Rin woke before his alarm.
For several seconds, he remained still, staring at the ceiling.
Then his eyes moved toward the clock beside his bed.
6:12 AM.
He looked away.
He sat up. The apartment was completely silent. He looked around the dim room, his eyes catching on the sharp angles of the furniture. The edge of the desk. The closed wardrobe door. The cold cup of coffee still sitting on the dining table.
One... two... three...
He stood. At five-foot-eleven, he cast a long, quiet shadow across the floorboards. He pulled on a crisp shirt, buttoning it with methodical, practiced movements. He strapped his watch to his wrist. Then, he picked up the broken arcade coin from his nightstand, slipped it into his shirt pocket, put on his coat, and left.
The streets of Mizuhara were damp and grey.
Strangely, the steady, rhythmic slapping of his shoes against the wet pavement dragged his mind back to the past. The suffocating darkness. The frozen city. The gaping void where a building used to be. It felt like an echo of his desperate sprint through the streets of Aokigawa years ago. But back then, he had been running blindly toward the impossible.
Today, he was just walking.
His thoughts turned to Nagi.
What if she forgot what happened yesterday too?
By the time Rin walked through the school gates, rainwater was dripping steadily from his dark hair. He didn't rush. Bypassing the teachers' lounge entirely, he moved calmly through the hallways, his eyes methodically scanning the morning crowds.
He swept past classrooms, stairways, and corridors without breaking his steady pace.
Finally, he spotted her near the courtyard, chatting casually with her friends.
Rin walked straight toward them.
“Nagi.”
She turned, and her friends offered polite bows.
“Good morning, Takeda-sensei.”
“Good morning.” Rin looked at Nagi. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”
Nagi tilted her head. “Of course, sensei.”
He led her a short distance down the corridor, away from the other students. Rain tapped softly against the courtyard windows.
Rin stopped.
“Nagi, did you tell anyone about our conversation yesterday?”
She frowned. “Our conversation?”
“The one during class.”
She looked at him for a moment. “I don't remember talking to you during class.”
Rin said nothing.
He studied her face.
“You don't remember asking me a question?”
“What question?”
Rin's eyes remained on hers. “You asked whether I ever wake up before three.”
Nagi stared at him. “I didn't ask you that.”
Rin waited.
Her expression didn't change.
“You're certain?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
Rin looked away for a moment. “Yesterday, in class, you also said the city burned before it flooded.”
Nagi's eyebrows drew together. “I said that?”
“Yes.”
“I don't remember.”
Rin watched her carefully. “Think about it.”
She lowered her eyes. “I'm sorry, sir. I really don't.”
Rin nodded once. “Alright.”
He turned toward the classroom.
Nagi followed him, confused. “Sir?”
“I want to ask the class about yesterday.”
When they entered the classroom, Rin addressed the students who had been sitting nearby the previous day.
“I have a question.”
The students looked up.
“Yesterday, during class, did Nagi say anything about the Coastal Floods of 2012?”
A boy near the window shook his head. “No, sir.”
Another student hesitated. “I don't think so.”
Silence.
Then Daichi looked at him. “I don't remember that either.”
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Rin's gaze moved across the room. “You're all certain?”
Several students nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Rin looked at Nagi.
She was watching him now.
Not frightened.
Confused.
Rin lowered his eyes to the desk in front of him.
The classroom looked exactly as it had yesterday. Same desks. Same windows. Same students.
But something had changed.
He knew what had happened. He remembered every word.
And now, apparently, he was the only one who did.
He moved through the rest of the day on instinct. He taught his classes, answered questions, and ate lunch without really noticing any of it. By the time the final bell rang, he was exhausted.
Outside, a cold drizzle had begun to fall. Rin walked home slowly, barely noticing the rain soaking through his coat.
When he finally reached his apartment, he didn't even bother removing his shoes properly. He let his bag drop to the entryway floor with a dull thud and walked straight into the bathroom. He turned the shower on full blast and stood beneath the freezing water, still fully clothed.
Sir... do you ever wake up exactly before 3:00 AM?
Rin pressed his forehead against the cold tile and closed his eyes.
She had forgotten.
She was safe.
She could go on with her normal life.
But as the water pounded against his shoulders, the relief never came.
Instead, the old isolation returned.
He was the only one left.
Again.
Slowly, the roar of the shower began to change.
Water against tile became rain against glass.
The sound pulled him back to that night.
The bathroom disappeared.
An empty parking lot stretched before him.
He was seventeen again.
In the immediate aftermath of the disappearance, he had practically torn his life apart looking for proof. The moment he stumbled back into his apartment that night, he snatched up his phone with violently trembling hands. He searched old satellite imagery. Nothing. Street-view archives. Nothing. Even background photographs uploaded by strangers on social media showed the exact same empty lot. He searched frantically, zooming into the empty lot on the digital map until his eyes burned and his vision blurred. But every single result mocked him. An empty parking lot. No pharmacy. No apartment block. Nothing.
The next morning, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He waited until his parents were both at the kitchen table.
“Mom... Dad... the apartment building across the street. There was a pharmacy on the ground floor.”
His mother looked up from her tea. “What apartment building?”
“The one across the street.”
She frowned, exchanging a quick glance with his father.
His father lowered the newspaper. “Rin... there's never been an apartment building across the street.”
“There has!” Rin insisted.
His mother reached across the table and rested a hand on his wrist.
“Honey...” she said gently, “are you feeling alright?”
Rin stared at her.
His father spoke more cautiously this time.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
“No.”
“Then why are you saying this?”
Rin looked from one parent to the other.
Neither of them was joking. Neither of them remembered.
He pulled his arm away, a cold, suffocating panic settling in his chest. He didn't argue. He just backed out of the kitchen.
His parents didn't remember. He did. A terrifying seed of doubt had already been planted, forcing him to question the only thing he still trusted—his own mind.
He needed someone to prove him right. He needed just one person to see what he saw.
Back then, the only tether Rin had to reality was his best friend, Touya Shinjo.
Touya was everything Rin wasn't—outgoing, deeply charismatic, and effortlessly capable of navigating social circles. Whenever Rin found himself drowning in social anxiety, Touya was the one who pulled him out.
That morning, Rin waited near the school gate long before classes started. The moment he spotted Touya walking toward the entrance, he hurried across the road to intercept him.
“Touya,” he called out.
His friend looked surprised, noting how unusually early Rin was, but Rin barely registered the words. He stepped closer, his voice tight.
“I need to show you something.”
Touya frowned, glancing toward the campus. “Right now? Rin, classes are about to start.”
“Yeah. Right now,” Rin insisted. “Just come with me. Please.”
There was a quiet, desperate edge in his voice that made Touya pause. For a long moment, Touya just studied Rin's pale, exhausted face, searching for an explanation.
Then, with a soft sigh of resignation, he yielded.
“Fine. What's going on?”
Rin didn't answer.
“Just come with me,” he said quietly.
He turned immediately and started walking back the way he had come. A strange, heavy knot had formed in his chest. He didn't know how to explain the missing building or the terrifying silence of the night before, and he didn't want to try. He only knew that if Touya just saw the empty lot with his own eyes, everything would finally make sense.
Neither of them spoke during the walk. Several minutes later, they arrived at the vacant, rain-soaked lot.
Rin stopped.
Slowly, he pointed toward the empty asphalt. He took a shaky breath.
“There used to be a building there. A pharmacy, too. Don't you remember?”
Touya didn't answer immediately. He walked slowly onto the cracked asphalt. His eyes swept over the empty lot, the neighboring walls, the skyline. Then he turned back, searching his memory.
“...No. I don't think there was ever a building there.”
Desperate, Rin snatched his phone from his pocket and pulled up the digital map. He shoved it toward his friend.
“Look.”
Touya stared at the glowing screen for a moment.
“Rin, if there was a building,” he reasoned gently, “then why does the map show an empty space?”
Rin stared at him, the phone trembling in his hand. He looked past Touya to the flat, rain-soaked pavement where a building should have stood.
“Please,” Rin whispered, his eyes locking back onto Touya's. “Touya, look.”
His voice cracked.
“There was a pharmacy there. I swear there was.”
Touya's expression changed.
The confusion in his face gave way to something softer.
Pity.
Rin looked away.
Touya wasn't convinced, but he didn't leave.
“Let's check the city records,” he offered quietly.
He followed Rin from archive to archive, watching his friend's desperation grow with every dead end. They scoured public libraries, building permit records, old zoning maps, and construction blueprints.
Nothing.
Every single document confirmed the terrifying lie: the lot had always been empty.
Touya looked through the records again.
“There's nothing. Not one record of a building ever being there.”
“So you think I'm lying?” Rin asked.
Touya shook his head. “I didn't say that.”
“Then what?”
Touya looked back at the records.
“I'm saying I don't know what happened. We've checked everything we can.”
Rin said nothing.
Their voices had grown louder without either of them noticing.
At the last library, an elderly archivist approached the two exhausted boys.
“Can I help you, young men?”
Rin looked up, his eyes bloodshot and hollow.
“Yes, sir...” he stammered, his voice vibrating with unshed tears. “I... I want to ask something. There's an empty lot near my apartment. Can you tell me if there used to be a building there?”
The old man pushed his glasses up his nose, studying the map coordinates, before shaking his head with a gentle smile.
“No.”
Rin's eyes dropped to the floor.
“...Why not?”
“Young man, I moved to this city when I was just a boy. I lived right near that sector while the city was still developing.” The archivist paused, then shook his head gently. “There has never been a building there.”
Rin's shoulders finally caved inward. Whatever hope he had been clinging to quietly collapsed.
“...I see,” he whispered.
Later that evening, the two boys sat in heavy silence on a park bench, facing the setting sun. The dying, blood-orange light washed over Rin's face, exposing every line of his devastation. He looked entirely hollowed out.
Slowly, his hand rose, trembling, to cover his eyes.
Through the cracks of his fingers, in a quiet, breaking whimper, he asked the only question he had left.
“...Do you believe me?”
Touya held his gaze for a long, agonizing moment. Finally, he answered in a soft, steady voice.
“I believe in you.”
Then, Touya leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“But Rin... do you believe yourself?”
The memory dissolved into the sound of rushing water.
Standing fully clothed beneath the freezing shower in the pitch-black bathroom of his apartment, twenty-seven-year-old Rin slowly opened his eyes. Rivulets of water streamed down the foggy mirror in front of him. His own exhausted, haunted reflection stared back at him through the gloom.
And for the first time in over a decade, Rin Takeda answered the question out loud.
“Yes.”
He believed himself.