Chapter 45Ishikawa Miki lifted her head slowly from her pillow of grass, her head screaming with pain and eyes aching with pain. Her mind was a jumble of images and sensations, overlapping sequences of events that made no sense. She remembered being at the table with her family, her mysterious teacher and their strange apprentices, and she thought that she remembered the story told, something about rice, about the underworld, but the sensation of movement was different from last time, the passing through somehow less garbled, more focused, more directed.
She blinked, lifting herself up with a groan and caught sight of Shizuka, her hair disheveled, the shape of Bear #020 at her side, solemn and silent since their departure. Despite herself, a broad grin touched her lips.
“You look like I
