Chapter 19: A Shard of Ayaka

Sky lost completely how to stand still.

It turned slowly round and round and round; spiraling, twirling like it was in a gentle centrifuge, there went the clouds.

Shadows were killed out of their proper length.

The shine of one tree on the horizon was growing sideways and the leaf floating away into vapor.

Haruto sat, totally silent.

He lay next to Hina, who lay in a half-dream and her flesh teemed under her skin.

Her breath was soft waves, unless she would mumble a name, or twitch as such a name struck a chord.

The Cartographer had vanished decorously.

And they still lingered over his words.

“You have to make room in your mind every time you tie a person down. And breaks Each time it stretches,” she tears.

Haruto scanned her hand with his.

Hot, yet precarious, as a saved file on the edge of being destroyed.

He wished they might freeze over. That the andante was there, despite being there momentarily. Something in the air did not smell right.

This was cold, and it was in the wrong place - some one was saying his name behind closed doors. Then again, a ripple of birds in the far off, but flying scarce, merely hovering in the air, the wings churning up in middle air, like filament onto a frame.

Something was tampering with the urban appearance. Not erasing it—overriding it.

The light shifted again.

Something in the middle of the morning--it was a sure word.

07:41:00.

It was wearing thin within this opening quarter reduction, hour after hour, by hour, with every minute.

But the sun had moved.

And it rose not out of the east, but out of the north; and threw them round in spinning directions.

Then the road split up.

Not like a fracture, but a fold.

It was a bridge that stretched itself out. There it is a bridge that sews itself with planks and beams and wire that sparkles with glowing white lines.

On the opposite side of the bridge: a figure.

Still. Waiting.

Haruto didn’t breathe.

He didn’t have to.

He already knew.

Ayaka.

Very slowly he rose and the movement could have awakened her.

The girl on the outer end of the bridge did not begin to move.

She stood just as she had been at the train station, upright, a little stiff like she would always be halfway in staying running.

Her hair tied low.

She was coloured in that suit of the same year-- the year before the bell.

Except… her shoes were wrong. Not black flats that the school had provided him with, but battered brown loafers, like Haruto had. He’d never seen her in those. The specific was lodged in his brain like a splinter.

Haruto’s heart was pounding.

Hina stirred. “Haruto…?”

He didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed on the body.

He took one step forward.

The bridge held.

Another step.

And it swayed, as a sheet should in the rain. This was not what the world was supposed to accommodate.

Hina sat up, eyes glazed.

“Where are you going?”

He turned his head toward her.

“She’s here,” he whispered.

Hina blinked.

“Who?”

He looked back.

Ayaka hadn’t moved.

However the wind changed--dressing round her back. Her contouring was just not washed out, but in some way too crisp. As the system was repairing its impression of her, combating rot on the high-def memory.

Haruto went on to the bridge.

The city groaned.

Under the boards, there was glittering glass--bits of schools, tables, corridors, a scintillating past like the screen of a film-reel.

Every step was time wasting.

The nearer he came to her the better she became.

She didn’t smile.

Not at first.

Just looked at him.

With those all-knowing, sick eyes. Bearing something to which he knew not its name. Not anger. Not even sadness.

Just weight.

Distance.

Haruto came halfway along.

A sound echoed.

His name.

Faint.

“Haru–”

He turned.

Hina was standing on one side of the bridge and her arms would be round herself and her hair would blow in the opposite direction of the wind.

“Who is that?” she asked.

Haruto turned around.

Ayaka felt closer now.

Not because she was in physical proximity.

Because of memory.

Everything was rediscovered to him with Flashing Glances.

However, she hesitated to answer.

And how she used to feign not to notice the man in agony until they would talk.

Ayaka kept quiet.

But she still smiled.

Just one small smile.

Faint. Controlled.

Such a smile you wear at a train station when you are not certain whether it is the last farewell.

“Ayaka…”

He extended his hand.

The sky split open.

There is no thunderous crack, no bang, no boom it is all so plain.

A beam cut through the clouds.

And Ayaka started to unravel.

She stayed calm.

Never fought back.

Her eyes stayed glued to him.

She held one of her hands and laid it against her chest just beneath her collarbone.

Her hand shook a moment--shaking as though she was clinging to it.

Her mouth, not to speak, but to breathe.

However, the thing that drove her away was indifferent to consent.

Then she stepped back.

Just once.

Then twice.

Her body was glittering into a thousand tiny things, not pixels, not energy, but little specks of light floating out with the wind as dandelion seeds.

Haruto froze.

The bridge shuddered.

The rumble started along the planks, it crawled.

Behind him, Hina screamed.

He turned.

She knelt and her hands – against her temples.

“I— I don’t know—” she gasped.

The bridge began to collapse and Haruto fled back.

The planks which supported him at the back fell to bits--not in pieces, but simply disappeared.

He bounded through the remaining ladder-steps into her arms as she again fell.

She had short breaths.

She was sobbing.

I do not know who she was, my goddess, Hina shook. “But I— I missed her. I think I loved her. I believe you did-- but I, I do not, I do not even know her.

Haruto held her.

His throat was burning.

“I do.”

The wind started to pick up.

Too high up the sky, tears split in an ugly jagged crevice.

There was a movement behind the crack.

Not a person.

Not a god.

Just motion.

A presence.

Everyone was watching again.

Haruto looked up.

He didn't blink.

He uttered the only name which sounded proper.

“Ayaka.”

But the sky didn’t answer.

Only a countdown ticked.

07:41:00 - 07:40:59.

It was not simply time keeping - it was reminding him that the Archive had taken its leash away.

And it kept going.