(Nozomi Yoshida Is) Queen of the Swamp

Chapter 3: Big Empty

Nozomi
April 15, 2022

The next morning, I woke up with a cold sweat. I had an awful dream.
In the dream, it started pitch black. Then, a swirl of white. After that, red and yellow.
Then a loud boom! in the background. I looked towards the direction of the explosion. Still nothing.

The first thing I actually see comes a few seconds later, when I realize I'm standing in my old living room, from my family's old house back in Iwaki.

Iwaki was a pretty big town on the coast in the Fukushima Prefecture. I was born there, and well... It was pretty idyllic. I had a lot of beautiful memories living there, going to preschool and kindergarten, all my friends...

It was a crisp March day. I was only six years old then. My mom was getting ready to take me to daycare.

"Nozomi! Are you ready to go?" my mom asked me, smiling and holding my backpack.

I jumped in excitement. I loved going to daycare. I don't know why... It was just so much fun.

Then, as if out of nowhere, a terrible rumbling ensued. It started as a loud sound. Then I felt a scary shaking, a phantom vibration coming out of nowhere. At first it was just me, then it was the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, everything.

To be honest, for the first few seconds, I wasn't that scared. Japan is no stranger to earthquakes, since we're right on a fault line. My dad used to joke that earthquakes are like traffic. They're a moderate inconvenience, but you'll never get rid of them entirely.

But the shaking was so much stronger than our regular earthquakes. Once the glass vase fell off the coffee table and shattered, I panicked. Almost instinctively, as if guided by some primal maternal force, my mom grabbed me and pulled me under a table, holding onto me for dear life. I never saw my mom so scared. I mean, she was this stoic masterpiece of a lady, but here she was, terrified. Knowing that her and her child could die at any second. Knowing that second might be any one of these seconds.

Across the room, I saw my favorite toy: my prized Lady Kurumi doll.

It was an old show from the 1990s, about this high-school girl who finds out that she's actually a princess, but still has to attend high school. I loved that doll. I used to carry it around everywhere, playing with it at every available moment.

But that day, as the earth violently shook, I remember seeing my doll and frantically trying to scramble out of my mother's arms, desperate to save it.

I strained and was able to reach my hand out from under the table, only about six inches from the doll. I reached as far as I could, willing every muscle in my body to move to grab the toy and escape my mother's grasp.

Right when the ceiling fan fell. It was such a loud racket. I heard and felt the impact as it struck the ground amidst the chaos. Too bad it landed right on my hand, shattering the bones in my hand along with the glass.

I pulled my hand back in utter shock, just in time for the ceiling to cave in.

I'm pretty sure I screamed when I woke up, in my bed, immediately afterwards. That dream was so vivid, I thought to myself. I remembered the immense, excruciating pain that shot through me like a bullet. The next thing I remembered from the day the earthquake happened was a dark red color, seeing the partly-dried blood coat my grossly mutilated hand when we were pulled out of the rubble about an hour later.

I'm really shaken up. Doing what I usually do in these situations, I grab a stress ball from my drawer and squeeze it tight. The plush skin of the ball is oddly soothing, comforting me, reminding me that after all of that, I'm still alive, and I'm lucky to have healed fully and still have use of my right hand.