Hiroko buried herself deeper in her coat, expecting more thunder to come when it didn't. It even seemed like the storm disappeared just like that. Still, she figured that they should be careful and still seek shelter just in case it does pour. She doubted it would be safe to proceed through a mountain when it's raining and the ground is unstable. One slip would be all it takes for them to meet an untimely demise. Maybe she was being a little pessimistic about their survival chances the longer they stay in the forest, but then again there's nothing wrong with being wary.

The statues were interesting, to say the least, and inscriptions were written on them. At first, she couldn't even understand what was written and she brought her hand up to rub her eyes a bit. Suddenly, it did make sense. Was she hit in the head and made her have trouble reading something? Or was there something wrong with her eyesight? Or did she actually just manage to understand a completely new language in less than a minute? But that was impossible... wasn't it?

This forest might actually be turning her crazy from overthinking.

"Statues like these must mean they're essentially protecting an area, right? So there's probably something for us ahead, at the very least." Thinking that there would be people there would be too optimistic though. These statues didn't look like they've been touched, let alone cleaned in a long time. She looked down the path, darkness clouding anything beyond what their flashlights could reach. The idea of continuing down a path they were unsure of made her queasy but it didn't look like they had much of a choice.

Ohta would rather that gunman get eaten by a bear or something, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he trudged behind the girl. No need to speak up now, after all. They had ground to cover if he was to get any chance of a comfortable sleep today. While she stalled at the statues, glancing over the faded stone as if it held any answers, Ohta swept the area around them instead, his phone’s light catching basically nothing. Sucked. Those statues looked like they were big enough to warrant some sort of plaque or information board, but perhaps they were just as unremarkable as the jizo statues one would find off the side of a road. Nothing more than attractive litter now.

He hunched his own shoulders against the buzzing of a nascent storm. It should be better to be in the treeline by the time the rain came down, and with that in mind, Ohta spoke up again.

“Um, don’t you think we should keep going now? We sorta don’t have any clothes to change out of if we get wet, and if the storm comes in while we’re out in the open…maybe let’s get over there?” It’d be a funny story to tell Tamimi after he worked off the debts and gotten a better job. They could oogle the statues all they wanted then. For now though, Ohta wanted fucking out. Not that he was planning on voicing his thoughts in any manner other than a pensive question.

---

Long, slender fingers traced meaningless shapes across the surface of an ancient statue. It was as if his body was responding to the buckling happening in his mind, the tracing of the statue's meaningless engravings into words and then sentences. Between the darkness that engulfed everything and the effects of heavy weathering, however, it made sense to Kaito that he'd struggle to read their message. Or at least initially.

"They have such an unkempt appearance," he commented, furrowing his brows. "Perhaps using some old regional variant of Japanese." It made sense. Their was nothing more Japanese than a shrine that was tended to diligently. This could've well been the outskirts of some ancient site.

He knew he was wrong though. He undoubtedly, viscerally, knew he was wrong. And yet he spoke anyways, desperate to put a label on any of the steadily growing list of bizarre occurrences. There was an unstable man with a gun on the loose, it was fine to assign a quick answer for the time being. Cathartic, even.

It was only when... the salaryman spoke that he snapped out of it. "We should, shouldn't we..." His eyes lingered on the man for another moment, unintentionally transmitting the space his name would've taken as silence. "...I don't believe you've introduced yourself."

---

Whatever berries were left would find themselves stuffed in Junichiro's jacket pocket as he prepared to move on ahead towards the direction of the waterfall. The familiar feeling of the pot lid was comforting to a degree, the mere act of lifting it reminding the young man of a happier time when he was a mere youth. The pleasant feeling of sharing a hot pot with loved ones. With Kaoru. Junichiro clutched the pot lid tightly as if it were his conviction in a tangible form. He would resolve to live, to power through whatever ill-fortuned situation he found himself in until he reached civilization once more.

It'd also probably help if his clothes didn't smell like piss.

Junichiro marched towards the waterfall, clutching the pot lid in front of him like some sort of makeshift shield in one hand, and his false firearm in the other. He looked ridiculous, really, like some sort of child playing pretend with cutlery and toys. Still, the false sense of safety his ensemble entailed was enough for him to continue forward.

Ah. Right. Introductions.

The dark-haired man pressed a hand against his chest, feeling for the bump that indicated where his business card holder was, then slipped two fingers inside to retrieve it. There was a quiet click as he opened the container out without bringing it out, before snagging out a simple paper card. It was too dark to make out the details, but there wasn't much to see anyhow. No point in having anything special, when the only people he was going to meet were assholes who cared nothing for decorum and courtesy but whom still expected it out of others. Pinching the corners of the card between his two fingers while squeezing his lunchbox under his right arm, Ohta bowed slightly while offering his card to the long-haired man.

"Kaneko Ohta. I'll be in your care. I don't believe I caught your name either?"

Though he didn't care, really. Unless the fellow in front of him was rich and magnanimous, his name was likely to be forgotten within the hour.

Kaito's observation didn't put Hiroko at ease. An old regional variant of Japanese? Sure, she supposed that was a possibility and why she could read these, but the moment simply felt too odd. Too... out of place. It just wouldn't make sense. Still, she buried whatever feeling she got deep into her brain to be thought of later when they were in a much safer location.

"Looks like no one's been taking care of these guys for a while." She voiced out her thoughts from before to respond to Kaito. "But moving forward is our only option so..." She gestured for them to continue walking and just as she was about to disappear further into the darkness, Kaito and their other friend seemed to have exchanged introductions.

She slowed down to a stop, turning around to watch and listen to the interaction. Ohta. Right, with his outfit, it was almost immediately obvious that he was some form of office worker. It would seem that he was a rather professional one. Still, Hiroko didn't say anything as she turned back to the path before them, trying to squint through the darkness if she could see anything.

---

"Oh..."

Kaito received the card with both hands as a sign of respect. His body snapped into its more awkward natural state as he finished, shuffling through the contents of the pocket of his dress shirt. His fingers skipped over the hard metal of a couple of paper clips before settling on a business card of his own. Digging it out took both hands, the other holding the pocket in place to keep anything from spilling.

"I am Iyasu Kaito," he said, thrusting the card forward. He'd introduced himself before, but enough odd events had happened to them that he didn't fault the tired-looking salaryman from either not caring enough to remember or not having registered his name in the first place. It was another one of those observations that had been neatly arranged behind gunman on the loose in his mind.

He gave the new business card in his shirt pocket a firm squeeze and carried onwards. "Therapy isn't a traditional office career, but there are many similarities." A twang of defensiveness seeped through his smile, a byproduct of conversations with other men his age who pursued more typical lines of work.

Ohta received Kaito’s card as well, his expression stretched into a practiced combination of politeness and admiration. He made a suitably impressed murmur as he stared at the card that he couldn’t read, before sliding it into his suit’s pocket ten seconds later. Took him a moment though, to realize that what Kaito said afterwards actually related to his profession. “Ah yes,” he replied. “Many similarities, but therapy is good work as well. Better that you’ve found a profession that improves society.”

The salaryman himself wasn’t even sure of what his company did, other than make money through cutting pay. His left eye twitched, before he righted himself and continued to shuffle in the same direction that the girl was walking towards. As they neared the forest, he turned the flashlight of his phone back on, scything a swathe of fluorescent light through the darkness, hoping to catch sign of any trail markers.

“Do you, mm, see anything yet?” Outside the nearing rumble of thunder, Ohta certainly couldn't hear anything.