I drift slowly and reluctantly upwards toward consciousness. I hear the hopeless moan of a lost soul in some torturous hell and I feel a strange pressure all over my body. My eyes seem to be glued shut. I pry them open and stare down at the aisle of the bus below me. I appear to be hovering somewhere near the ceiling. Then I realize the bus is upside down.

I close my mouth and the moaning stops, but the pressure begins to coalesce into sharp jabs of pain. Pain is usually easy to locate. It tells you where it is and you can point to it. But this pain seems to come from everywhere all at once. I can feel the outline of my whole body mapped out in pain except...

I roll my head to the right. Drying blood pulls at my matted hair. I look down. The sole of my right shoe rests snugly next to my right knee. My foot is still in it. I have no idea if it is attached to me in any way.

I roll my head back. The jabs of pain grow into sharp stabbing knives.

Kyoko.

I look up. Bodies and parts of bodies lay tumbled on top of each other like a fallen Jenga tower. Streamers of blood are sprayed across everything. It coagulates in large red pools along the center of the ceiling. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound.

I roll my head to the left and I see her lying face down on the floor next to me. Her hands are up near her head as if she had started to do a push-up but had grown too tired and decided to take a nap instead. Her hair covers her face but I know it's her. Her bright yellow dress and pink top are covered in a fine red lace.

Terror erupts within me. For one brief moment, I feel no pain. I try to roll over but only manage a spastic flop and the knives of pain transform into the blades of invisible samurai. I scream as they hack my body to pieces. I try again to reach her. Giant hammers slam into my left arm and my ribs and I can't breathe for a moment. I lie face down in a pool of blood until the vice of pain eases just enough to allow short gasping breaths. The stench of blood is overpowering. Its coppery taste leaks into my mouth.

"Kyoko."

She doesn't respond. I don't know if she can hear her name. I croak her name again but she doesn't move. I can't even tell if she's breathing. I extend the only arm that will move and I can just barely touch her upper arm where it extends from one short, pink, puffy sleeve. I poke her cool flesh leaving a bloody fingerprint behind.

"Hey. Wake up. It's over." I poke her again, but she doesn't respond.

Deep down inside, an ugly suspicion forms but I push it aside and poke her again a little more forcefully. She still isn't moving. My suspicion returns on a rising tide of despair and horror. She is... She is... I can't even bring myself to think of the word.

"Kyoko!"

The bus rocks gently. A rushing sound rises around me and the light dims beyond the busted windows. Is the bus sliding into the reservoir? Will I survive the accident only to drown? 

The bus isn't moving, but something like a gray mist rushes past. It pours in through the broken windows at the rear of the bus, growing thicker and darker. It starts swirl together, rotating like the satellite images of typhoons that slam into Japan.

The dark center of the whirlpool expands with a crackling tear like the first charge of lightning before the thunderous boom. The temperature drops and I feel a pull as if the bus were slowly being tipped up on end and gravity is about to drag me toward the gaping black void. I expect to slide into the swirling maw at any moment, but nothing moves and everything starts to blur.

I blink and try to focus. I see two of everything...but no, not everything, just the people. I focus on a middle-aged woman folded in half behind me. A ghostly image of her unbroken body lies in the same place. The imagined tilt grows sharper and I instinctively reach out to grab something to keep from sliding to the back of the bus. Fresh pain ricochets through me, reminding me that I'm not going anywhere, though I can't understand this feeling of falling.

When ghostly bodies slowly flop upward and tumble into the black hole leaving the corpses behind, I understand. They are the souls of the dead passengers falling into some other dark world. The rushing sound grows more distinct. Voices whisper and mutter, but I can't understand what they're saying. Faint screams echo in the distance but I can't tell if they are cries of pain or the laughter of madness. Most of the voices sound as if they are pleading and begging, but the words are in no language I've ever heard.

The swirling dark mist moves drifts toward me. The pull grows stronger and I don't feel like I can hold on any longer. I look up into the void and sense a presence looking back. I hear more words, but these I understand. They slip into my mind, the memory of words never spoken, like when a teacher who knows you haven't been paying attention calls on you to answer a question and you wrack your brain for the memory of the sounds you ignored.

"No. It is not your time."

The mist coalesces into a vaguely human form. I am facing a Shinigami, a death god. It's come to collect the souls of the dead and drag them back to whatever world awaits us after here. "No," it repeats as if it had paused to look me over and make certain. "Not your time, ...yet."

It turns aside to Kyoko.

"No! You cannot take her!" I push myself up on the elbow of my one working arm and drag my broken body forward with a scream. Massive sheets of pain slice through me and I collapse with my arm flung across Kyoko's back.

The Shinigami pauses. I can sense it puzzlement. "She is dead. Her soul cannot remain to become a yokai."

"You cannot take her," I repeat stubbornly. "To take her is to take a part of me--a part of my very soul! You said I cannot die yet."

The Shinigami hesitates, growing slowly more distinct. Arms, legs and a torso form within the darkness. It is about my size.

"Your two souls are bound in some way?"

"We've begun to become one," I say remembering a western marriage vow and taking some creative liberties with it. "We're in love."

The Shinigami draws back slightly. Something forms on its head that might be a face. Two eyes--black pits darker and emptier than the void behind it--open. "This has heard of love. Many times mortals beg for the souls of their loved ones. This has never seen or touched anything that can be love."

"Love is not a thing that can be seen with the eyes or touched with hands."

"Then it doesn't exist."

"Then how can you exist? Most mortals cannot see or touch you."

"This is Shinigami."

"Mortals cannot touch Shinigami and Shinigami cannot touch love. If you were mortal you would know that love his real."

Solidifying slowly, the Shinigami waits a long time.  It wears the swirling dark mist like a shroud. Its "face" brightens into a white oval that peers at Kyoko. It grows more detailed adding nose, mouth, cheekbones and a chin. It is a young female face, a beautiful face, but it is the unreal beauty of geometric perfection. "This will restore her so that you can prove that love is real."

Shock flows through me like a jolt of electricity. Is this possible? Does a Shinigami have such power? I know I'm grasping desperately at straws, but I choose to believe it. "Thank you."

The Shinigami turns its face to me, a beautiful mask through whose eyes I see only infinite pits darkness. "If you cannot prove Love in one year, her soul will be taken."

Again, I am shocked, this time by fear. How does one prove that love exists? "But what will you accept as proof?"

The body of the Shinigami approaches me. It looks increasingly like a real girl, but its arms and legs move like a marionette. Somehow the more real it looks the more frightening it becomes. It is obviously just an object being manipulated by an otherworldly spirit. It floats down to kneel on one knee and leans over me. Something like real skin covers the face now--I can even see the pores--but the eyes remain as holes into a black void.

This time, the voice does not come from within my head.  It sounds close by like a whisper in my ear.

"Make This love you."