Vivec and I spoke for a while longer before I left her to explore some more, nothing of consequence was said, just where either were from specifically and a few cultural comparisons. I went downstairs to the first floor to find Hogue cooking for Kaur and Bonds.

  “Oi mate, have a seat,” Kaur seemed enthused. It was a treat to have an SO cook for you.

  “Hogue is making blueberry waffles, my request–” Bonds said, but was interrupted by Hogue.

  “Just this once, wanted to stick around to see if anyone had any questions, figured I’d be back in the morning tomorrow or in a few days once y’all got over your jet lag.”

  “He was telling us about his time here at the Foundation,” Bonds was a very pleasant person and I couldn’t help but appreciate it.

  “Nah, nothing special, I’ve done a few ops, came in like all of you as a private. Great thing about the IERF is whatever ranks you obtain here cross over into your country’s military, so if you ever decided to go back, you’d be immediately promoted to an equivalent rank. I was just telling them about one op in Finland, the Nummela Sanatorium. Places like that, where they kept the infirm, the dying, the plagued, cursed, or insane, only to leave them to die there? Echo-rich environment. You ever seen the like, Ono?” He gestured to the waffle iron offering to me, I nodded.

  “No, I’ve never been to an epicenter before. Is it frightening?” I asked.

  “Terrifying, you think, sure, you’ve seen it all, you ain’t no spring chicken no more, seen your fair share of grandma moving the chair in the morning, a dead shopkeep who replays stocking the shelves when you’re out shopping, you just kind of get on with it. Damn place sounded like abattoir. It’s like they wait for enough people to be there to start wailing. Old gurneys and derelict wheelchairs squeaking behind you, doors half open slamming shut as soon as you pull your flashlight away. Shadow patterns changing as soon as you turn a corner.”

  “What was the mission objective?” Kaur asked as Hogue handed him a plate and a bottle of syrup.

  “One haunt, what locals believed was a girl kept there, bit noisy for their liking. Sometimes these ops make you feel like a bug exterminator. Her DRF rated a 6, three times normal, screams could be heard down into the town at night, and by the time we took the call, got down there, it was happening in the day. More serious when some townie died investigating it, making sure it wasn’t an actual person.”

  “Someone died?” Bonds sounded genuinely distraught asking that, in spite of her mouth being half full of waffle.

  “Yup, old man, one of the doctors who worked there when it was open, worried his guilt conjured something malevolent. We get there, EP was visibly spacial and tangential, knocking all manner of shit off the roof before replaying her death, leaping over the side at us.”

  “How’d you deal with it?” I asked, Hogue placing a plate in front of me.

  “We tried a medium, wasn’t any reason to her, she was just unmitigated rage. So we warded her. She’s locked in an effigy on the roof. Long as no one breaks the thing, she can spend the rest of forever up there.”

  We all sat there in silence, I’m sure the others at the table had their own thoughts on it, but for me, if I became an echo, I’d hate to be stuck, frozen in time forever.

  “Piece of mercy, I think,” Kaur commented. “Better than I’ve done. I feel right bad each time I have to tell them to sod off. I feel like I’ve done ‘em wrong.”

  “Kaur, can’t do that to yourself. You’ve done what you’ve had to. I’m sure Ono here has had to do things as well,” replied Hogue. I looked between them both.

  “Yeah. I can count them on one hand. I’m in the middle, honestly. My first, felt reluctant to do. Second, felt it was my duty. The most recent one…” I trailed off. My mind wandered. Bonds’ hand was on my shoulder, but I didn’t hear her. She must have said my name a couple times before I finally caught it. “Sorry.”

  “You okay?” She looked genuinely concerned.

  “Yeah. Yeah, fine, I’m fine.” I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, got up, and took my plate to the sink. Hogue hit the faucet before I could.

  “I got it, son. You hit the dateline, you ought to get some rest.”

  “Thank you, sir. For the meal.”

  He nodded to me. I looked to the other two: while they looked concerned, they also looked like they knew. They have things they could do, and they probably have been through their own experiences. It was a knowing look of reciprocal woe. I went to my room.

  I took a shower and got ready for bed. Clock on the wall showed just after 12:30PM, a bit early, but Hogue was right, jetlag’s awful. I took my sword out from the harness and propped it up next to my bed. Lying down, I thought about the last time I used my sword. Dangerous as it was, feeling as tired as I was, I couldn’t really help it. I thought about waffles just an hour ago, and how I lied to them. I had been in an epicenter. It was more than two handfuls. I felt like I had seen much enough.

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  Aokigahara needed quelling every few years by itako. The fabled Sea of Trees and a place of great pain. No war was ever fought in that forest. No nexus lived there. Yet, for whatever reason, due to its isolation, the natural silence of the place, or for something beyond reasoning, Aokigahara is unique in that it welcomes despair. The living and the dead congregate en masse; those that take their lives, or echoes of sadness that wander in, the ground itself and the trees, ancient and aching, grasps like fingers towards sadness and pulls them even further in. After becoming itako, I was tasked with a band of nine others to go in.

  Only three made it out.

  I still kept in contact with Shirakami and Houshou, but we don’t talk to each other about it.

  I felt myself drift off.

  My feet touched earth, soft, damp, riddled with conifer pins and pinecones. The trees hung low, keeping the air cool, only a dim, sulfurous glow from the sun could press through the dense canopy. Barefoot, garbed in traditional red robes, my bokken in my hands and at the ready, I walked cautiously. Like I was told when I was young, like I had done in Yanigahara, as I was trained to do, I let my eyes relax, I let the world blur, my vision drifted from tree to tree, rock to branch, a world out of focus, allowing my mind to notice the fringes. They lived at the edge of sight and sound. I took tentative steps, instinct taking over, my nerves ready to switch into fight or flight. Walking became graceful, deliberate, and I began my hunt. Like melted colors, I moved through an opaque palette of greens, grays, and browns, nothing was clear, only my hearing and concentration. I caught sight of something red in my periphery, another hunter. I whistled my distinct melody, and the call came back. Himari’s song. She may have been younger, but she had been an itako longer than I have. The calling of the itako favors women over men, but among our ten there were four men with varying degrees of aptitude, including me. We needed our sight, where the women did not. I continued, seeing movement in the distance. I flanked, hoping to catch the feeling of cold anguish and perhaps yurei no katachi. Red, another of us, and I whistled. Young Sota responded back with his trill, like a bird. I knew if I focused, I’d see his face, but not in this forest, not with so many yurei around. We faced east together but went in different directions, quicker now; we had until nightfall to quell what we could. I sprinted, over felled trunks, across small creeks, between the trees and through the brush. Then I heard it. A snap of a twig, but it had a flat, tonelessness to it, as though it were snapped inside a box. Again, closer, and I faced towards it, then slightly away, allowing the edge of my vision to let it manifest. I took a step back, my sword at the ready. It was a harsh intake of breath, but where air was sucked into lungs that weren’t there, only a cool air that bit into my skin lingered along the floor, scraping like acidic pins between my toes. I stood my ground, my head slightly turned, listening, watching out of the corner of my eye. A rotten hand, attached to a disjointed arm, lifting a decrepit torso, wrapped in a stained and tattered white gown, white eyes peering through a veil of matted, filth-ridden hair from a head that lolled on a still-broken neck dragged the lot towards me, legs hissing behind as it slithered across rock and moss at me, a baleful moan turned turbulent scream as it went from pulling dead weight to a full raucous charge. I waited. I felt blood drip from my ears and nose. I waited. The crack of bark and tumble of rock grew louder above the cries of the dead. I waited. It took in a final mimicked breath as my eyes turned towards it, my vision clearing, my pupils narrowing, my bokken came down. Like a rush from a wave on the edge of a beach, a swell too high to keep your footing, sadness and mourning washed over me. Like cold embers, white cloth turned to black filaments bending and fading in the light. I let my breath leave my chest. I continued my hunt. I would fell 24 in similar ways as the sickly yellow light became orange with the coming of the night, then a dim hue of pinks and purples. I whistled to call, at first, I couldn’t hear anyone. My feet began to freeze, and I let my vision cloud as I reeled around and back, but fast as I was, I did not react fast enough; I stepped on a loose rock and felt earth give out from beneath me, and as I course-corrected, it took advantage of my imbalance, and my held breath was forced out of me with unmitigated force as I saw the world tip and felt the searing hot pain of wood splintering across my back. I broke through one small sapling and then slammed into a bigger tree, coming to a stop after my body hit hard earth. I tried to take in a breath, but try as I might, this thing broke a few ribs and the air was impossibly cold. My eyes couldn’t blur, my fight or flight was activated and my vision hyperfocused, and I could see it. I could see them. Yurei. Spirits of sadness, unlike any yokai. Vengeful, jealous, angry, hollow. People came to this forest to die, and though some have been killed or by their own hand, some the yurei took and made them as they are. The pale figures of hate. I got to my feet, realizing that not only were some of my ribs broken, but my left clavicle snapped; my whole arm sat at a jaunty angle. I held my sword with my right, trying to ready my resolve. My feet felt like ice, my heart was pounding, I felt the blood dribble from my ears and nose. A blur of red, and another. Watanabe. Oyama. The eldest of the itako, the strongest women I had ever known. Their blind eyes were no less a detriment as their safeguard, and they cut through the now quickly swollen army or yurei coming from the trees. “Hashiranakya!” In the din of the cries of agony, wood splitting, the sounds of fighting, all muddled by the blood in my ears, I ran. I couldn’t tell if Oyama, Watanabe, or even my own thoughts told me to run, or even something beyond all of us told me to, but I heeded the plea, and I ran. I kept running, my left arm useless, my breaths painful, my legs giving out from exhaustion and terror. I kept running until I saw light. That is how I remembered it. Running until I saw the light. It was a road, and a car was passing by in the twilight. He must have thought I was a yurei at first because he sped up, but then swerved at the end and came to a screeching halt. He picked me up and brought me to town where I met up with Houshou and Shirakami.

  But this wasn’t a memory. Not my memory. There was no light. I was still running. The trees felt never ending, and I was not hitting any road. I stopped. I took a deep breath. I could breathe. I moved my left arm. It was fine. My sword was in my hand. I stabbed it into the earth and looked down at myself. I was wearing my fatigues from Camp Fuji training. Wait. This wasn’t Aokigahara. I picked up my sword. I checked the trees around me, the light of day gone, but the moon crawled into spaces to help me see a bit better in the dark. These weren’t the silver birches and conifers in the shadow of a mountain. Oaks.

  I fell asleep in my dorm. I did not clear my mind before I let sleep take me. The dead hide behind the wood. The forests of Quantico would be tested tonight.

  If they wouldn’t, I would.

  I was not dying in Virginia.

  I took my first step when I heard it.

  A whistle.

  My song.

  I ran.