A Lost Path

They were lost. That was a fact. Though it also felt a little pointless since they were in an unknown place already. Yumi didn’t know the land anymore than Yuki. Before the demon attack they had only been following the road in the hopes of finding another village. So saying they were lost felt like it might be a little redundant, seeing as they never knew where they were going before.

Yumi held on to Yuki while staring around the open fields of rolling grass. The only landmarks were distant mountains. But it was also night, so there wasn’t going to be a lot that she was going to see anyway. Between the two of them she knew she had the best vision, so there was no chance of Yuki spotting anything if she couldn’t.

Their situation left her pondering her options. ‘What should we do? We can’t be roaming aimlessly through this land.’ While Yuki was out of danger from his injuries, he still needed time to rest. She wanted him to have somewhere nice to recover that wasn’t out in the middle of the naked wilderness. The threat of another demon attacking alone was enough concern for her.

She looked over at Yuki. ‘It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking right now. Does he have a plan? I don’t really have any experience in this sort of thing.’ The back of her mind wanted her to rely on him for the answer. He had been through so much already and lived a very different sort of life from her. Yumi just assumed he would have a solution. He always had a way out of everything. It was always happening. An idea always came to him.

“Yuki…” she started out slowly.

Tilting his head over to her, he didn’t seem to present a face of one with an idea. It just looked like his normal face. That disheartened Yumi some that he also lacked an answer. “Got a plan, Yumi?”

He looked at her for an answer. Yumi would have stepped back a little surprised if she could. She didn’t expect to see him relying on her for a plan. ‘He can’t help me? I’m going to have to do this alone?’ Everything weighed on her coming up with a solution now.

Now she felt truly lost.

‘What do I do?’ A bit of panic rose up in her body. It hadn’t quite made it to her head, but it did start her heart beating faster. ‘I can fight a demon, but I get tripped up by being relied on for direction? What’s wrong with me?!’ Though chastising herself did nothing to find her solution.

‘I have to just think about the problem…’ She tried to control her breathing to calm her heart, but that didn’t help much. It really didn’t want to calm down. Yumi would just have to live with not being able to control herself. She just had to think of her situation and a way out.

Yumi tried to put the pieces out in front of her. ‘We’re lost… We don’t know the land or how far we are from the road. We just need to find some sort of village or town. Any sort of sign of life.’ Finding any of those was difficult though. A search around the field showed off why that would be hard for her. It might just be fields of grass around them, any sign of a forest wasn’t even a hint of a presence. But hills blocked their view from going too far. ‘This must be a very mountainous area of Japan with all of these tall hills. It’d be possible if we were on top of one to see farther…’

Then it came to her. A hit that made her nearly fall off her feet. She couldn’t believe how simple it was. The solution was in front of them. Yumi focused so much on the result rather than the problem that she couldn’t even see what was so easy. ‘I just need to get to high ground.’

Looking over at Yuki, she tried to see how he was doing. “Can you stand on your own for a little bit?”

He looked down at his legs for the answer. “Probably, why?”

“I’m going to go take a peek at our surroundings. I should be able to at least find the road.”

“Alright…”

Yumi released him from her support and took a step back. Watching how Yuki managed on her own, she hesitated to take action until she knew that he would be fine. Once she could get that, she looked up to the skies. ‘This should be the fastest way of doing things. I just hope the night doesn’t make it too difficult to see…’

Initially, Yumi began to hover off the ground with only a few centimeters between her and the earth. Her body bobbed slowly up and down as she got used to the flight and then she pushed herself into the sky.

Well past the peaks of the hills, Yumi came to stop with a full view of the region around her. She could see the ocean to her right and forests hugging the edges of hills and mountains. Still nowhere near the height to see past the mountains, she did at least have a view of the land. ‘Now where is the road?’

Retracing her steps from where they currently stood to where she thought they came from, she managed to see what amounted to the path that they took. At night, it wasn’t even visible as a road. Like Yuki had said, calling it a road overstated its design greatly. It was merely a worn out path that the grass couldn’t grow in very well. Such a lack of design made it very hard to notice. But she had found it at last.

Fortunately, she could see how far they were from the road and it wasn’t as far as she feared. They were actually pretty close. A hill blocked them from seeing it. So it wouldn’t be much effort to return to some sort of guide. ‘Now that I have the road, what about civilization. Is there anything that I can see from here?’

Nothing.

Whether they were really out in the middle of nowhere from people or it was just hidden well, she could not find anything. ‘I wonder if we’ll eventually find something following the road. There’s nothing I can see on it, not even the hint of farms or signs of people working. Though it is night, maybe I’ll see something more during the day…’

Continuing forward was going to be their only option. She had no other choice. They had to find something eventually, the road didn’t exist as something naturally created by the land. People traveled it and often enough to make this into something of a road.

Yumi landed on the ground next to Yuki, waiting the whole time. He welcomed Yumi’s support once more as she pulled his arm over her shoulder. “You find the road?”

“Yup, we’ve just got to get around that hill and we’ll be back on track.”

“Always just under our nose.”

“But I couldn’t find any village. There’s no sign of life at all.”

“We’ll find something eventually.”

She agreed with him. This was the only path that they could take right now. She had no clue about what was going on. Following what was the only thing in front of her would hopefully lead her to something. At least, she hoped it would lead to something. She reserved some fear that this was just a pointless effort that they made. A tiny bit though, she still believed more strongly in finding something at the end of the road. “Right!”

Chapter 390 – A Lost Path

Day finally arrived while they were on the road marking the end of their first full day within the digital world of Yumi’s mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing that she expected. She thought it would be over soon. Not still stuck without purpose or aim inside her own mind.

It made her think with a pensive expression about their situation and what it could mean for them. On a break to eat one of Yuki’s watered down milk flavor food bars and to rest for Yuki, she became more reflective on the situation. Yumi looked over at Yuki, who spent the time with his eyes closed and stretched out in the grass.

She leaned up against the cliff side watching the clouds pass by. “Think our real bodies are alright?”

“Why you ask?” he replied with a long delay in his answer.

“It’s already been a day in here now. How much time has passed out there?”

“If this was a normal VR world, I’d say it was a day as well. But this isn’t a normal world.”

“Because it’s in my mind?”

“Yes, it’s just my guess but I doubt time in here is moving at the same speed out there.”

That answer made her think about the situation even more. ‘If time is moving differently like he thinks then…’ Such a difference made everything change with the way she thought about their situation. “So even though we’ve experienced a day an hour could have only passed for Phoibe?”

“Or even a second maybe. Mind can do a lot of amazing things.”

“…a second… Then for Phoibe, she could still be only starting trying to save us from here?”

“Maybe.”

Yumi felt the weight of that reply. It put things into a different perspective for her. And not one that she was expecting. ‘I just sort of figured that we would have to wait only for Phoibe rescuing us from here. Especially since this seemed to serve no purpose right now. But if time isn’t passing normally, we could be stuck in here for weeks or months while little time passes for Phoibe outside.’ The changes in time made her head hurt a little trying to put it all together. It made sense, but imagining what that was like for Phoibe was weird. They moved quickly, while she was going slowly depending on their points of view.

Which still left her with some unanswered questions. Even with Yuki’s thoughts nothing was certain for them. They knew nothing about why or how they were trapped inside a virtual world created by another part of her mind that she couldn’t control. And anything that they came up with for answers was only just guess work. Not even Yuki knew the truth. None of them did.

“What’ll happen to our bodies if it’s not seconds or hours? Could we die here because of our real bodies being locked away?”

“Phoibe wouldn’t let that happen. She would find a way to keep us safe.” Yuki lifted himself up off the grass to look at Yumi directly. “Just focus on what you can affect. What’s happening here. This is happening for a reason and it is for you.”

“You keep saying that this is for me, but how can you be so certain about that? Maybe they just want to kill me off so that they can take over my body for their own. They plan to make me some vegetable, destroying my mind or something.”

“That still wouldn’t change that it’s about you. If they want to kill you or something else, this is happening because of you, Yumi. This is your mind and only you understand yourself. I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for.”

A sigh escaped Yumi’s lips. He was right. ‘I just don’t understand any of this! This doesn’t make any sense to me! If I understood myself I would know why this was happening and how it connects to me, but I don’t! I don’t understand anything! That much is clear!’ Yumi just wanted it to all make sense. If she at least knew why it was happening she could make some sort of action. But she was going around blind.

‘They’re laughing at me,’ she thought almost certain that they were doing this on purpose to screw with her.

Yumi couldn’t do much with her situation. Yuki had no answers for her and she had none either no matter how many times he told her this was on her. Nothing was going to be figured out. She stepped out away from the cliff and stared at the path once more. “We should start moving again. You’re going to need to sleep at some point and maybe there’s a village nearby for you.”

“It’s possible. There could be something hidden out in the forest.”

“Forest? I don’t see one nearby.” She looked around to see if there was something that he saw that she missed. But there was nothing. And then he just smiled at her like he had some internal joke that he chuckled about to himself.

He motioned with his hand for her to carry on as he leaned on her for support still. “It’s nothing.”

Yumi really felt like she was on the outside of whatever was going on inside his head. Which really was nothing new for her. Most of the things he went on about that got focused on his interests she couldn’t follow. But that was what made him Yuki.

And nothing fortunately was all they found for two days of travel. Yumi feared that they might have to fight another demon and if she could protect Yuki from it, but that was nothing that she had to worry about. Which left them in the late afternoon staring down from one of the hills at a beautiful sight. “A village…” Yumi said with a surprising lack of emotion after wanting one for so long and spending three days traveling partially blind. But they finally arrived at what she hoped was a place that they could rest and maybe understand what was going on.

What was the point of all of this?