What He Was Made To Remember

The fight was over. That realization didn’t arrive with clarity or relief. It came late, clumsy, like a thought that had missed its timing and didn’t know where to sit anymore. Dust hung in the air where the Wraith had been, thin and weightless, drifting downward in lazy spirals. Ash settled against broken pavement, against shattered stone, against Takumi’s unmoving body. Nothing reacted. Nothing acknowledged that something important had just ended.

The 25th Hour didn’t collapse. It didn’t soften. It didn’t mourn. It simply… continued.

Kazu stood where he was, sword still in his hand, arm extended forward as if the last strike hadn’t finished yet. His chest rose and fell unevenly, breath scraping through his lungs like they’d been lined with broken glass. Every inhale burned. Every exhale felt too small. He didn’t lower the blade. Not because he was ready to fight again — but because his body hadn’t been told it was allowed to stop. Blood dripped from his knuckles. He didn’t remember cutting his hand. It slid down the fuller of his sword, dark and slow, gathering at the tip before falling to the ground with a sound too soft to matter.

Behind him, Reina sank to her knees.

The motion was awkward, off-balance, like her legs had forgotten how to support weight properly. Her sword slipped from her fingers and clattered beside her, loud in a way that felt wrong, intrusive. She didn’t look at it. She didn’t look at anything. Her hands were shaking too hard to rest against the ground.

“Kazu…” Her voice barely made it out. It cracked immediately, fractured into something thin and unusable. She tried again, swallowing hard. “Kazu, it’s—” She stopped. Because she didn’t know what it was. Over. Finished. Safe. None of those words fit the shape of the silence around them.

Kazu didn’t turn. He stared ahead, eyes unfocused, fixed on the empty space where the Wraith had dissolved. His mind kept expecting something — a shift, a return, a correction. Some indication that this wasn’t the final state of things. Nothing came. The ash settled completely. That was when his arm finally began to tremble. Not violently. Not dramatically. Just enough that the sword wavered, the tip dipping a few inches before he tightened his grip again out of reflex. His fingers felt wrong. Too stiff. Too numb. When he tried to flex them, the sensation lagged behind the movement.

Somewhere behind him, Reina let out a sound — not a sob, not a cry — something caught halfway between breath and pain. She pressed her fist to her mouth, shoulders curling inward as if she could make herself smaller, disappear into the space Takumi used to occupy.

Kazu’s throat tightened. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. The name sat there, lodged somewhere behind his teeth, heavy and immovable. He could feel it pressing against the inside of his skull, demanding to be spoken. He didn’t know how to let it out without breaking something vital. So he didn’t. He took a step forward instead. The motion was automatic, thoughtless. His boot scraped against fractured stone, the sound sharp in the quiet. That was when he noticed it — the faint tapping noise that didn’t belong to rubble or settling debris.

Tap. Tap. Tap. It was soft. Measured. Almost polite.

Kazu’s body reacted before his mind did. His shoulders tensed. His grip tightened. Something ugly and hot surged up through his chest, burning past the numbness with violent clarity. He turned.

The Red Umbrella Guy stood several meters away.

He hadn’t emerged. He hadn’t arrived. He was simply… there. Umbrella open above his head, angled slightly to one side, as if sheltering himself from a rain only he could feel. The fabric was clean. Untorn. Completely untouched by the destruction surrounding him. He hadn’t stepped on any ash.

Kazu felt something snap.

“You,” he said.

The word came out low, scraped raw from his throat. Not a question. Not disbelief. Recognition sharpened into certainty.

Reina’s head jerked up. “Kazu—?”

He was already moving. The distance between them vanished under the force of his sprint. Pain flared through his ribs immediately, sharp and insistent, but he didn’t slow. His sword came up in a wide, reckless arc, aimed straight for the Umbrella Guy’s neck. Steel met fabric. The umbrella tilted just enough to deflect the blade, the metal skidding harmlessly along its surface with a harsh screech. The impact jarred Kazu’s arms to the shoulder.

The Umbrella Guy didn’t move his feet.

“That anger,” he said calmly, voice mild, almost conversational, “won’t bring them back.”

Kazu snarled and swung again. This time faster. Lower. A brutal horizontal cut meant to gut. The umbrella shifted. Once. The strike glanced off, redirected with minimal effort. Kazu overextended, momentum pulling him forward. He barely managed to catch himself before stumbling past.

“You did this!” Kazu shouted, spinning back around. His vision blurred at the edges, wet and unfocused. “You watched! You let him die!”

The Umbrella Guy regarded him quietly, head tilted slightly, like he was considering something unimportant.

“Nothing will change,” he said, “if you stay the way you are.”

“I’m not here to listen to someone like you!” Kazu roared. He attacked again. And again. And again. His form was gone. His balance sloppy. Each strike carried more emotion than intent, more fury than control. The Umbrella Guy blocked every one with small, precise movements of the umbrella — tapping the blade aside, redirecting the angle, letting Kazu’s own force work against him. Metal rang out. Over and over.

Reina tried to stand. Her legs buckled immediately, sending her back to the ground. “Kazu, stop! You can’t—!”

A sudden pressure slammed into the air between her and them. Invisible. Absolute. She hit it like a wall. Her hands pressed flat against nothing, fingers splayed, breath hitching as she realized she couldn’t move forward no matter how hard she pushed.

“Kazu!” she screamed. He didn’t hear her.

“Do you even remember why you’re here?” the Umbrella Guy asked, deflecting another strike without looking. “Your regret?”

Kazu’s blade slipped. Not fully. Just enough.

“No,” the Umbrella Guy continued, voice cool. “You don’t, do you?”

Something cold slid down Kazu’s spine. He lunged anyway, thrusting straight for the Umbrella Guy’s chest. The umbrella snapped closed. The metal shaft struck Kazu’s wrist with surgical precision. His sword fell from his hand. It hit the ground with a dull thud. Kazu froze.

The Umbrella Guy laughed.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a quiet, breathy sound, sharp with amusement.

“You’re so naïve,” he said. “Kazu.”

Kazu’s heart slammed against his ribs.

“Or should I call you…” The Umbrella Guy lifted his gaze, eyes locking onto Kazu’s with unsettling intimacy. “Kazutoro Hayashi.”

The world lurched. Kazu staggered back a step, panic clawing its way up his throat. “H-how do you know my name?!”

The Umbrella Guy opened the umbrella again with a soft click.

“Don’t ask how,” he replied. “I know everything about you.”

The air felt suddenly colder. Not physically, something deeper. Like the temperature inside Kazu’s chest had dropped several degrees all at once. He attacked again. Desperate now. Erratic. Sloppy. The umbrella struck in his ribs. Once. Twice. Each impact sent sharp, blinding pain through his body. He coughed, something wet splattering against the ground. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“You should stop struggling,” the Umbrella Guy said mildly.

Kazu screamed and rushed him anyway. The umbrella slammed into his stomach. Hard. Kazu folded, air ripped violently from his lungs. He dropped to one knee, gagging, vision swimming. Before he could recover, the Umbrella Guy grabbed his collar and slammed him onto his back. The ground cracked beneath the impact. Kazu gasped, mouth opening and closing uselessly.

The Umbrella Guy knelt beside him.

Up close, the pressure was unbearable — not weight, not force, but certainty. Like something that had already decided Kazu didn’t get to refuse. A hand pressed against Kazu’s temple. It was cold. Not the kind that numbs. The kind that invades. And the world broke. Not shattered, peeled away. The street vanished. The ground vanished. The pain in his ribs cut off mid-sensation, like someone yanked the wire out of his body. For half a second, there was nothing — and then the cold hit.

It crushed him from every direction at once.

Kazu screamed. He felt his throat tear with the effort, felt his lungs contract violently — but there was no sound. No echo. No feedback. It was like screaming inside a sealed coffin where even your own body refused to acknowledge you. His limbs didn’t respond. He tried to move his arms. Nothing happened. Tried to kick, to twist, to curl inward — there was no sense of up or down. His body wasn’t paralyzed. It was irrelevant. Like it had been left behind somewhere else.

Then the screens appeared. They didn’t fade in. They were just there, instantly, completely, filling every direction he tried to look. Above him. Below him. Beside him. Behind him. Layered so densely that distance stopped meaning anything. Hundreds. No — thousands. Each one played something different. Too fast to follow. Too close to avoid. The moment he focused on one, it slipped away, replaced by another. His eyes darted desperately, trying to land on something stable, something he could understand — but every attempt just pulled more into view.

His head began to throb. A deep, splitting pain bloomed behind his eyes, like his skull was being forced open from the inside. He grabbed at his head on instinct, fingers clawing into his hair, nails scraping skin hard enough to sting.

“Stop,” he gasped.

The word came out wrong — strangled, incomplete, like his mouth didn’t remember how to form it.

“Please— stop—” No one listened.

The screens accelerated. Not smoothly — violently. The light strobed, flickering erratically, jerking his vision from one fragment to another so fast his eyes burned. His stomach lurched. A wave of nausea slammed into him, sudden and overwhelming. His chest seized. He tried to inhale. His lungs refused. Not completely, just enough to panic him. Each breath came shallow and thin, scraping through his throat like air forced through a crack too small to survive on. His heart slammed against his ribs, frantic, uneven, like it was trying to escape his chest.

Cold seeped deeper. Into his spine. Into his teeth. Into his thoughts. He felt small. Not metaphorically.

Physically, like the space around him was expanding while he stayed the same, stretching him thinner, reducing him to something fragile and exposed in the middle of infinite noise.

He tried to curl inward again. There was nowhere to curl. No ground to press against. No wall to brace himself on. No way to shield his face. The cold wrapped around him completely, leaving no edge, no boundary to push against. Panic finally broke through..He screamed. Again. And again. His chest burned now, raw and aching, each forced breath tearing at his lungs. His throat felt shredded. Tears streamed down his face, hot and useless against the cold that didn’t care.

Blood spilled from his mouth.

He didn’t feel the moment it started — only the warmth sliding down his chin, the metallic taste flooding his tongue. His nose burned, then bled, droplets floating briefly before vanishing into nothing. The screens moved closer. Not drifting. Closing in. They crowded his vision, compressing the space around him, overlapping until there was no empty gap left to look through. The light became unbearable, stabbing straight through his skull. His head rang.

A high, piercing whine built inside his ears, louder and louder, until it felt like his thoughts were vibrating apart. Cracks appeared. Not in one screen. In all of them. Thin fractures spread simultaneously across every surface, spiderwebbing outward in perfect unison. The sound followed a heartbeat later — a low, resonant stress noise that set his teeth on edge. Kazu sobbed. Not words anymore. Just sound. Just air ripping out of him..The cracks widened. The light flared. And then—

Everything shattered.

Kazu collapsed back into his body with a violent jolt.

It felt like being dropped into his own body from a height he couldn’t measure..His spine hit first. Then his shoulders. Then the back of his head. The impact knocked the air clean out of him, a dry, strangled sound tearing from his throat as his body folded uselessly against the ground. He didn’t move. His arms lay where they fell. Fingers curled wrong. Legs twisted slightly at the knee, like they no longer belonged to him. His eyes were open — too open — staring up at nothing, pupils blown wide enough to swallow what little light remained.

The Umbrella Guy straightened.

He withdrew his hand with the same casual care someone might use after closing a book. No strain. No reaction. As if nothing worth noting had just been done.

Kazu lay there, chest barely rising. Each breath came shallow and uneven, hitching halfway in, stuttering out. Blood bubbled weakly at the corner of his mouth, thick and dark, pulsing in time with his heart before spilling down his chin. His face was frozen. Not in pain. In terror. The kind that locks muscles in place long after the danger has passed.

His jaw trembled faintly, teeth clenched so tight they ached. A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin, cold and clammy, like his body hadn’t realized yet that it was allowed to live.

“Make sure you remember,” the Umbrella Guy said.. Soft. Almost kind.

“Everything,” he continued. “And what you should do.”

Kazu didn’t respond. If he even heard it, there was no sign.

The Umbrella Guy was gone before the echo of his voice faded. The pressure vanished. The barrier collapsed without ceremony, dissolving into nothing like it had never existed.

Reina ran. She didn’t think twice — her body moved on instinct alone. Her sword clattered uselessly to the ground as she dropped beside him, knees skidding on debris. Her hands shook as she slid one arm beneath his neck, the other bracing his shoulder.

“Kazu—” Her voice broke immediately. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Kazu, look at me. Please. Look at me.” His body jolted with a weak cough. Blood spilled freely this time, staining her sleeve, warm and real. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t even flinch. She just held him closer, one trembling hand cupping his cheek, her thumb brushing frantically beneath his eye.

“Hey,” she whispered, desperate. “I’m here. You’re here. Just, just stay with me.” His eyes shifted. At first, it was barely noticeable — a minute adjustment, unfocused gaze drifting sideways. Then they locked onto her. Focused..Present. Reina froze..Something about his expression made her breath catch painfully in her chest. It wasn’t relief..It wasn’t recognition.

His eyes weren’t brighter. They weren’t darker. There was no glow, no dramatic change. They were… awake. Too awake. Like someone who had seen something they were never meant to see — and had come back not broken, but altered. The fear was still there, buried deep, but layered beneath it was something heavier..Weight. Understanding.

A quiet, unsettling calm settling behind his gaze, like a door that had been opened and could never be shut again. Kazu swallowed, throat working painfully. His lips parted, but no words came. Reina felt it then, not logically, not consciously, just a deep, sinking certainty in her chest.

Something had survived inside him. And whatever it was… It wasn’t the boy who had collapsed moments ago. And somewhere inside him, the waiting finally stopped.

Whatever had answered him in that cold place didn’t intend to leave.