Volume 3 – Chapter 9: When People Start to Break

[August 10 – 51 Days Left]

It began with little things.

A man on the bus screaming at nobody, a woman in the market standing transfixed, staring at the ceiling for nearly an hour, a gaggle of children darting around the street, cackling loudly far longer than any other human being would care to, till one of them collapsed from sheer exhaustion, eyes open, with a pronounced grin.

Stress had been the initial diagnosis. Under the circumstances, who would not be tense? The countdown had poisoned the air, turning every second into a needle pressing just beneath the skin. But then there were the small things that simply could not be ignored.

On August 10 in the morning, Kaito found a note stuck to the door of the building.

Fondly, ‘It's getting inside. Not through the walls. Through the mind.’

No name. No signature. Only those ten words in a haphazard and slanted hand.

He showed it to Rika during breakfast. Her hand trembled as she read it. "What do you think it means?"

"I don't know," he answered. In truth, he knew. Part of him, the part that had gone a little too close to that crack by the river, understood all right.

That evening Haruto had come in, breathless and wild-eyed.

“I think people are changing,” he said. “Not just emotionally. Cognitively. I was at some community shelter this morning. One of the volunteers, he just stood up in the middle of everything and started talking with the air of a dream. He said: ‘The Earth is thinking again. We’re just its thoughts.’ Then he walked out and... didn’t stop walking.”

Kaito felt a knot in his stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he didn’t stop. We called out, tried to grab him. He wouldn’t respond. Just walked. Toward the east.”

Silence fell upon the room, heavy as cloth.

“We shouldn’t have gone to the crack,” Rika whispered.

“No,” Kaito said. “We had to see it. We had to know.”

“But what is the use of knowing,” Aya quietly asked, “if it makes everything worse?”

Kaito could not sleep that night. He had been staring at the dark buildings, flickering streetlights and the occasional figure drifting down the road at a speed too slow to be normal when he found Rika joining him at the window.

"It's not just stress," she said.

“I know.”

"Something's... leaking into people."

“Not just people,” said Kaito. “Ideas. Feelings. Beliefs.”

He turned to her. “I think the world is thinking back. Or maybe not thinking. Dreaming. And we're inside the dream."

Rika looked at him, as if trying to disagree but didn't. "What do we do?"

Kaito stayed silent.

Because deep down, he was beginning to suspect the truth.

There might not actually be anything left to do.

Not if the world itself had begun its work of rewriting its inhabitants' minds.

And somewhere far far below their feet, the crack is still glowing.

And humming.

And waiting.