Izumi's mind flooded with thoughts.
Some brushed past him too quickly to understand. Others lingered just long enough to hurt before slipping away. They collided, tangled, and drowned each other out until he couldn't tell which were his and which were echoes left behind by the Void.
He couldn't gather them. He couldn't choose. He couldn't decide.
So he ran.
Amid the chaos, he didn't stop running. His legs moved on instinct alone, body obeying a command his mind had long abandoned. And as he ran, a question surfaced quiet, unsettling.
Why am I running?
In his past life, he had tried again and again to kill himself. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in ways no one noticed. And yet here he was now running desperately to protect a body that wasn't even his own.
The thought struck deeper than fear.
Maybe this is my true self, he wondered.
Maybe I never wanted to die at all.
Then why had he tried so hard to disappear? The question hung unanswered. No matter how he turned it over, there was nothing beneath it. Only silence.
Then in the space between two heartbeats—
The doppelgänger returned to his mind.
Not its face, Not its presence.
Just its words.
"Hide your light. Let it think you've gone dark. Become the shade and it will lose you."
Izumi slowed.
Hide my light? The thought almost felt absurd.
"I don't have any," he whispered.
Not here, Not now, Not ever.
Even in his past life, he had been nothing more than a shadow moving through a crowded world. He had never shined. Never stood out. Never been warm enough to draw anyone close.
Maybe it wasn't asking me to change, he realized. Maybe it was asking me to remain.
And then—
He stopped running.
The Void roared around him. The mist churned. The sound of crawling closed in.
Izumi stood still.
He took a slow, deliberate breath.
Memories surfaced not sharply, not painfully but calmly. How he never looked people in the eye. How conversations died in his throat before they were born. How his family spoke around him instead of to him. How his coworkers treated him like furniture present, useful, invisible.
How he spent his nights alone, trusting only the bottle because it never asked him to explain himself.
He stood there, unmoved.
Not by the chaos, Not by the creature, Not even by himself.
It felt familiar—this stillness.
Like standing at a bus station, watching crowds come and go, knowing no one would notice if he stayed behind. Like sitting at a family table, chewing in silence while voices passed over him. Like existing in a world that had already accepted his absence.
It was dark.
Completely dark and then he understood.
Hide your light…
He let out a quiet laugh soft, almost amused.
"I don't even have an ounce of light to hide."
The monster arrived.
Its presence crushed the space around him, limbs unfolding, form warping into something more horrifying than before. The air trembled as it reached the place where Izumi stood.
And found nothing.
Izumi remained there, a faint smile on his face. No expression. No fear. No emotion.
Empty, Still.
As if he belonged to the Void itself.
The creature circled the spot, its movements growing uneven. It scraped at the ground, clawed through the mist, tasting the darkness for echoes that should have been there. But the trail it had followed so faithfully fear, light, panic had vanished. The resonance it hunted thinned, fractured, and then slipped away entirely, like a sound swallowed by deep water.
Izumi watched it, For the first time, he could see it clearly. It was terrifying and yet
He didn't move.