Chapter 23:

Chapter 23: The Shared Echo Zone

Fractured Hour

It wasn't really a fall.

It was trying to think of something that you were whacked down in one stroke--heavy and overweight.

The next thing, though, Haruto and Hina were in the center of this strange dissolving world and then the next, and everything stretched off like wet ink being pulled sidewise before them and at that moment they simply fell into a silence that was too profound to hear any sound at all.

His stomach didn't lurch. His heart didn’t race.

So this drop wasn’t physical.

It was time, more like mind, emotions.

He was falling into various versions of himself.

Flashes tossed through him a Haruto who never sent in the umbrella, a Haruto who said he loved Ayaka and one who did not.

A Haruto who has never banged that hospital door open.

A Haruto who died.

A not-even existing Haruto.

Each uncut motion was like a breath upon his flesh--as though reality was peeking in and making comparisons.

Then—solid ground. Or like it maybe.

He opened his eyes.

Everything around him was longer than wide, straight as a corridor, without either end, doors of all shapes and colours, odd shapes.

Other doors were scratched out of memory—schooler lockers, hospital room doors.

Others appeared like the door to an apartment, ancient shrine, and fragment of a dream, which suddenly became three-dimensional.

With intervals of just a few feet there was the sound of a bell.

It sounded close. And absurdly far.

“Haruto—!”

Hina scuffled down beside him, and coughed at putting her legs on.

She caught both of his sleeves in her hands even before she looked up.

Their glances touched each other and the first time since the peculiar situation she did not glitch.

She shook rather--as candles disturbed in still winds.

She was there. But fragile.

He helped her up.

The altier forced its way about them.

Colors shifted. Walls breathed. People were talking at the doors--bits of names, incomplete sentences.

“Where… are we?” she asked.

“I think—” Haruto looked around.

I believe we are overlapping ourselves here in every form.

Her grip tightened.

So we no longer have this place to ourselves, huh?

“No.”

The door at the front was automatic.

Before it lay a classroom in the afternoon light.

Haruto was sitting in the smaller, hunched, headphone-wearing.

The other side of him was Ayaka, laughing, and mocking him because of something in his notebook.

It was a perfect loop.

They repeated the game again and again.

Haruto was extending his hand to the door, but Hina seized his wrist.

“Don’t.”

“I just want to see—”

“That’s not her,” she said.

“That’s not you either. That is Haruto never turned back at all.

He hesitated.

Then have the door flung there.

They walked.

The corridor forked.

The walls became a reflection of each other.

And then, projections.

The scenes were showing on nonexistent walls, enclosing them, a distorted museum of what might have been.

Ayaka and Haruto by the fireworks.

Haruto, alone at the shrine.

As people get down at the train point, Hina stands up in front of the door.

A Haruto who refused to remember her.

Every projection lasted several seconds, after which it disappeared - another one came.

Haruto stopped.

His breathing got shallow.

He said to himself: “I believed I was the only copy of myself that counted.”

“Long but then what, what if, what if he were better, he who never came here?”

Hina stood beside him.

“Did he not lead a quiet life, maybe he did,” said she.

“But you chose to remember. Even when it hurt.”

She looked at the next door.

“That’s who I stayed for.”

Another door creaked open.

One of the Haruto was lying on a hospital bed holding a watch without a face. No one visited. No one came.

He spoke a name--but not that of Hina or Ayaka.

Not a one that Haruto acknowledged.

And yet it pained him to hear.

They viewed it in a larger room on the other side of the hall.

A rounded table with straw seats.

Every seat held a Haruto.

Some wore the school uniform.

There were those who were aged, with wrinkles below their eyes.

One had blood on his collar.

Another held a photo.

One was asleep.

All were frozen mid‑thought.

And at the centre, a reflected pedestal.

On it, a shard of glass. Flickering faintly.

Hina shivered.

“They’re not ghosts.”

“No,” Haruto replied.

“They’re me.”

He stepped into the room.

No alarms. No resistance.

The atmosphere became still colder--not cold to the point, but in term.

The space did not seem to be happy to be recalled.

He touched the pedestal.

The voice was not in the room, but within himself.

“You are the fracture. The independent variable that had no resolution.

The shard glowed brighter.

Then dimmed.

"Haruto..."

Hina's voice cracked.

He turned.

Her hands shook. Her eyes were not jerking--you see? They were reflecting.

There began to spring all round her, different versions of Hina. Others wore eccentric hair, others carried umbrellas. One, walked hand in hand with a Haruto that was not even a bit like him.

They didn’t talk. They just watched. Then they disappeared.

One by one.

then only was Hina the true one spared.

She fell to her knees. Who I am I know not, I know not.

Haruto knelt next to her. "You're the only one still here."

She looked at him. Tears filled her eyes. "Do you really mean that?"

He nodded.

You were the only one who remained.

She leaned into him.

He pulled her close.

No static, no glitch.

Just warmth.

Just breathing.

Just now.

They moved through more doors as they opened.

In another Hina was making an exit out of him as Ayaka touched his hand. In the other, Haruto did not get out of the hospital.

In the other one Hina even did not talk. Intense scrutiny of all these alternative lives looked back at Haruto. They were all like seeds that had never grown. The thing to remind us is that memory is a choice and not a chain.

Then they hit the final room.

Circular. No seats.

Just walls full of mirrors.

All the mirrors were Haruto staring back. One after another each version spurned. They didn’t want to watch.

They didn’t want to carry it.

Only one stayed.

That Haruto at the center—him.

He looked in the mirror at Hina. "You're the one who had them all."

He didn’t say anything. "I trust you," she said.

He turned to her. She smiled. "I trust you. Not the smartest Haruto. Not the bravest. Just you."

At that second the mirrors broke. Nor violently--more as a sigh.

The passage in which they were standing shook and fell. All doors shut.