As soon as her mother goes missing and the only clue pointing to her whereabouts is her search history, Elise Newman has packed her bag and boarded the first flight to Japan. Having both lost somebody, Elise fears for her mother's safety and for her...
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IT HADN'T TAKEN long to hail a cab--there were several milling around the airport lot. At the man's gesture one had pulled alongside them. It wasn't like the yellow ones back home that she was used to, of course, but Elise didn't expect the door to automatically open. The man chuckled at her response and had a conversation with the driver she couldn't follow. The vehicle shuddered to life again, and Elise watched the airport fade in a cloud of exhaust.
"I don't even know your name," she spoke up timidly, toying with the hem of her jacket.
The man informed her it was Kaito, and she introduced herself too, though he seemed content with calling her 'American girl'.
The silence following wasn't uncomfortable. Elise was mesmerized by the world passing in a multicolored blur outside her window, finally allowing herself to see some good in her spontaneous trip. She rarely had gone far from home before, only even leaving Kentucky once to visit distant relatives. It had nothing on what she was experiencing now. Driving here was an extreme sport, it seemed, like she'd seen on her trip to Chicago, though when they passed out of the city, it was manageable. Speed limits were slower than she was used to. The route they took seemed to cost a lot of tolls just to enter a highway, but Kaito informed her it would take hours upon hours otherwise. Elise forked over some cash, but he declined it.
Before long, she felt her eyes getting heavy. Elise couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten some decent sleep since finding her mother missing, and the bumps in the road started to feel more soothing than jostling, like she was being rocked to sleep. Taking comfort, and sadness, in that idea, she rested her head against the window with intentions just to shut her eyelids until they felt less like paper weights. The next time she opened them, however, the daylight outside was bleeding into a sunset over the hills in the distance. She was still in the cab; the road was otherwise deserted and seemed to curve into oblivion.
"Welcome back," Kaito said beside her. "We are almost there."
"Almost where?" Elise stretched, feeling the pins-and-needles sensation as she moved her numb limbs. She felt disoriented and more exhausted than when she'd put her head down, and Kaito didn't seem any more awake.
"There is a place right by the mountain you can stay. I will leave you there for the night."
That woke Elise up. She looked to Kaito for an explanation.
"An inn, as you say. She will accept your money," he said, not clarifying who 'she' was, and Elise didn't ask. He must know the innkeeper, she supposed, though when they arrived at the place he indicated, Kaito refused to go inside.
Elise had been nervous to travel with a stranger, but now she was reluctant to leave him. Sensing this, Kaito reassured her, "I will meet you back here at sunrise. Then the search begins."
With those parting words he left her. Elise shivered in the dark, as the temperature had fallen drastically and her jacket didn't provide nearly enough solace from it. Seeing no other option, she lifted her carry-on and went up the dirt path leading to the inn, a cozy-looking building with a sign written in several languages. She was relieved to see in English information about the inn and check-in details.
