The sky was still dark, and the suffocating scent of summer hung thick in the cool air outdoors. The only people out on the street were joggers and dog walkers, people returning home after spending the night elsewhere, and the elderly. Everyone had some purpose in mind, and compared to them I must have looked like a ghost out wandering in the dawn as I plodded along, dazed, dressed in whatever clothes I happened to have grabbed.

There wasn't really anywhere I wanted to go, so I just kept on walking slowly in the direction of the local park. It was a very small place, tucked in a little cranny on a street of houses that ran behind an apartment complex. Shiori and I used to visit it a lot on early morning walks after we'd stayed up all night. There was nothing there but a bench, a sandbox, and a swing set. I sat down on the aging wooden bench and clutched my head in my hands, like someone who's lost her job. My stomach was growling, but somehow I couldn't think of how to make it stop. What on earth had happened to me? It seemed as if I'd finally reached the point where I couldn't make myself do anything, where I no longer had the will to act. I was so sleepy I couldn't even think clearly.

The air was filling with mist, and the different colored toy animals that lay in the sandbox looked smudged, as it I were seeing them through smoke. The entire park was filled with the scent of moist greenery and the fragrance of soil. I went on holding my head in my hands, struggling to keep my eyelids from dropping. I gazed at the pattern of my skirt, which was darkened by my shadow.

“Are you feeling ill?”

A woman's voice rang out just inches from my ear. I was so horribly embarrassed that for a moment I considered acting like I really did feel sick, but the thought of how much trouble it would be if she got seriously worried made me give up on that idea. So I lifted my head. The woman was sitting right beside me, staring into my face, except that she wasn't a woman, she was a girl—she looked like she was probably in high school. She was wearing jeans. And she had these really enormous, mysterious eyes. Eyes that seemed to be gazing off into some vast distance, eyes like two crystals.

“No, I'm all right. I'm just a little tired,” I said.

“Your face looks pretty pale,” she said, sounding concerned.

“I'm fine, really. But thanks anyway.”