The sound of the wagon, moving from a rail to the next, lulls me gently. Hinami's hair is spread over my shoulder, which she uses as a pillow.
There's still half an hour to go before we stop, we'll be just in time for dinner.

Something warm begins to vibrate against my chest, I grab the cord I wear around my neck and pull the pendant out of my robe. In the small metal cage, my dragon pearl rattles and glows. Hinami, disturbed by my movements, opens one eye and then straightens up completely when she notices what's distracting me.

- Is Shiro waking up?

I simply nod my head. The small grey smoke that only I can see is escaping from the stone. The sinuous mist stretches and snakes before my eyes, before condensing into a familiar silhouette. The first time it appeared, it was the size of my little finger. It has grown, day after day. Now the ethereal being sitting comfortably on my lap is barely a head shorter than me.

- Where is he?

- On top of me.

Hinami moves her hand forward and through the body of dust. The spirit is startled and immediately stands up. He doesn't like being passed through. He moves away from us, finds another free seat and then turns his featureless face towards the shifting landscape. Sometimes a wave of sadness overwhelms him, it is not always easy to live behind a veil of invisibility.

- You've upset him, you know he hates that.

- It tingles, it's the only way I can feel him. I make sure he's there.

Hinami had admitted the existence of my transparent friend. That was some time ago. We weren't very close yet, I was a newcomer, obedient, very invested in what I was doing and appreciated for my mature and responsible side. Hinami was the orphanage's pet peeve, not mean, but clumsy, lazy, stubborn. We were the same age and very quickly the supervisors compared us, telling her over and over again that she should learn from me. I was the model girl whose smooth image was ruining her life. She was bitter and curious to know if I had any weaknesses. It had become her favourite pastime, spying on me to discover a flaw in my behaviour. She wanted to reach into that flaw and show the adults that I wasn't perfect either.

I didn't realise what she was up to until she found out my secret. In the evenings, I took advantage of my temporary isolation to chat with this strange little white spirit who came out of my pearl from time to time. He never answered me except by gestures, he could not touch me, but his presence was enough.

He had been there during the three years I had spent with my parents in our new home. There is no home no longer, no parents, but he is still there, helping me remember.
At first, at mealtimes, the white spirit sat on the table, next to my chopsticks, circling my bowl of rice when I put it down. Then he grew bigger, and would just sit next to me, with his back straight. My parents didn't see him, nor did my friends at school. He pranced around the garden, loving the plants. He climbed along the rosebushes, then up the trees... His light followed me everywhere, he imitated my actions, stole books from me... His curiosity about the world knew no bounds, nor did mine about him.

Our relationship was rocky at first, the size difference intimidated him and he really hated it when I scratched him. If I had the audacity to walk through him, he would take offence and not show up again for at least a week. Then, as time went by, a ritual was established. Each time he woke up, he would ask me to stand up with arm rolls, then compare our heights: at the ankle, then at the knee, at mid-thigh, at the waist, at the navel, at the chest, at the shoulder, finally at the chin. He was proud to see himself growing faster than me, jumping up and down with each step he took, daring me to catch him and disperse his volatile matter. But last season his incredible growth finally stopped, and I for one regained a few inches.

Returning to our first interaction with Hinami, she had slipped into the common room I shared with two other girls, to hide behind a folded futon. I had entered, not suspecting her presence. I was smoothing the folds of my uniform for the next day when the pearl on the desk rolled to the edge and fell to the floor. My roommates were not about to come back up, so I allowed myself to whisper.

- Are you there?

He came out, sitting legs and arms crossed, his figure fuming with anger. He had no mouth to twist into an annoyed sneer, no eyes to stab at me like knives, no eyebrows or nose to wrinkle. His appearance was always of a neutral ,even white, with no texture nor warmth. Yet I could feel his resentment, his bitterness.

- I can't talk to you at school. Holidays are over and I have to attend classes properly if I want to pass my final year, instead of watching you mess around. You should never have knocked over the teacher's stuff, even to get the others to leave me alone.

If he has no influence on living bodies, nothing inert escapes his touch, and anyone who looks remotely like a threat may have been harmed.

One of my classmates, not a real bully but not the smartest of the bunch either, had convinced himself that messing with the newcomers was the best way to make friends out of them.

We were waiting for the teacher supervising us during study period to arrive, when he and his buddies stopped talking. They all turned to me from their desks. We exchanged a few words, and then I received a particularly hurtful comment regarding my family. They found the bad joke to their taste and particularly hilarious.

I didn't complain or made a comeback at them, I was taken aback by a wave of sadness. A very, very small wave, very quickly halted.

The little boy of light was standing next to me, bent over my notebook. If many things escape him when they emanate from others, he had clearly sensed the uneasiness growing in my heart. I had chosen to keep quiet, to let it go. The ghost didn't see it that way. He rushed towards the cause of my distress, he smacked into his desk, and shoved away his things. The students all jumped, the laughter of some fell silent, the pencils of others hung over their papers.

Resolute and certainly not calmed, the spirit continued the show by throwing the entire contents of the chalk box that sat on the teacher's desk at the unfortunate boy. The students cowered and screamed in surprise under the white rain. I swallowed my words at the last second. They couldn't see, I was the only one who could, and I wasn't supposed to say anything, definitely not. His deed done, the poltergeist had come back to me, looking for my approval, trying to get my attention. I remained unmoved, staring at the floor. This was the moment the teacher choosed to show up, then the scattered papers and broken chalk had to be collected. The incident was over.

That evening, in the room, Hinami was hidden in a corner and the white spirit was having a fit.

After the death of my parents, he had found himself powerless to deal with my grief. He was suffering it as my soul expressed it, with no shield to protect himself from it, with no weapon to free me from it, powerless. The tragedy was not yet a year old, back then, and at the slightest negative thought that crossed my mind, he went crazy, tried by all means to eradicate the beginnings of my sorrow. He didn't want of the shadow of pain anymore.

- Don't worry. It wasn't serious. Please don't do it again.

He froze, wearing an outraged posture.

- Don't grab things when others can see.

It was too much for him, and he grabbed my futon, threw it across the room and rolled on it. He straightened his chin to challenge me with his invisible gaze. I did not look at him.

I noticed, shocked, the presence of Hinami, pressed against the wall. She was staring wide-eyed at the mattress that had flown and crashed away from her, depriving her of her hiding place.

He noticed her too then, moved away in surprise. He backed up until hitting the sliding door, causing it to shake. The intruder had followed his movements. Her eyes moved from the now still door to the tracks he had left in my sheets. She couldn't see him directly, but she had witnessed several disturbing events, including the hovering of the class equipment that morning. Her jaw dropped and she turned to me. I stood there, not knowing how to react. I didn't know her very well, and if I could have expected any reaction from her, it wasn't this one:

A big smile of admiration crossed her face, her eyes began to shine...

- A spirit! It's a spirit, isn't it? A Yokai, a kami? Can you see it? Do you speak to it?

I remained silent, my panicked gaze passing from one to the other. The situation caught me completely off guard. The ghost in question didn't want to hear any of it anymore. He trampled on my mattress in the opposite direction, and dived onto his shelter. The stone glowed for a few more seconds before losing its aura. He left us there and we stared at each other, not knowing where to start...
In the weeks that followed, Hinami transformed, and started to clinging to me as a shadow. Her curiosity drove her to do so, and as we talked and talked, we gradually opened up to each other. Like her grandmother, Hinami was very attached to the traditions of Shinto, and believed strongly in the existence of spirits. For her, I was under the lucky star of a kami sent by my parents. I told her about my pearl, the ethereal being. It manifested itself several times in her presence. She didn't think I was crazy, even gave it a name, Shiro, and kept asking me for more details.
Everyone at the orphanage was happy about the good influence I had on her, but her character remained basically the same. We are opposites who complement each other, and our friendship deepened with each passing day.

My companion would attend to our chats, and sometimes agree to indulge in my new friend's experiments. Eventually he shunned her and tried to keep a safe distance between them. I was torn between Hinami, who kept asking me to tell her where he was, and the invisible one, who dissuaded me with large head movements.

***

The train stopped, rather abruptly. The violent jolt pulled me out of my thoughts. Bags fell off the luggage racks. The passengers are not even surprised anymore, they don't say anything. Problems on the auxiliary tracks are becoming more and more frequent these days. Hinami grumbles, Shiro comes back to us. Against my skin, the stone heats up.
We wait for the fail to be resolved and for the journey to continue, calmly.

We keep waiting.

Even longer.

The loudspeakers crackle, but no message is communicated to us.
We wait.

The silence in the wagon gets heavy, the men look at their watches, the mothers and grandmothers hold their children in place.

We wait.

Shiro turns in circles.

Hinami starts to get impatient and fidgets on her seat.

Shiro freezes, halfway through one of his rounds, he holds his head up.
He worries me, I try to get his attention by tugging on one of his threads of thought. He remains perfectly still... I pull a little harder and the thread thickens, becomes a flow. His sensations come back to me. The information sinks into my head, forming incomprehensible knots. Trying to untangle them, they break into needles that sting from the inside. The acuity of his sixth sense stuns me. Then, slowly, under the drumming of the migraine, his impressions become clearer. Shiro senses that something is wrong, that a foreign body is being added to the picture of the world.

I want to look into it a little more, intrigued, but Hinami distracts me:

- Chihiro, don't you think this is going on a bit too long?

- Shiro senses something abnormal.
She tenses up.

- What do you mean by that?

- I don't know, let me see.

I wrinkle my nose, close my eyes, dive into him.

I concentrate, he leans into the irregularity, to put his finger on it. There's a... a humming in the air, a mysterious ripple, a special atmosphere, familiar to him... I swallow, anxiety rising. But it's not quite mine.

Shiro has a bad feeling. His intuition tells him something certain: something is happening... It is coming at full speed, spreading over the entire Earth. An icy blanket engulfs the world. My hair stands on end, goose bumps run up my arms to the back of my neck. The blood leaves my face.

An anomaly.

A strange emanation whispers in the small spirit's ear, without anything audible, makes his vision dance, without anything visible, without the slightest alteration being palpable. An icy wind runs over the plains and oceans, sweeps through the forests and over the mountains. The wind blows, and we do not feel it. A wind that shakes the very pillars of the universe.

The anomaly becomes a frightening paradox: the Immutable changes, the Colossal bends, the Unbreakable shatters. The wind blows, and destroys everything. The bridge between The Lower and The Higher breaks, letting the sky, which has become too heavy, fall upon us. This weight, it's the very foundation of the world that topples over in a sinister creaking. A silent creaking whose unbearable accents send a shiver down my back so violent that it would reap my spine.

At this, Shiro silently screams in terror. By reflex, I clench my fist on the jewel, on the soft warmth of the small white stone. And it is by touching it, that I understand...
The atmosphere thickens, the sky falls. The ordinary air swirls, mixing with another, purer, different air, which bathes us in a mist of unknown and strangeness. A mist with a spiritual flavour.

The vault falls, gets closer. Shiro feels it, I feel it through him, but nobody else:

Heavens are falling.

Towards us.

Towards the world of the living.
The first tremor sends Shiro flying away, towards the seats opposite. The passengers let out a few astonished exclamations. In their murmurs, they wonder about a possible earthquake. Yet the radio and television forecasts have not announced any such thing for these days, in this region...

The second tremor is stronger, but does not generate any clamour. All Japanese citizens are trained to react to these natural disasters from an early age, yet no one makes a move.
Hinami is still waiting for her answer. I say nothing, just take her hand and squeeze it in mine. This simple, unusual physical contact only increases her fears.

The shaking becomes a continuous vibration, almost imperceptible at first, it builds in a crescendo, without interruption. It is not a simple earthquake, at this point everyone understands that. The cries of surprise give way to cries of fear, terror and then pain. The clashes become more pronounced, the leaden blanket crushes us a little more. Unable to stand up, shaken to the core, we suffer the assault, powerless against the anger of the land. The people around us feel sick, their noses bleed, they faint. I shake Hinami's sweaty hand, she squeezes even harder. The vibrations hurt.

Finally, it stops, for a moment, like a last respite, an unexpected rush of air. During this second, in my blurred field of vision, I distinguish a white shape that is throwing itself at us: Shiro.

His arms close around both of us, he cradles our heads against his fragile torso, to protect us. His heart beats at a bewildering speed against my cheek.

His heart beats, his skin is hot, his breath is jerky in my hair, his fingers cling desperately to my shirt, his waist is tiny.

My little ghost holds us, his body leans against us. The untouchable is touched, the absent is present, the non-existent exists...

How? ...

What the...

Another quake...

My air gets sucked out...

The void choke me up...

I'm sinking.