Chapter 9: The Crow’s Warning

The city had changed again. It was not only the colours, but it was out of place in all directions. That was the beginning of another rhythm--still, unnatural--and the whole world went falling on top of itself.

Haruto and Hina ran away, crouching under collapsed portals and through empty pavilions with barren gardens of metallic foliage.

The Correctors did not march, and swayed, as ever. He heard them looking at him and hissed into his ears.

They were no longer following them; they were just crawling nearer.

There was no safety, and no one could escape with hope because everyone is cynical.

Passages were like dungeons they each opened in conflicting directions.

Prophetic references were fictional names.

Between the lines there were letters.

Something was unraveling. And Haruto knew it was his fault.

A staircase led them to a half-collapsed library, with stone and glass shelves. A few books had no words in them; others said one thing to you today, and another tomorrow; they altered their purpose as you shut your eyes.

Hina was sitting on a broken pillar, but her face was lighter, and her eyes keener, as of green glass that was letting the light pass through. More then.

Haruto sat next to her and the dust on the floor did not disturb him.

There was a silence, lasting one or two minutes, between them.

Then a shuffle they faintly heard--no steps or sound--at the farther end of the ruined hall. An ugly, soft sound as if the paper were bending, turned upside down.

Nothing happened.

Haruto remained motionless.

The quiet was even more spaced out.

Then she broke the silence. “Well, you are the first to talk to me,” she said. “Not just to wake me. Reach me.”

Haruto looked up. Hanging freely nearly by the floor, her roots hanging nearly like ropes up to the ceiling. “I believe that is what scared them,” she said. “No, it isn’t the world you made. You just found someone in it.”

Haruto slightly turned his wrist.

99:39:30.

Still ticking. Now there were increased weights, more than time. It was, so to speak, pressure, the suggestion of the degree of the magnitude of whatever he could escape with before the mechanism blew up.

“You do not remember its origin, do you?” he said. "For you?"

She shook her head. "No. But I have an idea--when I began to be forgotten. It's like you are getting swallowed. First your name goes. Then your birthday. Then you are being erased... wiped out.”

Haruto did not notice before he was shaking until he examined his hands.

“I must have seen it happen,” I said to myself. "To Ayaka. I saw her freeze. I didn't get it back then."

Hina gazed at her with her pathetic eyes. "Ayaka... that name--"

Her pupils got huge.

Holding her hands, she cried out.

Haruto lunged toward her. "Hina!"

And gave a Scalp of breathless attendance. Her whole body shook. It flashed in the library, as though it were not the light, but the room, as though there were two duplicates of the room in a duel of death.

Then it passed.

Hina blinked.

Her eyes focused again.

She stayed silent.

But she was shaking.

“The name Ayaka, is not a permitted name under the name system. Even her name is volatile. Triggers. The world forgets on purpose. There is somebody to listen when you want to say them.”

Haruto's breath caught.

“It is she who I saw in the train, you see,” he said. “The first memory was introduced to me by the bells. She made me appear as though I did something wrong. No, as I thought I was not there.”

Hina wipes her sweats, “Then she is not wholly out of her mind. Not totally. There is still a piece of her fighting somewhere.”

I could hear the creaking of the book shelves behind them.

Well above this passage there was a low voice that might have been heard through the crozed-ceiling.

A flutter.

Haruto comes to his feet, bent upwards, in the direction of the sound.

One of the crows landed on a shelf which bordered the broken floor.

Its feathers were darker than before. Its eye did not shine, but sank into depth, as it recalled more than it ought to recall.

The same crow from the alley.

It cocked its head and spoke.

Not in words.

But in meaning.

Haruto could feel it touching his skull-base, like the hissing of an idea.

“The Five cracks will split you. You have to choose what you keep in mind.”

He stepped closer.

"What does that mean?" he asked, loud. "Who are you?"

The crow blinked once.

“The world you walk is a memory's corpse. Every name you awaken feeds what was locked.”

Hina was next to him and was gasping shallowly.

Haruto clenched his fists. "Then what’s the countdown?"

The crow turned away. Its nails made a hole in the rock.

"The end of forgetting. Or the end of choice."

Then, softly: "Choose one. Anchor one. Before the Rift closes again."

And it took flight, washing in mid-air.

How long it appeared before Haruto moved.

His watch ticked again.

99:38:17.

Hina said, "You are not remembering. You're rewriting something. ”

He felt that deep in his bones.

"I didn't ask for this," he said. “I had no idea I was the one making the choice.”

But now he knew. Each measure was a division. And he would keep stepping. Even if it broke everything.

“But you did”, she said pitifully. "Some version of you did. That's why the bell rang."

He looked at her.

He heard the words variously reputed in Mirror-Haruto:

"You made a choice. To remember someone the world erased.”

Now it was making sense. This was not an issue of survival. It wasn't even about escape.

It was about restoration. Haruto had no role here to play. It is he who desacralized the symmetry.

And symmetry was desired back in the world.

There was some shuffling sound in the higher levels.

He looked up sharply.

More footsteps.

But these weren't metal. Not Correctors.

Just… echoes.

Frozen bodies half-way down the street. Figures in between acts, blurred. A woman that was going to get hold of a book that was not there. A boy chasing a shadow.

Nobody saw Haruto and Hina.

But the moment felt fragile.

Like a breath held too long.

"We need to move," Haruto said.

Hina didn't argue.

Haruto peeped back when they walked out of the devastated library.

The shelf which the crow had occupied was entirely covered with the mark of the crow--one deep scratch in the dust-covered stone. However, on examining it further he understood that it was not by chance. The scratch had depth. Intent. It was a direction rather than a line.

The man crouched beside it pushing away the debris.

The rock shone in his hands like it had been stroked by a claw. The scratch bent in a little, then became straight; making a kind of hook at the end--as the arm of a compass directing to true north.

Haruto stood and turned.

The scar perfectly matched an opening just big enough to pass behind a shattered archway--that he had never noticed, that yet the city had concealed. The alley there was throbbing with a golden glow that was neither light nor memory, but something of a glow, and it was the glow that had shattered the panel that carried his name in the Archive.

It was not a way that the crow cut.

It was an avenue that the world had buried-- and had forgotten.

Hina stepped beside him.

"Was that… always there?" she asked.

"I don't think so," Haruto said. "I think the crow revealed it."

Or perhaps... They were challenging him to follow.

Or perhaps he said, he only looks when he wants to walk it.

The street above turned in at an angle, as though a passage sought to huddle into obscurity. No sound came from it. No wind. Nevertheless, the pulse was--slow, steady, like a distant beating heart.

He knew without being told: The second echo could be found here.

And the decision to be made there may not be simple.

It was the same Light that he had seen in the Rift. It was the same gold that had broken his name and panel when he touched his name.

They followed.

And away out of sight behind them there was another bell beginning to ring.

Not calling this time.

Counting.