[14]

“We found another one.”

Ami didn’t look up from her workstation when she said it. The blue light of the hospital’s internal network reflected in her glasses, making her look as cold as the data she was processing.

Ishida turned toward her immediately, his hand tightening on the strap of his shoulder holster.

“Another missing? Where? Shinjuku? Minato?”

“No,” she replied, her voice dropping an octave.

“Returned.”

Silence. In Tokyo, things that go missing stay missing. The city is too big, the sea too deep, and the crowds too dense for things to simply come back. Especially things taken by the Gap.

“Where?” I asked.

“St. Luke’s International Hospital,” Ami said. “Psychiatric observation ward.”

She was sitting perfectly upright when we entered the room.

Awake.

Alert.

Staring at a point on the white wall three inches above the television.

She was too calm. There was no hospital-induced anxiety, no frantic questioning of the nurses. She sat with the stillness of a statue in an abandoned garden.

Her name was Mina.

Late twenties. A researcher for a pharmaceutical firm in Chuo. No visible injuries. No bruising, no marks of struggle.

That meant nothing. The worst injuries in this case were never on the skin.

“Do you remember what happened, Mina-san?” I asked. I kept my voice low, the way one speaks to a wounded animal.

She looked at me.

She held the gaze longer than necessary. It wasn't an aggressive look; it was a search. As if she were looking for a specific frequency in my eyes.

“…No,” she said.

The same answer. The same hollowed-out tone.

“Anything unusual before the lapse?” Ishida asked, pacing the small room. He couldn't stand the stillness. “A sound? A person? A strange light?”

She hesitated. Her pupils didn't dilate.“…I felt like I was about to remember something. Something from a long time ago. Something I never actually knew.”

Ami and I exchanged a glance.

Pattern confirmed. The "Nostalgia of the Void."

“Before that?” I asked, stepping into her line of sight. “Think about the last thing you saw in your apartment.”

She thought. For a second, her hand twitched against the hospital sheet.

“…I was looking at the wall. Near the bookshelf.”

“Anything on it? Anything that shouldn't have been there?”

“…A crack,” she whispered. “A long, diagonal crack. I remember thinking… it looked like a seam. Like the wall was just two pieces of paper held together by a thin thread.”

Ishida exhaled sharply, a frustrated hiss.

“Of course. Always the crack.”

I stepped closer, until I could smell the antiseptic on her breath.

“After the gap,” I said. “After you found yourself back in the room... did anything change? In here?” I pointed to my chest.She didn’t answer immediately. The clock on the wall ticked a heavy, mechanical sound.

Then—

“…I don’t react the same way anymore.”Silence.

“What does that mean, Mina-san?” Ami asked, leaning in.

Mina looked down at her hands. They were perfectly still. No tremor. No sweat.

“If something scares me,” she said slowly, her voice devoid of any inflection, “…I understand that it should. I see the danger. I recognize the threat.”

“But I don’t feel it.”

Ishida stiffened. He was a man who lived by his gut, by the adrenaline spike that told him when to run or fight. To him, what she was describing was a death sentence.

“That’s not normal,” he muttered.

“No,” I said quietly, my eyes never leaving hers.

“It’s not.”

I watched her closely. There was a transparency to her expression now. It was like looking at a person through a layer of thin, frosted glass.

“Do you feel alone, Mina?” I asked.

She looked up.

Directly at me.

“…No.”

The room went still.

Not dramatically. Not with a crash or a flicker of the lights.

Just... enough. As if the air had lost its weight.

“Why?” Ishida asked, his voice cracking.She tilted her head slightly, a bird-like movement.

“…Because something knows I’m here. It didn't let me go. It just… finished with that part of me.”

Silence.

No panic. No fear. No tears.

Just a terrifying, clinical certainty.

And that was worse than any scream.I stepped back, the cold from the hospital floor seeming to seep through my shoes.

Because now, the pattern wasn’t just removing physical matter from Tokyo. It wasn’t just a "missing persons" case.

It was changing perception. Emotion. Response.

It wasn't breaking people.

It was rewriting them. Small sections of the psyche were being deleted and replaced with a void. Quietly. Precisely. Without resistance.

And the most horrifying part was that most people the neighbors, the coworkers, the family would never even notice the difference. They would just think the person had become a little more... "focused."

Ami closed her tablet. Her hands were shaking.

“She isn't a survivor,” I whispered to her as we walked toward the exit.

“She’s a prototype.”