Eve-1 First Feat

Everything vanished suddenly before her eyes.
Kiyomi Nagashima had no idea what had happened. The houses she passed every day
were reflected in the windshield only a moment ago. Just ahead, the street took its familiar
slope downward and bore slightly to the right, where a traffic light had just changed to
yellow, before vision failed her.
Kiyomi tried to blink, but her sight did not return. No matter how much effort she put
into it, nothing appeared. They had all gone away: the white sedan driving in front of her; the
tail light of the bus waiting at its stop; the cluster of high school girls hastening along the
sidewalk. Kiyomi looked down in her confusion to check the steering wheel. Then, she was
truly shocked. The steering wheel was gone. In fact, she did not even know where her hands
were. She could not feel the seat belt around her waist nor her foot on the gas pedal, for
neither was where it was supposed to be. There was only darkness fanning out, continuing
endlessly in all directions.
There was a churning around her, and she was floating in a warm, viscous liquid. She
was naked. Her clothes had vanished without her ever noticing.
That dream again.
That dream she had once a year, on Christmas Eve, in which she felt herself writhing in
some pitch-dark world without beginning or end. She'd always had that strange dream. This
was the dream, and she was now entering into it again. But she did not know why she was
having it just now. Like the stars' orbits, the dream always came to her with regulated
precision. She never dreamt it on any other night but Christmas and had certainly never
entered into it while she was awake.
Prologue. Page 2.