“Eh, sugoi na! Nihongo jouzu da na!” He orders a nearby nurse to wheel him over. We have a nice chat about what I’m doing there (waiting for a friend, earning me another “sugoi” ), what he is doing there (he maybe broke his ankle slipping on the floor of his local snack bar, he’s waiting for his X-rays to be sure), where I’m from, what I do, if I like Japan, can I teach him English, do I like lemons, if the friend I’m waiting for is my boyfriend, and would I like a Japanese boyfriend. A nurse comes by to wheel him away to see a doctor before I have to answer that one.

I check my phone again. That chat killed thirty minutes. Nothing better to do now than take a nap. Maybe in the next hour someone will wake me for an update on whether or not I should stay. Spa World isn’t too far from here. I can afford a thousand yen to squeeze in a quick nap there if someone comes along to release me soon. I find three seats without handles in a relatively vacant part of the waiting room and spread myself across them with my nice puffy coat as my pillow, kicking off my boots before lying down. When a nurse passes by, she asks if I would like a blanket. I graciously accept and set my iPhone alarm for 6:30. If anyone needs to find me before then, well, I shouldn’t be too hard to locate, being the only gaijin here.

I relax, despite the harsh fluorescent lighting and the sporadic announcements on the hospital PA system. The images of that place still float in the darkness of my mind, like photographic negatives: the musty descent down the flight of stairs, the clutter of abandoned sake casks, the hazy lights in that room … and Zaniel, lying there like Sleeping Beauty. None of it makes sense. My body grows heavy with sleep. Just before I doze off completely, I hear a sound like rushing water, and I faintly smell something like salt. Maybe it’s the ocean about to close over my head in a tidal wave.

No … it’s applause …

“Omedetou, Baku-sama!”

“What?” I mumble. I open my eyes and find myself surrounded by strange faces, animals on two legs, people on all fours, creatures no taller than my knee, animals bigger than cars, monsters in modern-day suits and ancient yukata and kimono, and they’re all clapping (except for the tenome, who wave and twist their hands in the air to sign for applause). “You did it!” they cry. “You found him!” “Hooray, hooray! Callooh! Callay!” “Omedetou, omedetou!”

“Huh? Oh, no. It was nothing. I just did what you all told me. I think.”

“Good! Now, there is one more thing you must do, Cybelle.”

“What’s that?”

“Cybelle?!”

“That’s my name.”

“CYBELLE!”