Dark red light.
Okkotsu felt as though he were somewhere very, very deep. Dark red lights flowed through his vision like rivers slowly writhing along, stretching before his eyes without a beginning or an end, as if this world held nothing but those lights, nothing but those colors.
He heard something.
The voice was distant, as though rising from deep, deep underwater. He couldn't make it out. The words seemed muffled beneath a thick cloth, leaving only vague, indistinct outlines.
He wanted to hear those words clearly. He strained to listen, but the voice drifted closer and farther away, as if playing hide-and-seek with him.
"Yuta!"
The voice suddenly became clear.
His name was like a key sliding into a door deep within his consciousness. The door swung open, and light poured out from behind it, brighter light, a color more like the sunshine of a summer afternoon.
That light filled his vision, scattering the dark red rivers and washing the blurred outlines into focus.
He saw Rika.
She crouched at the edge of the sandbox, sunlight falling across her face and casting two small, warm flecks of gold in her eyes. Her light brown hair hung over her shoulders, its ends swaying gently in the breeze. Her eyes were narrowed, the corners of her mouth slightly raised.
"It's a promise-when we grow up, Rika and Yuta will get married."
The girl's voice echoed in his ears, like an echo that would never fade. He watched her smile blossom, spreading from the corners of her mouth toward her cheeks, toward her eyes, toward every corner of her face.
Then the image shattered.
A glaring red spread beneath her, seeping from under her scattered hair, beside the hand protruding from her clothes, from every part of her body. It gathered on