Chapter 44: The Whole Truth

Time didn't stretch here. It folded.

Haruto, Hina got into a respiratory world. Colors changed upon their naming. Roads originated out of blanketing memoirs. A store break shop turned into a hospital corridor turned into a train station. Darkness flickers along with lights that had no source gave shade to the shapes of persons who had not stood there in a long, long time.

At what could have been an outdated soft drink machine, Haruto stood and, glancing at the screen, a list of beverages, and what seemed to be a half-finished mathematical problem of his third year.

Hina touched a wall beside her. The Archive is attempting to recall the Archive, murmuring within itself...

He nodded. "But it's forgetting the shape."

The avenue in their vicinity exhaled once, a very long, heavy breath, and the world narrowed itself into a square. Flat, gray stone. Fleshed benches of their school-yard. Lamps of an uproarious event they hardly recalled.

And in the middle --

The Cartographer.

Only now, they weren't a person. Not quite.

Their skin was of soot and of thread and unworked designs. Their face interchanged with every trace upon every map ever to Haruto numerous faces. They grinned at me, as though they were saying sorry.

Greetings to the faultlands, they said.

Haruto blinked. "What is this place?"

The innermost of all the Archive, the Cartographer answered. Where there is form in truth - but little.

Hina stepped forward. "What do you want from us?"

Nothing, the Cartographer said. This is what the system will not tell you.

They transferred to a bench and intrigued Haruto and Hina to be seated. They didn't. The Cartographer appeared not indignant.

They started by saying that The Archive was never intended to hold so many anchors. It was not supposed to grab timelines. It was a single corridor. A single loop. For a single person."

Haruto's pulse slowed. "Ayaka."

The Cartographer nodded.”After she passed away in your world--in your first world--your own mind was starting to crack, too. You had glimpses of her everywhere. You turned on the system with your hopelessness. She offered herself to it."

Hina said, “she had decided to be an echo.”

"No," the Cartographer said. "She made the decision to be the first anchor.

Haruto frowned. "What's the difference?"

The Map-Maker came forward. An echo is an impaction in the system--a product of emotional luggage. Passive. Fading. But an anchor... an anchor is voluntary. It is a memory that removes definitions of the system. Ayaka then decided to be the basis. Not to haunt thee, -- but to keep thee.

In their gaze they stared at Haruto.

It was because she did not want you to fall under the burden of losing her. And so she worked in the very heart of the Archive. This is why all loops culminate with her. She wasn't trapped. She was waiting with the door ajar--on your account.

Haruto's throat felt dry. "But why didn't anyone tell me?"

It is impossible to have infinite systems: you can teach the system. It proposed that you should choose what to keep--and what to lose. Each of her later echoes was conditioned by Contingent upon this initial selection.

He stumbled back a step. "But I didn't choose. Not at first."

"No," the Cartographer said. "You just remembered her. And that was enough."

It was light flickering overhead. Ayaka was there in the sky-- not flickering-- not corrupted for a moment. Just still. Waiting.

Haruto's lips parted. “Did she know what it would cost her?”

“She knew,” said the Cartographer. "And she chose it anyway. She would give her place in the world to you, because you were important in her life.”

The pictures flicked back and forth, about the room in which they were.

Ayaka on a balcony where Haruto is asleep in the library.

Ayaka leaving a note in his locker.

Ayaka shedding tears in a hall that happened to have no people after a talk that had never found its way to memory.

Ayaka had not spoken, but had made no motion.

To everything avoided by others she volunteered.

It was she who was staying out late, who spent hours editing the school paper at times when no one was willing or able.

One of the others had once got home on his injured legs in the rain; and that was done by her, simply because she could not think of her not crying with anticipation of their sobbing back alone.

Haruto's hands trembled.

And he now recalled those things.

A hundred moments. Her words at school at night, telling her, I just want to help, even when I vanish.

He had no idea at the time where she was heading.

The Cartographer said, “she died saving someone. It wasn't dramatic. Just one wrong moment. And now that the system called-- when your hurtness broke an opening-- when your readiness to break rose and spoke-- she was not running away.”

The Cartographer added, “she became the Archive. So you would not lose all the rest besides.”

"She loved you," they said. "More than permanence. More than pride."

Hina swung around to the floating pictures - uncertain, yet not hostile.

"She was made into the Archive so that I do not go mad”, said Haruto.

She turned to a Cartographer, and he amended his statement: “She became the Archive, that you might decide on creating something of your own.”

The silence is the breath of a sigh, Suffocated.

Haruto stared at Hina, glancing in her direction, no sign on her face, and yet, as if nothing was missing.

It was her presence not that of the ghost of Ayaka.

It was Hina who dropped the glitches.

Who chose to stay.

I thought I had to pick them, that was, who you loved most of all, he whistled.

The voice of the Cartographer sank. “Love does not quantify itself in years. It measures in choice. Ayaka was your past. But Hina was the one you continued to make.”

Hina said, "I do not want to be a substitute. I want to be chosen. Not instead of her. But for what we are."

Haruto turned to her. "You're not the echo. You're the answer."

The Cartographer nodded. “Yes, so, Ayaka may have been loved more by Haruto once. but now he does not mean to live for the past.”

They were all there and there was no pain, but there was no silence.

Haruto addressed the Cartographer. "What happens if I don't choose?"

The cartographer sunk his eyes into his blindness. "Then the Archive chooses. And it will take the most hearty echo. The one seeded first."

Ayaka appeared to Haruto looking up at his face. "Then that would be her."

"Yes," the Cartographer said. “Not unless you do another thing.”

Hina stood steady beside him. Her hand found his again.

“I never wanted to forget her,” Haruto answered. “But I want to live a story that isn’t trapped in a loop.”

“Then let her rest,” The Cartographer said.

Haruto swallowed. The world started to shake on them. Streets bent inward. Desks floated past. Victory Photos, locker doors, splashed scarf.

He turned to Hina. There was something wavering in her figure, but yet, not an error. She stared at him, and stayed to stare.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

"Always," she said.

Haruto stared at the Cartographer. "Then I need to see the bell."

The Cartographer drew his head.

"It's waiting.”