The fox suddenly stood up and made her startle again, taking a step back and tensing her whole body up. Its eyes were still locked on hers. It then calmly turned back and walked away as it entered the forest.

She stayed still for at least two minutes, being alert.

The little animal didn't come back. 

She could turn back too as the black fox did and set her way out to look for someone that could help her know where she was and how to get back home. Yet she couldn't understand why she felt the need to follow the same way the fox went to.

She started to walk straight foward, without thinking as if something possessed her body and mind. She stopped for a second to look back and, as she did, the train wasn't there anymore. Without giving any sign of surprise, she looked back ahead and passed through the first trees. She stepped on dry leaves and small branches which sounds scared her a little, but strangely she couldn't stop as if her heart was determined to found something, and commanded her legs to move, taking her foward and foward.

The forest started to look denser and somber as the light was dimming. All of a sudden, she stopped. Her breathing was agitated. She looked back. Behind her there were only trees and darkness, to the point she couldn't see outside anymore. Wherever she looked everything looked the same.

Kumiko then realized the situation she put herself in.

She was panting and the sweat was sliding down her face and dripping from some loose hair strands.

“Crack”. A broken branch sound. Kumiko got startled and immediately looked the way the noise came from, but didn't see anything. She looked around just turning her head side to side. 

Maybe it was the fox again. Or maybe another animal. The fox didn't seem like a danger, but other animals could be. She started to think of the worst possibilities when, abruptly, something jumped from a side and rushed over her. She fell to the ground on her knees and on one hand, while the other one directly went to her face. A bigger hand was grabbing her face from her jaw and covering her mouth and almost her nose. Her hand was grabbing the stranger hand trying to lift it, starting from the fingers. 

The stranger was resting all of his body weight on her back and their other arm was wrapping her around her waist.

“Stay still! Don't try to resist”, an adult man voice said.

Kumiko kept trying to take his hand away from her mouth. She tried to lift her head, then breathed labored and a moaning escaped from her in an attempt to say something. He was way stronger to her and the extreme situation made her unable to think of a way to get him away from despite the strength difference. Tears started to form on her eyes as her chest moved agitated while trying to take the most air she could through her semicovered nose.

“Don't worry. We'll just take what your things and have some fun with you”.

The man kept talking, but she wasn't hearing anymore. We? Her mind was drown in fear, but fear wasn't enough to explain the feeling that invaded her insides the moment she realized there was more than one man.

After the man stopped talking, Kumiko heard steps. Looking to the side the sounds came from, she could only make out some legs coming to her. Two pairs. They were wearing geta¹ and some beige pants below their knees. Maybe they were farmers, she thought.

The man that was holding her squeezed her jaw and tried to pull her head to the ground by it. It hurt her so she just didn't use much resistance. Then he changed his hand position to the back of her head, pressing it to the ground and letting her mouth free. She breathed fast trying to recover the air. She let go the man's hand and put hers down on the ground, helping the other one to support her weight.

“You're making it easier for us if you stay in that position”, one of the new men's voice was heard, ending the sentence with a laugh.

“Let me go, please. I'll give you everything I have, I promise, even my phone”, she finally managed to articulate, with a trembling voice. Her throat was sore from trying not to cry, but some tears already were rolling down her cheeks.

The three men burst out laughing. Kumiko was completely drenched in fear. Every part of her was signalizing how scared she was. Those voices, the sound of their laughs, almost burlesques as they saw her body and voice shake and her wet eyes sparkling and shaky, as a rabbit cornered by its predators, it only made her understand that, no matter how much she begged, they would not let her go.

“What is she saying? She speaks nonsense” one of them said. She couldn't see his face, but a he kept smiling, as he talked, just lifting one side of his lips. “You crazy girl, dressed crazily like that and saying weird words. Even your accent is from a crazy girl”.

She then noticed something. Their accent was different from hers. Their speech was more formal than where she came from. Actually, she never heard one like that before, it wasn't only the level of formality. Maybe it was just the dialect from that zone. She didn't know many places from the countryside, so maybe it was normal it sounded unfamiliar to her. Maybe they were unfamiliar to other dialects too.

A sudden scream dissipated her thoughts and got her back to reality. The fingers that held her face clenched hard on her skin, almost making it bleed. Then the grip loosened up and the hand let go, falling with heaviness to the ground. Her waist was released too and the burden on her back dissapeared followed by a dry noise. She wasn't understanding what was going on, she only knew it was her chance to run away, maybe her only one. She got up fast.

In front of her, a petrified man was looking at the scene with a horrified face, his mouth wide open and shaking. Near him, the other man was standing firmly and his eyes filled of rage, fixed on something behind her.

Kumiko didn't understand the situation yet neither had much interest on what happened, she just knew she had to run as fast as she could. She turned around without a second thought, but her body crashed into something, for her surprise, burying her face into a tough but smooth obstacle. The feeling of cloth rubbing her skin let her inmediately know it was a person. The sudden collision amost made her fall down; but an arm hold her right away, steady but softly at the same time, pressing her more into them. It was strange one of her capturers took her in their arms so delicately. However, still scared it was the same man that grabbed her before, she turned her head to the right trying to see something again; the clothing slided a bit, then she could feel the touch of skin to skin on her cheek. Before her eyes were covered by the strangers hand, she could barely grasped a puddle of blood near her feet next to a body.

Next thing she felt was dizziness and her body slowly giving up, before her eyes closed.

The smell of burnt wood smoke woke Kumiko up. In front of her there was a bonfire. She was still feeling dizzy and her head spinning around. The silhoutte of a man sat across the fire made her come to her senses. She tried to incorporate on herself a little, slowly and carefully, trying not to make any false move. 

“You're awake?”, the man asked. His voice was from a young man, a bit grave, but he spoke softly in an attempt to convey safeness to her.

Kumiko kept looking at him, still not seeing him clearly, not sure if she should answer or not.

“You can get up and go away”, he gently spoke again, “You can even run away, but it's not even necessary, I won't go after you”. 

The young man got up and got closer to the fire letting himself be seen clearer by Kumiko. He bent down in a squat right in front of the fire, took a small branch and threw it in the fire. The look on his face was gentle as his voice. The fire light gave his face a bright reddish orange skintone and highlights of the same color on his dark hair. His build was slim with broad shoulders andfrom what she could see he looked a similar age to her, at least less than 30 and younger than 20. 

After carefully analizing him she opened her mouth:

“Did that man die?” 

“Maybe... most probably”.

The expression on his face didn't change.

“What happened to the other men?”, she asked again, deciding to accept that ambiguous answer.

“They ran away”, he answered in an instant again. “And I didn't have any intention of chasing them”. 

Kumiko kept looking at him in silence, trying to thing what to say or what to do next. She couldn't really trust him, even though he seemed reliable. He most likely killed a person... But for her... The difference between being a killer for an evil reason and being a killer to help someone was what made her doubt so much. Any other time and situation, she'd have run away without giving him a chance to even notice she'd woken up. But it wasn't really necessary to kill that man to save her, was it? And however, the young man was still a possible murderer. And why would he get that far just to save her, a completely stranger? The more she thought, the more she was unsure.

Seeing her get so lost on her mind, he spoke again, this time with a lower voice:

“Listen, I already told you, you can go if you want”, he made a pause looking at her, trying to find her eyes in the darkness, “But it's really dark and you don't seem to be from here, so I would prefer you go in the morning”.

He sounded sincere and his look said the same. Kumiko slowly got up; a piece of cloth she didn't notice fell down from her lap. She tried to walk closer to the bonfire. She felt a sudden pain in her left ankle the moment her whole weight rested on her feet. The man got up abruptly too and Kumiko flinched in a response.

“Your ankle has sprained. I'll help you out”. 

Kumiko stayed still as he got closer. He was taller than her, almost two heads and he was dressed in dark blue kosode² with a narrow obi³. He extended his arm to her and put it behind her back, but stopped before touching her.

“Can I?”, he gently asked slightly bending down.

His eyes locked with hers. She noticed his eyelashes where long and his eyes looked deep black.

She nodded with her head timidly. Her wrap his arm around her shoulders from the back and hold her arm tight, while the one nearer his body lifted on his shoulder around his neck. He then waited for her to give the first step. They walked way closer to the fire and stopped less than a meter from it, where he helped her sit down again. He then covered her shoulders with the “blanket”, she then realizing it was a haori⁴.

He sat to her right, not so close, trying to give her space but trying to break a little the distance they had before, then looked at the fire.

She looked at him. He had thin straight eyebrows that slightly arched on the end. He had plump lips, though they were not so thin not so full. He had monolid eyes and, decorating his face, two moles side to side, below his left eye forming what looked like a colon in writing and; a single mole below the right side of his lower lip. His hair was straight and messy and even though it was long enough to cover his forehead, reaching even his eyes, it didn't cover his features. He was handsome, although, the first word that came to her mind was “pretty”.