Life Connected Liquid sea

Nagahama Beach in the evening, as everyone was heading to Inasa Beach, closer to the Obon venue.

Miku continued to scream for a long time as blocked memories penetrated her consciousness.

The girl's mind couldn’t cope with such a flow of negative information and only denied it. But it didn’t help.

When the tears ran out, the throat was dry, and the mental strength was exhausted, silence fell.

"Miku, Miku, can you hear me!?"

All this time, Keshita's voice didn’t reach Aoki. Holding the girl by the shoulders, he tried to shake her awake.

The close contact and emotion only intensified the unlocking until Miku remembered everything.

Aoki's brain isolated Miku from the outside world, although he couldn't do it completely. The girl's consciousness was still in the body of her little version.

She pedaled frantically, trying to get home before her parents, but they met her earlier on the way back. From her state, Miku told them she’d seen something she shouldn't have.

No excuses worked, and Miku's psyche was deteriorating faster and faster, so they tranquilized her.

In the following days, the therapy also failed to produce results, Aoki's parents were worried that Miku would finally "go crazy" or that she would tell someone about what had happened. They were especially afraid of the thought that Mukibutsu would find out about it. So, they went to extreme measures and used memory blockers developed at Mukibutsu.

The Aoki themselves were surprised at how effective it was. That fateful day for Miku became one of the dreams she doesn't remember. The girl also achieved what she wanted so much. Her parents began to spend more time with her, and at some point…

It was becoming more like another experiment. For some reason, the parents were reusing the memory blockers and other drugs created in Mukibutsu and their other units.

The reasons for this were very different.

One day, Miku became interested in drawing. Her parents thought it was a good stimulus for her overall development, but when the girl began to devote more and more time to it and especially said…

"I want to become an artist!"

They blocked the memory associated with this desire and, using other drugs, “redirected” the child’s development.

"I wanted so much to make art, to immerse myself in the wonderful world of creativity. And you took it away from me so easily? I hate… hate you! The name Aoki makes me sick!"

If Miku really didn’t like something, if it interfered with her studies and the “career” that her parents had determined, they’d immediately biochemically interfere with her body.

"This is how I became a biologist… Deprived of will, guided by the hand of my parents to achieve their goals. My brain is like a patchwork."

The first guy Miku fell in love with suddenly moved to another city soon after. And then Miku's libido also went down. As a result, she finally became "cold" and more goal oriented.

“I constantly wanted my parents to notice me, to be proud of me, to appreciate my work and love… and all this time I was just an instrument.”

Miku's participation in deciphering data from the US was also not a coincidence, although it only took bureaucracy and the usual manipulations.

However, the success in this was due to Miku, and for her parents, it was the result of an experiment.

"Without all this horror… I wouldn't have been able to achieve this. Maybe it was worth it?"

Although libido was neutralized and empathy was reduced to a minimum, Miku still experienced "love" and craved connection, sublimating it into parental attention. When, as an adult, she met an injured kitten on the street and wanted to shelter it, her parents' use of drugs had already become automatic.

Miku's life was planned down to the hour.

"Then what is the point of all this? I'm just a machine or worse! A complete ugly thing! What's the point of my life!?"

Miku finally stood up, but she still felt like she was in another world.

"Experiments, Mukibutsu, parents, biology, the world… it's all so insignificant… distant. I just want peace… I want…"

"Aoki! Please calm down! This is all incredibly difficult, but…"

"…die."

This one thought, this one true desire, coming from the brain that controls the entire body, weakened Keshita. His empathy, heightened by SNH, completely transferred Miku's state to his own brain.

Keshita fell onto the sand, his vision beginning to blur.

"Mi-ku…"

Suddenly Keshita began to choke. His hands instinctively grabbed the noose around his neck, the end of the rope tied to a tree branch.

Aokigahara. Suicide Forest.

From the depths of the forest emerged the disfigured faces of rakshasas, who had sensed game.

Keshita's body refused to give in and tried to loosen the noose or tear it off. When his fingers managed to scratch his neck and get under the rope, he pulled it back and swung a little. Pushing off the tree, Tamiya grabbed a branch with his feet and broke it with force, falling to the ground.

"Why… why can't I just die!?"

The body, covered in many layers of dirt, seemed not to obey its head and wandered through the forest.

"This is my body, why don't you listen!? I want to die! Die, die, die! Leave this damn world!!!"

The body could only respond with a juicy slap to its head.

The struggle for control continued until his eyes caught sight of a steep slope. Keshita shook his head violently, disorienting his body, and deflected it powerfully, shifting his center of gravity.

Keshita fell at high speed, hitting rocks and trees, until he fell into Lake Saiko, losing consciousness. In this way, Keshita swam all the way to the artificial canal that leads to Lake Kawaguchi.

"Purification."

The body was picked up by a fishing boat at the exit of the canal in the city of Nagahama.

When Keshita woke up, he’d partially lost his memory. The fishermen took care of him until he could "get back on his feet."

"Those who take and those who give. If it weren't for the people of Nagahama…"

*Shh-shhh*

"Nagahama!"

Keshita opened his eyes on the beach of the same name, his head washed by sea water.

The guy jumped up and looked around for Miku. Only her things were lying nearby.

Keshita looked at the sea.

"No…"

Tamiya clenched his fist with sand so hard that the grains of sand almost merged into a single mineral. The grinding of his teeth went right to the bone, and the whites of his eyes turned red from the strain. Keshita's ability increased again, and he heard the voices of a thousand people at once.

«

Save
Miku

»

But only one thought troubled him.

Keshita took off his clothes, took a deep breath and dove into the sea, hoping it wasn’t too late.

In the underwater darkness nothing could be seen, but Keshita continued searching, straining his eyes.

Tamiya tried to fish out Miku's thoughts from the sea of collective consciousness.

"__________________________________________________________________________________________"

"She's nowhere to be found! Is she dead!?"

Keshita continued his search desperately, straining all his senses and mind reading.

"I won't let you die like this, Miku! Please, answer me!"

Only the sound of the sea and other people's thoughts were heard. The ominous darkness of the seabed silently hinted at hopelessness.

Keshita was running out of air, but he couldn't return to the surface, wasting precious time. Death didn't seem like such a bad option, but he wasn't going to give up. Tamiya let out a death rattle deep inside himself. Suddenly, someone answered from the depths.

« ▙▚ ▛ ■ ▜▟▝ ▞ »

"What is that? It came from there!"

Having reached the very bottom, Keshita noticed Miku and urgently swam up to her and breathed the last of the air into her.

Having pulled Aoki to the shore, Keshita immediately began resuscitation; the girl wasn’t breathing and showed no signs of life.

"Come on, Miku, come on!"

Artificial respiration and chest compressions didn’t help, but Keshita didn’t stop.

"You can do it, wake up! This is only clinical death. The brain should be fine…"

"Stop it."

Keshita continued to be resuscitated.

"Is that Aoki's voice? Am I going crazy and hearing the thoughts of a dead person!? Or is that her subconscious?"

"I told you: stop!!!"

"No way! You’ve to live!"

"For what?"

"Just come back to me, please!"

"Selfish. You're just like my parents!"

"They’d to have reasons! That doesn't excuse them at all, but… aren't you tired of running from the truth!?"

"…"

"I beg you, come back… I…

love you

…we can just watch it all to see how it all ends. Aren't you curious?"

Miku came to life, her sea-blue eyes meeting the bottomless darkness of Keshita's eyes as she performed artificial respiration.

Salty kiss.