ACT 2
“Well, there it is. The moon’s up now...” Mitsuki sighed, looking up wistfully at the full moon. At first only visible between the gaps of the densely packed trees, it had silently risen free of the canopy line and into the night sky.
As Mitsuki and Yuuto had continued their preparations, the days had seemed to fly by.
In the last half-month left to her, she had dutifully spent time with her parents, and had also spent as much time as possible having fun with Ruri and her other friends, so that she’d leave no regrets behind.
The previous night, her family and Ruri had thrown her a huge going-away party.
Even still, the fact that this might be her last time saying goodbye to all of them had left her feeling like it still wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her.
If I had only done that differently back then... If I had only done that thing for that person when I could... I wish I could have gotten the chance to... Mitsuki’s mind filled with a mountain of things she was leaving undone, things she wouldn’t ever get the chance to try. Her vision was clouded with tears.
“Mitsuki, you make sure to take care of your health, okay?” Her mother spoke through tears of her own, and hugged her tightly.
Mitsuki thought about how this would be the last time she would feel this warmth, and the corners of her eyes grew hotter. She’d promised herself that she would say goodbye with a smile, and not break down crying, but the tears fell down her face anyway.
“Y-you too, Mom. I’m sorry... I’m sorry I wasn’t a better... daughter...”
“What are you talking about, honey? If you’re going to say that, then do this for me: Make sure you live a happy life over there. That’s... that’s the best thing a child can do for their parent.”
“Okay... okay...” Mitsuki nodded over and over, still sniffling.
They held each other for a long moment, and then finally, Miyo placed her trembling hands on Mitsuki’s shoulders and firmly pushed her away.
“It’s not fair for me to hog you all to myself, now, is it?” Smiling through her tears, Miyo leaned over a bit to gesture to the man at her side.
Mitsuki’s father Shigeru stood there, his teeth clenched tightly, his face scrunched up as if he was trying to hold himself back.
“Go on, dear, you too,” Miyo prodded.
“R-right.” Shigeru spoke in a trembling voice. “Ahh... um, well, you know, just... keep in touch with us as much as you can.”
Mitsuki could see that his eyes were watery.
After getting a better impression of Yuuto as a person, her father had reluctantly acknowledged him as someone worthy of giving his daughter to, but there was no mistaking that he still couldn’t bear to part with her.
Mitsuki could read those feelings from behind his words. She nodded deeply.
“Yes, I will. I’ll call you every day, whenever that’s possible.”
“If you ever start to hate things over there, you can always come back to us right away, okay? I’m your father. I can figure out a way to make it happen.”
“Thank you, Dad. But it’s okay. I’m going to be happy.”
“...Yeah, all right.” Shigeru tilted his head up, trying to hold back his tears, and turned his back to her.
His shoulders were shaking. His pride as a father wouldn’t allow him to let his daughter see him crying.
Mitsuki bowed deeply toward her father’s back. “Thank you for taking care of me; thank you for everything. I was blessed to be born as your daughter, Dad. Please make sure to get along with Mom, okay?”
“D-don’t talk down to your father like that! You’re still just a child. Y-y-you just worry about taking care of yourself, that’s all youuu... uuugh... augh...” At the end, Shigeru couldn’t finish the sentence as his voice broke into sobs.
Teardrops were raining from Mitsuki’s eyes, as well.
As she stood there, she felt a hand suddenly tap her on the shoulder.
“Mitsuki, good luck out there, and you be sure to live a good life!”
“Ruri-chan... Yeah, yeah! I definitely will!” Mitsuki looked at her best friend, who had come out here in the middle of the night just to see her off like this, and showed her the biggest smile she could muster.
Ruri’s face was covered in tears, too; she must have been pulled along by seeing Mitsuki’s mother and father break down crying. Even so, she flashed her characteristic mischievous grin, and gave Mitsuki a thumbs-up.
“When you have kids, make sure you send me pictures.”
“Whaaat?! Y-you’re getting ahead of yourself, Ruri-chan!”
“What are you saying?” Ruri grinned. “Yuuto-san’s like a king over there. If you’re gonna be his queen, having a baby right away to secure the next heir is one of your roles, right?”
“Y-Yggdrasil doesn’t do succession by bloodline, though...”
“Huh? Wait, really?” Ruri tilted her head to the side, puzzled.
Thinking back now, Mitsuki remembered Ruri had pretty much been distracted or asleep whenever there had been discussions of the finer details of Yggdrasil.
“Just you wait, Mitsuki,” Ruri said confidently. “I’m gonna get myself an awesome boyfriend, too, just as cool as your ‘Yuu-kun.’ I’ll send you pics when I do.”
“Ah ha ha! I’m looking forward to that.”
“Mitsuki, take care of yourself,” Ruri added, looking a bit choked up.
“Yeah, you too, Ruri-chan.” Mitsuki took a deep breath. “All right, then. I’ll be going now.”
She didn’t want to say farewell, but she managed to get the words out anyway, and reached down to pick up the backpack resting at her feet and put it on.
It was too big for her small frame, and looked like it might squash her underneath it at any moment. It was tightly packed with the full assortment of items she’d purchased in preparation for this day.
Mitsuki gave one final bow to everyone, and turned to walk away.
Standing a ways ahead of her was Yuuto, who was looking in her direction with his face scrunched up and looking rather pained, as well. He was also wearing a large, heavy backpack.
Further ahead behind Yuuto stood his father, Tetsuhito. It seemed Yuuto had also finished saying his last goodbyes.
With heavy, slightly unsteady steps under the weighty pack, Mitsuki made her way over to Yuuto.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“...Are you really okay with this?” Yuuto said quietly, casting a glance at Mitsuki’s family. “You can still back out, you know.”
“No, I’m all right.” Mitsuki wiped her eyes with her sleeve and made a brave face, forcing herself to look ahead.
Her gaze fell on the worn-down and partially rotted small Shinto shrine sitting ahead of them. Everything had started here three years ago, when they had come here during a game to test their courage.
They had both said their farewells. All that was left was to wait for the summoning ritual in Yggdrasil to begin, and then, when the timing was right, look into the divine mirror using an opposing mirror.
“Okay, then. I’ll tell them to start the ritual on their side.” Yuuto took out a new smartphone, and placed it to his ear.
It was a new model he’d just purchased a week ago. Supposedly it had the latest in LCD screens, and the battery life was an incredible improvement over earlier models.
They’d made sure to buy large-capacity solar-powered batteries, so their battery situation on the other side was sure to be drastically improved, but the fact remained that their power had a hard limit.
Yuuto had decided to buy the new, longer-lived phone thinking that it was better to have it than not, just in case of unforeseen events.
“Felicia? Is everything ready over there? ...Okay, then go ahead and get started.”
This was it.
In just a few moments Mitsuki would be leaving Japan, the land where she’d been born and raised — forever.
The instant that thought crossed her mind, anxiety suddenly began to well up within her.
Would she be able to bear not being able to see her parents ever again? Would she really be able to get by all right in this foreign land she’d never even seen, where she couldn’t understand the language?
She knew it was a little late to be getting scared, but she couldn’t help it.
But she couldn’t turn back, either.
“All right... Mitsuki.” Yuuto turned to her and held out his hand.
“Right!” With a spirited nod, Mitsuki grabbed hold of Yuuto’s hand, and looked up at the screen of the smartphone he was holding up.
The camera app was already active, and the frame was centered on Yuuto and Mitsuki, their expressions stiff and nervous. Centered between them, the divine mirror was catching the moonlight and giving off an eerie glow.
(ᚠᛟᛉ ᛟᛋᛋ ᛋᛖᚷᛖᛉᛜ)
All of a sudden Mitsuki heard a woman’s voice, beautiful and clear like a bell, seeming to echo from far away. It was a voice she’d heard several times before, in the background during her phone conversations with Yuuto.
Ohh, so this must be Felicia’s voice, she thought. Then an image of a woman materialized in her mind.
Even as she continued to look at the image of herself and Yuuto on the smartphone screen in reality, it was as if she was simultaneously watching a different scene with her mind’s eye. It was a very uncanny sensation.
The woman in her mind wore a finely worked golden tiara decorated in places with jewels, as well a pure-white outfit that reminded Mitsuki of an angel’s robes. She was completely engrossed in performing some sort of dance.
“Wow, she’s so pretty...” Mitsuki whispered, and let a breath escape that she didn’t realize she had been holding.
She’d seen images of Felicia before, in pictures that Yuuto had sent her, but that was nothing compared to seeing her glamorous figure for real like this.
(ᚷᚢᛞ, ᛋᛖᚷᛖᛉᛜ ᚦᛁᛚᛚ ᛟᛋᛋ!)
The voice echoed in her mind again, much clearer than before.
Mitsuki’s vision in the real world began to waver.
It seemed the summoning ritual was going to work.
They didn’t actually have a clear understanding of the exact method for traveling from 21st century Japan to Yggdrasil, so they were trying to reproduce the same set of events that had led up to Yuuto’s summoning last time as closely as possible.
The prospect of simply relying on that vague method had left Yuuto worried, arguing, “Then what do we do if that doesn’t work?!” There was still the threat of the Lightning and Panther Clans, after all, and he was desperate to get to Yggdrasil as soon as possible.
Thankfully, it seemed like he wouldn’t have to worry about that.
“Huh?!” Mitsuki cried out in surprise as she felt the sensation of Yuuto’s hand in hers disappear.
She’d been gripping his hand tightly, determined not to let go no matter what, and yet it was as if they’d been separated in an instant. Like he’d just vanished.
“Yuu-kun...!” Panicked, Mitsuki turned to look in Yuuto’s direction.
“Mitsuki!” Yuuto cried out her name, his face wracked with shock. His voice seemed somehow distant. His figure seemed blurry and faint.
Without even thinking, Mitsuki reflexively reached out toward him.
Yuuto reached out too, and grabbed her hand... and his hand slipped right through hers.
“Wha?! Mitsuki, your eyes...!”
Yuuto was saying something, but it was too faint to hear clearly. His figure blurred and grew dim...
...and Mitsuki’s vision went dark.
When Mitsuki’s sight returned, the first thing she saw was a familiar-looking mirror.
Its surface was carefully polished and held not a speck of rust, but otherwise its shape and appearance looked exactly the same as the divine mirror passed down through the generations of Mitsuki’s family.
The mirror was enshrined on a rectangular altar surrounded by torches, along with what looked like clay idols.
Mitsuki sensed a group of people behind her, whispering to each other, and turned around to see a crowd of several dozen.
“Ah...!” Mitsuki couldn’t help but gasp and tense up instinctively; it was a large group, and they were all clearly foreign, with chiseled features and blonde and brown hair. But they seemed just as surprised by her, perhaps even more so.
Wide-eyed, they all stared at her, then began looking around nervously. It was as if they were searching for someone.
“Ah, that’s right! What about Yuu-kun?!” Mitsuki also frantically began looking around, searching for the childhood friend who should have been summoned alongside her.
The room they were in was about the size of a small school gymnasium, but there was no sign of anyone with dark black hair.
Mitsuki looked down at the palm of her right hand.
Right up until the last moment, her hand had been joined with Yuuto’s. But now, it was empty.
That could only mean one thing.
“Did I... come here alone?” As the words left her mouth, Mitsuki could feel the blood draining from her face.
She had anticipated the possibility that just Yuuto would be summoned, or that it would fail and neither of them would be. But she hadn’t even considered the scenario of her being summoned alone.
“Wait, no, this can’t be...” Mitsuki began to panic. What was she even supposed to do, alone in a world where she couldn’t even communicate with anybody?
“Mitsuki ᛋᛃᛋᚦᛖᛉ?” A woman called out to her, the same woman she had seen in her vision earlier — Felicia.
This was their first time meeting face-to-face, but she’d heard a lot about Felicia from Yuuto. Seeing someone she knew brought her back some small measure of composure.
“Ah, y-yes! Y-yes, that’s right. I’m Mitsuki. I am Mitsuki.” She repeated her own name, pointing to herself.
Felicia nodded to show she understood that, then responded with a question. “Yuuto ᛒᛉᛟᛉ?”
She was using the word “Yuuto,” so Mitsuki understood she had to be asking about what had happened to him.
That was also the question Mitsuki most wanted the answer to right now.
“Oh, that’s right!” Mitsuki gasped.
If she didn’t know, she just needed to ask him herself. If she was next to this divine mirror, she could contact the world of modern Japan.
She was a little embarrassed that her panic had made it take her this long to remember that.
“Uh, let’s see, smartphone, smartphone...” She tried to reach down into her purse to retrieve it, but the huge backpack on her back made it so her arms just barely couldn’t reach it.
She went ahead and dropped the heavy pack, and picked up the purse again to look for the phone.
Taaaa! Ta la laaaa!
An old, familiar melody reached her ears. It was a song that had been popular a little over three years ago; she remembered that Yuuto had set it as his ringtone back then.
Mitsuki turned in the direction of the sound to see a girl with silver hair.
“Felicia,” the silver-haired girl said.
She had a tough, gallant air about her. As she called Felicia’s name, she held up an item that Mitsuki recognized right away.
It was a slightly older model of smartphone, the one Yuuto had been using three years ago. Its screen was a bit small for its size, and it was a bit thicker than the phones she was used to seeing nowadays.
““ᛒᛉᛟᛉ?!” Felicia ran over to the silver-haired girl and took the phone, placing it to her ear. She cried out in words Mitsuki didn’t understand. The person on the other end must be Yuuto.
Mitsuki could easily tell how worried Felicia must be from her tone, even without understanding the words themselves.
That was probably only natural. Yuuto was the person the Wolf Clan was so desperate to reclaim, yet here they’d failed to summon the man himself, and only gotten his extra passenger. Of course they’d be confused.
Mitsuki herself felt much the same way, filled with dread at what would happen now.
Her anxiety was made even worse by the strange stares she felt from the crowd, and their voices in a language that didn’t make any sense to her.
“Mitsuki ᛋᛃᛋᚦᛖᛉ.” Felicia turned to Mitsuki, who had been nervously watching her speak with Yuuto, and held out the smartphone to her.
Without thinking, Mitsuki yanked it out of her hands.
“Yuu-kun?!” she cried.
“Hey, is that Mitsuki? Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know why, but it looks like you’re the only one who got summoned.”
Yuuto responded to her in a much calmer voice than her own. Maybe that was because he’d had a chance to talk with Felicia first and get a handle on the situation.
“It might be that Felicia only has enough magic power to summon one person at a time. She’s gonna perform the Gleipnir ritual again for us, so just sit tight for a bit, okay?”
“O-okay.” Mitsuki nodded, and exhaled in relief.
The thought of being all alone in this foreign world was terrifying.
At the very least, they now knew that performing the Gleipnir ritual like this did work for bringing someone from modern Japan to Yggdrasil.
In that case, one could assume that summoning Yuuto next would be an easy task...
“Oh, that’s right, tonight is the full moon.”
Standing out on his terrace, the Panther Clan patriarch Hveðrungr looked up at the sky and remarked aloud to himself, as if he’d only just remembered.
The moonlight illuminating his face glistened off of the jet-black mask which covered the upper half of it. That strange mask of his had earned him the alias of Grímnir, the Masked Lord among the people in the region, a name by which he was widely feared.
Dealing with the aftermath of the great Battle of Gashina had kept him incredibly busy for the past half-month, so much so that he had even lost track of the calendar date.
“Sigyn!” Hveðrungr called to his wife, who had been standing in waiting nearby. His gaze and his tone were cold, much colder than one might expect of a husband calling out to his wife.
This woman had praised him and spoken up for him when he had still been but a stranger to her and her clan, and after helping his rise to power, she had been devoted to him; he surely owed her an extraordinary debt for that.
However, this woman had also used her power to expel from this world the man Hveðrungr had vowed over and over that he would kill with his own two hands. Now he was in a place out of reach.
Her action seemed like a declaration that Hveðrungr was no match for Yuuto. His wife, of all people, had done this. He couldn’t forgive her for it.
Frankly, he could cut her to ribbons and still not be satisfied, but she was also the previous ruler of this clan, and the one who had publicly named him as her successor. If he did as he wished, he knew he would lose his power to unify the Panther Clan under his rule.
That being said, he was in no mood to share a bed with this woman anymore. So their relationship had grown cold and fallen irreparably apart.
“What is it, Rungr?” Sigyn’s reply was also wooden.
As always, her revealing outfit hid none of the beauty of her brown skin or sultry form, but her usual sensual grace was snuffed out by her dark expression.
“What are the chances that Yuuto might return to this world tonight?” Hveðrungr demanded. “Is it really impossible?”
It was true that, two years ago, Yuuto had wanted only to return to his homeland. But people changed.
Yuuto was now one of the great rulers of western Yggdrasil, and had obtained great wealth and power. His coffers were filled with gold, silver, and treasures; he had the privilege of taking his pick of beautiful women to serve at his pleasure every night; and everyone beneath him knelt at his feet and followed his orders.
Having become a man living life at the top, a life that others could only dream of, it seemed impossible to consider that Yuuto would so easily throw that away.
And the Wolf Clan, for their part, surely desired ever more of the knowledge that he could provide to them, for it had brought them such glory and prosperity.
So then, with tonight being the full moon, his little sister Felicia might very well be in the middle of performing the summoning ritual once again.
“Not a chance.” Sigyn responded bluntly and firmly, striking down Hveðrungr’s thin hope as if cutting a thread. “I heard from the imperial priest Alexis about the Wolf Clan’s seiðr user, and about how much power she has. It’s less than yours. I am the Witch of Miðgarðr, and I poured my life and soul into my casting of Fimbulvetr — she will never be able to overcome it.”
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