[ 運命決定者の領域 ]
REALM OF FATE DECIDERS

  The sky was full of stars held together tenuously by strings.

  Threads spun into strings which spun into ropes which tied into knots around celestial bodies, passing through looms that spun autonomously. The beings of the realm, the kittei-sha, lurked on the ground below, scrutinizing threads before tossing them into the air to settle them in their star-crossed paths. Occasionally one of the fate gods would pull one of the strings around a pen and scrawl something in one of their notebooks. The attached thread would glow softly and gently move in response, obediently bumping and entwining with other strings as directed.

  One of the fate gods, a thin, hunched being who looked like he was made of several thick layers of paper,  took an autumn-colored string from a large cluster of threads, examining its lustrous surface and reading the name attached to it:

片岡亜希 |  Kataoka Aki

  He peered down at the large, gaping pool of liquid glass a few steps away - a vast gap in the floor of the Fate Realm through which he could see the mortals he wanted to write about. The orange string trailed through the air and into the glassy liquid, attaching inexplicably to a young woman staring out of a window. Pensively, he played with the thread, twirling it around his index finger and thumb. He stared at the threads closest to the girl's, then gathered them all into a twist around his pen, touching it to the paper of his notebook.

  Kataoka Aki will be robbed by -

  "What are you writing, Mei?"

  Mei looked up, not lifting his pen. A female, humanoid god of fate, with flowers sprouting between her shoulders and on her head, sat next to him, looking at the strings he had selected. He glanced at the threads which had begun to creep towards each other, slightly, as he scrawled.

  "A Marker."

  Mori stared at the strings wound around his pen and his fingers. The mortal girl attached to the orange thread was probably younger than twenty, surrounded by thick textbooks and neatly stacked papers. The kanji on her string showed she was Japanese, and what Mori could see of her work was of college level. 

  "Really? What kind of Marker is it?" she asked, as she read the names attached. 

  "A violent one. Watch."

  Mori shuddered, but since it was a Marker, it wasn't uncommon for something bad to happen. After all, major life-changing events weren't always about rescuing puppies or eating ice cream with a friend. So she stared through the gap at the young woman, who was now scribbling homework answers in a notebook on her desk.

  "She has a rather confusing line ahead," Mei commented absently, glancing away to look at a similarly bright thread that hung, in a stubbornly vertical manner, slightly further than his arm's reach.  He looked back at Mori, who was watching the happenings of the pit at a close distance to the edge. Her flower petals lifted to an almost null degree as minute currents of air from the mortal world, far below, straggled into the realm, immediately pushed away by every breath of a god of fate. 

  The brightly hanging, distant thread twitched as the orange thread was intertwined with strings of black and brown.

   And then Mei saw something; a window shattered behind the mortal girl and a rag coated in drugs was stuffed over her face - she squirmed, tried to hold her breath, but suddenly her breath lost her to the drugs in the cloth -

  Mori's journal fell in her shock, through the gap, through the liquid glass.

  The orange thread snapped, falling away from the two gods of fate, and the bright, distant thread trembled.

  Far below, the girl slumped, unconscious, as the rag was removed from her mouth.