I mull over this, as we quickly map out who should tackle whose minds. As we have enough people now, we decide to go in two teams and deal with two different minds at once. Since Natsumi is afraid of balloons and Katsuki absolutely loves balloons, we decide that Katsuki should head into Natsumi's mind, with Ririka as his partner for we sort of assume that balloons appear in high places and having someone who can fly would be handy. Izumi is my best friend here, so I immediately volunteer to tackle her mind, and after some discussion we decide that Yukiya will come with me while Hiroki and Shun stay outside to spot.

Poor Hiroki, he can finally get some rest. I still see him trembling a little from time to time; I don't think he has forgotten the feeling of slimy snake scales against his skin yet. Just like I haven't forgotten what it is like to ride a spider.

Thinking about it causes goosebumps to appear all over my upper arms.

"So, you guys be safe, right?" Hiroki begs, his big puppy eyes oozing sincerity and anxiety. I smile at him to assure him that everything will be just fine. I'm going into the mind of my best friend, after all. The person I trust wholeheartedly in. The person who has always been there for me through the whole year. My best friend.

The Izumi I know is the epitome of calm. So her mind can't be that terrible, can it?

I comfort myself with this thought as we sink through the watery nothingness into Izumi's mind.

It's, well, normal.

Like, the birds-chirping, sun-shining-through-the-leaves kind of normal. The streets are familiar, the trees are familiar, the walls are familiar, the little houses are familiar.

It's home. It's Japan.

"Man," Yukiya complains, "Izumi has no imagination!"

It's true that Izumi is a very well-grounded and sensible girl, but I guess I'm still slightly surprised that there isn't even a single element of fantasy no matter where I look. Everything seems perfectly calm, perfectly organized, perfectly in its place.

"Where do we find, uh, hair?" I ask.

"How would I know? Isn't she your best friend?" Yukiya counters.

"Well, you're the strategist out of us two, right?" I counter right back. Yukiya might not be a Katsuki-level strategy fiend, but he does love tactics, like most gamers do.

"Hmm," he muses, "how about we check that map over there?"

I didn't even notice there was a map. It is hung innocently on the stone wall, written in a bold, no-nonsense font. No Comic Sans or Papyrus for Izumi.

The map marks out the name of all the houses. One of them says Shimokawa, Izumi's surname.

"I suppose we can try that one?" I suggest. Yukiya agrees and leads the way. I have zero sense of direction and never have any idea which side of a map is up, so I'm glad I have someone whose judgment I can trust. We navigate through a couple of lovely afternoon alleys, lined with old-time pawn shops and ivy-clad grey houses, and arrive in front of Izumi's home.

Of course, I wouldn't know if this actually is her home—I've never been there. We did promise to visit each other's homes during the summer vacation, but this has not happened yet considering summer vacation still hasn't arrived. But even though I have never seen Izumi's home, I somehow just know that this two-storeyed wooden mansion has to be it. It smells like her. It looks like her, all square and symmetrical and safe and innocent.

I do realize I had literally just commented that my best friend looks like a house, but please understand that I meant it as a compliment. Izumi would understand, I'm sure. She knows me better than the back of her hand.

"Do we ring the doorbell and wait for someone to buzz us in?" Yukiya wonders.

"No harm in trying," I say, suddenly feeling my heart thudding madly in my chest. After all, you never know—I might be meeting Izumi's parents for the first time! True, it's in her mindscape only and not in real life, but still. I feel so nervous it's as if I were invited to my college boyfriend's home for thanksgiving. Which is a rather bad comparison of course, as I don't have a boyfriend, am not in college, and don't celebrate thanksgiving. But you get the gist. You see, Izumi's parents probably wouldn't approve of me. Izumi is a no-nonsense person, so her parents are probably serious people too. And I, well, am honestly just flat-out lazy. Would her parents want their diligent, studious, teacher's pet daughter to associate with a potato?

Not that I'm actually a potato, of course, but with the amount of time I spend sitting there doing nothing I might as well be one. No way Izumi's parents would like me. Sometimes I even wonder how Izumi herself tolerates me. What does she see in me? Why does a future Nobel prize winner want to be friends with a slightly distressed nobody?

I don't know the answer to that, but hopefully Izumi's parents do because I'm about to meet them in seconds.

I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. I feel like I were getting ready for a job interview. Yukiya eyes me strangely and pats me on the back, like he understands exactly what I'm going through. Who knows, perhaps he does. Perhaps he's visualizing himself meeting Ririka's parents, whom I've always imagined as two tiny birds strutting around sporting shiny overcoats. They'd stand on my shoulder and chirp sweet nothings in my ear and fit in my jacket pocket.

I smile at the thought. Who doesn't want a couple of adorable birds in their jacket pocket?

And then I remember that we've just rung the doorbell of Izumi's house and I start panicking again. It ends up being pointless panic, however, because after a two-minute wait without any signs of human life turning up we conclude that most likely nobody's home.

"What do we do now?" I complain to Yukiya. He shrugs and tries the front door, opening it easily with a creak.

"I guess we go in," he concludes, and does exactly what he says.

"That's trespassing!" I exclaim, but it doesn't stop Yukiya. He's a potential arsonist, after all, trespassing doesn't bother him. It bothers me, but I don't want to wait outside alone so I sigh and gingerly step in after him.

"Ojama shimasu (sorry for bothering)," we announce together, and look around. Izumi's home seems quite nice. The floors are wood, the walls are wood, and there are little vases with flowers here and there. Two pairs of slippers, one red and one blue, are waiting for us at the entrance. Like someone is expecting us. Like someone already knew we'd be coming.

"Creepy," I murmur to Yukiya.

"What's creepy? I like this place," he replies, taking his shoes off and donning the red slippers, leaving me with the blue. While I am hastily pulling off my two-for-the-price-of-one shoes, Yukiya has already jogged upstairs and down again to declare his findings.

"I found—nothing!" he informs me, "Just a normal house, no one anywhere."

I groan. "So what exactly are we going to do?"

"I don't know." Yukiya picks up a remote control and begins flicking through channels on Izumi's family TV. Even the channels are normal, predictable ones. News, movies, enka, Music Station, Animal Planet. "Maybe we wait. We did wait a bit in Katsuki's mind before anything happened, you know."

"We did wait a bit in yours too," I tell him.

"Don't remind me of that," Yukiya remarks with a grimace, so I don't. We decide that since we have no way of knowing how long we'd have to wait we might as well make the most of the situation, so Yukiya takes out mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer while I attack the oranges that sit in a pile on the living room table. Since this is all happening in Izumi's mind it's not like we'd be eating real oranges and real ice cream, so we figure it wouldn't count as stealing. Right?

"You find something you want to watch, and I'll go wash my hands," Yukiya tells me. He stalks off looking for the bathroom and I sink into the Shimokawa family's comfy sofa, staring at the TV which is playing some robot anime I don't recognize. The story is set in a primary school, where gigantic mecha robots apparently live under the school swimming pool and a fifth-grade class courageously rides them in battles against vicious vegetables.

Nice plot, I think, and then wonder why Yukiya is taking so long to get out of the bathroom. Constipation, perhaps? He should have some of these oranges; it'd probably help.

And that is when I hear Yukiya's choked screams.

You'd be proud to know that as soon as I hear Yukiya scream, I run to his aid like a selfless heroine that is afraid of nothing.

You'd be less proud to know that I'm utterly bad at directions and it takes me two minutes to even locate the bathroom.

By the time I finally figure out where Yukiya is (in the en suite bathroom in Izumi's parents' room on the second floor), it is too late to remedy the situation. I find him in the bathtub, tangled in a mess of wet, gross, long hair.

Long hair that is stretching out of the bathtub drain like grabby hands and sticky tentacles.