The first light was only beginning to break out of the cloudy winter horizon as seen from the summit of Mount Hakone while four individuals began their hike towards a remote destination.
Although not entirely covered in a shroud of a seemingly sort of eternal darkness, it was still challenging to trudge through the hundreds of yards of rolling hills filled with rugged terrain.
The roosters of a nearby farm had already begun their morning rituals of sounding the alarm for the coming of a new day, but the crickets' chirps that were heard throughout the withered forest mountainscape were starting to fade as dawn approached.
Noticing that their instructor for the day was beginning to slow down, Chizuru glanced at him with an inquiring kind of expression. 'We must be near.. but where on earth is Hanagawa-sensei planning to bring us?'
