"Some voices speak louder the more they are silenced."
The quiet after the Chair felt unnatural.
As Orin and Junie climbed the spiral stairway back toward the surface, silence clung to them like a second skin—dense, expectant, too clean. It wasn't the silence of emptiness.
It was the silence of something waiting.
Orin couldn't stop glancing behind them, half-expecting the stairwell to seal itself shut, trapping the truth where it had been buried.
Junie walked a step ahead, flashlight gripped in her fist, though the air had begun to shimmer faintly around them, as though the walls were giving off a dull luminescence. She hadn't spoken since they'd left the Chair. Her face was pale, her knuckles white around the handle of her sketchpad.
Something had shifted in both of them.
But neither yet had the words for it.
When they emerged from beneath Unit 402, the world outside didn't greet them.
It observed them.
The store was still empty. Silent. But now, even the lights felt wrong. They didn't just flicker—they paused. Orin watched one overhead blink, then stay dark a second too long. Another blinked out entirely.
Time was lagging.
Not for them—but for the space around them.
"We've ruptured the node," Junie said quietly, voice hoarse.
Orin turned to her. "What does that mean?"
She looked up. "The System tried to seal away the Chair. But it never fixed the breach. It just… looped reality around it. Now that someone's sat in it again, the loop's fraying. It's not just you waking up, Orin. It's the memory of the city."
They didn't speak again until they reached the cracked alley that led back toward the Old Quarter.
It took them nearly an hour to walk the route that should have taken fifteen minutes.
Not because they moved slowly—though they did—but because the city itself had begun to fold.
Street corners repeated.
Signs they'd passed once began to reappear.
Three times they passed the same fruit stand, operated by a man with an identical smile, saying, "Special's fresh today," with the same exact cadence each time.
And on the third loop, Orin stopped.
He turned toward the man.
"You've said that line three times."
The vendor blinked.
Then blinked again.
And again.
His body stuttered—looped—for half a second.
Junie pulled Orin's sleeve sharply. "Don't. He's caught in a short-loop. They'll detect interference."
"But he's—"
"They'll correct him if he deviates. Trust me. I've seen it."
They hurried past. Behind them, the vendor resumed his chant.
"Special's fresh today. Special's fresh today. Speci—"
Then silence.
By the time they reached the abandoned train terminal Junie called home, the shadows had lengthened unnaturally. The sun, half-set for hours, hung like a broken clock hand, refusing to sink.
Inside, it was cool, dim, and filled with the rustling breath of old paper and memory.
Junie dropped her sketchpad on the crate that served as her desk and sat without speaking.
Orin remained near the entrance, arms crossed, eyes heavy.
He hadn't told her yet.
About the voice.
About how it hadn't stopped speaking.
It began again while Junie sketched.
Soft at first.
A sound beneath sound. Not quite a whisper. More like the memory of a whisper.
Orin froze, eyes narrowing.
"You... are still here."
This time, it was clearer.
Orin staggered and gripped the wall. His vision blurred. The temperature dropped several degrees.
Junie looked up, alarmed.
"What's wrong?"
He didn't answer at first.
The voice wasn't coming from the outside. Not even from within.
It was coming from underneath his thoughts.
Deep, like an old floorboard creaking under years of pressure.
"You opened the path... I can't hold shape long… but the echo remains."
Orin pressed a hand to his temple, forcing his breath to steady.
Junie stood. "Orin—talk to me. What's happening?"
He closed his eyes.
And listened.
A rush of sound washed over him.
Not a scream.
Not a message.
A memory.
He was somewhere else again.
Standing in the ruins of a massive hall made of glass and code. Screens shattered. Wires dangled from broken walls. At the center, the Chair—fractured.
And kneeling beside it was Kaito.
Breathing hard.
Bleeding code from his eyes.
He looked up.
And spoke—not with words.
But with grief.
"You are me."
"You are what I couldn't be."
"And maybe... that's enough."
Orin tried to move. To speak.
But the memory would not allow action. Only witnessing.
When the vision snapped, Orin collapsed against the wall.
Junie was there immediately, gripping his shoulders. Her hands were warm. Real. Grounding.
"What did you see?"
He looked at her, eyes rimmed with tears.
"Kaito's voice… it's alive. Trapped. Not full—not human—but there. Fragmented."
Junie sat back, stunned.
Then her gaze drifted toward her sketchbook.
She opened to the most recent page.
And gasped.
The page had filled itself.
She hadn't drawn it.
A face—his.
Not Orin as he was now.
But older.
Like Kaito.
Tears streaming.
Hands clutching a pendant he didn't recognize.
Behind him, flames devoured a library of mirrors.
And etched in the corner of the page, in her own handwriting, though she didn't remember writing it, were three words:
He never left.
Later, they sat together on the cracked floor of the terminal.
No words for a long time.
Junie finally broke the silence.
"What if... it's not just you remembering Kaito?"
Orin looked at her.
"What if he's trying to wake up through you? Not to live, but to finish what he couldn't."
Orin stared at his hand.
The Diver mark shimmered faintly.
Almost… breathing.
And then the voice whispered once more:
"Find… the bell."
"The tower still remembers."
"She drew it."
"She knows."
Orin turned slowly to Junie.
"…He's not speaking to just me."
Her eyes widened.
And she nodded.
Kaito's voice grows louder—and it's calling both of them. But if Junie drew the bell tower, and doesn't remember it, what truth is buried in her erased past?
© 2025 Ofelia B Webb. All rights reserved.
This is an original work published on WebNovel.