Ten years ago.
Aokigawa City.
3:14 AM.
Rain fell steadily over Aokigawa, leaving the streets below Rin's apartment shining beneath the neon lights.
He was seventeen.
And asleep.
Until he woke up.
The urge to use the bathroom pulled him reluctantly from bed. Still half-asleep, Rin glanced at the glowing red numbers of his digital clock.
3:14 AM.
He shuffled into the hallway.
A few minutes later, he returned and pushed open his bedroom door. He was already thinking about getting back into bed when his eyes fell on the clock again.
3:14 AM.
Rin stopped.
For a moment, he simply stared at it.
He had been gone for at least a minute.
Then he noticed the tiny red colon between the numbers.
It wasn't blinking.
3:14.
Nothing moved.
Then—
Every light in the sprawling city of Aokigawa was snuffed out at once.
The apartment building across the street vanished into the black. For a second, Rin thought he had gone blind.
Rin stumbled backward against the doorframe, his lungs clawing for air. On the desk across from him, the digital clock flickered—3:14—before the red numbers died altogether. A dead silence swallowed the world.
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There were no distant train sirens, no hum of traffic, no buzzing neon. Nothing.
Rin dragged himself to the window, bare feet trembling against the cold floor.
Something about the skyline was horribly wrong.
It wasn't just dark. Entire sections of the city seemed to have vanished, leaving impossible gaps where buildings should have stood. The rain-soaked streets below gleamed with pale silver reflections.
A low metallic hum filled the silence. Slow. Rhythmic. Heavy enough to make the windowpane tremble beneath his fingertips.
The sound felt wrong. Almost alive.
Looking down at the street, Rin’s blood turned to ice. The world below stood perfectly still. Cars were dead-stopped in intersections. Traffic lights were dark. Pedestrians stood frozen mid-step beneath the lifeless glow of vending machines. For eight unbearable seconds, nothing moved.
And then—everything moved again.
Lights exploded across Aokigawa in a blinding wave. Electricity surged through the nearby buildings, train rails screeched back to life in the distance, and stray dogs barked into the wet alleys.
Rin tried to rationalize what he had seen. A massive power surge. A blackout. A waking nightmare.
But as his breathing slowed and he looked back out the window, something felt wrong.
His eyes drifted across the street below.
They stopped.
There was too much empty space.
He stared through the rain-streaked glass. What was supposed to be there?
A building...
He tried to picture it. The pharmacy on the ground floor. A faded green sign. A white cat sleeping beside the entrance.
The details slipped away whenever he tried to hold onto them.
Only then did he realize what he was staring at.
A flat, cracked asphalt parking lot, slick with rainwater.
He didn't think; he just moved. Rin grabbed his coat and sprinted downstairs, bursting out into the freezing rain. He scrambled blindly across the street, his sneakers splashing into puddles, until he stood in the dead center of the empty lot. There was no rubble. No construction equipment. No torn foundation. Absolutely nothing to prove a building had ever existed.
“Sir?” a cautious voice called out.
An elderly security guard, smoking beneath the dripping awning of a nearby shop, was eyeing Rin like he had lost his mind. “Are you alright?”
Rin spun around and pointed at the empty asphalt. “The building,” he gasped, his lungs burning. “What happened to the building?”
The guard furrowed his brow. “What building?”
“The pharmacy. The apartment building!”
The old man looked at the empty parking lot for a long, quiet moment, then glanced back at Rin with a mix of pity and unease. “What building? Sir, there's never been a building there.”
A creeping, paralyzing dread seeped straight into Rin’s bones. Rainwater dripped from his dark hair into his wide eyes. “No,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “That's not possible.”
The guard let out a nervous, uncomfortable chuckle. “You should go home, sir.”
Rin stared at him.
The words didn't make sense.
He slowly turned back toward the parking lot.
Something was missing.
Not just the building.
Something inside his own memory.
He knew he had been there.
He knew what he had seen.
He tried to remember the pharmacy sign. He couldn't remember its color anymore.
Rin stared at the empty space through the rain.
He tried to remember the building again.
Nothing came.