The Girl Who Ended The World

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The alarm clock didn’t go off this morning.
It stayed stuck in time.
I should have been in class by now.
But how could I? After everything?
My world was falling apart.

Yashiro’s confession.
Sayuri’s warning.
Nothing felt solid anymore. It was as if reality was breaking at its seams.
And the thought began to creep.
Was I behind all of this?
Yashiro said I was special. What did he mean?
Special didn’t feel like a gift... more like a curse.

And her.
The girl with the guitar.
Haruki Amane.
If what Yashiro had said was true.
If I really was the cause of all of this… these unexplainable distortions.
Was I hurting her too?
Was she trapped, same as me?

I just lay there, staring at the ceiling.
If my own life were to get swallowed up by some cosmic mistake, I’d learn to accept it.
But knowing I’d pull another down with me…
I closed my eyes again.
I must have laid there for hours. My clock didn’t move and I lost track of time.

Maybe if I just stayed here, in my room, no clock, no movement, nothing would change and everything would stay the same. I wouldn’t have to face it. I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.
But then the thought hit me—it wasn’t enough.
Even if I survived this, even if I somehow crawled out alive.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Every second I hesitated, someone else paid the price.
Maybe her.
Maybe all of them.
I couldn’t outrun this anymore. I couldn’t avoid my problems anymore.
I still had so many questions. I needed to talk to someone. Anyone.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

I wandered my way to school like a ghost.
I needed answers. But who could I trust?
Yashiro? Sayuri?
The people who I thought I knew were strangers now.
I wasn’t ready to face them. Not yet.

The only person who had not come out to me with some secret identity was Minase. Maybe she wasn’t part of some inter-dimensional cabal that watched my every move. Maybe she wasn’t part of this nightmare. Maybe I could still trust her.

I crossed through the front gates.
Classes were over and students were spilling out of the school. Laughing and joking as usual.
The student council room was on the second floor.
I took the long way there, looping past the library for no reason other than to delay. I still had no idea what to say or how to begin.

When I finally reached the door, I hesitated. My hand hovered over the knob.
Please be there.

I turned it slowly and peeked inside.

Empty.
No Minase. 

The lights were on, but no one was there.

I sat down in a plastic chair and leaned forward. I wanted to scream. Or cry.
Instead, I just sat there, alone.

The silence was deafening. Only the buzzing of the fluorescent lighting directly above continued to stab my brain.

My breath sounded louder. Every inhale and every exhale felt forced.
Who was I to trust?
I didn’t know if I could trust anyone anymore.
I didn’t even know if I could trust myself.

The council room smelled even stronger of eraser when it was empty.
The walls were too white. Too fake. Too sterile. I hated it.
I pressed my palms into my eyes until colors bloomed.

When I lowered my hands, the room was still the same as it was before.
I stood, ready to leave. Ready to forget this stupid idea and go home.

…And that’s when I heard a knock on the door.

I froze.
“Minase?”

There was no answer.
I just stood there, unsure if I wanted to answer.

Then a girl’s voice spoke out, soft and muffled behind the clubroom door: 

“Tsukasa, it’s me. Haruki Amane.”

The blood drained from my face.

No.
It couldn’t be.
It wasn’t possible…

Was it?

“Can I come in?” the voice asked.

I didn’t answer. 

The door creaked open anyway.
And a girl stepped inside.

For a moment her face was concealed by the door’s shadow.
Then she took another step.

Her hair was red.
It lazily brushed against her shoulders.
She had a pretty smile.

It looked exactly like the girl from the visions, and the dreams.
She stood there, in a dark spot between the ceiling lights. 

She gave a shallow bow, her eyes never leaving mine. 

“Tsukasa,” she said again, stepping out of the dark spot. “I finally found you.”

The floor felt unstable under my feet.

I staggered back a step. “Who… what are you?”

Her smile didn’t falter. She took another step closer. “Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what was real anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

There was a confidence in her voice that wasn’t there before.

Was it really her? Was it possible that this was the Haruki Amane that had been in my dreams for so long? A slightly grown-up Haruki. One that had moved past her doubts and worries.

“Are you really her?… Haruki?”

She giggled. “Yes, that’s me, silly! Don’t tell me you still can’t recognize me.”

I stayed still. Part of me wanted to believe it. She looked like her. She had the same nice smile. Maybe it really was Haruki.

After a pause, I asked her. “Have the weird events happened to you too?”

“Of course,” she said sweetly. “I’ve seen them too. The silly memories… the dreams…”

Her eyes were moving across the room, as if inspecting.

“Did you…” I hesitated. “Did you get to visit the priestess?”

Her head tilted slightly, still half-focused on something else. “The what?” 

She didn’t know. Perhaps she didn't heard me after all.

I swallowed. “Sorry, it’s just so… unreal to see you outside of, you know, a mirror. Or a dream.”

“Dreams are just another kind of memory,” she said. “The important ones never really disappear.”

Where had I heard that before?
Something about how the brain keeps what matters.
How the important ones stick.

“You’re different from how I imagined,” she said, now inspecting me. “Quieter.”

“You’re different as well...” I replied.

“That’d make sense.” She said, abruptly wandering off again.

Huh?

She brushed her fingers across the nearest wall, tracing the grain of the wood.
And as if one had touched the surface of a pond or a pool, the wall seemed to ripple.

I blinked.
When I looked again, everything was normal.

She was tracing the room now, fingers on the wall.
I had to turn my body to keep up with her.
The light flickered again.

She stopped at a window and turned to face me. 

“You know, I’ve been waiting to meet you,” she said, no louder than a whisper. “For so long…”

But I noticed something.
Her reflection…
It wasn’t there.

My eyes widened. “You’re not her...” 

"Mm?"

"You’re not her.” I repeated, this time louder.

She froze, then stepped away from the window.

“Of course I am,” she cooed. “Stop being an idiot!”

My heart was pounding now. My breath, louder than ever.

“No…” I said. “You’re that… that girl. The one Sayuri warned about.”

Our eyes were locked. 
The name left my mouth. 

“Natsuki.”

Her smile faltered for a second.
Then it was back.
And she brushed the wall a final time.
And everything began to warp.

The walls stretched.
The floor buckled.
The windows burst into shards and then back again.

I stumbled back. “What do you want from me?!”

The floor ripped from my feet. I tried to grab onto something, but nothing would hold my weight. It was as if I were suspended in midair.

The space continued to bend and distort like it was being pulled and squeezed from all angles by an invisible force.

She stepped toward me.
Until she met my eyes only mere feet away.

Then her appearance began to morph. It began with her arms and legs, fragmenting like digital mosaics, spreading across her entire body and finally ending with her face.

A new girl stood before me. This one had dark hair, in two neat ponytails. Her skin was pale, as if no blood flowed through her veins. Her face and expression almost uncanny, as if a machine had reproduced what it believed a human face looked like. 

The girl outside my window.

“Oh well!” she said lightly. “Let’s get it over with then.”

I tried to kick my legs, but it was as if I were underwater.
Colors blossomed, shifting rapidly from one to the other.
Red. Green. Purple. Blue. White. Black.

The hue of the walls changed along with it.

“You’re the fracture,” she said. Her voice was now cold and unforgiving. “I’m simply fixing it.”

The blackboard curled upward. Lines of runes replayed on it. Over and over. Steadily getting faster, never stopping. The clock on the wall had frozen still.

I couldn’t move.

“You should be thanking me,” she said, lifting her hand. “I’m doing you a favor.”

Then her hand reached down and pierced into my chest.
As if it were liquid.

I screamed.
But no sounds came.

Her arm was inside me. Past skin, past bone, past blood. Somewhere deeper.
Somewhere that wasn’t meant to be reached.

The space around me spun sideways.
The walls spiraled into ribbons of runes.

She leaned in closer. “I won’t let the universe end because of your stubbornness.”

She began to pull.
It felt like my guts were spilling out. But it wasn’t guts.
It was names, memories, experiences.
They slipped through her fingers out of my chest and dissolved into sand.

In an instant, a thousand visions flashed before me.
I saw it. I saw it all.

A version of me with different colored eyes.
A version of me who’d never met Yashiro.
A version of me who’d never picked up a pencil after junior high.
A version of me who was an acclaimed pianist but couldn’t hear the notes.
A version of me who lived to a hundred.
A version of me who died shortly after birth.
A version of me who was a successful engineer, but no life in his eyes.
A version of me who had run away from home.

The images splintered faster now.
It flickered like old slides in a carousel projector.

Versions of myself that I couldn’t even recognize.

I didn’t just see them, I felt them.

A tired fisherman casting his last net into the frozen tides of Alaska.
A teenage girl standing alone on the edge of a vast wheat field in rural Ukraine.
A barefoot boy running through the flooded streets of Dhaka.
An old man pulling a tiny lao mian cart in the busy streets of Beijing.
A hungry violinist ignored in a Paris subway station.
An alcoholic beating his wife in Murmansk.
A wife running away from her abusive husband under the cover of night.
A Congolese miner who’d struck lithium two miles beneath the ground.
A war medic tending a wounded soldier in the urban ruins of Yemen.
A lifetime smoker with stage four cancer who’d accepted his time was coming to an end.
A single mother giving the last of the rice to her son, knowing she’d go hungry again.
A powerful CEO in New York City with all the money to give, but no heart to give it.
A homeless veteran in San Francisco with no money, but a lifetime of heart.

An old woman.
A young boy.
A fat food critic.
A skinny peasant.
A man on his deathbed.
A baby on her birth bed.

Each one was a life I almost lived.
Or a life I could have lived.
Or was still living somewhere.

And then, I saw her…

The reddish-haired girl who was a little too unsure and a little too scared to speak up.
The girl who would hum songs under her breath when she thought no one was listening.
The girl who always carried three hair ties in the inside pocket of her jacket.
The girl who had an imaginary friend for a little too long and got embarrassed if brought up.
The girl who practiced smiling in the mirror to make sure it didn’t look awkward.
Who had a habit of combing her hair with her fingers.
 Who hid bruised knees under long skirts.
And tied her shoes in a weird way.
And still kissed her childhood teddy bear goodnight.
And secretly loved cheesy romcoms but would never admit it.
And would cry her heart out in her bedroom after a stressful day even if she never showed it.

The girl who still managed to stand up on stage and play her guitar.
Even when she felt that her life was out of her control.
Even when she thought that everything could be taken from her in a blink of an eye.
Even when she believed she couldn’t get too comfortable, and could never belong anywhere.

She still showed up.
And smiled doing it.

And then, nothing.
Darkness.

There was a deafening cry from somewhere within the space.
My vision twisted violently.
I fell backwards.
But I didn’t hit any surface.

My chest hurt.
Everything did.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t see.
I could only hear the strange sounds around me.

“Y—you?!”  the girl's voice called out, raw and furious.

“I’m here, 'Kasa,” a second, steadier voice whispered closer.

Was he speaking to me?
It was familiar, wasn’t it?
I didn’t know. 

I wasn't too sure of what was happening now. 

I just stayed there, wherever it was. Unable to move. Unable to process.

Somewhere I heard a noise.
The sound of paper tearing and metal groaning.
As if the space was struggling to hold shape.

“You’re destroying everything!” The first voice growled.

“You’ve already destroyed quite enough,” the second voice said. “I’m just stopping you from finishing it.”

A sharp crack.
The sound of a barrier forming…
Then breaking…
Then reforming again…

“Why are you doing this? Why?!” The first voice spat.

“Because this isn’t right,” the second voice said, unshaken. “This isn’t a part of your directive. You have no idea what your actions will produce.”

“And what about you?” the first voice remarked coolly. “You think you’re some sort of righteous hero now? A self-appointed messiah, the sole arbiter of right and wrong?”

Another tremor.
Another bang.
Another shriek of rendered air.

"You’re so blinded by sentiment that you can’t even see the bigger picture!" The first voice continued. 

A crackle of tearing light.
A wail of splintering geometry.

“I outrank you. I am your superior,” the first voice commanded. “I order you to cease.”

“I don’t answer to them,” the second voice said. “Not anymore.”

Then a burst of heat.
It grew hotter by the second.
Another cry of pain.

“You sorry being,” the first voice snarled. “You really would sacrifice everything,, huh? This world… this universe… just to save some... Variable?!”

The second voice didn’t respond.

Another violent rupture.
A shudder of inverted gravity. 

The heat continued to swell hotter and more unbearable.

I screamed again.
Still, nothing came out.

My skin, or whatever was left of it, felt like it was peeling away. Degloved. Burnt to charcoal. A silhouette caught in a flash, etched only as a shadow where a body once had stood.

The space shook and twisted and warped and distorted.
My body was being stretched and pulled like a thread of dough.

Then the second voice spoke one last time. “He’s not a variable. He’s a human being. My friend.”

The heat reached its ultimate crescendo.
A final, broken ear-piercing cry tore across the space.

“AAAAAAAAHHH—!”

I felt something hit my face.
There was a taste of ash in my mouth.
They disintegrated like ice crystals.   

And then the shaking stopped.
And the heat receded back from where it came.

My body slammed hard into a cold surface below.

Everything hurt so bad. I couldn’t stay awake for much longer.

“Hang in there, man,” the breathless second voice whispered.

Then the sound of knees hitting the ground.
A hand gripped my shoulder.

There was footsteps.
They were frantic.

“Tsukasa!!”

A third voice called out.
Another familiar voice. A girl.

She dropped beside me. Her hands moving across my body. “No no no no—please—”

Her fingers pressed against my cheeks, my collar, my chest.
Her extremely long hair brushed against mine. 

“I was trying to warn you,” she choked out. “I was the one. The messages, the notes. It was me!—I—I didn’t know how else—”

The messages… I knew those. Something about I Ching? Or… maybe not.

“I should’ve told you everything from the start,” she cried. “I should have told you…”

Her voice was trembling now. “I’m so sorry…”

Little droplets fell onto my face. One after another.

And I wanted to say something.
Anything. But I couldn’t. 
I hated that I couldn't. 

My mind was beginning to dim.
My body, completely numb.

“She didn’t break him all the way...” The second voice spoke again, breathless and hoarse. “...he’s still in there.”

That was the last thing I managed to catch.

Everything went blank.
And I was gone.

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