Ubume grinned and announced in a loud voice:
||Aight y'all. I hope you know that this train is headed for Iwate....||
Ren, poor Ren, barely had time to register Ubume's words before the Yokai Train ripped through the sky like a goddamn ballistic missile.
Then Ren saw it.
Chubu Centrair International Airport.
From above, it looked like a futuristic outpost rising from the sea. Built on a man-made island, its runways stretched over the water, lined with blinking lights. The terminal, a sleek glass-and-steel structure, reflected the sky like a mirror.
Surrounded by the deep blue of Ise Bay, ships moved like scattered insects below. Beyond the airport, the Japanese coastline emerged— a mix of city, nature, and distant mountains standing like silent watchers. A lone gateway between sky and sea.
And they were flying directly over it.
Ren’s stomach dropped.
"No. NO. TURN THIS BLOODY TRAIN AROUND."
The conductor, who was literally just a floating smirking shadow, slammed the train horn.
BWAAAAAAAAAAMP.
Below, hundreds of people in the airport terminal looked up in confusion.
A flight attendant muttered.
"What the hell was that?"
A businessman checking his watch frowned.
"Did— did that sound like a train horn??”
And then they saw it.
Or rather, they saw HIM.
The 'him' in question, meanwhile, was seriously considering isekai as an escape route.
But he was still lucid. (for now)
"WHY ARE WE FLYING OVER AN AIRPORT?!?"
Ubume, sipping a spectral margarita, replied nonchalantly:
||LMAO, IDK, vibes?||
~~~
Meanwhile, at the Air Traffic Control Tower, a man entered the Airport Director's Office with a worried face.
"Sir, there's an unidentified flying object entering our airspace"
The Airport Director rubbed her temples.
"Another damn drone? Shoot it down."
The supervisor, however, shook his head.
"N-no, sir. It's.......it's a train flying at ungodly speeds.."
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The Airport Director stared at him like he was done with life.
"I'm sorry. A what?"
The radar showed nothing.
But the window—
An entire goddamn train. Flying. At Mach speeds.
The Airport Manager lost her shit.
"IT'S GOING TO HIT RUNWAY 2!!!"
~~~
Ren shrieked, grabbing the nearest solid object—which unfortunately happened to be Ubume’s sleeve.
"HIT THE BRAKES!"
Ubume looked annoyed.
||Bruh, chill. This train doesn't have brakes.||
Ren’s soul briefly left his body.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT DOESN'T HAVE BRAKES?"
Ubume shrugged.
||It’s a ghost train, bro. We don’t stop. We just vibe.||
Ren, having a full-blown existential crisis, yelled
"I AM NOT VIBING, UBUME. I AM HAVING A FULL-BLOWN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS."
Down below, the airport staff had gone from mild concern to full-scale military DEFCON 1 panic.
The Airport Director shouted, slamming the emergency alert button.
"Evacuate Runway 2! I repeat, EVACUATE RUNWAY 2!"
Sirens wailed. Security personnel scrambled.
A group of pilots in the staff lounge collectively spat out their coffee as they saw the eldritch horror barreling toward the airport at terminal velocity.
"Is that a—?"
One of them, who had twenty five years of experience in aviation, simply said:
"Nope. Nope. I refuse to acknowledge this. I'm going home."
Inside the control tower, a junior air traffic controller whispered,
"We're gonna be on the news for this, aren't we?"
Back on the train, Ren was rapidly approaching total mental shutdown.
"We're gonna crash, we're gonna to crash, we're gonna—"
The Yokai Train did not crash. Instead, it phased right through the goddamn airport.
Like an unbothered king, it ghosted through the terminal, passed clean through the bewildered crowd, and emerged on the other side without so much as a scratch.
Ren blinked. Once. Twice.
Ubume casually took another sip of her spectral margarita.
||See? All good.||
The Airport Director, watching from the window, went absolutely still.
"...I quit."
Her subordinates, still processing what the hell just happened, nodded solemnly.
"Yeah. Fair."
~~~
Meanwhile, Ren, who was gripping a railing like his life depended on it, turned to Ubume, his eye twitching uncontrollably.
"You. Absolute. MENACE."
Ubume smirked, patting him on the head.
||Aww, you flatter me. Now sit back and enjoy the ride. We've still got a long way to go before Iwate.||
Ren did not, in fact, sit back and enjoy the ride. He sat there contemplating every life choice that had led him to this moment while the train shot forward at ludicrous speed, the howling wind blending with Ubume’s laughter.
~~~
Hours passed.
Or maybe minutes. Time was a joke when you were on a spectral bullet train violating every law of aviation.
Ren had finally calmed down enough to pry his fingers off the railing.
That's when he noticed where they were.
"Wait. Is that—?"
Below them, a perfect, snow-capped peak pierced the sky like a slumbering titan.
Mt. Fuji was a colossal, snow-crowned beast of a volcano, perfectly symmetrical yet menacing, looming over Japan with an eerie, ancient patience—beautiful, deadly, and eternally watching.
Ubume, lounging across three seats like she owned the place, didn't even glance up.
||Yep. And fun fact: you got a side quest.||
Ren’s stomach twisted.
"A side quest??"
Ubume yawned.
||Y'know, you're standing on a god-tier pressure cooker, and the universe just sent you a pop-up notification.||
A spectral parchment materialized before him, shimmering with golden letters:
[SIDE QUEST UNLOCKED: AWAKEN THE SLUMBERING GOD
OBJECTIVE: Erupt Mt. Fuji.
REWARDS: ???
ON FAILURE: Also ???]
Ren’s brain refused to process.
"This is a joke, right?"
Ubume beamed.
||Nope. Time to decide—are you about to commit high-level geological terrorism, or nah?||
Ren stared at the mountain, then at the absurd quest floating before him, then back at Ubume, who was waggling her eyebrows like this was some kind of cosmic prank.
He exhaled sharply, reaching for the artifact glowing at his feet.
The mountain trembled. The air grew thick with an ancient, restless energy.
Ubume cackled.
||Aight, bet. You actually gonna do it?||
Ren inhaled.
"Three... two... one..."
And then, utter annhilation.....
