Echoing Loops

The Junk Zone never slept. In a place where time stood still, the air buzzed faintly, warped with static and old fragments of forgotten loops. Eito sat cross-legged beside what remained of a concrete wall, his eyes trailing the glitches crawling up its surface.

Hina knelt by her bag close by, carefully taking out the small pair of wings, fragile constructs that barely fit across her palms.. They shimmered faintly in the low light.

Eito watched as she turned them over with practiced care. "So… how exactly do those help us escape?"

Hina's fingers paused on the fractured edges, tracing the faint glow along the feathers. "They're not finished yet." Her voice was calm, matter of fact, the way it always was when she skirted around the full truth. "But even incomplete, they can disrupt the system's boundaries. The wings are made from anomaly code like us, the kind the system can't properly erase. When activated, they anchor to the user's accumulated memory bleed and use it to fracture the layers of this place."

Eito frowned. "Boundary?"

She nodded. "Everything here: the city, the sky, even this place, it's stacked, like old recordings playing on top of each other. The wings, when activated, will tear through those layers."

Eito tilted his head, still watching her.

"We'll find out what is beyond this world," Hina said with certainty, tucking the wings back into her bag. "It's the only way I've seen that worked for those who successfully 'escaped.' If we stay here, the system catches up. The world falls apart. But with these… we'll accomplish our plans."

It seemed like the digital angel was done with the explanations as she turned away to tinker with the wings, but it felts like she left too many answers missing. Eito caught it. He knew there was more to the story - more she wasn't saying, who was the one who had the wings, anything else about the people who escaped, the exact plans for their escape.

But for now, he let it go.

He leaned back against the wall, rubbing his eyes. The faint hum of corrupted code drifted through the air, and with it, the edges of his memory began to peel back their hidden layers.

The first flash came sudden - a street that wasn't broken, blue sky intact, and Hina out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes widened as he noticed her and gave chase. The winged humanoid vanished behind the street of the corner.

Then another - a classroom, familiar faces, the static creeping in at the edges as he followed his routine.

Again, the rooftop - a girl who wasn't Hina with his school's uniform and fractured wings, static roaring like wind. She began to ascend in his eyes while the world seemed to swallow him whole.

He was suddenly engulfed with hurt, regret, yet relief as his vision was covered by static.

These weren't just dreams. He knew deep inside his confused emotions that these were fragments of lives he'd lived and forgotten, over and over.

"Hina," he muttered, as he reached out for comfort as these feelings overwhelmed him.

Hina's eyes softened as she took his hand once more to ground him. "Memory bleed. The closer we get to the wings forming, the worse it'll be."

Eito opened his eyes, meeting her gaze. "You've seen this happen to before. To others. And... to me."

Hina said nothing for a long moment. "I've seen a lot with many humans like you."

Eito studied her, the weight of what he saw lingering between them. He wasn't sure how much she truly remembered. He now knew this wasn't his first attempt to escape. And Hina, at some point, she was there. Watching, waiting, and wary.

"How many times did I…?" he stopped himself.

Hina stood, brushing dust from her dress. "Enough. It's hurting for you to remember. Get some sleep."

They let the silence settle again.

Outside, the distant echoes of collapsing code whispered through the Junk Zone.

Eito let the fragments drift through his mind. He couldn't fully untangle them yet - the false starts, the failures, the quiet traces of something more.

This time had to be different. The wings were their only chance.

Even if, somewhere deep down, he already understood why she wouldn't.

But he knew, as sleep pulled him under, that Hina would stay by his side, for now. And whatever came next, he'd face it with her - even when the truths between them could no longer be ignored.