Spirit Unbreakable

“Take this,” Riumi said handing Mikomi a small plastic card. She looked at him confused.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“The bus,” Riumi replied.

“First of all, I have my own money,” Mikomi said pointing at her wrist where a small RFID chip had been placed. This was what most people used for payment, especially for orphans like Mikomi. The problem with the RFIDs was that they were also a very good way of tracking someone’s movements. It was something that Riumi had declined getting when the Takahashi’s had recommended it. He had always been fine with just carrying around a plastic card instead.

“I don’t want everyone in Nihon to know what we are doing.” Riumi replied.

Mikomi rolled her eyes. “Okay then, what about taking a sky taxi. I have always wanted to take a sky taxi.” Her eyes were scanning the traffic overhead as she said this.

“The bus is cheaper.”

“It’s slower too.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Why aren’t you?” Mikomi emphasized this statement with a stomp of her foot and a pouty look on her face.

“We’re taking the bus.” The statement was final and Mikomi could see there was no room for argument. She dragged out her reluctant sigh and plodded to the bus stop.

Riumi wasn’t about to waste all his money on a sky taxi ride. Very few cars drove in the sky, even though most had the capability. The insurance was really expensive and getting a permit to drive the airways was even worse. It had limited the amount of traffic that was seen in the skies above to those who were really rich, for you needed a lot of money to drive an air car, as well as to get an express sky taxi, which would bypass the congested streets on the earth.

“Fine,” Mikomi huffed taking a seat on one of the few empty chairs at the bus stop. Riumi just sighed; it was going to be a long trip.

Riumi had waited until Sunday to do their little excursion, just so they had enough time to get to Ohara and back before nightfall. He would have went earlier in the week, but it would have meant skipping school, and after the promise he had made with Ayumi and the deal he had made with Matsumoto-sensei, it would have caused more trouble than it was worth. Riumi had an unending supply of patience and it annoyed him that Mikomi did not.

Mikomi let her eyes wander back to the sky. As she watched the patchy traffic flying overhead, she looked back at Riumi and glared.

“This is a waste of time, Riumi-san,” she said.

“Hey, if you want to fork out the money to get a sky taxi be my guest,” Riumi replied. Mikomi just looked at him with a glare. “Or you could just give me the comb and be on your way if you feel you are wasting your time.”

“Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you,” Mikomi huffed. Riumi just shrugged his shoulders and leaned against the pole that posted the bus schedule.

Minutes later, the bus they were waiting for pulled up. They scanned their cards and shuffled onto the crowded bus. Riumi saw an unoccupied seat and pulled Mikomi toward it. Sitting her into the seat, he grabbed one of the dangling handles and stood, trying to keep his balance as the bus lurched forward.

“You’re gonna have a sore arm by the time we get to Ohara,” Mikomi stated.

Riumi looked at Mikomi. “I didn’t have to give you the seat.” Mikomi shut her mouth and looked out the window.

It took them an hour to get out of Kyoto on the bus. Mikomi had fallen asleep within the first fifteen minutes. As they got nearer to the outskirts of town, the crowd on the bus thinned enough for Riumi to find a seat. Riumi shook Mikomi awake when the bus finally came to a stop. Making their way to the front of the bus, Riumi scanned his card on the reader which paid the amount shown. Mikomi was right behind him rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Once they were off, the bus pulled away leaving them in the midst of a very busy town.

Sunday, being the only real day off, meant that anything remotely interesting to do was being done. Sanzen-in happened to be one of those interesting things to do and so Riumi and Mikomi followed a line of tourists up the path that led to the temple. Vendors selling all sorts of goods had set up shop along the busy street and Riumi saw Mikomi light up at every new thing she saw. It took a firm grip on Mikomi’s hand to keep her from getting distracted. When they finally made it to Sanzen-in, the crowd was massive. There was a large group of people near the steps leading to the temple, all of them vying for their turn to take pictures. Riumi moved past them and got into the line where they could by tickets to enter the temple. They were there for another hour waiting. The volume of people there had to be controlled so that the temple grounds were not so congested that people could not enjoy the peace that the grounds instilled. Finally purchasing their tickets, they removed their shoes and stepped inside the temple.

Riumi had never been to Ohara before. He had never ventured this far away from Kyoto. Every Saturday after school was out, and sometimes before, Riumi went to his mountain for the weekend. He usually came down Sunday evening when all the crowds had subsided and gone home. So when he got inside the temple, he was surprised by the peacefulness of it all. Most people were meandering around the various rooms looking at the paintings and other trinkets that were held in cases. A few of the rooms harboured wears that they could buy, and Riumi weaved his way into those, since the monks of the temple seemed to be handling the buying and selling. Mikomi followed behind him, her gaze less focused.

Riumi glanced at the wares for sale and spotted a few combs that looked similar to Mikomi’s. Grabbing one, he took it to the nearest monk.

“Are these made here?” Riumi asked the monk who looked at Riumi and smiled.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Would it be possible to meet the person that made this?” Riumi asked the smiling monk.

Instead of replying, the monk just pointed deeper into the temple and Riumi set down the comb and headed in the proffered direction. Mikomi ran after him, dodging people as she went, having been distracted by the things sold.

“Riumi-san wait up. What did that monk say,” Mikomi asked as she caught up with Riumi who was not relenting in his pace.

“He didn’t say anything. He just pointed this way,” Riumi said. He stopped when he came to a room of the temple that was not screened off. A garden stood before him, unimaginable in its beauty. Riumi walked closer to the edge of the room and sat in Virasana pose while people flitted from the room, taking pictures of the garden. Mikomi came and sat by him, puzzled by the sudden change in Riumi.

“Arashi-san, what are you doing?” she asked.

Riumi responded without looking at her. “I don’t know. This just reminds me of the place I was always trying to find when I went up the mountain.”

Mikomi looked at the garden and mimicked Riumi’s pose. Light was filtering through the sculpted trees that hung over the garden causing the whole area to be bathed in a yellow green glow. Moss covered the ground between the sculpted bushes and bonsai trees. A creek ran through the garden with rocks and stone lanterns – most covered in moss – standing in accent to nature. Riumi felt peaceful for once, a true peace. It finally felt like he was moving in the right direction. He was sure that coming here was the right thing; that he would find what he was searching for here, or at least a piece of it. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, ignoring the whispers of the people that surrounded him. He felt a light hand on his forearm and opened his eyes, finally remembering the Mikomi was with him on this venture and that she didn’t harbour his patience. Riumi was starting to think she didn’t hold any patience at all.

“Arashi-san, what’s that over there?” she asked pointing past the garden and into the surrounding temple grounds. Riumi cast his glance beyond the garden and looked in the direction Mikomi was pointing. A man stood back there, he had turned and left just as Riumi had looked toward him.

“It was a monk, Mikomi-chan,” Riumi said.

“He didn’t look like a monk to me,” Mikomi replied. “Anyhow, don’t you think we should try and find this Aacron person?”

Riumi nodded his head. “Yeah,” he said and got up. Mikomi took the lead this time and they wandered through the remaining rooms of the temple until they found the other side. Donning their shoes – which they had been carrying through the temple – they stepped into the temple grounds. Another building was before them, the sun cresting just beyond it. Riumi moved toward it with the rest of the crowd that was gathered and followed the path past a group of ponds that held the giant koi that were common in Japan. On the other side of the building, Riumi caught sight of another moss garden beside a small pond that was being filled from a bamboo shoot, which was coming from the hill above. Tall trees shot up without bend or curve, arrows pointing to the sky. Among them, Riumi saw small statues buried in the moss, almost consumed by it, with only their round squinted faces peaking up at him. He passed it by with vague remembrance and wondered if he had been wrong about Ohara. He felt like he had been here before.

Reaching the steps that led to the upper grounds of the temple, Riumi took them at a fast stride, reaching the top before Mikomi had even got half way up. Riumi waited patiently for Mikomi to catch up when she called out to him. He took the pause to look around this part of the temple. He could see numerous paths branching off and he decided that he would take the path to the left that rounded back to the garden he had been at, though they were now above it. He wanted to meet that monk he had seen briefly and thought his best chance of doing that would be in that direction.

When Mikomi had finally caught up, she put her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath. Riumi didn’t notice this action, and instead, as soon as he realized that Mikomi had reached him, headed in his desired direction.

“Riumi-san wait up, you walk too fast, I can’t keep up,” Mikomi said in between breaths.

“This is my slow walk,” Riumi said still not relenting in his pace.

Mikomi looked at him incredulously. “Well, I don’t want to be around when you start walking fast.”

Riumi looked back at Mikomi, she was nearly running to keep up with him and he tried to hide the smile that was creeping to his lips. He slowed his pace and watched Mikomi slowly catch up, her face to the ground scowling.

A loud thump in front of him made him stop walking all together and he turned from Mikomi to look at the large mass of orange robes that was on the pathway in front of him. Mikomi, who hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going, ran into Riumi and he stumbled forward a few feet as he took the impact.

“Hey! What are you doing Riumi-san? Warn me next time,” Mikomi said and after receiving no response from Riumi, she glanced at his stony face. “What’s the matter anyway?” Riumi did not reply. He was still trying to figure out where the man before them had come from, it was like he had fallen from the sky, or maybe a nearby tree.

“Are you all right?” He finally asked the monk, who was now rising to his feet, giving his robes a shake. At this comment, Mikomi finally looked in the direction of the monk and met him face to face. He didn’t look like a monk; he looked more like a bear dressed in monks clothing. He wasn’t Japanese either. He was Caucasian and far taller than Riumi was.

He smirked at Riumi’s comment and gave a slight bow. “Hello, I’m Aacron, everyone’s favourite monk,” he stated. He had a tenor voice, but seemed rather flighty. Riumi looked at Mikomi with puzzlement. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it hadn’t been this.

“You don’t seem like a monk to me,” Mikomi said. She glanced at the man before her. He didn’t even have a shaved head; instead his dark brown hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“You don’t seem like a little girl to me,” Aacron replied.

Mikomi wanted to reply to this indignantly; however she regained her composure and tried again. “But you’re not even Japanese.”

“Where is it written that monks have to be Japanese?”

Mikomi glared at the monk and crossed her arms muttering under her breath things that Riumi was sure he didn’t want to hear. Turning his attention back to the monk, who now wore a rather smug look on his face, he tried to take the man seriously, but was coming up short. He was starting to think this whole venture had been a waste of time.

“Have I been here before?” Riumi asked. Maybe this man could answer the strange déjà vu that Riumi seemed to be having ever since he had seen the garden.

“I dunno, have you?” Aacron asked with that same satisfied smile he had given to them when he had been dusting himself off. He looked like a kid who had just gotten the last candy.

Riumi opened his mouth to reply and seemed to have come to the same loss of words that Mikomi had. He shut his mouth again and just stared at the monk, who continued to stare back with that same satisfied grin. It was somewhat disconcerting.

“Look,” Riumi said after a very long awkward pause, “we came to ask you about something. Are you the same Aacron-san that painted this?” Riumi, after taking the comb from Mikomi’s hair, walked over to Aacron and placed it in his hand. Aacron looked at it and the smile momentarily subsided, then just as fast as it had gone, it was back.

“Yes,” he simply said. He leaned in conspiratorially towards Riumi cupping his empty hand around his mouth, “do you know what that is?”

“I was actually hoping that you could tell me,” Riumi said, he was starting to think that this person was a few brain cells short and so he backed up a few steps.

“Oh, I doubt you would know what I was talking about anyway,” Aacron said his face turning solemn as he clutched the comb and tried to stuff it into his robes. Mikomi, seeing this action, lunged forward and wrenched it from his grasp. Riumi was surprised with the deftness in which she did this and once again had the feeling that Mikomi had in fact stolen the comb to begin with. She had the reflexes of a cat. Aacron looked just as surprised as Riumi, but Mikomi just gave him a glare and shoved the comb back into her hair.

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with angels and dragons would it?” Riumi asked. Mikomi looked at him with a raised brow, but said nothing.

Aacron, on the other hand, seemed to have brightened a bit. “Maybe you will know then.” Aacron gave Riumi a closer look which made Riumi shift uncomfortably and then he looked at Mikomi. “Not for her ears I think,” he said.

Riumi didn’t give it a second thought. “Mikomi-chan, take a walk.” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. Mikomi couldn’t have looked more venomous than she did with those words.

“I can’t believe you. You promised. You promised I could come and now you’re sending me away like some sort of dog. I will not leave, I’m staying. I want to hear too. It’s not fair.” She was doing her best job of whining like the little kid she was. Her voice rose higher with each word she spoke until Riumi was wincing with pain. Before she could continue with her tirade, he held up his hand and stuck the other in his ear.

“Enough, Chiisai, I said you could come, but I never said that when we found Aacron I would let you stay. There’s a difference.”

Mikomi pouted and tried to speak, but Riumi gave her another fierce glare. She had tears in her eyes now and she was fighting back sobs. It affected Riumi in an unexpected way. He felt suddenly out of his depth.

“Mikomi-chan, grow up,” Riumi said. This made Mikomi burst into tears. Riumi was suddenly panicky. He didn’t know what to do. People were starting to come down the path to see what was happening.

“Shh, Mikomi-chan. Stop. Stop crying. Oh, you’re such a child,” Riumi said which made the crying louder. “Mikomi please stop. All right, all right stay. As long as you stop crying you can stay.” The tears stopped almost immediately and Riumi stared at her with clear incredulity. How can she turn on and off the water works like that? It’s a gift. Highly annoying, yet still a gift.

With the crisis handled, and Mikomi once again her cheerfully annoying self, Riumi turned back to Aacron who was holding in barely suppressed laughter. He took a deep breath and looked at Riumi once again.

“That was highly entertaining. Come up any time,” Aacron replied.

“About that dragon with the backwards wings,” Riumi said trying not to let his disastrous handling of Mikomi’s tantrum weigh on his mind.

“It’s a symbol,” Aacron said like this was some sort of revelation.

“I figured that,” Riumi replied, again having the sense that he was wasting his time.

“For a race… um, maybe a species… never really asked them though, whether they were a race or another species. Doesn’t really come up in regular conversation.”

“I see,” Riumi said with barely suppressed rage, he hated when people wasted his time and that’s all this conversation seemed to be doing.

“You see? No, you wouldn’t see them, they’re hiding.”

“They being?”

“Didn’t I say?”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t.” It was Mikomi’s turn to laugh, she was starting to warm up to this Aacron. She’d never seen Riumi show so much emotion before, even if it was anger.

“Oh, I’m sure I said. It’s rather important; I wouldn’t have kept it to myself.”

“Look, if you are just going to waste my time with this nonsense I’ll leave. You obviously have no idea what this is all about.” Riumi turned around and headed down the path.

“You’re wrong, Riumi, I know exactly what this is all about,” Aacron said, his voice suddenly very serious. Riumi stopped in his tracks, but did not speak. “I’ll give you the beginning of your journey, but the rest is up to you. We are called Shidenen for a reason you know. The word that you are looking for is Levanith, Riumi, not angels.”

Riumi’s mind ached. He knew that word. It had been on the tip of his tongue for all these years. He turned and looked at Aacron who was giving him a half-hearted smile. “Thank you,” he said.

“Be careful,” Aacron said. Riumi nodded and turned back up the path, Mikomi at his heels. As suddenly as he had begun, he stopped as he realized something. “Hey wait how did you know my –” Riumi turned and looked behind him but the path was empty and his last words echoed among the empty grounds, “name?” Aacron was gone. Riumi looked at Mikomi. “He wasn’t just a figment of my imagination was he?” Mikomi shook her head.

“That was the strangest man I have ever met,” she whispered.

“Strange, yet highly useful,” Riumi replied. He had a beginning.

“Yeah, about that, what did he mean Levanith and not angels and what was that strange word he used to describe himself, shidenny?”

“I think it was Shidenen.”

“Yeah that one. What’s going on, Arashi-san? Why did you want to know what that backward dragon was anyway?”

“You ask too many questions, Mikomi-chan. Mind your own business for once,” Riumi said brushing past Mikomi. He heard the sobs coming again and winced. “For all that’s good in the world, Mikomi-chan, please don’t.” But she was not to be ignored. “All right, but I warn you, what I tell you could put you in serious danger. It could kill you.”

Mikomi had stopped crying with that startling abruptness that amazed Riumi and grinned at Riumi. “You’re the master of exaggeration when it comes to seriousness, Riumi. I think I can handle anything you can tell me.”

Riumi sighed. Mikomi was soon going to find out that despite what she believed, Riumi had never exaggerated anything in his entire life. The truth was just more than most could handle.

“Come on, let’s find some place quiet to talk,” he said leading Mikomi down the path.

“I don’t remember much about my childhood, not before I was here in Nihon. I just remember a woman smiling sadly down at me. She had wings, like an angel. I remember a little girl as well, she was younger than me, but we played together a lot. I always remember her being so cheerful when everyone else was sombre. I remember dragons flying in the sky. But my memories have no coherence. They are all out of sequence, like half remembered dreams,” Riumi said, he was so lost in thought that he was starting to forget who he was talking to. It had been so long since he had told anyone. He actually couldn’t ever remember voicing these realities to anyone before, not even Ayumi and Eiji. It felt like a weight was lifting from him. He didn’t want to stop.

“How could that be real? Dragons and angels?” Mikomi asked. She was more probing for answers than disbelieving.

“When I first woke up in Nihon, I thought that my memories were of things here and now, on Earth, but the more I found out about Earth, the more I realized that what I remembered couldn’t have been here. It’s not Earth I remember, but somewhere else. We were at war, we were losing, they sent me here and now I want to find my way back, I want to help those people I left behind.”

“So you’re an alien?” Mikomi said. She quite fancied the idea.

Riumi glared at her, somewhat sullied. “Do I look like an alien?”

“Well no,” Mikomi said, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, “it’s just I thought that if you are from another planet you would have to be an alien.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am, but I look like you and that’s got to mean something.”

Mikomi shrugged. “So Levanith. You think it’s the name of your planet?”

Riumi sighed, “I really don’t know. It sounds like it should mean something to me, but I just can’t remember. Every day that goes by I feel like I remember less and less about the place that I came from.”

“Don’t worry, Arashi-san, we’ll find your home, I know it,” Mikomi said. She had never been so excited in her life. Here she was caught up in the middle of a mystery and the person it surrounded needed her help, or at least had been tricked into needing her help. It was too much, she felt like she was going to burst apart at the seams. “So where do we begin?”

Riumi looked back at Mikomi with a frown. “We begin nowhere, Mikomi-chan. We are taking you back home, and I am going to find out on my own.”

Mikomi grabbed Riumi’s hand. It was not what Riumi had been expecting. He was waiting for the crying and the screaming to start again, this was wholly too mature for Mikomi, and it confused him. He was starting to think he would never understand this small girl.

“You shouldn’t do this alone, Riumi-san,” Mikomi said, her voice merely a whisper.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Riumi replied.

“Why not? Who else could you tell? The Takahashi’s? No one would believe you the way I do. Grown-ups don’t believe in possibilities anymore, only facts, and they feel all of those have been found. If you started going around saying, ‘dragons and angels live on a planet called Levanith and I’m from there too’ they would put you in a padded cell,” Mikomi said.

“You might get hurt,” Riumi replied. Why couldn’t she understand that? This wasn’t some game; it was her life on the line. He couldn’t play with her life as well as his own. She had nothing to gain from this and everything to lose. He couldn’t do that, she had so much life to live. She belonged here, on Earth, in Japan, but he didn’t. Every day he stayed here was another day closer to his death; he was suffocating here with his scattered memories. Not knowing was killing him, but knowing would surely kill Mikomi.

“I could walk down the street and fall and get hurt, but that doesn’t stop me from walking down the street, does it?” Mikomi countered.

Riumi reached up and grabbed Mikomi’s shoulders. She was standing now and he was staring into her defiant and hopeful face.

“That’s different, Mikomi-chan. If I let you do this, it would be my fault if you got hurt.” That was more than he had meant to say. Actually it wasn’t at all what he had meant to say. He had meant to say that she was a nuisance to have around that he would get things done faster without her and that having her around was about as enjoyable as a sunburn.

Mikomi looked at him with tears in her eyes and Riumi let go of her.

“I mean, you’ll just slow me down,” Riumi said shoving Mikomi aside and walking down the pathway to the exit of the temple.

Mikomi followed behind him, silent at first.

“The Web would probably be a good place to start,” Mikomi said.

“I know,” Riumi said.

“Should we do a search tomorrow? I’ll come to your school at lunch, that way we won’t have to wait until after,” Mikomi said running to try and catch up with Riumi who had reached the exit.

“You’re a pain, Chiisai,” Riumi mumbled as he walked down the hill back toward the bus stop. Mikomi just smiled.