“It is a state I have been able to effect since I was a child. I retreat deep into the snow and rivers and sink myself into the ocean below, and everything on this mountain becomes me, and I become the mountain. It looks like meditation, but it is more. It is becoming a different sort of being.” “A different sort of being?” Misaki repeated. “A bigger being,” he said, “so big that I, Matsuda Takeru, cease to matter.
