I look at the cord on my wrist.

It hasn’t worn through yet. The connection is still there.

Before I know it, the trees have vanished, and I’m in a mossy, rocky area. Below me, I can see fragments of the gourd-shaped lake through gaps in the thick clouds. I’ve finally reached the peak.

“…It’s there!”

Sure enough, beyond me, there’s the crater-shaped basin and the giant sacred tree.

“It’s really there! It wasn’t a dream!”

The rain has subsided to a drizzle, dripping down my cheeks like tears. I scrub roughly at my face with my sleeve, then start down the slope into the caldera.

In front of me, what was a little stream in my memories is now a decent-size pond. Is it swollen from the rain, or has enough time passed since that dream that the landscape changed? Either way, the great tree stands several dozen yards away on the other side.

This is the edge of the next world.

I remember somebody saying that to me once.

Does that make this the Sanzu River?

I step into the water. There’s a big, echoing splash, as if I’ve stuck my foot into a bathtub, and I realize, belatedly, that this basin is unnaturally quiet. The heavy water is above my knees, and every step I take makes a loud sloshing sound. I start feeling as if I’m tromping all over something pure and white with muddy feet, defiling it. Until I arrived, this place had been perfectly silent. I’m not welcome, I think instinctively. My body heat is being sucked away again, into the cold water. Before long, the water’s up to my chest, but I manage to get across somehow.

The massive tree stands with its roots twined around a big slab of rock.

I don’t know whether the “body of the god” is the tree, the rock, or whether the shape of the two of them tangled together is what people worship. There’s a little stairway in the gap between the roots and the stone, and when I go down it, I find a yawning space wide enough for about four tatami mats.

The silence here is even deeper than it was outside.

I unzip my jacket with freezing hands and take out my phone. I check to make sure it didn’t get wet, then turn it on. In the darkness, every single movement sounds violently loud. With an electronic vvum that seems completely out of place here, the phone comes alive, and I use it as a flashlight.

This place is wholly devoid of color or warmth.

The tiny shrine the light reveals is completely gray. On a small stone altar, two four-inch urns sit side by side.

“It’s the sake we carried up here.”

Gently, I touch the surface. I don’t know when it happened, but I’m not cold anymore.

“This is her little sister’s…”

My hand closes around the urn on the left, confirming its shape. When I pick it up, there’s a slight resistance and a faint, dry tearing noise. The moss had put down roots.