After The White

It started with sound.

A faint breeze — impossible, because there were no trees yet. No leaves to rustle.
But it moved through the new world like memory itself.

Sena sat beside a growing stream. The water wasn’t wet. Not yet. But it shimmered.
She reached into it and felt… warmth.

Takamura was building something nearby. Not a house — just a shape. A pattern in the dirt.
Like laying down a boundary, trying to define what real meant again.

Neither spoke much those first days.
Time didn’t pass normally. The sky never dimmed.

But eventually, Takamura asked:

“ …Do you think we were supposed to survive? ”

Sena stared into the light. “ No.”

“ Then why did we? ”

She didn’t answer for a long time.

Then: “ Because we remembered who we were. And we didn’t give up on each other. ”

Takamura looked at her — and for the first time since the end, smiled.

“ Then maybe that’s how we start again. ”

Later that " day, " something moved in the distance.
A figure.

They weren’t alone.

And whoever — or whatever — was walking across the white horizon wasn’t shaped by Miko.

It was shaped by this new world.
And it was heading toward them.

The figure came closer each time the sky pulsed.

Not with footsteps — it didn’t walk.
It moved like memory: sometimes near, sometimes far, always approaching.

Takamura saw it first. He gripped the makeshift pole he’d been carving — his only “ weapon. ”

“ It’s him, ” he said.

Sena turned, heart tightening. “ …It can’t be. ”

But it was.

Not the Miko they’d known.
Not the calm boy with holy eyes, or the false prophet who erased the world.

This was the unfinished part.

The guilt. The contradiction.
The voice that had whispered “I’m doing this for you” even as he destroyed everything.

The figure stepped into their clearing.

It looked like Miko — vaguely. But blurred. No shadows. No eyes.

It didn’t speak.

Not with words.

But they felt it. A pulse in the air, like thoughts projected into bone:

“ You carried me here. ”

Takamura took a step forward. “ We didn’t want to. ”

“ You remembered me. That’s enough. ”

Sena swallowed. “ Are you here to destroy this too? ”

The fragment stood still. Then shook its head — slow, eerie, almost childlike.

“ I’m only what’s left. The part that regrets. The part that asks if it was worth it. ”

Silence.

Then, Takamura asked:
“ …And what do you want? ”

“ To see how it ends. This time, without me. ”

The wind stirred again.
But now there was breath in it. And warmth.

The world was growing.

Sena looked at the fragment. “ You can stay. But this is our story now. ”

It nodded once.

And quietly — without sound, without ego —
the last echo of Miko knelt in the grass, and watched.