The next thing I know, I'm back home, sitting at my desk staring at my homework.

The passengers float out of their seats. Shopping bags with picnic supplies and tourist trinkets spray their contents upwards in slow motion.

My school uniform is streaked with dirt and sprinkled with bits of leaves and broken twigs.

Kioko-chan is smiling up at me waiting to hear her name.

I have a vague impression of running, running and screaming and running.

A mountain of steel and aluminum rises up just outside our window.

My throat is still sore and my hands are scraped up.

Her hair flies forward in a spray of splintered glass.

A shudder runs through me and I take a deep breath. I close my eyes and see the blur of spinning chrome handrails, smell the blood and feel the tipping point as the bus goes over. Falling. It feels like I'm still falling.

My heart pounds and my breath grows rapid as I remember the cold heavy pressure of the shinigami's presence, the weight of its awareness pressing down on me.

That means that Shizuku-san is...Shizuku-san is that...thing.

I open my eyes but the cold heavy presence only grows. I look around in growing panic and see the shadows begin to gather like black mist in the corner of my room.

No! I think. Not here, please not here.

The darkness solidifies into an infinite blackness, as if a hole was torn through the wall of my room in a crackling rip. It seems to lead to a cave deep below the earth that has never known light. It's the same hole in space I saw on the bus and I hear the muttering cries of the lost souls within.

Then she steps out, Shizuku-san still wearing her school uniform, and the same blackness fills her eyes.

The room goes gray and starts to rotated. I feel like I'm about to pass out from pure fear, then her voice jerks me back to the here and now.

"You remember now."

"You! You're a shinigami!"

"This is shinigami."

"What do you want? Why are you here?"

"To make sure you remember the agreement and to show you that love does not exist." She reaches for my hand but I jerk it back. The thought of her touch makes my skin crawl. "Come."

She turns and steps back through the hole into the darkness. I walk up to the edge. Somehow I think I see shapes in the darkness, lighter grays among the black. I hesitate at the edge when suddenly her hand shoots out, grabs me by the wrist and yanks me inside.

All light is swallowed up and warm moist air breathes over me, carrying the faint smell of blood and rot. The muttering and wailing and insane laughter is louder now and coming from all around me. I turn in circles but the opening is gone. The darkness feels as if it is pressing in on my eyes. After a moment I see something like the outline of a bridge in a faint gray aura. The shinigami is standing just a few feet away.

"What have you done? Where am I?"

"Brought you to Yomi, the land of the dead."

I feel a surge of panic, "Why?"

"All things are connected by death. Come."

She turns away and walks down the bridge, a black shape moving against the lesser blackness of Yomi. I shake my head feeling something is wrong with my eyes and nearly lose my balance. "This isn't the bridge over Sanzu river is it?" I asked referring to one of the three crossings the priests say the dead must take to enter Yomi proper. Only the very good get to take the bridge while evil people have to swim the snake infested waters. Most everyone else crosses at the ford...or so I've been told.

The shinigami points off to the side and I see the faint arch of another bridge in the distance.

"You are going to let me out again, right?" I try not to plead. The groaning of the souls increases as if they are gathering below us following my voice.

"Yes! Let us out!"

"Let us all out."

"We don't belong here."

"Out!"

I shiver, wanting to flee but have nowhere to go. "I mean, It's not my time, right?"

"Come." The shinigami continues down the bridge.

We arrive at a round platform with a spiderweb of bridges leading away from it. The shinigami turns down one and I follow until the bridge abruptly ends in a pall of darkness. It steps through. I stop, this time well back from the edge. After a moment, its head and shoulder lean out of the darkness in an incongruously human gesture. "Come...or have you decided to stay here?"

I reluctantly step up to the opening and see a dimly lit subway landing on the other side. I don't know where this is, but at least it is a human space. I step through into a shadowed spot under an escalator. Several of the overhead lights are out so that this corner is especially dark. The shinigami walks out onto the platform and pauses to look back at me. I step out and look around.

I'm guessing it's somewhere in Tokyo. I live far enough on the west side that the train landings are just covered platforms. This is a proper subway. I don't know what the hour is, but the initial after-work rush has passed. It's late enough that those going home early have done so, but not so late that everyone is jamming onto the 1 a.m. train to get home before the trains stop.

I turn to the shinigami. "Why did you bring me here?"

It points at a girl about my age, standing by the wall at the end of the platform. She is still wearing her school uniform and I'm certain her being out so late is a violation of her school's rules. She stands motionless, facing the tracks, her head bowed so that I can't see her face. "She is going to die now."

My insides feel like they have dropped out, or like the nauseating moment of weightlessness when you hit a bump at high-speed. I look to the thing that I had once thought of as Shizuku Tamashii and realize there is no sympathy, no emotion, nothing human about this pretense of a beautiful girl.

"And you just stand there?" I try not to shout. Any kind of public display of strong emotion, particularly negative emotion, is publicly frowned upon.

The shinigami looks at me. "Yes."

"How can you?"

"Not allowed to take a soul before the body dies."

"No!" I cringe at my own shout and lower the volume of my voice. "That's not what I meant. How can you just stand there and allow her to die?"

"Everyone dies."

"You brought me here to tell me that?"

"You are here to learn that love does not exist."

I hear the sound of an approaching train. "What is going to happen?"

"She throws herself in front of the train."

"Why?"

"She was in love with one of the popular boys at her school, managed to persuade him to go out with her then, even though he told her he loved her, he cast her aside after taking her virginity."

I have seen guys like that. I even thought Kurosawa-san was one of them, though I'm no longer sure. But I've never understood why girls pursue such guys. Too many girls seem to think they are somehow immune to the laws of human nature. "I don't think that has anything to do with love."

"She loved him. Now she hates him and hates herself. Her love has turned to hate and will soon destroy her."

The sound of the train gets louder and I feel the air pressure increase as it nears. The girl looks up, fixing her gaze on the edge of the subway landing.

A sense of panic rises up inside me. I can't believe I am watching someone die. In a minute a huge chunk of steel will grind her body up like hamburger. I feel nauseous just thinking about it. How could this happen? How could the shinigami stand there and let this happen? Why doesn't somebody do something?

The light from the train slides across the curved wall of the tunnel as it approaches the station. Her foot moves forward. Other passengers have lined up where the doors will open to let them on. She passes them, walking faster, increasing her speed as she nears the edge.

A passenger happens to notice her as she races past but does nothing to stop her. "Hey! Watch out!"

I realize I'm running just as my hand grabs her school jacket's collar.

She looks back over her shoulder with an open-mouthed look of terror.

I'm running so fast that, when I try to stop, my feet slide up to the yellow caution line at the platform's edge. I yank with all my might, throwing her behind me. She lands on her hands and knees, hitting the tiled floor and crying out "Itai!"

Other passengers begin to gather. "Girl, are you alright?"

"Who are you?"

"Do you know how dangerous that is?"

"Hey, where is the boy that caught her?"

I see movement out of the corner of my eye and darkness envelops me. We are back in Yomi. The shinigami, behind me, speaks. "That was misguided."

I whirl on it, my body still trembling with the receding tide of adrenaline and fear. The rage, however, is only growing. "How could you do that!"

"This did nothing."

"That's my point! There was no need for her to die. Have you no feelings at all?

The shinigami looks at me a moment as if thinking.

"This is shinigami."

"No. You're a monster." I point down the bridge behind it. "Take me home."

The shinigami turns in a swirl of gloom and walks away. I stomp along behind it. Neither of us speak. Below us, the dead follow shouting up at us. A chorus of voices sounding like men, women, even children shouting after us.

"Stop! Stop! Take me with you! I'm not supposed to be here."

"Help me! Have pity on me. Have you no feeling?"

"Tell her I buried it beneath the tree. She'll know which one. Tell her she can have it!"

"I'm so thirsty! Give me a drink. Please! Just a sip. So thirsty!"

"Do you know where my children are? My girls, have you seen them? Are they here?"

"Tell her I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do it! It was the sake's fault. The sake made me do it, but I don't drink anymore."

We turn down another bridge whose arch ends in swirling black disk of shadows. It opens with a rip and I see my room on the other side. The shinigami steps aside and I walk through. I pause, looking back at the shinigami waiting on the other side.

"Do you understand now?" the shinigami asks.

"Understand what?"

"That love does not exist."

I get so angry I actually think of throwing my chair at it then an idea comes to me. "You said her love turned to hate."

"Yes."

"Since it turned to hate, you must admit that she first felt love.

"That is not correct."

"Then what does it mean?"

"It means what you think is love is not love."