Chapter 4 : The Land of Dreams

I am Kei..... Kei Karasu.

Karasu means ‘Crow’ in our language...

I would be shedding light upon this strange origin of our surname later.

I was born and raised in a small rural town of Yasha, a small SEA nation that you've never heard of. Legends say that Yasha was raised out of the sea by mystics and wizards. However, for a great period, it had been ruled by the Japanese. So it had left very dominant footprints on our society and culture.

Unfortunately, I barely recall any detailed memory of the town where I had spent the early years of my life, except for some foggy images. I and my sister lived with our grandmother, uncle and aunts. Our parents were in the city. Mother was still studying in university while father was busy with his jobs.

It was a breezy town, clad with greenery and surrounded by hills. The town itself was not on plain land but slightly slanted on a hill. The ocean had accompanied the small town. On bright cheerful days, you could observe the calm blue sea gleaming like a giant sapphire under the sun, while the sea breeze would flow through the alleys of the town and kissed the children who seemed to be playing at the parks and on the edges of the woods.

Our house was near the beach. Even though it wasn’t right beside it, but you could get a clear view from the terrace. At night it felt like the stars had come down to play with us. It was a big traditional Japanese styled old house, where we had been living for generations. There was a small garden at the front, where I had spent some good amount of time.

The town had a very strange aura of idleness, as far as I can remember. People used to take things much casually and with a certain amount of laxity.

There were vastly stretched farmlands on the outskirts. The majority of the people were farmers. The elders used to gather and roam around the town, and the same was applied to the young ones. Another speciality of such a small town was that where anybody knew everybody. So the topics of gossips never used to run out for the elderly people. But they were warm-hearted too. They would have given their hundred per cent efforts while helping each other.

There were also these tiny creepy shrines around the town, which often accommodated strange-looking idols of local deities. I could remember the colourful festivals and fireworks on hot summer nights. All townspeople would gather at the riverbank to watch them go all ablaze. They would share foods and drinks like one big family.

Everything was like a sweet fairy tale. Oh, how could one forget about the fireflies? The woods, the river, the entire landscape would be wrapped in countless blinking lights. So my childhood, as I mentioned before, had taken place on a surrealistic plane where dreams and reality were almost the same things, at least for me.

On one such surreal evening, our grandmother left this world.