Miyamizu Mitsuha was dragged along for the whole way. Panting for breath, she leaned against the wire mesh fence by the road, her round eyes glaring at Mori Tsukisa, who looked as if nothing had happened.
"Hey, you—"
Before she could finish her angry words, a lollipop was stuffed into Mitsuha's mouth.
Strawberry flavored, sweet and sugary.
"Mmm..."
"At a time like this, all you need to say is 'Thank you, Miss Mori Tsukisa'." The girl leaned against the tree trunk with her hands behind her head, laughing heartlessly with a weirdly shaped candy in her mouth. "Hahaha! Your dad's face looked like he'd seen a fake version of you!"
No, the one I know is the fake you, Mitsuha thought, her face drooping with the lollipop in her mouth. This is your true self, isn't it, Mori Tsukisa?
"Mischievous" wasn't enough to describe it anymore.
She was a complete troublemaker.
"I clearly helped you," Mori Tsukisa said, the candy clacking against her teeth. "And I was telling the truth, Mitsuha."
Miyamizu Mitsuha squinted at Mori Tsukisa and pulled the lollipop out of her mouth to take a look: a light pink candy, shaped like... Huh? A strange snake?
Mitsuha, her hair tied with a red cord, shook her head, trying to clear out the image of her father's perpetually stern face. Mori Tsukisa was still giggling foolishly.
"How can you be so sure I have a bright future..." Miyamizu Mitsuha muttered with a funny sort of boyishness. This sense of conflict was even more interesting on her soft face.
"Because you've become my friend," Mori Tsukisa said with certainty. "Right?"
"Right, right?"
Miyamizu Mitsuha's lips drooped as she nodded reluctantly—she didn't know what would be said to her when she got back... Honestly... Immersed in the memory of the people speaking up for her just now, the girl saw Mori Tsukisa, leaning against the tree, raise her left hand out of the corner of her eye.
"Question!" she asked indistinctly. "Mitsuha, you like Tokyo so much, why have you never been? There's a train here... hmm?"
It's too expensive.
Miyamizu Mitsuha shook her head.
"My allowance..." The girl mentioned a figure. "I've seen it online. The price of a cup of coffee where you live is my entire month's allowance."
"You don't actually think your family is poor, do you?" Mori Tsukisa found it strange. "Setting aside your family's hereditary profession, you have a shrine th—is—big in the Tokyo metropolitan area where land is worth its weight in gold."
"Do you know how much an area like this could rent for every year?"
Should she call Miyamizu Mitsuha a dummy, or was her father being excessive?
"That is my father's wish..." Miyamizu Mitsuha picked up a fallen leaf from her shoulder, rubbing the clearly veined oval leaf, her voice low. "Ever since Mother died..."
Miyamizu Futaba, the mother of Mitsuha and Yotsuha.
As the previous shrine maiden, she fell in love at first sight with Toshiki Mizoguchi, a folklorist—as Mitsuha spoke of the past, the smile on her small face grew.
'I don't know why, but I just feel like I'm going to marry you!' That was what Mitsuha's father said the first time he met her mother. The romantic man was very serious, while Miyamizu Futaba only smiled gently, looking at him shyly.
'Ye...s, I have that feeling too...'
After marrying into the family, Toshiki Mizoguchi changed his name to Miyamizu.
The once harmonious and happy family only lasted until the moment Miyamizu Futaba fell ill.
'To the hospital! We're going to the hospital! Futaba, the gods cannot cure your illness!' Miyamizu Toshiki held his wife's hand on the hospital bed: withered, thin, the naturally gentle woman now seemed even more fragile. It was as if a gust of wind from outside the window could carry her soul away forever.
'The hospital, Futaba, you must listen to me!'
Miyamizu Futaba stared blankly out the window in silence.
'Futaba... no... you can't be this cruel...'
'Toshiki.'
Miyamizu Futaba touched her man's face, once again carefully observing her husband, who was getting older but weeping like a Child.
'It's wonderful...' she said. 'Before I met you, I always felt like I was searching for something...' The woman's intermittent words came through dry, cracked lips, so raspy that even the young Mitsuha nearby frowned.
Her lungs were failing.
'At that time, when I saw you, I knew. I just knew...' she said. 'It feels like I've known you for a long time...'
Outside the window, leaves were falling, and the bare, tangled branches pierced sharply into the cracks of the man's heart.
'I won't be going to the hospital, Toshiki. Everything is arranged by the gods...'
'I refuse to serve a god that takes my beloved away!!'
Miyamizu Mitsuha closed her eyes. In the darkness, her father's words grew more and more irritable, and she and Yotsuha saw him less and less—he often appeared in taverns and open spaces, holding a microphone and making feverish promises to the surrounding villagers.
Mayor—he soon became one.
'The Miyamizu family is full of nonsense! I will absolutely not be this Shinto priest!' The sound of a glass shattering and the sight of his back as he left after an argument with her grandmother were etched into Mitsuha's childhood memories, held tightly in her palm until now.
From time to time, she would secretly unfold them and look, thinking of the past.
"Father..." Miyamizu Mitsuha smiled. "Father... is a good father. It's just... it's just our fate is terrible... Mother's too."
Grandmother said Mother was the strongest shrine maiden in the Miyamizu family's history. Is that true? Were those so-called 'prophecies' really not just coincidences or things bound to happen?
Mori Tsukisa listened quietly and gave an 'mm'. "I see."
"Mitsuha."
The girl lifted a lock of hair, twisted it into a small braid, and lightly flicked Mitsuha's arm with it.
The girl looked up at Mori Tsukisa.
"Tsukisa?"
"Actually..." Mori Tsukisa looked left and right, carefully pulling Miyamizu Mitsuha into the woods beside the dirt road—in reality, in such a sparsely populated town, there was hardly anyone on this road anyway.
"Shrine maidens really do exist. Your mother must have been a remarkable human!"
Human...? Does anyone use that word to describe their own kind?
Miyamizu Mitsuha blinked in confusion.
"Those traditions you hate are just Mortals peering at the truth through the mist." Mori Tsukisa mysteriously led the girl deep into the woods; in this relatively primitive village, the vegetation was even more lush than in a big city.
This was what "growing wild" truly meant.
"Here. I'll show you the flip side of the World, but don't tell anyone." The girl's black hair fanned out as she patted Mitsuha's shoulder with a smile. "Not even your boyfriend."
"Oh, and not that Ichiyo guy either."
Miyamizu Mitsuha:...In just a few short days, I feel like I've learned a lot of things I'd never heard before.
Without waiting for a reply, Mori Tsukisa stepped back slightly and swept her forearm from left to right!
The crisp sound of shattering glass reached Miyamizu Mitsuha's ears.
The World was folded.
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