The Realm of Still Waters

The fog didn’t lift.

It only grew heavier.

The moment Babai stepped through his apartment door, he felt the shift. Gone were the familiar creaks of floorboards, the humming light above his desk. In their place was a world made entirely of water.

Endless, still water.

He stood atop it like it was solid glass, yet every step left a subtle ripple—one that pulled inward instead of pushing out.

There was no sky here. Just a dull gradient of violet and gray overhead, as if twilight had forgotten how to end.

Behind him, the door had vanished.

“No map. No GPS. Classic trauma dimension,” came the voice on his shoulder. “Real crowd-pleaser.”

Typo—the talking black cat with eyes like glowing cursors—curled his tail into a question mark.

Babai didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the world around him.

Frozen echoes floated in the distance. Transparent shards of memory suspended midair—each one glowing faintly. A blurred silhouette turned away. A laugh with no sound. A hand reaching out, forever mid-motion.

He took a step forward. The water shivered.

“Still Waters,” Babai muttered. “Right. Hope I’m ready to drown in feelings I bottled up.”

Reflections That Shouldn’t Be

With every step, the water beneath Babai's boots reflected not the world—but versions of himself.

Moments he didn’t want to see.

There he was, laughing beside Monju at a café, coffee in hand.
There he stood, alone in an airport, staring at the arrivals board, her name nowhere in sight.
There he sat, in a dim room, watching her chat icon go from "Online" to "Last seen two months ago."

Each step unearthed more.

Not memories.
Regrets.

“Don’t look down too long,” Typo warned, his voice low. “This place feeds on it. Echoes. And you’ve got plenty.”

Babai lifted his gaze.

Far ahead, something hovered just above the water’s surface—a small glass pedestal, no taller than his waist.

Atop it sat a jar.

Inside: a glowing fragment of thread, suspended in air like a firefly frozen mid-dance.

His heart thudded.

He reached out.

The Memory Trap

The instant Babai's fingers touched the jar, the world fell away.

There was no water. No Typo. No air.

Only—

Monju, laughing.

Her voice was clear. Real. Not distorted.

“You’re always so serious,” she said, brushing her hair from her eyes. “You look like you’re trying to memorize the moment while it’s still happening.”

He remembered this.

And yet, he didn’t know what came next.

“Maybe I am,” he said.

Then—glitching.

Her face stuttered. Her voice warped like a broken tape.

“I—just—need some—time—”

Static.
Silence.

Gone.

Babai dropped to one knee.

The jar slipped from his grip, vanishing into the surface below.

But the thread inside didn’t disappear.

It floated toward him and gently fused into the locket at his chest, pulsing once—then glowing brighter.

His breath returned in fragments.

And then… the water trembled.

The Shadow That Knows You

A ripple surged across the horizon.

Something approached—fast. Its shape was familiar. Too familiar.

A figure made of shadow and broken light, stitched together with shards of Babai’s own voice. It moved with purpose, its eyes glowing with every unspoken thought he had buried beneath the surface.

“You held onto something she dropped,” it hissed, voice fractured and low.
“You carried it so long, you forgot it wasn’t yours to keep.”

The water cracked beneath his feet. His reflection shattered.

The shadow lunged.

Babai stood, unflinching.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of worn gloves—black, fingerless, embroidered with soft circuitry and faded runes. Connector gloves.

Sliding them on felt like waking up from a long, dull dream.

“I’m not letting go,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

The locket at his chest surged with light.

The world erupted in blinding white.

[To be continued in Chapter 3: Shards and Shadows]