Once I've fixed myself tea, I sit down at the table again by the light of the weak lamp and listen. All around is, at first, silence. So quiet I can hear my own pulse and my breathing. I can hear the loud slurps from my lips when I sip my tea. I can hear when my cup lightly thumps onto the table. Then my scope of perception expands outward like a searching sonar and I hear the buzz of the electric lamp. I hear a fly slapping against the window. The creak of a floorboard that had been loose. The groan of a shingle on the roof when wind passes by. I listen to the cry of a crow perched on a branch somewhere. It is ominous and dry. Absolutely emotionless. The military call of duty. Further, I hear the rustle of the leaves like whispers discussing secrets - likely about me. They watch and huddle close, wondering what my next move is. Whether they should come and stamp out the shack and prevent me doing from anything else. These sounds rush in, towering over me and overwhelm my senses.

My head rings with possibilities. Of fear. Of imagining. The shadows seem to be alive, shifting and moving and watching. I see hands and arms and heads creep out towards me and then retreat when I turn to look at them. Everything starts to breathe and vibrate. I could die here and now, suddenly, without ever realizing it, in some inexplicable manner like by the hand of a murderer hiding out in the woods or by something so mundane and natural in the forest, no one would bat an eye. Naoki Maeda (22) dies in a tornado. Naoki Maeda (22) dies in a forest fire. Naoki Maeda (22) is attacked and killed by a mountain lion. Naoki Maeda (22) is found dead from starvation.

I shudder. The air is getting cold. Time wears on, slowly oozing by like a predator circling its prey. It is especially slow and stealthy now that I have nothing to do, nothing to hear and nothing to see. In this nothingness, things wind down to a halt. And the nothingness matches the nothingness inside me. Such that I begin to feel a sense of calm and complacency and equilibrium. There's nothing to strive for here. I can die or live and it wouldn't make a difference. It had never really made a difference. I can sit in between the state of existence and non-existence. In a sea of nothing, I am nothing, therefore, we are one and the same. If I could maintain this mindset, I might just transcend and become an abstract concept, an eternal timeless being, without any attachment to the world I had come from and become the forest and the wind.

But immediately, a violent rebuttal comes into my mind as if an axe splitting wood. I hear the deafening snapping sound resound through my head. I see Shizuka's face. And there's a pain so powerful I nearly double over. It rips through my body in a shaking convulsion, from my chest to my fingertips and toes and then back again. It goes into my head and then down to the base of my spine. I feel the waves of some supernatural agony ricocheting through me like my skin are the walls and boundaries. It sends me writhing in my chair, a divine punishment for even wanting to become nothing, to cast her aside. Here, in complete solitude, with nothing but a flickering lamp and the smell of wood, I long for her more than ever before. I miss her. I miss her a lot.

If not for my own, I am a vessel for her existence - and for Shirayuki's too.

I decide I would need to make good use of what's available here, sparingly and carefully. I'm not sure how long I would have to remain here. If no one comes to me and I couldn't find the way out, I might be stuck here. Yet surely an hour away from Tokyo can't be that bad. There's electricity, and forests out here can't be so immense that there is no end to it. Tomorrow when there's enough light, I would check the vehicle and the surrounding forest to study my environment. I would need to plot my approximate longitude and latitude location if possible, and find firewood.

By now, the sun is setting and I rush to fix myself a simple meal. There's some frozen dumplings and one last pack of instant ramen from a shelf I throw into a pot and boil. I eat it directly from the pot afterwards without bothering to sit down. After I've finished, I wash everything and turn them over to dry on a towel. I drink my tea, take a cup of water, rinse my teeth and wash my face with my hands. My skin suddenly feels refreshed like having a minty breeze breathe against me. Once all is done, the sunlight has entirely disappeared and the colours of the world around change from greens and browns into black and cool navy. Except for my sphere of light from the little electric lamp, everything becomes essentially the same colour. The black sea strains to swallow us. I stay in the light.

Then when I realize I've nothing left to do, I lock the door and slip into the bed.

It takes a long time to fall asleep. The bed is a little damp, full with the smell of soil and leaves. I wonder when was the last time its bedsheets had been washed and changed or if it's infested with bugs hidden away somewhere waiting to feed. My skin at once feels itchy and crawls with paranoia. A few times I turn over just to make sure nothing was climbing over me. I shiver over and over. The air is getting colder and the night seems to be getting darker. The electric lamp I left on is growing weaker, and its pitiful existence is swallowed by the murky depths, as if a metaphor for my own solitude. A single last bulb of humanity.

Around me, it's like there are no walls. I can hear everything clearly as if the volume had been turned up a dozen notches. Everything I heard before becomes a choral chanting of some mystical cult. Things that I shouldn't be overhearing on the edge of the world; they sway and pirouette, words prancing around like the witches of Macbeth: "double, double toil and trouble". As if I am in the origin, axis point of the cauldron, the middle of something monumental and sinister. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre". For some reason, literature comes to mind and it swirls in the wind with the sounds, and in the darkness, things come to life. Even literature itself is foreign and unsympathetic.

I can hear every single call of insects, one to another, and hollow echoes of nocturnal birds above, the rustle and cackles of branches and foliage as some animal moves through, the creaking of the floorboards and the rooftop - and I begin wonder if someone is right inside the house. A rough beast slouching to Bethlehem to be born. My eyes are wide open and I search frantically through the dark for answers but all I can see is pitch black paint, the pit of the underworld I've entered.

A few times I get up, almost in a crouch, muscles tense as if something could see me, and creep over to my electric lamp to make sure it wouldn't die off. Then I sit next to it and read a few pages of my novel to calm down. Again and again, I convince myself that they are only a figment of my imagination and that these are the natural sounds of a rickety shack in the forest. If animals can live out here, surely a man can. But upon returning to bed, it all comes back, rushing into my head, as I break out into cold sweat.

It must have been hours into the middle of the night, perhaps three or four, when I finally fall asleep from exhaustion.

*

For the next few days, there was not a single soul around. It's like the Fox and the driver had disappeared into thin air. The taxi is still in the yard, untouched, cold steel, without anywhere wide enough for it to pass through. Quite a few times I've trekked as far as I could through the forest, leaving marks on the bark of trees with a survival knife I found in the car so I could find my way back. And just as many times I had found myself lost, but through pure luck, came across a tree with my old markings. Surrounding the cabin, maybe an hour in all directions, are trees. Thick, ancient trees, so tight they are like walls and I can barely pass between them. It's as if they were designed to act as a cage for something monstrous. Not even the slouching beast in Yeats' poem could break through this forest.

Because of the nature of its density, it was also impossible to look for the North Star and other celestial bodies. I could only see a handful at a time. I could climb a tree but at the moment, I don't want to risk the fall. There are also enough supplies to last another two weeks.

I had begun gathering firewood and looking for a source of water. In two days, I found a creek nearby that seemed safe to drink. Fresh clear water, crisp as winter air, but following the creek seemed to be of no use. It dried up a little while downstream and the source is a natural spring. I am effectively cut off from the rest of the world.

I realize that the terrain is entirely flat, without any indication of mountains nearby. Of course, I couldn't see any, but I had to be in a valley or a plateau. There must be changes in elevation almost everywhere in Japan.

In the mornings, I would get up, shave with an old razor blade and do exercises, turn on the stove, boil water, make tea and fix myself something from cans or the dwindling groceries in the fridge. This would probably last for lunch, sometimes dinner too. I might read my book, or play a game on my phone. I might head outside, take pictures and plot my territory. On warm days, when the sun is overhead at noon, I sit outside and sunbathe, looking up like I am at the bottom of a great green well. At night when the darkness settles, I've become much more familiar with the sounds and the movements of the forest. I watch the stars sometimes, just a handful of them above, little glow-in-the-dark stickers plastered on the ceiling, sharing the view with the chirping birds and insects. I'm no longer afraid - there is still a distance of fearful respect, as if I'm praying for its mercy.

There's a rabbit that always happens by the cabin every now and then. I had watched it for quite a while. It's a white rabbit, with some splotches of grey fur, as if it's in the middle of changing colours. Maybe once it had been black. Large droopy ears crown its face and they are nearly always down like a puppy's. Its nose, of course, is forever twitching, smelling, attentive to its surroundings, twitching more when the sun shines down on it, twitching more when I open the door. Eventually it must have seen me so often and realized I'm not much of a threat, that it would sit in front of me even when I approach.

I decide to follow it today, and it starts to shuffle away as I get closer. Nose twitching. Baiting me, it stops every now and then and waits for me to catch up. I make sure to keep a comfortable distance and my pace even and slow, my posture relaxed and if possible, I try to radiate an aura of goodwill. I speak to it in my head.

I'm just a bit lost, I say. You know the forest much better than I do, how 'bout you teach me a little something and I'll offer you some lettuce. We can be friends. No one's with me anyway. How does that sound?

Of course, it doesn't seem to respond. But eventually we - the bunny and I - make it past the creek I had found the other day and down a slight slope. The incline is extremely subtle; I might not have noticed it if I haven't been looking at the roots of the trees. I leave regular markings on a tree with my knife, a clean X mark. All around the trees stand tall and mighty, stoic and unmoving. Their canopies ahead covers most of the sunlight but every here and there, golden drops tumble through and cast wavering dabs of yellow jellyfish. Some are softer and some more pronounced, then they shift and change positions. The ones further in the distance look like glistening coins.

Sometimes, I feel the urge to chuckle as the rabbit moves in and out of view, making shuffling sounds, its tiny feet slipping and sliding on underbrush. Yellowed hay, dead twigs and leaves, green weeds and wild grass. Each time the bunny turns around as if it had caught me laughing inside. There's something peculiar about this creature though. I become more wary as time goes on. It is almost too sentient and consciously playful. It acts like someone I know.

I reason with it again. Where are you taking me? No response. Do you know me? Or perhaps I know you? Silence.

We wind our way deeper into the woods. It's well past half an hour now. I look backwards a few times to make sure I can see the marks on the trees clearly. Somewhere from above, birds chirp and hoot, their voices echo. A few days ago, I would find their call haunting, but now, it only sounds customary. It would rather be haunting without them.

At about noon, right when the sun is directly over our heads and the maximum amount of light is available, the rabbit stops. I stop. Then looks one way and the other, and takes off running. I watch it disappear into shrubs. There's no way I could have caught up to it. It was once again just an ordinary hare.

Where it had left me the trees are so thick and dense I can barely squeeze my body through them sideways. The roots underneath must be a tangled mess. Some might be suffocating another. The strongest survives. Just like the human world, whoever had the farthest reaching roots would win the fight.

Once I've managed slipped through, my breath catches as it seems the rabbit had led me to a clearing. I vaguely remember traveling in this direction but I had never come across this place before. Yet here it is, a vast open field, an enormous blanket of blue above and tall grass sweeping like the wings of a giant bird. Having been enclosed by the forest for so long, this world looks unnatural and surreal, as if looking at a scene on TV. Real once but now compressed into a flat virtual display of RGB crystals. It doesn't seem like the other side of the clearing is too far because of how crisp the outlines and details stand out, but the trees are small and thin, altered by perspective. All around as far as I can see, trees line up at rapt attention, clones in every likeness. In the middle of this field rises an emerald hill, round and elegantly shaped, almost appearing man-made. It reminds me of a young mother's baby bump. Was this the same hill from which I stood in my dreams? It had seemed much larger and the field stretching for kilometers, but it might have just been an issue of nighttime perception.

Oddly, I have no real desire to cross the field or walk up the hill. I'm not ready to verify its meaning or acknowledge what I cannot simply understand. Though something settles down in my heart within like a trickle of water filling a dry cistern, I clearly know I'm not ready to enter this sacred ground before me. I am content looking at the view, feeling the sunlight encasing my body, and an open breeze on my face. It's been a while since I've been able to look so far out and my eyes are blurry from focus.

After an hour, sitting at the base of an oak tree, simply gazing out at the scenery, I decide to return to the cabin and make the expedition again tomorrow. I have to test my ability to find the field again, or else, it would be hard to confirm its existence. If it could be so easily lost, it might be better off never found.

It takes me double the time to march it back to the cabin, tracing my fresh knife marks with much difficulty. It is always harder than I expect to find the cuts because no tree is without its rough bark, wounds and scars, whether it's from the natural elements or fauna. Not to mention, there is a slight uphill on the way back which puts a wear on my legs. It's past four in the afternoon when I finally stroll into the small yard and see the same rabbit in front of the porch. I say hello but it ignores me. It is sitting still, frozen like a statue, and its nose doesn't twitch. As if time had stopped. Its peculiar behaviour is like a powerful prompt. I stop in my tracks and listen.

Something is starkly different, so I look up and find the sun darkened by a cloud. All around, there is absolute silence. No wind to rustle the leaves above, no creaking of wood or calls of birds and insects. The silence is more frightening than the first night when I had cowered against nature.

When I enter the cabin, knife in hand, I find someone there already.

"Nao-kun."