Gateways to Casselonia Vol1( Light Novel )

Chapter 4

Sorata was in the middle of a dream.

"Sorata. Come on wake up. Sorata."

"...Mmmm..."

The voice calling out to him belonged to someone he knew all too well: his mother. The tone of her voice sounding calm and gentle, but at the same time urgently demanding a response to her request. Sorata felt his right shoulder being shaken softly. With a quiet groaning sound forcefully making it's way out from his mouth, he opened one eye and raised his head up from his makeshift pillow-arms to find his mother looking down at him.

"Geez, what have I told you about sleeping at the table? You promised me you wouldn't stay up so late anymore, remember? And don't tell me you were studying all night for a big test because I've already heard that excuse before." Still half asleep and only one eye open, he could only make out the bottom half of his mother's face. Her cheeks puffed out pouting at him. She turned around slowly, then made her way over to the sink and began washing dishes. "If you're done eating then get ready for school. You have perfect attendance so far. So don't do anything that can put your streak in jeopardy." Her talking reverberated daintily around him, as if where they were was a hollow shell or something.

Sorata soon came to realize he was in the kitchen of his house. He sat on one of the chairs, his person already dressed in the black uniform of Adachi Ward Public High School, in addition, his school bag on the ground next to him. No memories of ever getting up and dressing for school were in his head, but somehow it had just happened on it's own volition. The familiar aroma of his mother's morning miso soup made it's way into his nose. He looked around the room for a minute, giving all his senses an opportunity to analyze the environment. The sound of the running water from the sink felt real, as was the wooden texture of the black kitchen table upon gently stroking it with his right index finger. Following through with the previous action, Sorata went so far as to examine his own finger that grazed the smooth table top, looking at it with a puzzled expression.

Behind him, the sounds of someone flipping through static channels on the television became audible out of nowhere. Or it could be that Sorata wasn't paying any attention until now. Still, he became curious about who could be behind him in the living room but didn’t make the attempt to look back. He felt it wasn't possible to turn around in his chair actually, for some odd reason. The intention of questioning exactly why he couldn’t do so didn’t cross his mind either. But a sudden pain of disappointment showed up on his face as a result of it. There was a chance it could be his father or his younger sister only a few meters away from him. “I... I want to see them too”, Sorata said to himself on the verge of crying as he looked down at his hands placed on each lap. A few drops of tears fell on them, making a quiet plop sound as they crashed landed. His head laid hanging for a brief moment.

He had seen his mother again for the first time in over a day, and now the chance of seeing one of two possible other family members once more was being denied to him. The time he'd been apart from them was really only a short one, but someway or another the opposite was also true. Upon raising his head back up, the kitchen and the house were gone.

        Not even a small trace of it once being there was left behind. Everything disappeared from sight.

A sudden rushing gust of wind pushed heavily against his back, he couldn't feel the chair below him anymore nor the ground for that matter. It was then that Sorata found himself freefalling in a surreal world between the sky and the earth, where the horizon was vertical.

Falling without the slightest chance of ever landing anywhere, Sorata peeked over to the right where the earth was. He knew how fast he was travelling by how drastic the nature of the landscapes changed over a few seconds. He caught glimpses of thick forests, grasslands, farms, suburban areas, shrines and temples, even chains of mountains in only a mere four seconds of focusing. And as he did, he interpreted the land beneath as his home country of Japan.