Chapter 32: Clues in the Shrine

Ren doesn’t tell Haru, Mina, or anyone where he’s going. As soon as the sky turns pale with early morning light, he grabs his bag and starts climbing the long stone steps toward Miyazuma Shrine.

The air feels heavier the closer he gets. The wind doesn’t blow. Even the forest seems to hold its breath. It’s as if the shrine has been waiting for him.

When he reaches the top, the first thing he notices is that something is wrong.

The torii gate is slightly shifted. The paper talismans that used to hang neatly along the rope are twisted together, forming shapes that look almost like letters. One even hangs upside down.

Ren steps forward slowly.

“Yuki…” he whispers under his breath. “Please be okay.”

He walks deeper into the shrine grounds. The gravel crunches under his shoes, but the sound feels muted, almost distant. Every step sends a faint vibration through his chest, like the remnant of that strange chime.

He reaches the main hall.

And stops.

The offering box is pushed to the side, as if someone dragged it during a struggle. The wooden floor is scratched—thin, curving lines that form a rough, swirling pattern. He kneels beside them, touching the grooves with his fingertips.

It isn’t vandalism.

It’s deliberate.

The pattern is too precise.

Almost like a map.

Almost like a message.

Ren’s pulse picks up.

Then the chime echoes again—soft, metallic, and cold—curling behind his ears like a whisper.

His vision blurs.

And then he sees it.

---

A flash of another time.

Ren stands in the same shrine, but the air is heavier. Older. Yuki is standing in front of him. She looks tired. Hurt. Not physically—emotionally. Like she’s been carrying too much for too long.

“Ren… we can’t keep doing this,” she says quietly.

He watches the memory, helpless.

He sees himself—the older him—looking away instead of answering. His jaw tightens, his fists clench. He’s angry, but he doesn’t speak. He chooses silence.

Yuki’s voice shakes.

“I need you to talk to me. Even if it’s messy… even if it scares you.”

Old Ren doesn’t answer. He just turns to leave.

The silence between them grows wide enough to swallow everything.

The vision shifts.

---

Another memory. Another moment.

They’re sitting at a dinner table, two plates untouched, tension thick enough to choke on.

“You’re shutting me out again,” Yuki says.

Ren looks exhausted. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Then talk to me.”

But he doesn’t.

He stays quiet.

Letting pride win.

Letting fear speak for him.

---

The scene shatters, replaced by yet another.

This time, they’re outside their home. Rain pours down their jackets.

Yuki is crying.

“Ren… if you keep pretending everything’s fine, we’ll fall apart.”

He steps closer—and then stops.

Fear of saying the wrong thing.

Fear of showing too much.

Fear of being vulnerable.

He freezes.

He lets her walk away.

He lets the distance grow.

He lets love rot in silence.

---

Ren snaps back to the present, breath shaking.

He presses a hand to his face, wiping at tears he didn’t realize were falling.

“That’s why we broke…” he whispers. “That’s why the future ended the way it did.”

Not because they didn’t love each other.

But because they didn’t know how to stay honest.

Because they were scared of being hurt.

Because they hid behind quiet and pride.

He sucks in a shaky breath, standing up.

The shrine is darker now, though the sun is already high. Almost as if the place is shifting, reacting to his thoughts.

The swirling scratch marks on the floor pulse faintly.

Ren follows them.

They lead behind the main hall, down a path he’s never noticed before. Moss grows thick on the stone edges, and the air turns colder. The closer he gets, the louder that chime resonates in his skull.

He finds another mark—this one carved deeply into a wooden pillar.

It’s the same looping pattern from the floor.

A spiral.

A circle.

A path that loops too many times to follow.

At the center is a break in the circle, a single gap.

A way out.

A way through.

Ren runs his thumb over the carving.

The chime rings again.

This time, he understands it a little more.

The message isn’t telling him where Yuki is.

It’s telling him why she vanished.

Because their relationship—the real one, the one from the original timeline—was full of unspoken hurt.

And now the timeline is trying to balance itself.

He steps back, staring at the pattern until the world seems to tilt.

And then another memory hits him.

Not of their marriage.

Not of their fights.

Something smaller. Softer.

---

A quiet night, long before they ever dated.

Yuki and Ren sit under the school stairway.

He’s frustrated about something stupid—grades, pressure, life.

She leans closer, nudges him gently, and says:

“Ren… being strong doesn’t mean being silent.”

Then she smiles at him, warm and patient.

A smile that always told him she saw through him.

---

Ren’s chest tightens.

He finally understands the clue.

The shrine isn’t demanding power.

It isn’t asking him to solve a puzzle.

It isn’t showing him a direction.

It’s showing him a truth.

Yuki disappeared not because she is gone…

but because the version of her tied to this timeline can’t exist while the emotional wounds between them remain the same.

To find her…

To restore the flow…

He has to confront everything they lost the first time.

The small cracks.

The quiet hurts.

The things they never said.

Yuki didn’t vanish into thin air.

She’s somewhere beyond reach until he does what he couldn’t before.

He grips the pillar tightly.

“I won’t run this time,” he whispers. “I won’t let pride make me lose her again.”

The wind stirs for the first time all morning.

The chime rings once, sharp and clear.

Almost like acknowledgement.

Almost like approval.

Ren straightens his shoulders.

He’s going to bring Yuki back.

Not by fighting time—

But by fixing the parts of himself that broke their future.