Chapter 32: The Choice to Forget

Some don't go away because they won't.

Others persist because you won't let them go.

The ringing of the bell still resonated in his head.

Even after the light faded.

Even after Mirror-Haruto vanished.

Even after the mirrored platform crashed into darkness.

Haruto was by himself in the nothingness — or at least something like it.

But he knew where he was at the time.

The middle of the loop.

The start of it all.

A low rumble surrounded him, vibrating on the edges of consciousness.

Like not breathing.

Like time not breathing for the truth.

Then: light, shaking like some old film projector.

And at once, the past returned.

He saw himself.

Younger.

Maybe only weeks into the first round.

Tired. Hallow-eyed. Sitting in the courtyard of his school beneath a gray sky.

No countdown yet. No Hina. No glitches in the air.

Just pain.

Ayaka had vanished.

She was there one afternoon. Gone the next. No farewell. No reason.

And no one else gave a damn either.

Haruto sat for hours.

Waiting.

He held her notebook in his lap — a little yellow one with little clouds on the cover. The pages were nearly full.

He'd found it hiding under her desk when she disappeared.

"Meet me after school," the final page read. "I want to tell you something important."

But she never showed up.

Haruto's chest hurt just observing.

Even now. Even in retrospect of what was to be.

He remembered that version of himself — a kid who'd lost the one who ever treated him as if he mattered.

Ayaka had been loud where he was reserved. Brave where he hesitated.

But above all — she listened.

She once told him, "You speak in silences. I like that."

No one else ever heard his silence.

That was when he fell in love with her.

Not for being faultless.

This for having the capacity to see something in him that he didn't even know existed.

Then he heard it — the voice.

Distant. Synthetic.

"You may now choose to forget."

It came from nowhere. No origin. No speakers.

Just. there.

The sky froze.

The world paused — in mid-breath.

A message coalesced in front of him, glowing in mid-air like a floating screen:

[SYSTEM INTERRUPTION]

This memory has been designated as destabilizing.

Emotional overload acknowledged.

Recommended course of action: Remove subject.

Go on?

YES ☐  NO ☐

He'd not witnessed any systems. No loops. No broken laws of memory.

He was a pain boy. A boy with a notebook.

But he understood one thing:

Forgetting was peace.

Remembering was pain.

He could have stopped the pain at that time.

He could have walked on. Entered a stream of time in which Ayaka never breathed.

But he couldn't.

She lived.

Her laugh, her voice, her truncated sentence.

She was the one proof he'd ever had that he lived.

So he reached up…

And felt NO.

The sky buckled. The recollection trembled.

And time rewound — in the wrong direction.

Now he was outside the hallway.

Faces blurry. Colors out of place. Shadows growing.

As if a world trying to keep itself fixed with tape and optimism.

And from there, the loop repeated.

The countdown was observed the next day: 99:59:59

The world bent. Voices skipped.

And Haruto started looking for her — anywhere.

A scented pencil case of perfume.

The hum of a note from a class she used to attend.

A laugh in a hallway when no one was present.

All of them made her more real.

But all of them stole something from him.

First, his mother's voice.

Then, his birthday alone.

Then, the way sunlight looked coming through the gym windows.

And yet, he chose Ayaka.

In the present, Haruto floated outside his younger self, watching everything play out again.

He experienced every pain, every stolen breath, every sacrifice made freely.

"Why did you do that?" someone wondered.

Haruto turned.

Mirror-Haruto stepped out of the darkness — or maybe it was just a memory of him.

"You had peace. You were given mercy. And you threw it away."

Haruto looked at his younger self.

"She was my lighthouse."

"Or your anchor.".

"Both," Haruto exhaled. "And I didn't want to be lost anymore."

The vision softened.

Ayaka became real in the library — not truly there. A glimmer. A shadow.

"You're attempting to pull me back, aren't you?"

"Perhaps I need to go."

He was reaching for her.

His hands passed through nothing.

"I wanted only to remember you," he whispered.

But memory wasn't mercy.

Not always.

The illusion dissolved.

Darkness again.

And the floor pulsed — like a wound learning to bleed.

"You were never meant to stay here."

It wasn't Ayaka's voice.

Or Hina's.

It was the system. Unemotional. Honest.

"You chose an anchor that broke protocol. You infected memory with grief. You rewrote timelines by denying entropy."

Haruto faltered.

"Then why did you allow me to continue?"

"Because you loved her. And that spoiled the equation."

The glass floor beneath him rippled.

He could see all the loops:

Ayaka gone missing. Ayaka recreated. Ayaka trapped in a smile that isn't hers. All because of him.

He collapsed on the ground.

"I didn't want to be alone."

He really meant it.

And then… Hina.

Not loud like Ayaka.

Not invincible.

But present.

Her scarf on a rainy day.

Her voice guiding him through the desolate streets.

Her hands, malfunctioning, but warm.

And the question hit him like a bell:

Did I find her by chance?

Or because I lost Ayaka first?

Was she a substitute?

Or was she the fix the system gave him?

"Perhaps I pushed her into this," he whispered.

The shame wound its way around his belly like corruption.

"Perhaps I tried to rebuild Ayaka… through Hina."

But Hina had never been Ayaka.

She didn't fill silence with light.

She listened to it.

She made space in it.

And for some reason, that made him feel noticed.

He looked back over the system's choice.

Forget — peace.

Remember — pain, but truth.

And he whispered:

"I made the wrong choice."

A pause.

"But perhaps I had to."

Because it gave him Hina.

Because it recalled to him what he was.

And now he had to suffer all of it — the guilt, the grief, and the grace.

He stood.

Watched the infinite loops.

"I'm not proud of what I did. But I won't deny it happened."

He turned away from the screen.

"I remember her. I remember both of them."

The world didn't shake this time.

It settled.

Like something had been accepted — finally.

6:58:01

And so, the loop didn't repeat itself in a simple way.

It grew.

Because Haruto wasn't chasing ghosts anymore.

He was carrying them.