"After the accident on the first day of elementary school, I spent more than a month resting in the hospital. I ran a fever, my lungs got infected, I even came down with acute gastroenteritis. But in the end nothing serious came of it."
Shiina Taki had assumed that the memory of that incident would gradually be sealed away, the same as most other memories: unmentioned for long enough, it would thin out and fade until it was gone completely.
The memories from that stretch of time were not pleasant ones, after all. She had nightmares every single night, and what she could actually recall amounted to almost nothing.
All she remembered was drifting in and out of a haze until, somehow, she was discharged. Afterward, when she went back to school, her classmates all fussed over her.
That part had been rather nice, really.
That was what Shiina Taki had believed. That she would never remember it again.
Until that day in her second year of middle school.
At the witching hour, the girl opened her eyes in a daze.
The moment she woke, Taki felt as though her skull were splitting, as though at any second a seam would open across her forehead and her brain would crawl out on its own.
She sat there recovering for a while before she looked up at the clock at the front of the classroom.
The second hand ticked around. It was five thirty-two.
"..."
Shiina Taki was fully awake now. She stretched out her aching body; her legs had gone badly numb from being folded under her weight.
"That's not right."
Taki doubted what the clock was telling her. If she remembered correctly, the stupid thing had a fault in it that nobody could adjust away.
It ran behind the real time by-
"Great. So it's five thirty-five."
Shiina Taki had fallen asleep around three, when classes let out.
With no one around to disturb her, she had slept straight through to past five.
The last of the sun before nightfall dyed her uniform and the side of her face a burnt orange. The tear mole at the corner of her eye caught the light beautifully, though even that couldn't disguise the irritation churning inside her.
Today was actually a very important day.
Her big sister, Shiina Maki, was leading the Haneoka Girls' School brass band to the national competition, and the whole family was supposed to be there to cheer her success.
But Taki didn't want to go. She didn't want to go at all, and it had nothing to do with a little sister's petty stubbornness.
Like her parents, she was happy for her sister. What she hated was the way other people held her sister up beside her for comparison.
Those people would sing praises of how magnificent her sister was, then note, ever so casually, that Shiina Taki still had some work to do.
Shiina Taki knew she had to push herself. She knew it would take days and nights of grinding away before she had any hope of catching up to her sister, let alone surpassing her. What she didn't want was strangers appointing themselves her instructors.
The sheer condescension of it!
"Haah."
She packed up her things and stretched. The sky outside was gorgeous; even from here she could see the blazing sunset clouds, teetering on the edge of collapse.
Burning clouds were a symbol of happiness and peace.
Taki drifted down the corridor at a crawl. She knew she was stalling, putting off the moment she had to go home and face her sister and her family.
Would they be disappointed in her? Would they think she was just a rebellious brat? But that wasn't how she felt at all... Thankfully, her parents and her sister understood her.
"That's exactly the problem. They're too good about it. It makes me feel childish and small."
Taki wished she could achieve something, anything, that would make her parents and her sister proud of her.
If only she had her sister's gift for leading people, and that deep well of musical talent to go with it.
If only she could also-
The empty, hushed campus held nothing but the rustling chirp of insects and the occasional snore of a stray cat.
But as Taki wandered aimlessly deeper into the school grounds, she caught a sound that was strange beyond description.
She stopped where she stood. She couldn't have said what kind of sound it was.
One moment it was a wailing cry, like a child's. The next it turned into the yapping of a small dog, and when she listened harder it sounded more like a cat. Taki had the feeling she had heard it somewhere before.
She just couldn't remember where.
Standing in the corridor, she noticed that a light rain had begun to fall outside. Come to think of it, this was the first rain since her second year of middle school had started.
[Maybe I should just go home.]
But the sound from the courtyard not far off was too peculiar to leave alone.
She had come this far already. Getting home a little later than that hardly seemed to matter now.
No sooner thought than done.
Shiina Taki stopped hesitating and edged carefully toward the source of the noise, and the strange clamor grew clearer with every step.
At last, when she rounded a concrete pillar, she saw a girl standing beneath the old tree in the courtyard ahead.
Taki's pupils contracted. It was an image she would carry for the rest of her life.
The girl wore a school uniform and paid no mind at all to the rain soaking her. A ring of crows surrounded her. Some perched on her shoulders, some rested in her open palms, but most of them chose to wheel through the air around her.
The fine, needling rain had dampened their wings, though it was too light to hinder their flight.
Feathers that should have been pitch black shimmered now with every color there was, the wet plumage catching the orange phantom of the sky. To Taki, those birds looked like little rainbows that could move.
[So that's what a crow sounds like... it's like something out of a fairy tale.]
No wonder people in the old days called crows crow tengu.
The girl had her back to Taki, yet Taki was already certain she had to be beautiful. That blurred silhouette in the rain alone was enough to leave her staring, dumbstruck.
Especially when the crows streaked past and threw that snow-white long hair into relief. Then this living oil painting became more entrancing still.
She swallowed.
The thought surfaced almost on its own: go over there, say something, get to know her.
[Nah, forget it.]
Well, whatever. She was a big kid now. Walking straight up to a stranger would be mortifying.
She didn't dare go and greet her, but she wasn't willing to leave either. That girl felt like the crows, somehow. So...
[Cute.]
Whether or not fate arranged it, the girl finally turned and looked back.
A small crow was perched on her index finger. And the instant Taki saw her eyes clearly, a familiarity so intimate it was horrifying came crawling up her spine.
"!!!"
Such a familiar red. Truly, truly familiar.
She had seen it somewhere before. She was sure of it.
[Where, though?]
Her past was nothing but incomplete shards. Shiina Taki dug through them searching for the answer and came up with nothing.
She backed away a few steps without thinking, then turned and jogged off.
[I'll just go home. Today doesn't count. Next time I see her, I'll definitely go up and ask her properly.]
At least, that was how Shiina Taki consoled herself.
To miss a chance at meeting such a beauty. What a shame that really was.
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