Chapter 13: The Voice That Almost Was

Having thrust their heads out of the smoke-filled stairwell, the static stopped.

Not faded – stopped.

The entire world seemed to be in suspense.

It was as if the entire world had held its breath.

Haruto glanced behind him, expecting the glitching hallway or the writhing remnants of the corrupted echo from before.

Never had there been, it seemed at least to me, no fog.

No wobbling ground.

No disappearing shadows.

Just a street.

Perfectly paved.

No dust.

Book-stores and shop windows with slick signs and a bakery window with spotless pastries and trees with green leaves in a wind that was as real as a breeze and not artificial.

It was late afternoon, soft amber light falling on cobblestones the way it was always meant to.

Haruto narrowed his eyes.

"Hina?"

She trailed behind by two steps gasping her breath in a barely noticeable flicker along her skin like a ghost of contact.

He touched her by habit.

She didn’t grab his hand.

"This isn’t real," she whispered.

Haruto looked around again.

The street was super quiet.

Not empty, just… chill. Warm.

What type of atmosphere his brain was feeling relief to have spaced out in.

Then the voice came.

"Haruto."

He froze. Not loud but piercing right through the silence. The words were too wordy - too familiar.

"Haruto."

That voice. Soft. Low. A tiny tease on the last vowel. He knew it. Ayaka.

The world tilted.

No—no, that couldn’t be right. He hadn’t seen her since—

Since when?

The memories of the precise moment when she had disappeared was fuzzy. \

A bell.

A flash.

A day that would have lasted long enough but not so.

The world responded as a stagehand tweeting a set, he turned, reluctantly, slowly. The street curved, widened.

The trees were tilted towards the sunlight.

A teacher table erupted under the entire sky and was in four neat rows. The third left desk was appropriated.

Her.

Ayaka sat, the sun pouring its rays through her hair, and a loose strand of it swept close by her face by the wind. She shut her eyes a moment then when he moved once nearer she opened them. No glitch. No blur.

Just her.

“Hi,” she replied, looking like any other Saturday afternoon.

Haruto didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His throat was sand rubbed rustily.

"Been a while, huh?" Tapping fingers, she added, on the desk.

When she was nervous, she always tapped.

Three light taps.

A pause.

Then two quick ones.

She was doing it now. Same as always.

Hina darts to the rear behind him.

"Haruto, no," she says hoarsely. "That’s not her. It is plucking out of your recollections. It’s wearing her like skin."

Ayaka tilts her head. “You never speak for yourself, do you?”

Haruto takes a step closer.

He is able to smell dust and lemon soap. He remembers that smell. Ayaka applies lemon-smelling washing soap as she lacks the hospital odor of the regular brand.

“Enough,you have done enough," she tells her.

“You fought, remembered and got hurt... Why not rest here? Just for a bit?"

Haruto looks down. His shoes have returned to the school regulation design. His uniform is pressed. The watch on his wrist reads:

08:00:00

But it is not the same as before.

A near-inaudible shimmering is evident on the glass. And below the clicking numbers, far off the systems text is flickering, not to be seen:

Phase Threshold Reached

Memory Sync Protocol: Active

The shimmer fades. The numbers blink.

07:58:46

His heart drops.

"I… missed you," he whispers.

Ayaka steps closer. She doesn’t glitch. She doesn’t shimmer. She is real, more than the entire strange world.

She reaches for his hand.

"Then stay," she says. "Forget the countdown. Forget the girl.”

Haruto draws his gaze at their hands.

She’s warm.

Too warm.

Like she’s running a fever.

He blinks. Her smile cannot come up to her eyes any more. and something--you can hardly see--itch in her skin. A flicker. Like pixels rearranging. A blink too slow. A breath too synced.

Haruto looks into her eyes.

And sees nothing reflected.

He steps back.

"No," he says, quietly.

The expression of Ayaka does not alter. But the warmth drops. Her skin pales. Her lips tremble.

"You don’t want peace?" she asks.

"I want the truth."

"You want pain again?" Her voice warps a little.

Haruto turns toward Hina. Her back is prostrating before a post box and she is flickering so severe that her shadow is split in two. In one pose she stands upright with her eyes shut. The other continues to look ahead cawing his name.

Ayaka was mad as hell. Why do you continue picking her on me?

Haruto just flipped back. “You ain’t her.”

She froze mid‑step.

It was as if the sky above us broke in one straight line, with no sound. Her face began to flake away like a water-photo. Her fingers, her shoulders, thread from digital.

You were to hold me down, the spindly sound replied.

“I almost did,” he whispered.

“Why not?”

Not that the actual Ayaka had not told me that I was to forget.

Silence.

then a voice water-paper laceration. The keyboard of the echo ript open on her cheek. Her forehead sprouted a second eye on its side.

And she screamed.

Behind her desk brightened - no fire, but pure light. The world went wild.

The sky was red in way, buildings were toppling over, the streets were round-tailed.

Hina screamed as well--real, or echo, Haruto did not know.

The echo lunged.

I put my arms up, however, without being struck. It fell into fragments of uncertain recollection, casting them off like dust.

The scene vanished.

And then: darkness. Not unconsciousness. Just… silence.

We were in an empty place, on white and gray and flickering.

I was breathing hard.

Hina was solid again on the ground. But she was white, and her eyes were not clear.

“Hey,” I whispered, kneeling. “Are you still with me?”

She blinked. “I think so.”

I helped her sit up.

Then I saw something else.

My watch: 07:58:46

My heart dropped.

“I rejected it,” I muttered.

Hina stared at me, glassy eyes. But the system called it the forgetting anyhow.

I stared at the time.

“It was ninety‑nine. Days, not hours. Now…”

I trailed off.

Hina looked at my watch, and the expression was as developed as ever. Perhaps the system altered the codes.

I aroused something, said I. “A second phase, or…”

“A final one,” she whispered. “It is not allotting us space anymore.”

I clenched my jaw.

The echo--which was imaginary, an examination. But the expense of abandoning it still paid itself.

“You saw her,” Hina murmured. Was she like the way you had wanted to remember her?

I nodded.

Hina leaned back. “That’s how they get you.”

I observed the horizon being built up again into a shattered jumble of the alley in which we had first appeared.

The light was gone.

The air felt thick again.

“I almost anchored her,” I said.

“But you didn’t,” Hina said.

I nodded.

And she shook her voice at the lip.

I suppose I lost something, too; she said. “I don’t remember how I got here.”

I turned toward her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… I do recall my being with you, not how I came to it. Not my first day here. Not… who brought me.”

The color drained from his face.

“Hina…”

We sat there, where it broke light down on, and the city made an attempt to remember itself.

and in one place, which neither of us could mention, a bell rang.