It was a storm she would never forget.

By the age of five, Kofuku had grown up being told how dangerous it was to venture outside of the palace grounds. She had seen the gathering clouds, the flashes of distant lighting, the howl of the black winds that rattled the wind chimes in the hall in an ominous cacophony. The sound of it agitated her mother, sick and maddened by the god on that mountain, and as her father’s attendants tried to calm her, Kofuku found herself on the banks of the river in the valley, further than she’d ever been from the shouting and screaming that filled the space inside the palace.

“Will mommy be okay?” she asked, her fingers brushing through the silt where the bank began to dip into the river. It was a lot shallower than usual, which was common before a big storm, when the water was all up in the clouds above them.

“She will be fine,” said Yamashiro Tensuke, crouching down to her level. “I’ve seen her survive much, much worse. When the spring comes, you can go cherry blossom picking together again, okay?”

She looked up and nodded, and felt something wet and cold splash on her forehead.

Tensuke wiped the drop of water off of her face, gentle even with this metal gauntlets, and stood up and held out his arm. He leaned into the radio on his shoulder. “Kimura, it’s raining.”

The radio crackled. “Is it?”

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel the drops. I thought you said four at the earliest?”

“I didn’t say that. The chimes are going crazy. I’ll see what the readers are saying.”

“Go fast. I’ll need to get her out of here.” Tensuke crouched back down, grabbing Akiraka by the shoulders. “Let’s get you out of the rain, Kofuku-hime. One sick princess is enough for our doctors.”

Kofuku held the little bag of bright, shiny rocks close to herself as Tensuke took her hand, leading her towards the car parked less than a hundred metres away, along the bank.

“Hey, Yamashiro!” came Kimura’s voice from the radio. “Pick up, dammit!”

Tensuke pressed a button on it. “What?”

“Something’s happening up there! I don’t know what, but you need to evacuate right now.”

“On it.” He sped up, tugging Kofuku along but not quick enough to hurt her short arms.

A flash in the distance, and then…Boom!

Instinctively, Tensuke went low, owing to his combat experience, his hand slipping out of hers. He paused to look back at Kofuku, who was on her knees in the mud, covering her ears. The rain intensified around them, the drizzling coalescing into big fat drops of water that almost hurt, becoming oppressive and almost hail-like.

“It’s just lightning,” he said softly, taking her hand again and resuming their walk.

Even now, Kofuku never figured out exactly what it had been. She had some ideas, now that they had been to the cabin in the mountains, but the exact details remained foggy, banished to some other reality that was lost in the time between then and now. Whatever it was, nobody could anticipate it.

The sudden change in the rain must have been much more intense upriver, because in a matter of seconds, the roaring of water reached the both of them, and Tensuke’s face contorted into one of horror as she hurried them towards the car, disregarding all pain or comfort on her part. Even when they got to it, and Kofuku saw the wall of water and mud, foaming and brown from soil and rushing to take them both, Tensuke didn’t give up. He just smiled at her.

It was the last expression he ever made.

She was suddenly flying through the air, landing hard on a large boulder in the side of the valley before the torrent swept by, picking up the car and sending it downriver, dumpling it over and over like it was a plastic toy.

He had thrown her. Tensuke had picked her up and put her in the only place he had figured was safe, and just like that, he was gone.

Kofuku began to cry. She was alone, trapped on this rock with the river crashing past, and even though she knew Kimura or someone would come to get her, but for the time being, she was at the mercy of forces she couldn’t even begin to understand, barely surviving by the skin of her teeth. There was nothing she could do, and as the wind came in, blowing upriver and channeled by the walls of the valley, she laid down on her front on the rock, praying it wouldn’t blow her off and into the current.

She wasn’t sure how long she slung there, but the sound of the water became quieter as whatever dam that had broken upstream was beginning to run out. The same was true for her tear ducts, and she wiped them away, finally looking up from the surface of the round rock. There was no lightning to see, but she could hear them all around her, everywhere from the forests just off to the sides of the valley to the lake behind her. With them came an odd sensation, too strange and powerful for her developing mind to resist, carried on the wind currents and in the smell of ozone.

Dangerous as it was, something told Kofuku that she didn’t want to stay on that rock any longer. It flooded her mind and washed away any conscious fear, at least for the moment, and she found herself hopping down into the rushing water, keeping to the edge of the valley so it only came up to her knees. Battered by wind and rain, fighting to keep from toppling and being carried away to her doom, she took it one step at a time, heading to the mouth of the valley where the river emptied out into the lake north of the palace. She pushed through the cold seeping into her bones, the terrible feeling in her gut, the jolt of fear each time her little trainers slipped on the mud under the water, forcing her to stop and steady herself, and-

“Akiraka!”

Her heart raced. She turned around, but raindrops blowing past her made it difficult to see. There was a figure in the river itself , tall enough to be an adult, getting bigger as they waded down to her. She reached out, but the drop in temperature forced her arm back to cradle her chest, where her body heat was rapidly fading. The sudden movement shifted her balance, and before he knew it, both of her feet sunk into a softer patch of mud, tipping her over backwards into the water.

Before her face could submerge and vanish, powerful arms wrapped around her, hoisting her up and out of the river, her face pressed against soft yet dmp silk and the rougher cloth of the jacket around it. “I’m here,” her father whispered. “I’m right here. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

Kofuku squeezed her eyes shut. “Daddy!”

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?” Takeshi anchored himself to the wall of the valley and pulled her with him.

“Hurt…my tummy hurts.” She looked up, watching her father smile, crow’s feet developing at the corners of his eyes. His moustache always made her laugh, but at that moment, she just felt…warm, though maybe that was their combined body heat.

“Does it hurt much?”

“Not much. I hit a rock. Tensuke pushed me.”

“Tenuske…” Takeshi looked downstream, for a moment, losing his eyes in prayer. Then he pulled her close. “Don’t be afraid of the storm. I’m here now.”

“Okay,” she said, weakly.

“Close your eyes, Akiraka. Listen to my voice.”

She nodded and shut her eyes. The roaring of water was dying down, and the rain felt lighter. Did her father…?

“Do you hear it?”

“I hear you.”

“Do you hear the wind?”

She frowned. “The wind is bad.”

“Just stay still, and listen. Listen to his voice.”

Kofuku went dead still, focusing on the sound of the wind as it flowed through the valley, over the rocks and water, spreading through the trees up above them. Now that it wasn’t trying to kill her, it felt peaceful, just like any other part of nature on a good day.

I see you.

She opened her eyes. Her father hadn’t spoken.

He was moving her now, wading down to the lake, where a convoy of military vehicles was arriving with heavily-armoured soldiers, shouting at them. A body floated facedown near the bank, Tensuke’s half-submerged and inverted car bobbing beside it, pushed by the eddies of the river.

She allowed herself to drift off to sleep then and there. The storm was dangerous, deadly even, but it was still no match for Takeshi Kofuku, who had kept it at bay with just his sheer strength of will, and it would never hurt her again because he would be there. When she lost consciousness, it was with a smile on her face.

And that was exactly where the trouble began.