She was heading straight into a telephone pole. Kiyomi blinked, then looked straight ahead. She clearly saw now her own two hands grasping the steering wheel. Her vision was then completely restored just as unexpectedly as it had abandoned her. Kiyomi let all her nerves relax as she slowly surrendered herself to the flow. Rather, she was insensate and that was bliss. She wanted only to remain floating like this in the dark. Where am I? When is this? What am I? Such mundane concerns no longer mattered. At the same time, she felt a gentle constriction in her very center, and the ends of her body flowed quietly in opposing directions. Something small divided slowly deep inside of her. To begin with, it was not clear that time flowed in this vast gloom. Had it been yesterday, a recent year, or in the more distant past? She could not tell. Once, in some far-off place, Kiyomi was just like this, not understanding anything, just squirming and swimming. Her body seemed to recall this place, yet no matter how much she tried, Kiyomi herself could not remember. What is this place? It was a question she had asked many times before. Kiyomi shook and slithered ahead through the slightly sticky blackness. Head, torso, and hips gone, a body long and narrow like a worm's, she felt herself to be. She lost all feeling in her arms and legs. She never dreamt it on any other night but Christmas and had certainly never entered into it while she was awake. Like the stars' orbits, the dream always came to her with regulated precision. But she did not know why she was having it just now. This was the dream, and she was now entering into it again. That dream she had once a year, on Christmas Eve, in which she felt herself writhing in some pitch-dark world without beginning or end. Her clothes had vanished without her ever noticing. There was a churning around her, and she was floating in a warm, viscous liquid. There was only darkness fanning out, continuing endlessly in all directions. She could not feel the seat belt around her waist nor her foot on the gas pedal, for neither was where it was supposed to be. In fact, she did not even know where her hands were. Kiyomi looked down in her confusion to check the steering wheel. They had all gone away: the white sedan driving in front of her the tail light of the bus waiting at its stop the cluster of high school girls hastening along the sidewalk. No matter how much effort she put into it, nothing appeared. Kiyomi tried to blink, but her sight did not return. Just ahead, the street took its familiar slope downward and bore slightly to the right, where a traffic light had just changed to yellow, before vision failed her. The houses she passed every day were reflected in the windshield only a moment ago. Kiyomi Nagashima had no idea what had happened. PROLOGUEĮverything vanished suddenly before her eyes. ISBN 1-93 Manufactured in the United States of America First American Edition Vertical, Inc. Shigeo Ohta translated selectively from the Kadokawa paperback edition. Originally published in Japanese as Parasaito Ibu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1995. Copyright © 2005 by Hideaki Sena All rights reserved.
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