>Smile. "I can't tell you what this means to me, Kagerou. I'll make it up to you one day, if I can."
>Stand.
>"Let's roll."
>"No need to worry about that," she says.
>You rise and depart, Kagerou giving one last cautious glance around her home before closing the door behind you. She leads the way around the back, up the rise upon which her house rests, then into the closed woods beyond.
>The terrain is much the same as always, once you move beyond sight of the river, rugged sometimes rocky ground with large looming trees and clumps of leafy underbrush. You spy scattered impressions of past footfalls in more yielding patches of ground, but Kagerou's pace gives little time to observe and even less need to. Despite her demure and and often hesitant demeanor while you spoke, she moves now with focus and purpose, traversing rough terrain with confident strides that are telling of her familiarity with it. You don't think she'd be quite as agile as you under ideal conditions, but she barely has to so much as pause for bearings or question whether to move left or move right. A surprising lack of genuine obstacles make you wonder how many you may have avoided by letting her make one choice instead of yourself making the other.
>Indulgently, it is pleasant not to have to think about where you are going, but simply follow - though this lasts only briefly before your mind resumes churning nonetheless. This cannot last until the garden - she has said as much - and you know before long you will be adrift in a distant wood with only hope and an old map to guide you, and little enough time to rely on so little. Each of the many unknowns before you loom like predators lurking in distant shadows. This doesn't have to work, after all. There are so many ways it could fail. So many ways
you could fail. Sekibanki mightn't have even been right, and you could spend your last week scouring the wood for a place that isn't even there. Wouldn't
that be a great way to go?
>You let out a sigh, the arborescent air tickling your nose as you draw breath again. For now you are in someone else's home turf, and they are showing you the way. Just for now, that will have to be enough.
>"If you... don't mind me asking," Kagerou says after a long silence. "How did you come to be searching for this? I mean
you. This sick person... are they someone you know?"
