Chapter 37: The Clock Without Hands

Haruto woke up to silence.

Not quiet — silence. The kind of heavy, impossible silence that wasn't created by the absence of noise, but by the absence of expectation. As if the world had stopped — not to breathe, but to watch.

He sat up.

He was not in the Library any longer. No ash, no fire. Only pale stone tiles beneath him, stretching out into fog. The floor sloped very very gently, like the inside of a bowl. Or the rim of something enormous.

No walls.

No sky, either.

Only fog.

He stood up. His legs pounded with memory, but they still functioned. Somewhere up above him, soft and distant, a bell rang once — then was silent.

He turned slowly on his heel.

There.

The shape started to form through the mist.

Then a dark spine of rock, then defined surfaces, then glass—frosted, shattered. The building unfolded itself slowly, one breath at a time, as if recalled into existence. It didn't just stand there inside the fog. It emerged out of it. And it was gazing.

A clock tower.

Not tall, but measureless still. Its light gray stone shone dimly. Symbols ran along its bottom like veins. The architecture was old. Older than the city. Older than the reverberations.

And at the top, half-engulfed by the fog—

A face for a clock with no hands.

Haruto walked up to the tower.

His footsteps echoed softly — as if the floor was bare. Every step rolled back the mist just enough to let him through, and then rolled up again behind him. Not unfriendly. Not friendly. Just watchful.

The tower was the focus of all the loops. Not the beginning — the witness.

A door at the bottom.

It was open.

He put the flat of his hand against it.

The door didn't creak. It sighed.

Inside, the air was cold, dustless. Shelves against the walls had books on them, but each one was shut up tight. Names tickled their backs — some known, some deliberately forgotten.

He moved down aisles of unread books. Many bore his name. Many bore Hina's. One bore Ayaka's in silver ink. When he picked it up, the words vanished.

A single direction to continue — a little iron door in the back.

A spiral staircase mounted up into the dark.

He went up.

Each step pulled memory out of him. He remembered holding Ayaka's hand. Then forgot the shape her fingers were. Remembered Hina's scarf. Then forgot the color.

He reached the top, gasping.

And saw it.

In the center of the glass room — the pedestal.

On it:

A broken wristwatch.

His.

The one he'd thought was lost.

He didn't move.

It wasn't dusty. Wasn't old. It was warm.

He reached out slowly, as if he were touching a sacred relic.

As soon as his fingertips brushed against the cracked glass, he staggered.

The moment his fingers touched the cracked glass, visions danced in front of him:

Ayaka's laughter, interrupted mid-sentence.

Hina in the rain, scarf wrapped tight around her.

Mirror-Haruto, bleeding words Haruto had never said.

The Cartographer's maps, drawn in curling, interminable spirals.

The Librarian's whisper: "Only what you love."

Then: silence again.

He held the watch tightly.

It was broken.

The hands had fallen right off.

In the shattered face, tiny shards of metal lay like silver powder. Star formation of a time that no longer kept pace.

He looked up at the glass above.

The great clock face glared back — faceless, boundless, waiting to be named.

And then he noticed something else.

A body.

Sitting in the corner.

Gazing at him.

She didn't move when he adjusted.

She was small, younger than he remembered, in the outdated school uniform. Her hair was pulled back with a ribbon that flared in and out of color — red, blue, nothing.

She looked like Ayaka.

But her eyes were off.

Not hard. Not empty.

Just. too motionless.

"Do you remember me?" she said.

Haruto hesitated. "You're not her."

"No," she replied. "But I'm what you made of her.".

He moved closer. The outside fog distorted, casting shadows on the ground.

"You're the echo," he told her.

"One of many," she replied. "But the nearest to truth."

She was standing now. Her body didn't flicker. Didn't glitch. But there was something too perfect about her symmetry.

"You came here looking for her," she said. "But you built me instead. Out of grief. Out of guilt."

"I didn't do it on purpose," he breathed.

"Nobody ever does."

She reached the pedestal and set her hand on top of his. "Do you love her anymore?"

He breathed slowly.

"I did," he said. "Not because she was perfect. But because she saw me when everybody else didn't. She heard the silence I had no idea I was speaking. I think. I clung to her because she was the first proof I existed."

She nodded. "And now?"

"Now I love what she left in me. Not what I kept building around her."

She nodded. "Then let me go."

He looked down at the watch.

It didn't tick.

But it still meant something.

The girl stepped back. And when she did, she began to evaporate.

Not into light. Not into ash.

Into absence.

Into a space that had never been occupied.

Haruto took hold of the shattered watch, too late realizing it was warm. Freshly taken off.

The face of the clock above groaned.

A new crack extended the glass.

No hands. No tick.

But then — a shadow. A dim figure behind the glass. In motion.

He stared.

It was him.

But younger. Smiling.

Not calm. But relaxed.

The figure placed two hands on the glass. Not clock hands — actual hands.

And the glass cleared.

The mist out there retreated, just far enough for him to see a shape in the distance:

A bell tower.

But not this one.

Another. Deeper still.

He took the watch. Pooled it in his pocket.

The countdown whispered faintly in his ears.

6:38:11

And he began to walk.

Not to reset.

Not to forget.

But to go deeper — down to the last anchor.

Down to a buried truth.

Whatever was on the other side of the fog, he knew this:

It was where memory came to reside.

And he had gone after.