After leaving the restaurant in Santa Monica,
I decided to drive toward that mountain.
When I checked the map, I found it was a state park —
Topanga State Park.
About a 16-minute drive from Santa Monica.
During the drive, Lucy and Gyu (Michael) didn’t say a word.
Both of them felt unusually serious, almost tense.
Their silence made me tense as well. The silence was suffocating but I continued to drive.
I drove up the winding mountain road and arrived at the parking lot.
I paid the fee, parked the car, and stepped outside.
The tightening sensation in my stomach — Gyu — was already very strong.
The same kind of feeling I had when I once entered Taro Library.
My whole body felt restless and alert.
I hesitated, but decided to take everything with me.
A paper bag with a light-blue horse and a large bag of popcorn,
and the iced tea I bought at the café.
Looking at the map near the trail entrance, I realized something.
This place was huge.
A real mountain.
A vast area of trails spread across the park.
How far am I going to be walking?
And alone, in the mountains.
Nervous, I started walking.
👇 Trail entrance.
So nervous!!!
Please let me make it back before dark!!!
Please let me come back alive!!!!!
After about five minutes…
“Huh.
This is just a normal mountain, isn’t it?”
That said, I was already out of breath from the first uphill climb.
There didn’t seem to be anything unusual around me.
Just the strong tightening in my stomach, and the tension.
It was actually quite peaceful.
I walked while occasionally eating popcorn and drinking iced tea.
At first, I passed other hikers.
But the farther I went, the fewer people there were.
Eventually, no one.
Walking alone with that strong sensation in my stomach,
I started getting scared.
What am I even doing out here?
Is something going to happen?
Am I supposed to find something?
And then my imagination went wild.
What do people find in mountains?
…A body?
No. No no no no no.
Absolutely not.
I panicked.
That’s when Saiki’s grandfather appeared, smiling.
“Give me all your fear,”
he said.
Thank goodness you’re here today too…!
I remembered reading something about giving fear to angels,
but I had never taken it seriously.
Well… close enough.
When I focused on my fear,
it felt like a dark, cloudy mass — about the size of a basketball —
leaving my body.
I handed it to him.
“Ho-i ho-i♪”
He cheerfully turned it into sparkling light and made it disappear.
I kept handing him more.
“Ho-i ho-i ho-ho-i♪”
It was so ridiculous that I started laughing.
The fear faded —
whether because the method worked or because he was funny,
I honestly don’t know.
I kept walking.
The ground felt sandy.
This wasn’t soil — it was desert.
At several forks in the trail, I took photos so I wouldn’t get lost.
Each time, I had to push away the thought:
If it gets dark, these photos won’t help at all.
Being alone in the mountains with no sense of distance left to go
was genuinely frightening.
The entrance kept getting farther away.
The urge to turn back grew stronger.
But I kept going.
I’ve come this far.
I can’t turn back now.
Eventually, I noticed something strange.
Only one type of plant surrounded me.
From a distance, it looked green.
But up close, much of it looked dry and brittle.
And then — suddenly —
The tightening in my stomach stopped.
No pull forward.
No pull back.
I knew it instantly.
This is the place.
But there was… nothing there.
Just the same plants as everywhere else.
Then I noticed it.
One plant — identical to the others —
was standing slightly apart.
Not obviously.
Only if you really looked.
It stood alone, round, quietly isolated.
About the width of my outstretched arms,
and about chest-height.
This?
This plant?
Is this what I came to see?
The moment I thought that —
A massive pressure poured down from above.
“Massive” doesn’t even cover it.
It was overwhelming.
I couldn’t tell where it came from —
the sky, space, somewhere above.
The tightening in my stomach became almost unbearable.
My body buzzed, my heart raced.
Then it spoke.
“The plant you are looking at is a symbol of light.
Symbols of light exist all over the Earth.
They are located at points like pressure points.
Look at the ground beneath your feet.
This is not soil. It is sand. A desert.
This mountain appears green at first glance,
but once you step inside, you will see that it is entirely a mountain of sand.
The plants living in the sand hold little visible consciousness.
Not because they lack consciousness,
but because they do not express it outwardly.
The desert is the Earth’s stress.
When stress increases, desertification spreads.
Trying to fix desertification alone is meaningless.
The source of stress must be removed.
You must change this as a warrior of light.
Do you have the resolve?
The resolve to protect this Earth.
The resolve to restore it to what it once was.
The resolve to return greenery to this mountain.
Do you have that resolve?”
After those words were delivered all at once,
the one who stepped forward was my skeptical middle-aged self.
Wait a minute.
Isn’t this… a bit too grand?
Why tell something like this to an ordinary woman like me?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell someone powerful —
someone with influence, money, intelligence, status?
I’m just a regular person.
What am I supposed to do with something this big?
From what I had read online, ascension was supposed to be about people healing their past lives, resolving karma, becoming kinder, and not hurting others or the planet anymore.
Something like: Everyone wakes up, and everything gets better. Yay.
But “warrior of light”?
What is that?
That sounds like a video game.
Change this as a warrior of light?
Does that mean I’m supposed to go argue with oil tycoons by myself?
That’s impossible. Completely impossible.
I couldn’t accept it at all.
Then, another part of me pushed forward —
the middle-aged woman who was trying to believe.
Maybe they say things like this to everyone who’s just starting to awaken.
Maybe this isn’t personal.
At least listen. This feels important.
And suddenly, the vast oil fields I had seen from the airplane the day before flashed through my mind.
That must be why I was shown that.
This continent is being hurt, and that’s one of the reasons.
Before I could stop myself, I said:
“Okay. I’ll try my best.”
I said it too fast.
“Very well,
I will acknowledge you as a warrior of light.”
…Wait.
What?
The conversation just moved forward.
I was acknowledged.
Then the presence disappeared.
The pressure from above vanished completely.
I was shocked by how refreshed I felt.
Clear. Light. Happy.
I greeted the plant.
“Nice to meet you.”
I even shook one of its branches.
It felt completely natural.
The plant had both green leaves and dry, dead-looking branches.
There were more dry parts than green.
“This represents the current state of this mountain.”
Gyu said.
And Lucy finally spoke.
“You really did it, Congratulations.”
I wrote everything down in my phone and started heading back.
On the way, the trees began talking to me.
“Congratulations!”
“…Thank you.”
They asked me to touch them.
Even in this desert-like mountain,
they were all doing their best to live.
“Just once per species is fine,”
they said.
So I touched as many different plants as I could,
talking to them as I walked.
“Wow, your trunk is so smooth.
Can I take a photo?”
I was genuinely talking to plants —
thankfully, no one else was around.
The walk back to the parking lot was effortless.
I didn’t feel tired at all.
I felt like I could keep walking all night if I wanted to.
My body and my mood were completely different from usual.
Above me, two large birds —
hawks? kites? eagles? —
flew together the entire time.
Even after driving down the mountain, the good feeling didn’t fade.
So, for the first time in Los Angeles,
I tried driving without GPS.
I let Gyu guide me instead.
Gyu-navigation led me to an excellent sushi restaurant.
A very easy-to-understand reward.
The uni I ate on the West Coast that day was incredible.
That night, I slept with the blue horse beside me.
It was the same city,
the same kind of night as the day before —
but it felt completely different.