Chapter 25: The Memory That Bit Back

Certain images do not wish to endure.

The world twisted again.

There was no warning — no sound, no lurch, nor a flash of static. Just an abrupt shift in weightlessness, like dropping through consciousness. One moment, Haruto and Hina were walking through a creaking hallway of swaying floorboards, and the next, the sky ripped open above them and took the path.

The city folded.

When the light returned, they were nowhere around one another.

Haruto fell with a thud onto the ground. Rocks tore through his hands. Far away, a bell tolled once, not from the Archive, but low and cracked, as if choked with earth.

He grunted and rolled over onto his feet.

The air was cold. Much colder than before.

He was in a cramped alley, hemmed in with high iron buildings. The architecture was recognizable, but just off. Rusted kanji signs hung askew. Vending machines flashed with error displays. The geometry closed in too tight, as if the walls were sucking him in.

His watch was silent.

07:31:15

Time had not ceased. Just gotten stuck — like everything else.

"Hina?" he called out.

Only echoes replied. No words. Distortion alone — his voice, distorted and reverberating, incorrect.

He took a step forward.

And there she was.

In the end of the alleyway, half-hidden behind shadow and dust, there was a girl with long, messy hair and skinnier-than-normal arms. She wore what was likely a school blouse but it hung off of her like it wasn't even on her. She had her back to them but Haruto instantly knew who it was.

Yamazaki R.

The girl who always sat alone in the back pew. The girl who never was spoken to. The girl with haunted eyes.

Whom Haruto had attempted to assist—and then failed to assist.

His throat dried.

"There's something here," he grumbled.

This was where he'd discovered her crying, once, among the other students. They'd scrawled things on her desk. Spoken about her family in whispers. He'd flinched. Then sat beside her the following day.

That was it. No bravery. Just presence.

It had been enough to anchor her — once.

Yet now—

The girl turned.

And her face was wrong.

Not grotesque. Not evil. Just off. Her eyes were big and filled with white static. Her lips curled back on a grin that stretched too wide. Her voice when she spoke was coming from behind him, not from her lips.

“You left me here.”

Haruto took a step back. "No. I anchored you. I assisted."

She moved a step closer. She wasn't making her feet move. She just shifted closer.

"You moved on," she stated. "I stayed.".

The structures started to throb. Lights flared uncontrollably. Reality faltered.

This was not an echo. This was a memory gone rogue — a corrupted bit of the past that had festered in the system for far too long.

Haruto instinctively reached for his anchor, tried to stabilize the moment, to pull it into focus.

But the memory bit back.

The girl shrieked.

The voice wasn't coming from her throat — from the walls, the sky, the earth. It pierced through his back. Haruto lost his balance, grasping his ears. The gravel beneath him writhed like moving skin.

"You used me," the memory spat. "You anchored others. Then forgot."

Haruto yelled out. "I never forgot."

But he had. Not her name— but the weight of her. The feeling of sitting next to her. The trembling jerk of her pencil while drawing cartoons in the margins of her book.

He recalled facts. Not emotion.

That was enough for the system to corrupt it.

"You want to be a hero?" She spat. "Rescue me again.".

And then she lunged.

Haruto stumbled back. The vilified echo attacked him, limbs extending grotesquely. She scratched across his face — with memories, but not with nails. Lockers slamming shut, voices mocking, her stifled cries in the infirmary at school.

He was drowning in her pain.

"No!", he yelped, jumping upright. "You're not real. Not ever!"

The echo stopped.

Its head inclined. "Make me real again then."

And then, horror of horrors, she started to stabilize.

She was just like she had been just a moment ago. Soft features. Quiet eyes. Rain scent on her sleeves.

Haruto staggered.

This was the system’s trap.

It was trying to trick him into re-anchoring a corrupted memory. To overwrite his identity with one steeped in guilt.

And it almost succeeded.

almost.

Until he remembered what Hina had informed him.

This isn't about deciding between us. This is about recalling yourself.

Haruto shut his eyes.

He dipped back into the memory - not to grasp it, but to *refuse* it. Not because she wasn't important.

But since she was never going to live here anyway.

"I recall you, Rika," he whispered. "Yet I am unable to anchor you like so. Not like this."

The world shuddered.

The echo screamed.

Her body started to break down — not dissolve, but disintegrate into pixilated pieces. She scratched at the air as if attempting to piece herself back together.

"i don't want to go." she cried. "i don't want to be nothing."

"You never were," Haruto stated. "But this isn't going to save you. It's erasing me.

He stepped back.

The alley yawned open behind him.

Wind surged.

The corrupted echo let out one final cry — not of anger, but of grief — and exploded into a cloud of fragmented memory. Faint laughter, a pencil sketch, a whispered “thank you”, from another time.

Then silence.

Haruto fell to his knees.

His heart raced like it was trying to escape through his chest wall. His breathing was in irregular fits.

The system had fought back.

Not with violence.

And with guilt.

He never found out how long he was there.

But eventually, footsteps echoed.

He looked up.

Hina.

Her face was drawn and pale, but she was Whole.

“I felt the collapse,” she said quietly. “Something tried to pull me into it.”

"It was Rika," Haruto whispered. "What was left of her."

Hina knelt next to him. "You never re-anchored her?"

“I almost did.” He looked at her. “It knew exactly where to hit.”

She nodded. “The system’s learning.”

He took out his watch.

07:30:00.

"Don't you think how long it has been accumulating these… corrupted pieces?"

"Since the first memory was ignored," Hina told him. "Since the first truth was forgotten."

Haruto shut them tight. "We're not battling decay like in the past."

"Not," replied Hina. "We're fighting design."

They stood slowly.

The alley disappeared behind them—bricks rising into the air, spinning a spiral staircase to the sky.

New path. New trial.

Haruto wasn't prepared either.

But he was no longer here to feel ready. He was here to finish.