Pandemonium withdrew.

What once was disarray grew tangible.

A screech of iron came, sharp whistles followed, a heavy horn blared and drowned it all out.

Taps, scraping of heels; then a clutter of voices, all around him: gossips, yells, shouts, and sometimes from somewhere afar, came a laughter.

Someone knocked him on his shoulder.

“Ex… Me…”

He staggered. Or maybe not. After the first few seconds passed, he no longer felt sure.

He took in air. He felt his chest grow, his clothes go taut on over his body, and trepidation arise.

The blinding light lifted, finally, and Hasegawa Satou saw for the first few moments what he could have only failed to comprehend.

He was lost in a crowd: but one so peculiar, and his vision of it so immersive, that it felt too surreal to just outright disbelief. Behemoths of iron, trains, he could only presume, flanked him on either side and lumbered up to a halt. He saw a crowd part and enter it; and above, past an expansive iron-cast vaulted roof, plein air of an early noon sky come in.

Something pulled him on his shoulder.

A leather strap, he realized, of a satchel he himself had pulled on, resting at the end of which was his hand—black gloved, that—No, not his hand… Not his? Then whose?

Where am I, Satou thought; and thought again, out loud: “Where–" only to halt and eat his own words. His heart leapt out from his chest. He became light-headed. Colors left his vision then, when one too many questions arose for him to have enough mind to act, or even stand. He must’ve staggered, because someone saw it and came up to him.

A well-built man, easily twice his age—in a black overcoat, felt hat—came up to him and caught him by his arm in case he stooped too far and fell. The man—he must’ve said something—his mouth moved; Satou heard none of it, except ‘Miss’.

That one word—like a bold of lighting it struck him.

“Miss,” Satou murmured back. Again he heard his own voice—a woman’s tenor voice—and again his heart skipped a beat.

He looked back at the man. This stranger, foreigner, or whoever he was—he seem to want something from him, Satou wasn’t sure what; but having enough sense still in him to do something, somehow he gave back a nod.

The good samaritan let go of his arm, and left him with a look of doubt still on his face.

Swaying like a drunk, Satou kneaded his hands.

The black gloves he was wearing were a little too thick. He felt the weight of his thumb pressed against the base of his palm, but he wasn't sure as to whether if he truly felt it. Furtively he pinched his cheeks, and he felt… He wasn’t sure what he felt, or even if he felt at all.

I’m needlessly doubting myself, he thought, and thought so in his own voice: as Hasegawa Satou—that was who he was, right? But that meant little to nothing in practice. His hair stood on their ends, and a shudder ran through him.

He brought up his fist and covered his mouth.

“A mirror,” he said. I need a mirror… And if it was true, he dared not believe it, not without proof.

Resigning himself to go wherever the crowd would take him, he let himself be led.

Novelty surrounded him here, wherever he went. He was immersed in it.

On his way, he saw faces—all foreign: caucasian, if he had to make a guess; but he knew he was wrong. As for what they wore, he found that a lot harder to pin down. Not quite european, he thought: medieval, victorian, georgian—but more so was it a pastiche of vogue that in his mind could only find their mark on one word: fantasy, and nothing else.

And he felt unnaturally light and agile as he took his strides, and somehow taller than he once was. His lethargy from living a sedentary life had gone away. His weight pressed against his boots; his posture, upright, as he walked; the satchel, and how it swayed under his arm; or how his hair, longer, somehow, bobbed on over his neck, caressed his ears—he was conscious of it all; except what expression he might’ve had on his face.

He tried to ease it. Lord only knew if he did.

Ahead, something else caught his eyes:

Idling right outside the entrance of a sleeper car, he spotted a clique of youths—five of them, one of them a girl, all of them blond—who distinctly stood out to him, at least in his eyes, from the rest of the crowd because of what they all wore: Ornate embellishments and plenty of garters hung from their militaristic-looking uniforms; and sword, each had one, a thin and slender sword hung and sheathed at their waist.

Knights, was what Satou thought when he saw them: young aristocratic knights, scions of noble houses vowed by birth to serve their nation’s crown. An outlandish conjecture, he knew, but even to half-believe it…

And it was then that one of them, a haughty-looking blond-haired young man, suddenly looked up towards him.

Caught off-guard, Satou flushed.

Eyes had met. He tried to look away, but did it too abrupt to be furtive, and for a fact he knew he was caught.

He passed them by as though what he had done he had done in passing, but when he heard said behind him: “What a beauty,” he nearly staggered then and there. “Did you see her? Outside the theaters, you don’t see such a beauty often,”

Words beyond that were drowned out by the crowd; but every word of it had tensed his body, rusted his stride, and made him conscious on how he took his next steps. He tried to not walk like a puppet, but found it needlessly difficult to do so; and only was it when he knew for certain that he was out of their sight did he regain back his bearing.

I need to see myself… Now…

He struggled to tell apart if he was wading through a dream or not; and because he could not, he longed for pain. Not the drunken sort of stifling pain he was in right now, but the sort of pain that brought you back to your senses and made you feel alive—sharply so.

Trains arrived and departed east of him, as well as west under an intricate latticework of stained glass held up by lofty archways, seven stories high, where though he could not see, he could hear them come and go clearly.

Far away, marble stairways teeming with commuters lead up to someplace else—Hopefully outside.

Satou leaned in to a trot towards it. Platform to platform he waded his way through, brushing past shoulders until the pandemonium stifled by thick walls grew muter, and muter.

Only once he had set foot onto its landing did he let his eyes wander. The diamond-patterned marble floor splintered where he stood into a labyrinthine of countless hallways, corridors, and stairways, some of which led his eyes upstairs, while others led him down underground. The lofty atrium he was in was in no way inferior to a palace. Loggias held up by burly marble pillars for floors upon floors peered down at him, above which, sculptures of angels sat dangerously close to the ledge—their life-like features and their loose white robes softly lit by the sunlight that cascaded in from outside—studying him curiously under a beautifully muralled dome of what looked to be the mythologized atlas of the known world.

Now, thoroughly lost, he looked around. Vintage signboards hung at every juncture—in english, no less—but were of little to no help. Up a marble stairways he went, as high as it would take him, and soon stepped out onto a floor that at first glance seemed scarcely treaded. The cold and empty corridors echoed softy with the distant clamor that came up from down below. Satou wandered on, lost, until he caught something from the corner of his eyes.

Like a moth to a flame, his eyes did not stray from what he saw once he saw it—The light at the other end.

With bated breaths, he walked up to it, and beyond it, there he saw it.

Satou stood there frozen, nonplussed; and he stood there lips parted for a very long time.

People busy with their own lives passed by him, paying him no heed—

"Hah..."

—until they saw him fall down to his knees.

Hands held onto the baluster railing, the closest thing he could grab a hold of, from his lips came something not quite a laughter nor a cry. He felt faint, incredibly faint, and on the verge of his whole world falling apart. Tears began to well his eyes, he felt dizzy, blood siphoned out of him entirely, and everywhere he looked he saw everything go in and out of focus.

Barely, he held himself together.

From the misty distance, half-blind, announcements come for the next schedule of trains—the few final words of which that seared deeply into him, Satou knew, that for the rest of his life he would never forget it:

“We welcome you to Ednin.”