Chapter 28: Found, But Different

People forget things with their hearts alone even when the mind forgets.

Haruto did not know when the sound would come to an end.

Not the bells - those were long since kept silent.

And yet with all that ringing in his ears, that whining between his temples, that ache, it was causing him to lose more than time.

There was lingering fog which he blinked through.

The interior of the tower was completely different.

In place of the curling memory passageways and hall of mirrors it now appeared, I suppose, simpler.

Just a hallway.

Flashing lights all around.

Hanging wall lockers which were partly open, crammed with half-whooped text-books and even more half-suited gym shoes.

At the end of the passage a girl was huddled on the floor.

Her hair was tangled. Her eyes were distant.

Hina.

He said her name.

She didn’t move.

He went a little nearer, like a man when he steps differently to avoid waking a sleeping beast--or a prayer yet silent.

Another step.

Her head tilted just a touch.

Her eyes met his.

However, there was no sign of something behind them.

No recognition.

No flicker.

No spark.

Haruto froze.

“Hina…?”

Her eyes wandered aimlessly over him, scrutinizing awareness.

Her head was thrown back, as though in an effort at a dream song.

“—Do I know you?” she asked.

No corrector could strike more convincingly than those words.

A ticking of his watch was all that Haruto could hear.

He was torn between two worlds, where Hina always knew him, and where Hina was a stranger.

It was a deep and cautious voice.

“It’s me. Haruto.”

She furrowed her brows.

That name…

A pause.

She tapped her head, as though to try to awaken something within it.

Then she looked around.

“…Where are we?”

“The Bell Tower. You were taken here. I followed.”

There was a gesture of uncertainty in her features.

“Why would you do that?”

His chest tightened.

“Because you saved me. And you would not quit on me. Due to the fact that you are my only hope in this failed world.”

But he didn’t say any of that.

Rather he claimed, “…because you are important.

She studied him.

A thing blazed in her eyes.

No identification still--only a more gentle and wary interest.

“I believe you,” she said.

He didn’t breathe for a moment.

Then he smiled, just a little.

“I’m glad.”

Relief came over him in an odd hysterical manner.

Neither was it triumph nor peace.

That was the weak contentment of not solitude.

Not anymore.

Not again.

He sat down next to her on the floor above the cold.

They remained silent and sat there quite some time.

Beyond the shattered windows, the sky was trembling mildly like a root going through the clouds.

The degradation of the city had been sped up.

Haruto looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

She continued embracing her knees, and gazed into the future devoid of some numbed grace.

She ought to be panicking, she whispered.

You have seen worse, explained the philosopher.

She gave a half-smile.

…Have I?

He looked down at his hands.

The body is always said to remember what the mind has forgotten. You fought so softly before, he said. “Your heart knows.”

She turned to him slowly.

Her voice trembled.

“Do you remember… me?”

He nodded once. No hesitation.

“All of you.”

Her eyes brimmed.

“I wish I could say the same.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “You came back. That’s enough.”

Then he withdrew the watch after having suffered a stroke. The same thing that I had been hearing on my headphones during my study at the school. He pressed the side button. It was heard, it was a wild cry of loneliness reminding me of late cram. Hina's head shot up. There was a spasmodic movement of her fingers, and she was trying to take hold of a lecture slide by means of electricity. "That sound..."

He held it out. "Do you want to hear it again?" So she took it and together her hands went like long cock scuttling in martyr. Pressed it. Chime.Her hands trembled more.

And then — her shoulders shook.

She didn’t cry loudly.

Just a breath. Then another. Then she said, “You were there I forgot... when was I?” Haruto nodded. She approached him plainly oblivious to what he might have said, with faith alone.

“Lets get out of here,” he said.

The Bell Tower trembled as they moved down. Haruto left his backpack behind as he half carried her away.

The room was a wobbly structure, the doors opened into blank rooms, the walls were webbing code with hairsplitting cracks--a demolished graphics lab.

When we emerged out of the shadow of the tower, the city was different, it was much worse.

The city was not simply rotting, it was peeling like the old paint peeling off a rotting wall.

Alterations were made to the streets.

Trees turned into poles.

End up turning Forum into back yards of a bygone time pattern.

Storey windows melted.

Haruto turned his gaze to Hina and set her upon her feet.

She said nothing, but she never had loosened her hold of him and his sleeve, nor on mine or the hoodie being part of my dormmate, neither.

We sat a few moments on a statue stair descent step.

Instead of leaking through the memory, the sky above us burst once-- and white exhaust came into it.

Haruto looked up. "It's happening faster now."

Hina never answered but threw back her head against his shoulder and this, in some way or other, was enough.

Then he saw it.

It had glitter somewhere at a distance.

On the roof of one of them, a girl.

There she was in the wind with the wind in her hair and the arms open and wide. Ayaka.

Just for a second.

A phantom.

A remnant.

Not calling out.

Not crying.

Just... watching.

Then she vanished. Haruto closed his eyes. It didn't hurt like before. Yes--but not this time the migraine that was not going to go, but pain. It became a scar, in presence, if it were, of me. And he said, “Thank you, to the air, and to him.”

In the background, there was an appearance of two figures. The Librarian--exhausted, his robes all torn, pages like dying birds. and with her, the Cartographer, now old, or rather weary, his map-covered flesh starting to unravel.

The Tower is broken through. It becomes nonrecognizant of itself through the addition of the Cartographer.

"What happens now?"

“You remembered her,” she said, voice unreadable. “Even when she didn’t remember you.”

“I had to.”

“Did you?” the Cartographer asked, voice low.

Haruto looked at Hina.

Her eyes met his.

“I didn’t know what would happen,” he said. “But I knew she was worth it.”

The Librarian seemed to look at the aching sky. It must have one exception, said she. "Buried at the Core."

Haruto tensed.

"Ayaka?"

The Cartographer turned his gaze to the left to the Librarian and the Librarian did not respond immediately.

There was then artificially a silence,--a moment long enough, however, to notice that the trees were ceasing to be blown by the wind.

“Perhaps,” the Librarian said. “Or something deeper.… wearing her name.” Haruto's breath caught. Something deeper? A memory? A ghost? Or something far older, far more entwined with the collapse than he'd understood?

He asked the only question that mattered:

"If I anchor her?"

The eyes of the Librarian became ugly. Then, she said, “the world begins all over again. And everything you know about it, Hina and your father, and you too, it all melts.”

Haruto looked at Hina. She didn't flinch. Didn't plead. Didn't ask him to stay. Rather she grip his hand. And in her voice too, so light and yet so square, she told me: “I believe you.”

Haruto's throat tightened. To the skyline-- to the city falling, he looked. The countdown ticked. 6:59:59

And he took a step forward.