Digital Devil Story - Chapter 4

While this was going on, Nakajima was standing still, alone in Izanami's burial chamber, deep below Asuka. After enjoying a brief reunion with Yumiko, who had been brought back to life by Izanami's power, the goddess had taken her off the the land of Yomi.

As Yumiko had been drawn into the battle with demons against her will, Izanami wanted to give her the ability to defend herself at the very least. Meanwhile, Nakajima had been ordered to return to the human world. But still sensing Yumiko's presence, he was reluctant to leave the room, and as he was mulling about, his ears started to ring slightly. Looking up, he realized that at some point the crimson walls of the tomb had disappeared, and that he was surrounded by an empty void, almost like outer space.

What's going on?

All of a sudden, Izanami's voice sounded in his head.

"Stand up. And think of the person that needs you the most. Return to her." Realizing that Izanami was using her power to return him to the human world, Nakajima immediately pictured Yumiko in his mind. Immediately in front of him, white mist swirled around and formed into the face of a human.

"Yumiko!" As Nakajima called out, the face dissipated back into white mist.

"Nakajima, there's someone that needs you much more than me." Yumiko's familiar voice whispered an admonishment into his ears.

Soon after, he heard another familiar voice, painfully crying out his name--"Akemi, Akemi." Reflexively, Nakajima covered his ears with his hands. But the voice calling to him became louder and louder, and Nakajima felt as if he was getting smaller as the voice became louder. The white mist condensed again, into the face of a beautiful woman that looked quite a lot like him--his mother.

"Stop! I don't want to see you!" Nakajima cried out like a petulant child. Nakajima's antipathy toward his mother, who hardly ever bothered with her family, might have been strong enough to completely overwhelm his ego. But the billowing mist gradually started to envelop him.

"No!" As Nakajima desperately resisted, the mist's movement slowed slightly, and his mother's beautiful face looked down at him with sadness in her eyes. Her kind stare opened the stubborn Nakajima's heart like the unraveling of ropes binding a body down.

"Mom..."

The minute the word left his lips, his body became as a drop of condensation in a mist and he was wrapped in a feeling of pure extacy. The mist enshrouding Nakajima quietly moved toward the void. There was no distance or time there.

I want to stay like this forever... Nakajima thought.

But at some point, he became aware of an image in the nothingness. The outlines of white walls and a familiar room's lighting formed, and the profile of his mother entered his field of vision.

"Mom..."

As Nakajima reflexively called out, he felt all the blood being pulled out of his body along with a floating sensation like being in a weightless environment, and the next instent, his body was hit with a twisting shock as he was tossed somewhere. As he moaned and sat up, he had already been returned to the human world from Izanami's burial chamber.

A familiar sofa and sideboard stood in front of him. There, in his old living room, his mother sat, dejectedly twirling her disheveled hair with her fingers, not making a single motion to fix it. Though her face looked so young that she was often mistaken for Nakajima's older sister, it now was full of creases and wrinkles, and she looked almost twenty years older than she did before. Looking up, Nakajima's mother saw him in front of her, and she gaped at him in amazement.

As soon as she confirmed that this was indeed her son, she let out a wail like a cry of anguish, rushed over to Nakajima and hugged him madly, crying all the while.

That was the first time that Nakajima realized just how much taller he had grown than his mother. The difference must have been there for several years, but in that period, living with his mother without making so much as the slightest physical contact with her, Nakajima hadn't really looked at her as his mother in a true sense. But for the first time, he was starting to feel that reality, and all of a sudden he felt a great love for her.

As he patted his sobbing mother on the back, Nakajima softly spoke to her.

"I'm sorry, mom..."