Chapter 27: Inside the Tower

Certain truths aren't lost. They're in fragments — and we bleed as we gather them.

The air was thick within.

Not with heaviness — with memory.

Haruto had expected the Bell Tower to ring hollow. Sacred. Hollow like the rest of the city. But it vibrated with voices — the faint echoes of footsteps, laughter, screams, and whispers too broken to be heard.

He stepped slowly, boots thudding onto clock-faced floors of tile. Walls were made of shattered school corridors, held together by swirling loops of wire and chalk. Time did not go here, it came back. Haruto seized it in the shifting light above, where sun set and rose on a flicker.

And Ayaka was in there somewhere.

Or at least. a memory of her was.

He continued on. The tower curved.

A school desk in the middle of the hall, spotless. His name carved into the wood.

"Haruto," a voice called from behind him.

He turned around.

Ayaka at the opposite end of the corridor. Almost sixteen. Her uniform sleeves rolled up, her hair messy and loose from P.E., just as she'd always left it. She smiled, soft and confident, as if she'd never been gone.

And for one moment, Haruto forgot where he was.

“You’re late,” she said, stepping closer.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he whispered.

“Neither am I,” she replied, grinning.

The corridor warped. The floor stretched and pulled like ribbon. Haruto blinked and suddenly they were walking together, hand in hand, down a beach they’d never visited. A memory he didn’t have. But it felt real.

Because somewhere, maybe in some timeline, it had been.

They stopped near the waves.

"You're different," Ayaka said, sitting on the sand. "Less afraid."

Haruto knelt beside her.

"I've been recalling people," he said.

"You always did," she replied. "That's why the system allows you to shatter it."

He looked at her with intensity. "Are you real?"

She inched closer. "Does it matter?"

Haruto frowned.

"Memories aren't false because they're lost," she continued. "If they touched you, they counted."

He looked down. Down there was sand, made up of shards — tiny fragments of paper. Pages from letters, notes, diary entries. Words he could not read completely. *Her* memories, maybe. Or his. Or both.

"Then why am I here?" he barked.

She stood up and waded into the water.

"You've been remembering all the other people," she said. "Now it's time you remember us."

The ocean changed instantly into desks again. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

Classroom 2-B.

And Ayaka was crying.

Haruto stood in the doorway, frozen. This moment — this one — he remembered.

It was the day she told him she was going away.

Not disappearing — moving. Her family was moving. She hadn't even wanted to tell him. But he'd known something was wrong when she stopped eating lunch on the rooftop.

She looked up at him, her eyes puffy.

"I don't want to forget you," she'd whispered in that small voice.

"You won't," he'd said.

But she had.

And so had he.

Not the facts, the feeling.

The lesson dissolved.

They were in the infirmary now. She was on the cot. He was leaning over her, his eyes on her as she slept. A clock ticked too loud.

When she awoke, she whispered, "Don't let this be the last one."

Then they were both in darkness.

Haruto woke up in a hall of mirrors.

Each one showed him a different day. Some real ones. Some not.

In one: Ayaka asleep on his shoulder, soaked with rain.

In another: Her slapping him, screaming.

In another too: Them kissing goodbye.

He couldn't tell which one had actually occurred.

He looked into one mirror and saw him, older, eyes dull, standing to watch her get off at a station platform. That had never happened.

But the pain was real.

The air trembled.

A voice, his own, thundered up above.

"How many iterations of her do you need before you release her?"

He turned around.

A shadow duplicate of himself stood at the end of the hallway, Mirror-Haruto.

Dressed in the same clothes. No feeling.

"She's not here," it told him. "She's not anywhere. You're running after a girl who was wiped out a long time ago."

"I know," Haruto whispered.

"But you keep opting for her."

"I did not go to anchor her," he explained. "I went to find out why."

Mirror-Haruto sneered. "That's what weakens you."

"No," Haruto replied. "That's what makes me me."

The mirror shattered.

Haruto lurched forward. The hallway collapsed behind him.

Then — silence.

He stood at the center of the tower.

Bells hung like stars overhead. Some of them tolled softly. Others were shattered. Beneath them stood one chair.

And Ayaka sat in it.

Quiet. Still. Not crying. Not smiling.

Just gazing at him.

He leaned in slowly.

"This is the last one," she said.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm the last memory that can hold you here," she said. "After me… nothing else is left to distract you."

He swallowed. "I don't want to hold you back."

"You already do," she said. "A long time ago. When you chose to remember me instead of letting go."

"That wasn't wrong."

"It wasn't," she agreed. "But it kept you captive."

He clenched his fists into fists.

"I needed you," he said.

"I know," she said. "And I loved you for that."

Her voice cracked.

"But you need you now."

He knelt next to her.

"I still don't know what was real," he said.

"Then let me show you," she whispered.

She placed a finger on his forehead.

And everything returned.

The rooftop.

The first touch.

The secret poems she'd written but never shared.

The way she fell asleep during group outings, and the soft way he woke her up.

When she wanted to kiss him, but didn't.

The night she phoned him at a phone booth just to say goodnight.

The last time he saw her.

The last time he said nothing of what he felt.

The last time she smiled at him as if she knew he'd pull through in spite of her.

It all came flooding back.

It all hurt.

And it healed, all of it.

Then she rose.

It was not Ayaka any longer.

It was her recollection.

The actual one.

The one that had been there all the time, buried beneath all the illusions, the static, the tricks of the system.

She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

Then stepped back.

And vanished.

Haruto opened his eyes.

The tower was vacant.

No bells. No mirrors. No doors.

Just him.

And one new recollection.

He looked down at his watch.

7:00:00

It ticked once more.

6:59:59