“Now,” she whispered. “Tell me how much you know. And how long you've known it.”
Rin opened his mouth to answer. No words came out.
A sharp weight seized his lungs. He staggered backward, catching himself against the cold stone balustrade. His fingers dug into the railing.
“Takeda?” Shigure's defensive posture vanished. She immediately stepped closer. “What's wrong?”
Rin didn't answer. His mind was racing.
The pharmacy. The apartment building. The empty lot. For years, he had focused on the building.
The building.
The building.
Never the people.
He tried to picture someone walking out of the pharmacy. Anyone.
Nothing.
Someone who had lived there.
Nothing.
“No...” he whispered. His grip locked onto the stone.
Shigure watched him carefully. “What is it?”
Rin stared at the ground.
“I forgot them.”
“What?”
“I forgot them.”
“For all these years... I kept thinking about the building.”
“I searched maps. Records. Photographs. I never once thought about the people inside.”
Shigure went still.
“People lived there. They had to,” Rin whispered, his fingers curling into fists. “And I can't remember a single one of them. If people disappeared with that building... then I forgot them too.”
He looked up at her, the silence stretching between them.
“I never noticed.”
“You remember the building,” Shigure said quietly.
Rin nodded. “Yes.”
“But you don't remember who lived there.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately. Too immediately. Rin searched his memory again, but nothing surfaced—not a single face, name, or voice. Whatever should have been there felt impossibly distant, like photographs left too long in the sun.
“It happened to me too.”
Rin looked up. “What?”
“When my sister disappeared, I remembered her,” she said quietly. “But there were things I couldn't remember. Birthdays. Conversations. Small moments. I knew they happened.”
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Her fingers twisted into her sleeve.
“But some of them were gone.”
The wind howled through the darkened shrine. Neither of them spoke.
“Then we're not immune,” he whispered.
Shigure shook her head.
“I don't think we are.”
“Maybe we just remember more than everyone else.”
Rin squeezed his eyes shut, taking a slow, shuddering breath. The freezing mountain air burned his lungs, clearing the panic in his chest. He opened his eyes and looked out over the darkening valley.
“You asked me what I know,” Rin said, his voice hoarse but stabilizing.
“I've been tracking the inconsistencies for ten years. Dates. Maps. Photographs.”
He paused.
“But the most consistent thing is the time. Around 3:00 AM, everything stops. The bell rings. Then the lights come back... and something is gone.”
Shigure’s eyes darkened. “Just like my sister.”
“Yes.” Rin looked at her carefully. “Did you ever try to wake up around 3:00 AM? To catch it happening?”
Shigure let out a bitter, exhausted sigh. “So many times that I've lost count. But nothing ever happens. If I stay awake and wait for it... the night just passes perfectly normally.”
“It's the same for me,” Rin said. “But lately... whatever is causing this is getting sloppy.”
Shigure frowned, tilting her head. “Sloppy?”
“A few days ago, one of my students asked me a strange question. She'd drawn a massive geometric symbol in her notebook. She remembered something that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.”
Shigure's eyes widened. “She remembered?”
“She did,” Rin nodded heavily. “But the next morning... her memory had completely changed. She had no idea what I was talking about. She denied ever drawing the symbol.”
Shigure looked down at the faded scar on her wrist. “Nobody remembered afterward.”
“But she remembered it the day before.”
Shigure looked at him.
“So something changed.”
“Exactly.”
For the first time in his life, he wasn't looking at a stranger who thought he was crazy.
“I can't fight this alone anymore,” Rin said. “If we don't figure out what's happening at 3:14 AM... we might be the next ones to disappear.”
Shigure stared back at him. The wind whipped her dark hair across her face. Slowly, she nodded.
“Then we find out,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
But as the word left his lips, something changed.
The mountain wind seemed to drift farther away. The rustling branches became strangely distant, as though he were listening from underwater. The cold still bit at his skin, yet when he shifted his footing across the stone pavement, he couldn't hear the sound of his own step.
Rin frowned.
“Shigure?”
She didn't answer.
She stood exactly where she'd been. She hadn't shifted so much as an inch.
The wind tugged at her hair.
She didn't react.
He stepped toward her.
“Hey.”
He waved a hand in front of her face.
Nothing.
He reached out, gently touching her shoulder. Her shoulder was unnaturally still beneath his hand.
She wasn't breathing.
She didn't blink.
He pressed her shoulder again, harder this time.
“Shigure?”
Her body gave slightly beneath the push, then returned to that same, perfect stillness. Not even a twitch.
He grabbed her arm and shook it, but there was no response.
Rin pulled out his phone to call for help.
No signal.
His thumb stopped over the emergency call button.
His eyes caught the time.
3:13 AM.
His breath caught. The sun had just set. That wasn't possible.
Before he could process the thought, the numbers flickered.
3:14 AM.
A deep, heavy bell rolled through the silence.
Rin flinched.
The sound should have faded.
It didn't.
It simply continued.
Then a low metallic hum followed, vibrating through his bones.
“Shigure!”
He dropped the phone, seized both her shoulders, and shook her violently. “Open your eyes! Are you okay?!”
She didn't react.
The color drained from Shigure first.
Then from the stone shrine behind her.
The mountains dissolved into shadow.
Finally, even the sky faded into featureless black.
One by one, the world disappeared until only she remained.
Then she disappeared too.
Then even that was gone.
Someone was calling his name.
The voice drifted through the darkness.
Again.
Closer.
Closer.
Urgent.
“Takeda!”
“Wake up!”
Shigure desperately shook Rin's shoulders.
To her, the world was perfectly normal. The evening sky was there. The trees were there. The wind was still blowing.
Rin stood in the center of the shrine, eyes tightly shut.
He didn't respond to her touch.
Not once.
He was breathing.
But whatever he was seeing...
It wasn't the shrine.
“Takeda, please!”
She pulled out her own cell phone to call for help.
No signal. No bars. Nothing.
The mountain wind stopped dead.
For one terrifying heartbeat, the entire shrine became completely silent.
Then the wind rushed back.
And Rin collapsed onto the cold stone floor.