“Somehow I’m still alive.” Mori Hirazawa awakens, drenched and muddy in a large puddle of mud which use to be a parking lot. “What in the world happened? Is this even for real.”
Staggering to his feet, Mori goes off, stepping on soggy dirt and water. She stops when he steps on something harder. A branch maybe? That would’ve been better than what he realized he had stepped on. Adjusting the weight of his heel, a human arm emerges from the water. Mori covers his mouth, possibly holding back vomit begging to escape from his body. “Oh God…” he managed to mutter.
Mori continued on, trying really hard to block out the image of what he’s seen. But every which way he turned, there is nothing but chaos and destruction. Tears soon emerged from his eyes as he could no longer hold them back. The shaking was scary enough but the sight of the horrifying wall of water that reduced his home to nothing is still stuck with him. Soon the ground begins to shake again. “Aftershock? Yeah… it’s an aftershock…” He waited and stood still for a bit for the shaking to finally stop. Mori gripped his pockets and felt a lump. His cell phone. Did it get damaged in the water?
He reaches into his soaked pockets and pulls out his wet phone. He opens it and turns it on. Luckily it still worked but the earthquake knocked out the cell phone communication signal. However he does see the little envelope reminder in the corner of the screen, telling him he has a text messge in his inbox.
“Mako!” Mori remembers sending back and forth text to his older sister Mako. “I wonder if she’s okay… Damn no signal!” He holds his phone high into the air hoping to get a signal to call her. The fact that he was out of contact from his sister worried him a great deal. “What if she’s hurt… I hope she’s okay…”
He climbed up a soggy hill. His legs becoming extremely muddy. He came across a familiar road. “Good. This is goes into town.” He knew the road goes straight to his sister’s home. He and his mother always drove down it to visit her. Mori opens his phone again to see if there was any sort of signal he can get. He then notices the envelope in the corner of the screen again. He clicks open his inbox and reads the last message his sister had sent him. His stops in his tracks at the sight of the message:
“OMG the ground is shaking! Are you okay M-“
She didn’t spell his name. only the hiragana character of “mo” was shown. Was she not able to finish the text? Did something happen before she clicked “send?” Mori’s mind was racing. He raised his phone up again to hopefully get a signal to respond to his sister. He wants to know that she’s safe. He wants to know if anything has happened to her. It was driving him crazy. She’s the only real family he has left after their parents funeral a month ago. Is it right for him to lose anymore love ones?
“No choice.” He sighs and realizes that he has to walk to her home.
As Mori continued walking along the road, he checks his entire inbox. The whole back and forward text between him and his sister. “Wow. This is stupid.” He laughed. He cycled through the angry argument that they were having via text message. “All this for a stupid picture?” That stupid picture was a baby picture of him and his playing in the bath house with no clothing. She had showed the picture to a group of friends at a party she went to the other night and somehow they ended up on the internet. Mako thought it was cute and funny. Mori didn’t think so though. It irritated him that his sister was parading him around like that to strangers and now his face is on a popular social networking site for everyone to see. It even got sent to his phone. Mori eventually came across it in his inbox. It was the same picture their mother kept in her wallet. He remembers she always opened her wallet and smiled, seeing her two children misbehaving as such. After she passed away, Mako took it for herself.
Mori starred at the picture for a good while as he walked along the road. He wanted to take his mind off the half destroyed house that layed in the field to his left. He was trying very hard to block out all his surroundings. However, ignoring his peripheral vision, while starring at a tiny cell phone screen, proved to be difficult. He could hear a siren go off in the distance. Is it the state of emergency horn? Is help finally on the way? Mori’s thoughts drowned out at the sound of a woman screaming.
It was off to his right. He hears her crying out “Tasukete! Tasukete!” Cries for help. “My baby is trapped inside!”
“Baby?” Mori said. He slid down to the collapsed house. “Miss are you okay?” She frantically held onto Mori’s shoulders with tears flowing down her cheeks. “My baby! She’s still inside! Help me!” She cried. Mori bit his lip and looked at the house. There was no longer a front door for it has caved in forward. Though Mori did see a window he could easily access. “Wait here.”
The woman broke into a prayer chanting “Tasukete Kami-sama! Tasukete!” Mori left her and went around to the window. He tore a piece of his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. He punched through the window and climbed through it carefully. Mori tripped a little bit forward as the house was leaning at an angle. He got his footing and stood perfectly still for a while. A head of him he can see what probably used to be the living room area with the ceiling collapsed in. Then he heard it: it sounded muffled by all the debris but he can make out the sound of an infant crying out for its mother.
“Shh.. shh.. I hear you. I’m coming.” Mori says in a whisper. He steadied himself and climbed through the debris. He cut and scrapped himself a lot but he tried to ignore it. He pushed passed some collapsed concrete and continued on into what appeared to be the remains of the kitchen. He could make out the outline of a refrigerator along with destroyed counter tops in the dark. The crying became louder, as if it were in the same room as him. Actually it was. He saw a baby’s crib and in it lied a pink faced baby grabbing its blanket while crying furiously. “Ahh you’re cute chibi-ko!” Mori carefully reached into the crib and picked up the little one.
“Dear God! You need changing!” Mori tried to ignore the smell and cradled the baby in his arms as he walked back the way he came. It was a lot harder getting out than coming back in. the angle was steeper going back up to get out of the window. The house somehow sunk even lower to the basement level. Mori was in a dangerous spot. However he thought about the baby he held in his arms and decided to push all the worries away. Mori proceeded to walk up the collapsing house, steping over debris and furniture that got tossed around. Suddenly another aftershock rolled by, the furniture tripped up Mori and he fell backwards against a wall.
The baby exploded into a wail of crying and screaming at the sound of loud banging and the violent movement it was feeling. “Ugh! … Don’t cry..” Mori stood to his feet and continued on through the chaos. Just then, help had arrived. A fire fighter peered through the broken window Mori had made and their eyes had met. “Oh thank god!” he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Don’t worry! We’re coming to get you!” He was a local fire fighter who lived nearby. Luckily he was in the area. He lowered a fire hose with a looped knot at the end. “Oh I see” said Mori. “But they should take the baby first.”
He took the hose and tightened it around the infant. He stopped crying and starred at Mori, as children generally do. “There’s a baby down here! He’s coming up first!” He yelled to the fireman. He nodded “okay” and he carefully hoisted the child up to safety. Mori could hear the woman happily yelling for her baby. He felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Now he just needed to get out of there himself.
“Okay it’s coming back down! Get ready!” he called to Mori. He nodded and waited for the hose. When it touched down, he grabbed it and wrapped it around himself and was hoisted up slowly through the window. Three firefighters greeted him, calling him a hero. The crying mother held her baby and came over to hug Mori with her other free arm. “Arigato gozaimasu!” she said gratefully. Mori bowed to her and turned to get back on the road.
Before he could continue on, one of the firefighters stopped him. “Where are you going? Do you need medical help?” he asked. “I need to find my sister. I’m going into town to look for her” Mori turned to walk but the firefighter stopped him yet again. “I can give you a lift. I’m heading that way to for a search and rescue scout anyway.” Mori wanted to say “no thanks” nut his tired body and sore feet said “get on that truck!” and his body won the battle.
On the truck, Mori noticed that it suffered water damage from the passing wave. He was amazed that it survived and was relieve he was getting a ride to his sister. “Almost there” said the fireman. Mori became anxious to get off the truck and start looking for Mako. But the anxiety soon turned to uneasiness at the sight of the town submerged in water. The firefighter pumped the brakes with the sound of flowing water beneath the truck. “Down there?” the firefighter asked Mori. He couldn’t speak right away. The small town he always remembered seeing down that familiar hill as a kid, was suddenly underwater. “Hey. Don’t worry, we’ll find her. I’ll radio in a rescue chopper.” He grabbed his radio and gave to coordinates of their position. Mori still couldn’t find words.
Suddenly, another aftershock, this one stronger than the others, caused the ground around Mori to crack and slip into the water. The firefighter tried to rush to get him before getting washed away but it was too late. Mori didn’t see much. He only remembers being swallowed up by sea water and washing around in all sorts of directions. Soon he stopped violently thrusting around and swam in a direction he needed to go, up. He surfaced and caught his breath. Somehow he ended up next to the roof of a convenience store and hoisted himself out of the water. He rolled onto the roof and laid on his back, gasping at the air. Suddenly his phone began to vibrate.
It was a small faint vibration due to all the water damage. He opens it to find that the screen was completely white. He hits it a couple of times to see if it’ll clear up which it eventually did. It was a new picture message. Mori opened it and saw that his sister had taken a picture of her bedroom window. But it seemed odd. Tinted, yet clear. “Is her phone under water?” Mori tried calling her with little signal he had but no luck, straight to voice mail. Mori looked around. Even though it was underwater, he knew the area. Mako’s house wasn’t far away, but the question remained on how to get there. He soon got that answer when he heard someone calling to him.
The firefighter had pulled out the emergency raft and rowed to Mori’s side. “Daijoubu-ga? Are you okay?” Mori nodded yes. “C’mon, a search and rescue chopper is on the way, lets get you back to land.” Mori hesitated. “Do you mind if we swing by my sister’s place? I just need to know if she’s okay.”
“A rescue chopper is coming! She’ll be alright!” the fireman urged him to get on the raft with him, but Mori just starred and hesitated. He eventually gave up. “Fine. We’ll swing around to her place but after that, we’re going back!” he said irritated.
Mori was relieved and got on the raft. As they rowed down the river of the town where his sister lived, he looked around at all the roofs emerging from the surface. Then he saw people. People began standing on their roofs, signaling for help. Trying to get the firefighters attention. He signaled back that help is coming and told them not to worry. Mori felt kind of bad for being the only civilian in an emergency raft but he couldn’t think of that now. They soon reached Mako’s neighborhood. “So much debris” the fireman said as he rowed. Mori agreed, looking at the water. He saw clothes, trash, floatable accessories, and then, a familiar photograph. He reached for it almost tipping the raft over. “Hey! Watch it! What are you doing!” Mori apologized and studied the wet picture. He couldn’t help but laugh. “All because of this huh?” Mori chuckled.
“What’s that?” asked the firefighter. Mori showed him the embarrassing picture that his sister had posted on the internet. “Whose this?” he asked
“That’s me and my sister when we were little. Crazy isn’t it?” Mori joked. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw her. Standing on her roof, crying, while clutching her cell phone, Mako didn’t hear the boat swim up behind her. Soon all the weight of the world lifted off of Mori’s shoulders at the sight of his older sister in one piece. He rubbed his eyes, trying to hold impending tears. “Sis!”
She turned quickly to see the orange raft floating in the water. “Mori-kun!” she wiped away her tears as well. “You’re okay!” Mori broke out into laughter, then sniffled. “This doesn’t change anything! I’m still mad at you!” he joked while waving the picture. She saw that he had the picture and she started to laugh to. “I’m sorry!” he laughed. The fireman carefully pulled up to the side of the house and slowly and carefully assisted Mako onto the boat.
As they rowed back to land, Rescue choppers from the Special Defense, National Security, and The United States air force, arrived, helping other families and loved ones in times of this sudden disaster. But it’s only just beginning. There are people who are still in need of help around the country and we can only pray that we save them all.
