Chapter 31: Mirror Haruto

You can't erase the history but you can figure out how to carry it with you.

The mirror did not break.

Not like old glass. Not that type of break‑down.

It ectodermal, so to say, one layer after another of Haruto in his inner drain-pipe.

The white room had expanded, and with every heartbeat widened. Edges of world blurred, space yawned, pushed outward like exploding lung.

Haruto stood at center.

Hand‑in‑hand with himself.

Mirror‑Haruto.

The one who took the path to remember.

Reflections of everywhere their ghosts fluttered, in a moment, in time that could have been. Or not. It was impossible to tell.

One of the Haruto cowered in a corner so ended up in his knees, wailing.

Another strolled arm-in-arm with Ayaka off through a sunny park with a smiling face, oblivious to the way the world was ending.

One was in the hospital bed where he lay motionless.

Dozens. Hundreds.

All looking at him.

Haruto released Mirror-Haruto's hand.

He felt… empty.

But not hollow.

More like a grotto made by the blow of wind. Wind and water and wear. Time.

You are silent, Mirror-Haruto here said.

“I’m thinking.”

It is a risky thing to do, here.

Haruto looked around.

“Where are we?”

Mirror‑Haruto shrugged.

“Inside your truth.”

The imaginations continued vibrating and recombining, as a kaleidoscope of the memory.

It was when he spoke to Hina in the first place.

The night Ayaka vanished.

His father is in a hospital, having passed out.

The sympathy in the eyes of his classmates.

Here, each memory wasn't a flashback but a judge.

Each of them had a question in their face:

What is it that you [I] have escaped?

Mirror-Haruto start walking and Haruto trailed him.

It was made of liquid glass, which shook as each foot trod on.

We were the same once, Mirror-, Haruto said. "But you took a harder path."

"I chose not to run."

"Perhaps." Mirror‑Haruto turned. And maybe you were too scared to lose it.

Haruto stiffened.

I kept them, because they disagree.

"Did they? Or did you just want them to?"

That cut too close.

Haruto attempted to breathe but it was too late now, the air was choked with timelines.

Silence burns his lungs.

Mirror-Haruto gestured to one of the floating visions:

Hina shrieking when she was sucked into the time crashing down.

Haruto paralyzed, helpless.

"You let her fall once. And now you're making up for that fault again."

Haruto's hands trembled.

"I brought her back."

"No. You had substituted her with one, which doesn't remember you – which barely exists. You compelled the machine to recreate her."

The world fluttered.

Haruto Eric was in an alley with not much rain falling. It was with Hina who had around her neck a scarf.

He remembered.

She had left it to him unwittingly. Just… left it, quiet.

No name. No memory.

But warmth.

Like the world forgot you, you see like that, Don Gregor. But I have not been unlearned in being nice."

The vision ended.

"I did not force her," Haruto added.

But his voice had no weight.

Mirror-Haruto said in response to some other echo.

A classroom. Empty. And, except for Ayaka, sitting, humming, on a desk.

He stepped into the echo.

She looked up at him.

She placed her hand on his chest.

Well, that I don't need to repair everything. It is a simple fact that sometimes it is enough to be there.

That was when he fell in love with her.

Not due to the fact that she sparkled.

But since she looked at him.

The recollection shattered.

Mirror-Haruto said: You did not love her. You did bowl earlier whom you believed was she.

Haruto's throat constricted.

"It isn't true."

Why then did you never inquire her what she wanted?

The world reeled again.

They figured themselves to be outside of the Archive now.

It was in a broken manner Ayaka spoke.

"Forget me, Haruto. You can never and you will never.

And yet, he had declined.

Mirror- Haruto took a step forward.

"Did you love her? Or did you pull her out as a rope, to hang yourself?"

Haruto recoiled.

"I…

You pinned her down, You were frightened. You took Hina in because you had nothing to do alone beside, you see.

Haruto stumbled back.

The mirror space flashed.

A new memory rose, soft, simple.

History, in the library, reading. The shelves across which he watched her.

She looked up.

Smiled.

So cry all you like, my lady, she said. "Just… not in the book. I haven't finished that one."

He laughed, really.

And there was a crack in his chest.

"No," Haruto said, shrugging. I did not bring them back to use them to replace an empty space. I did it because they had done the same to me. They were larger than the empty space which they had left.

Mirror-Haruto had a look of agreement as if he was alright with the joke but not the joke punchline.

So you control all the decisions regarding who to ghost and who to recall? he asked, with a smirk beneath the seriousness.

This was clearly a strange mix of exhaustion and confusion, which Haruto let his face convey.

this rollercoaster I didn't ask for, I complained.

And yet you have opted, his doppelganger told him. And now you drag, drag them with you through a decaying world. What's the point? So that you won't have to sit by yourself when you die?

Silence.

It was more like a sigh with which Haruto inhaled.

He despise the way Mirror-Haruto had gotten so near the truth--as though the truth was the last great catch.

Then he recalled the hand in his, sucking warm as a bar on the chilly nights.

And Ayaka at the archive property, With her sniveling, out of tune.

And that this was the first occasion that somebody called his name like that, as a fact.

I goofed it up, Haruto said to no one. "I know that."

He walked on.

I stuck to people, who perhaps did not want to be remembered. I didn't let go of the leash, as I ought to have done.

A breath.

"But I learned my lesson. I kept going. I didn't run."

The look Mirror-Haruto got was a cold dreamier look, a Hard glare.

"And now?" he asked.

Haruto looked at the bell suspended above them, as though it were a gospel of an alarm on the end of the world in a college.

He answered, shrugging.

Now, to my mind, I even do not have any right to be alive.

A pause.

"But I want to."

Mirror-Haruto did not fight back this time.

There was a silence not angry or angry at all. They were not enemies but tired echoes each the result of a mutually different decision.

Then the air shifted. The room darkened and the mirrors shook like the handshake of some lousy hallway. Each echo had weakened blown to smudge.

But not all of them.

One stayed.

A classroom. Ordinary. Familiar. Pre-collapse, that is. Ayaka sat by the window, drawing clouds in her notebook with a pencil whose lead was all but gone.

enduring not a word, Haruto dragged himself across the room and stared at the wind blowing through her hair.

Then she turned.

"You see, Ayaka, I think memories are intentionally forgotten. Otherwise, new ones would never be forthcoming."

He blinked. "Ain't that kinda sad?"

She smiled, almost wistfully. "No. It's merciful."

The pencil broke.

The vision ended.

Haruto stood motionless.

He had also left that scene with the recollection of a horrific lecture.

Even then had she been attempting to get anything across to him?

Maybe she always knew.

Maybe she wished to fade.

The voice of Mirror-Haruto was less melodious.

“You wanted to save her. I did too.”

Haruto turned to him.

"But perhaps it’s not the same thing to save people, as it is to keep them. "

Mirror‑Haruto nodded slowly.

And she was as you first hooked to her. But she was not to be the final one.

Haruto inhaled sharply.

The second time's mirrors shattered, but soft and slow as frost melting.

So as though it had nothing to do with him, something started pulling on Haruto.

Not pain.

A warmth.

Soft. Familiar.

He looked down, and was overjoyed to see his watch shining in the dark, the one Hina had held onto throughout the tower.

There was a sound of a bell somewhere in the distance--a bell, which he could not hear but feel, as of a distant college bell.

There was a memory, of Hina's hand touching his wrist when she did not even know his name.

This, this is important to you, I have said looking at the watch. "That's why I'll remember it. Forget everything, I before I die on a tree.

Yet here she was out even now, a flash, a belt, a promise.

Haruto put a hand to his chest.

He didn't know what came next.

He wasn't sure if he would lose Ayaka, and Hina, and maybe even himself.

but he has finally realized something:

He was not remembering to hold on.

To let go by the right side, he was remembering.

Mirror -Haruto moved forward. Even his once piercing eyes seemed to have eyes that pitted.

He did not want to become this, he said. I, I had not even wanted to suffer anymore.

Haruto waited.

"I know."

This was the first time that they would not be doing this for a contest but to be part of the entire student who sat strangely by himself on a class waiting that somebody is noticing his crack.

The bell in their ears began to ring, low and melodious--not to warn but to participate in a sort of song.

Haruto shut his eyes.

6:58:59

The time-bombing no longer scared him.

It did not make him consider that he had none.

The ideas created a new nebula, home to Haruto, but contracted and created one massive concentration.

The light flared.

And the bell rang.