Sora’s eyes flicker open to see two bright brown eyes with a calculating gleam peering down on him, deciding on what judgement to pass. 

Noticing that the strange man had been roused from his slumber, Nozomi puts a pause to her judgement, and jumps back excitedly into a fighting pose, “Sister, sister he’s awake! He’s awake! Take the rearguard!”

In one swift movement, Mirai lifts Nozomi and plops her onto the bed, before kneeling down to meet the gaze of the man lying on the floor. The room itself is barely large enough to fit the three of them.

Mirai is not without suspicion, but she learned of his hopes, they resided in her body for longer than she'd like to admit, and she finds it hard to imagine the encounter was some kind of ploy to fool her.

She feels an uncomfortable responsibility for the event, though she had no intention of exposing that fact or taking responsibility for more than the bare minimum. She could at least allow him to recover safely and feed him a meal, before sending him along, since he already made up for the losses incurred to her.

Sora groans as he lifts his head from the floor, recovering his senses one by one.

“Don’t push yourself.” Mirai spoke to him flatly, neither warmly nor coldly.

Sitting upright, Sora scans his surroundings, and asks, “Where am I?”

Or at least he thought he asked. 

Nozomi turns her head sharply towards a wide-eyed Mirai. 

Mirai's concern jumps. What a mess, she thinks.

“Can you share your meaning? I don’t speak your tongue.” Mirai responds.

This only compounds upon his headache.

“What do you mean? You’re speaking it now.” He barely had the energy to be sitting upright, much less deal with the mind games this girl seemed to be playing with her.

Mirai stares blankly, having only heard unfamiliar noises. 

Could it really be that he doesn’t know how to communicate? She thinks to herself. How could that be? This man was a complete and utter mystery to her, and she isn't sure she has the time or patience for it.

She sighs. Closing her eyes, she takes a breath and reaches out to probe the meaning from Sora’s heart directly. This is not something she liked to do, but it couldn’t be helped.

Sora suddenly shakes, fearful that he was about to relive the trauma he experienced the night before, but instead, something gentle works its way to the residual meaning of his words. 

It was as if the words he just spoke made an imprint on his heart when he spoke them, and Mirai was searching for that imprint—no, it was the words themselves that were the imprint, and Mirai was searching for the origin of their meaning.

Sora’s eyes widen, and Mirai speaks again, “Alright, I should be able to understand you now. Who are you? Why do you not share your meaning with me?”

Sora hesitates. “I ... I don’t know what you mean. You said you don’t speak my tongue, but you just did. You don’t understand me?” He stammered aloud.

Part of Mirai saw this coming, but the surprise shows on her face nonetheless. Without speaking aloud, she speaks directly to Sora’s heart, “So you really don't know how to speak. What you said is correct. I cannot understand your words. I am listening to your heart, because you are letting me.” She pauses, thinking of the best way to explain things. “I do not speak your tongue, but you can understand my meanings, because I wish for you to,” she answers and pauses to let Sora process this information.

However, Mirai made a minor miscalculation. Sora’s eyes widen. He could understand her well and clearly, but this time...her mouth did not move at all. And it wasn’t even like he could hear sounds in his head. He just...understood.

Sora found himself at the limits of his wits. It felt like the kind of wordless communication one might share with a close friend or family member. The kind of communication that lives in the eye contact between lovers. But this...to be able to communicate something that would take many sentences to say, without a single world spoken, felt magnitudes more intimate.

Sora diverts his eyes from Mirai, deeply embarrassed for some reason, but this did not rid him of the feeling that Mirai was peering into his soul. 

He scrambles for words to reply and finds nothing. Meanwhile, Mirai hears exactly what his heart was saying, and her face grows flush.

Indeed, even in Mirai’s world, this way of communicating is mostly reserved for the most intimate of relationships, so Sora’s reaction is fitting to the situation. 

This is certainly not a way one would ever communicate with a stranger. It even felt like this to Sora, even though he never knew such a thing was possible.

“I ... uh ...” Mirai pulls her attention away from Sora’a heart and tries to recover.

“Can you ... understand me now?” Sora strains himself as he speaks out loud, wishing with all his might that he would be understood.

“I understand!!” Nozomi shouts, her eyes brimming with a joy that seemed to sparkle as it spilled out and onto the hearts of Sora and Mirai.

Had he not just experienced Mirai speak to his heart so directly, this influx of joy might have caused just as great a shock to him. 

Nozomi just wanted to be a part of this heart to heart the two were having, and her unrestrained expression of joy seemed to wash away any embarrassment that he and Mirai accumulated in the moments before.

“I’m sorry... this is all very new. And overwhelming to me. I am confused. Having a hard time processing what’s happening.” Sora speaks slowly and belaboredly, eyebrows furrowing as he tries to make sure that he continues to “wish” for his words to be understood.

“Are you still ... understanding me?” He asks, like checking to see if his cell signal was still working.

Nozomi lets out another affirmative squeal, signaling to Mirai and Sora’s hearts, spinning around as if bearing witness to an historic event that no one in the whole world would dare miss if given the chance.

This brought a soft smile to Sora’s face. 

He drew a breath. Then another.

Whatever “this” was, he might not understand it, but it wasn’t so bad, he thinks.

It was beginning to feel at least a bit more natural. Having felt the mystery and power of this magic, Sora finds himself allowing it fill him with wonder. 

He doesn't know it, but this too is part of Nozomi’s influence.

Mirai is relieved that this awkward moment came and went quickly enough, thankful for Nozomi. Even Sora calms down a bit.

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t trust anyone—other than Nozomi—enough to communicate this way, but given the bizarre circumstances, she didn’t stop to consider the implications before she exposed her heart to Sora. 

Nozomi never saw Mirai open up like this to another person, so to her, it feels like a revolutionary development of epic proportions.

Mirai tries to calm her sister’s outburst, but can't quite contain her smile from the joy imparted to her. 

She so often had to caution Nozomi to guard her hopes, as there are many who would take advantage of her.

Nozomi was unrestrained with her hopes. She opened her heart freely, like most children. 

However, Nozomi was special. Her hopes are almost boundless, and she was frightfully, dangerously resilient to despair. This was both her greatest power and greatest vulnerability. 

It was for this reason that Mirai ran away with Nozomi, and it was the reason she would continue to run and protect Nozomi with all her might and at any cost. 

She’d kill if she had to, to save Nozomi from being returned to her so-called family, to that foul creature that called herself Nozomi's mother.

Mirai shakes her head to reset herself. “Now, perhaps we should start over. My name is Mirai, and this one here is little Nozomi. Who might you be?”

Nozomi scrunches her nose at being called little.

Laughing, though still a bit dazed, he replies, “My name is Sora. I’m a software engineer, from the city—from New York City.” He pauses, remembering his unease. He glances up at the two puzzled faces showing no signs of recognition. “What is this place? Where am I?”

After all that had just occurred, this sort of question was to be expected.

After a moment’s thought, Mirai says, “We are in a small village called Pyrytyl in the northern province of the Kingdom of Taren.” She pauses to give Sora a few seconds to process. “This ‘New York City’. I have never heard of it. Which Kingdom is it in? What brings you here?”

Sora sits very still, as if stillness would help, eyes flickering back and forth as he absorbs this information, while also trying to decide on how to respond.

“I ... New York City ... is a city in America. Have you heard of such a place?”

Mirai shakes her head.

“Then ...” as if settling on how he would confront his bizarre circumstances, “I do not know what brings me here. I am surprised to find myself wherever this is. Where I'm from, we cannot communicate this way, and we can't ... share feelings like this.”

Nozomi interjects, eyes nearly popping out of her head. “What is your world like, Sora??”

“My world?” He freezes. Of course, that was the natural conclusion: this was not the world he knew.

“In my world, ...” Sora glances around the room, taking in his surroundings one more time given this long-dawning realization. His gaze lands on the candle.

If Mirai were the one to ask this question, he likely would have not known how to answer. But because it was Nozomi, his smile widens, and he begins to tell of his world as though it were a wonderful tale.

“I don’t know much of this world, so I do not know what will sound strange and what will not, but in my world, ...”

Sora tells her of lightbulbs that produce spheres of light at night and subway cars that travel underground at high speeds. Skyscrapers and the millions of people scuttling around the city in the morning as they leave for work. Airplanes that allow travel between continents, and cell phones that allow near instant communication with anyone in the world.

The marvel with which he spoke was unfamiliar to even him. Sora went through his life, day to day, without a sense of much wonder. His hopes for the future came as quickly as they went. He wasn't close to his family, and had no one of importance in his life, no significant other, no mentor, a handful of friends by name but if he were to be honest with himself, they were more like acquaintances.

He grew up in the city with a city boy's pessimism, followed the track laid out before him, and found himself in his mid twenties working a software engineering job at a small tech company. He was paid a decent salary, which accrued in his bank account over the years. This wasn’t part of a plan to save money, but he didn’t have strong desires to do much with it otherwise. 

He lived alone in a studio apartment, prepared his own meals early in the morning and late at night when he was home from work. He hardly watched TV, but found some joy in reading light novels on the weekends.

At least this is how Sora thought of his own life. It wasn’t devoid of color, but he didn’t think it was very colorful either. 

His basic needs were met without much effort, and he smiled enough with his coworkers that he couldn't say he was depressed. He accepted the loneliness in his life without much resistance.

Of course he didn’t tell Mirai and Nozomi such a sad tale. His life was nothing to marvel at. 

It wasn't as though Mirai and Nozomi’s world was primitive compared to Sora’s. There were many technologies built on the magic of this world that could be considered far more advanced than the technologies of Sora’s world. Yet, it brought him great joy to see that even the simplest of things that he took for granted in his life, drew sparkles to Nozomi’s eyes.