Chiharu froze for a moment, hearing a voice from behind her... shakily, she turned to face the source of the voice. There... Chiharu didn't entirely know her name. She had to be honest... but she recognized her upperclassmen, the pretty black-haired second year. It was... Yamamoto...? She didn't know much about her at all, beyond that she was apparently quite accomplished in class. Why had she decided to speak to her? Chiharu hadn't the slightest idea. Most of the time, since her penultimate year of elementary school, not many people spoke to her. Aside from her few friends... That, truthfully, was it.

"... A-ah, er... h-hello!" she said, awkwardly waving her hand before realizing that was quite possibly the most nonsensical response she could have had to the older girl's farewell. "A-ah, er, sorry, I... I meant... thank you? Er, and goodbye, of course, um... ah-hah..."

Chiharu rubbed the back of her head awkwardly, letting out a nervous laugh. She was sounding like some kind of weirdo, wasn't she? She supposed that was what she got for trying to talk casually with a stranger, it was something else on the long list of things that she simply couldn't handle. But... she'd... said something, right? Didn't that...

Count for...

...

...

The world around her, in that moment, changed.

The sky was red. The moon hung high in it. A woman at a table with a deck of cards. The world she had been in moments before and somehow given way to this. Chiharu stood before the table, and the woman in it, as she made her offer. Her hands shook. Her eyes were wide. Words caught in her throat. What was this? How had this happened? Where was this?

Her questions died before they could leave her mouth, and she stood in dumbfounded silence.

At some point during her moment of fear and incomprehension, she found her eyes drifting to the table.

... Her card. What... what did that mean? Was... was this a fortune teller? Chiharu felt as if she had stumbled into some wide-awake dream, a delusion brought on by who knew what kind of situation. And yet... part of her felt somehow at ease, as if something here was right. As if it was what she was meant to be doing.

One of Chiharu's hands slowly curled into a fist. Her hand moved out, fingers gripping one of the cards as she pulled it out, raising it. That's right... if this was some wide awake delusion, then maybe just once... maybe, since it wasn't real...

She could be strong.

The word on the card was [b][color=0054a6]|Strength|[/color][/b].