Storm Notes

The sky had turned the color of steel.
It wasn’t unusual for Ren to walk along the beach after a long composing session, but that evening carried a strange tension in the air. The wind had teeth—not sharp, not cruel, but insistent, like it was whispering for him to follow. He zipped up his hoodie, slipped on his headphones, and stepped barefoot onto the damp sand, the sea calling him with its old, familiar song.
Kai’s voice still haunted him from the message.
He hadn’t responded. He didn’t know how.
The audition had made something inside him crack open, but what poured out wasn’t confidence. It was fear. And then, just beneath the surface—longing. He didn’t want fame. He wanted meaning. Connection. To matter.
And now, here he was. Standing alone with his recorder in his hand, pointing it toward the waves like a divining rod.
He hit RECORD.
The tide thundered.
The wind screamed.
But beneath it all, he heard it.
The lullaby.
Soft. Beckoning.
Ren blinked. The clouds above churned like they were alive, spiraling into a vortex. The wind became a pulse. A rhythm. Each wave crashing in syncopation with his heartbeat. The sand trembled beneath his feet.
The sky opened up.
A column of light descended, not golden but iridescent, like the shimmer of oil on water. Ren didn’t run. Couldn’t. Something ancient was humming through his bones. The lullaby had become real, vibrating the very air around him.
Then—the world fell silent.
He was no longer standing on the beach.

---
The silence was dense. Electric.
Ren opened his eyes to a ceiling of luminous glass. Soft, shifting lights danced across the surface like starlight refracted through water. He was lying on something warm—almost alive. A platform? A bed? He couldn’t tell.
He sat up. The room curved in impossible ways. Gravity felt… optional.
A voice rang out.
"Subject identified. Ren Arakawa. Seawalker."
He flinched. "W-what? Who’s there?"
A panel of blue light pulsed. "Origin: Earth Year 2025. Genetic harmonics match. Lullaby code confirmed."
"Lullaby code? What the hell is this?!"
The platform shifted. Lifted. Carried him through a translucent corridor filled with suspended holograms of music notes, constellations, and ocean waves intertwined in a dance. It wasn’t science fiction. It was symphonic fiction—like the universe had been rewritten in melody.
Ren’s recorder, miraculously dry and intact, blinked in his hand. The last file was still recording.
He played it back.
And there it was.
His mother’s song.
In crystalline perfection.
Not from the sea this time.
But from the stars.

---
The platform halted in a wide chamber. Figures stood before him—three people in radiant suits, and one… one in black.
The one in black turned slowly. His hair was silver, eyes glowing faint blue like bioluminescence. His presence was magnetic, carved from confidence and solitude.
Ren’s breath caught.
It was Kai.
But not the Kai from the message.
This Kai looked older. Colder. Sharper. As if fame had turned his heart to ice.
He spoke with quiet command. "You're late."
Ren blinked. "I… I don’t understand. Where am I? What is this place?"
Kai stepped forward, gaze never leaving him. "You’re in AquaCelestia. Orbiting Earth. Year 2325."
Ren’s knees buckled.
Two of the radiant figures moved to catch him. Kai didn’t flinch.
"You don’t remember, do you?" Kai said.
"Remember what?!"
Kai’s voice dropped. "The song. You gave it to me. A long time ago. Before I ever sang a note."
Ren’s heart stopped. The lullaby.
"It’s impossible," Ren whispered. "I just—"
"You were the first voice," Kai said. "The one who woke the sea in me. And now… you’ve come back."Ren stumbled.
Not because of the sleek, gravity-defying hallway or the strange way his feet refused to fully touch the floor—but because everything inside him was unraveling at once.
Year 2325.
Kai.
The lullaby.
The voice recognition system had called him Seawalker. It felt like a myth, something out of the folk tales his mother used to whisper when he was small. But here, in this luminous sea-sky of a city, it wasn’t a story. It was him.
A living relic. A ghost from the past somehow sung into the future.
“Take him to the Harmony Quarters,” one of the radiant figures ordered, their voice calm and sonorous, like the bell tone of an underwater harp.
Ren flinched at the touch on his arm. Everything felt too soft, too smooth—like the world had been airbrushed with starlight. But nothing inside him was calm. His mind screamed with a thousand dissonant chords.
Kai, still watching, said nothing more. His eyes were unreadable, a silence louder than words.
The transport bubble—he didn’t even know what else to call it—lifted again and glided down an invisible track, taking him through towers of glass and glowing coral-like structures that curved and shimmered. Below, blue-tinted citizens drifted on elevated platforms and light-bridges. Music was everywhere: woven into architecture, coded into clothing, pulsing from the very air.
And yet all Ren could hear was the crash of the wave that had swallowed him.
That lullaby.
That moment.
That storm.

---
The Harmony Quarters felt like stepping inside a soundwave. Every wall seemed to hum faintly, like it was tuned to some frequency just beneath consciousness.
They gave him time.
Time to breathe.
Time to panic.
Ren stood alone in the room—round, soft, womb-like—with a view of the cosmos rippling across a translucent ceiling. Below him, the city glowed like a jellyfish in bloom.
He sat, legs pulled to his chest, recorder clutched tightly.
Play.
The file from the storm was still there.
But it had changed.
It no longer sounded like crashing water. It was layered—ocean beneath, voice above, something else threaded through. Chimes? A synth hum? An alien harmony? It was music, but not of this world.
He remembered his mother. Her hand stroking his hair. That gentle hum. The lyrics she’d never fully spoken aloud, only hinted at.
Child of tides, born of song,Sing the world where you belong.
That had always struck him.
Where you belong.
Had she known? Could she have… somehow… known this place?
A faint chime rang through the room. The wall shimmered and opened like water parting.
Kai stood there.
Again, that silence. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t welcoming either. It just was.
“You’ve been registered as an Echo-Class Composer,” Kai said. “The Agency wants you ready for debut in five days.”
Ren blinked. “What?! No—I can’t—why would I—”
Kai crossed the threshold, arms folded. “They think you’re someone else. Or that your DNA is close enough to fool the system. But I know better.”
He stepped closer.
“You were the first song I remembered,” Kai murmured, voice low and sharp. “I was three. I almost drowned off the coast of Old Osaka. They said someone rescued me. A boy with dark eyes who vanished. He hummed something. That song. Your song.”
Ren’s throat tightened. “I never—”
“You did.” Kai’s voice cracked, the faintest fracture beneath all that ice. “Somehow, you did.”
Silence stretched.
Finally, Ren said, “You… believe me?”
Kai looked away, and for the first time, Ren saw it—the exhaustion. The ache beneath his fame.
“I believe the sea gave you back,” Kai whispered. “And I want to know why.”

---
The next day began with fire.
Not literal fire—but a fierce inferno of activity. Stylists, AI-driven training pods, music coaches, emotional regulators—all tailored to turn him from an awkward composer into a star capable of wielding what this world called sonic resonance.
Ren was fitted with a device at his throat—a harmonic node. It pulsed when he spoke, adjusting his natural frequencies to better sync with the audience. It felt invasive. Powerful. Terrifying.
But when he sang… even just a note…
The room shimmered.
Not with lights—but with memory. With feeling.
It was like touching a part of the world that had always been invisible.
Kai watched from the training balcony, arms folded. Silent as ever. But his eyes betrayed something. A flicker. A tremor in the surface.

---
Later that night, Ren couldn’t sleep.
He found a stairwell—spiraling down through empty air—and ended up on an observation deck above the ocean, where the city’s lowest rings dipped into the waves. He leaned over the edge, breathing in air that almost smelled like home.
That’s when Kai appeared again.
“You come here to think?”
“I come here to remember,” Ren said softly.
Kai sat beside him, not touching, but close enough.
“You know,” Ren began, “when I was a kid, I used to think the ocean was alive. Not just a thing—but a being. Like it listened.”
“It does,” Kai said. “It listens to everyone. But only sings back to a few.”
Ren turned to him. “And you think I’m one of them?”
Kai met his gaze. “No. I know you are.”
And for the first time since waking in this strange future, Ren smiled.
Not because he understood.
But because someone else did.