Chapter 2 : Futurum Somnium

Futurum Somnium

The room was warm, silent except for the slow spin of her fan. Her glasses lay on her desk beside a stack of notes. The ribbons from her twin-tails had loosened; one clung half-heartedly to her pillow another slounged across her pillow. Her body curled beneath a thin sea land cotton blanket. The scrambled shoji tiles splinted her tidy room, scattering delicate human shadows across the bamboo tatami.

She stood in the centre of a vast glass still lake, its water barely reached her ankles. Its surface mirrored her short orange hair and reflected the bruised purple sky with twilight.

The air flew downward from the aisle mountain, carrying nodes of pines and cold stones.

She waded forward, the water rippling around her toes. Each step gushed mini factures of glass across the sheet. The cold bit her skin, sharp silver pins prickling under her skin, yet the first plunge was a fall into the cold winter river. But, she laughed, satisfied with the breath misting before her lips. She titled her head back, stared at the sky and grinned.

Then, the sky cracked.

A sound shattered the glass, splitting the heavens. Koemi wasn't startle. She had been here before.

Above her, a meteor streaked across the dusk. But instead of crashing, it fractured mid-flight, splitting into five glowing shards that hung suspended in the air. The sky itself seemed to bleed, the fragments spreading in the crimson.

She held out her hand, waiting.

Then the fire began to fall.

Embers drifted down like burning cherry petals. One landed in her palm, a tiny coal pulsing with warmth. It was a lover's breath, that rubbed against the skin. She closed her fingers around it, feeling the pulse of its dying light before the ash dissolved.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

The voice was wrong, too deep, too heavy.

Koemi turned. A boy stood beside her, neck deep in the silver water. He could not have been older than ten, with tousled black hair and a round face, his eyes were still blacked.

"All things are, even if they cause destruction."

"You speak like an old man, yet you pretend to me one."

Koemi tilted her head, "You sound like you resent the dawn. All things come naturally. Even the morning light, gifted by Inari is nothing more than a fleeting mercy."

"I resent nothing, Girl of Ratio Ignis " the boy proclaimed, "But even gods are not eternal. The Aesir knew this, The All Father hung himself upon Yggdrasil for wisdom, despite knowing his demise. 'Brœðr munu berjask ok at bǫnum verðask' Brothers shall fight brothers for a new generation. A generation must die for the next to rise. 

Koemi knelt, digging her fingers into the damp earth. From the sleeve of her shirt, she produced a single murmur seed. She pressed it into the soil.

The earth trembled. Roots erupted, surging upward with a sound like bone cracking. Bark split the air, branches clawing toward the crimson sky. In the moments a colossal oak stood before them, its truck wider than a mountain, its canopy burning through the firecracker.

"See?" Koemi whispered, "Even the smallest seed can become the world tree."

The boy said nothing.

When dawn arrived, she found him hanging choak from the highest branch, his small body limp, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. One eye was missing, other socket hollow filled by packed ice. The other stared emptily at the horizon.

Koemi reached up, the tree lowering as she brushed his bare foot.

"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi."

*

En Arcn

June 8, 2025 | Evening Edition

Beloved Student Council President, Yuushin Roku, Reported Missing

TOKYO — The local community is in shock after 17-year-old Yuushin Roku, the charismatic yet eccentric Student Council President of Shirokawa High (アルガスシロクワ高校), was reported missing earlier today. The last confirmed sighting of Roku was yesterday evening, when he was seen walking with the Student Council Vice-President, 17-year-old Koemi Youdo, near the school grounds.