Aira started paying attention.
Once she did, the city stopped pretending.
People moved with purpose, but never urgency. Shops opened and closed without announcing hours. Trains arrived on schedule, yet no one ever checked the time. Conversations ended before they reached anything important.
Nothing here started.Nothing ever finished either.
It simply continued.
Aira followed Elin through the city in the days that followed. They walked streets that looped back to themselves and crossed intersections where traffic lights changed even when no cars passed.
Elin never brought a bag.
Never checked her phone.
Never seemed to be going anywhere.
"Where do you live?" Aira asked once.
Elin tilted her head, thinking carefully.
"I don't think I do," she said. "I just… stay."
The answer should have sounded strange.
It didn't.
They stopped by a café near the river. People sat inside, sipping drinks that slowly cooled, staring out the windows as if waiting for something to happen on the water.
Aira watched Elin lift her cup.
"You're not drinking," Aira said.
Elin looked down at it, surprised.
"Oh," she murmured. "I forgot."
She set the cup back down, untouched.
Aira suddenly realized she couldn't remember the last time she had felt thirsty.
Later that evening, they passed the hospital.
The building was large, clean, and brightly lit. Ambulances stood parked in neat rows, engines off. The entrance doors slid open and closed periodically, welcoming no one.
Aira slowed her steps.
"Have you ever been inside?" she asked.
Elin shook her head.
"There's nothing there for people like us."
"What does that mean?"
Elin smiled, but there was something apologetic in it.
"You'll understand later," she said.
That night, Aira dreamed of standing above the city.
She saw it clearly—from the sky, from nowhere.
The lights glowed softly against the dark, forming shapes that shifted when she tried to focus. Lines connected. Curves bent.
Letters.
Names.
She woke up with her heart racing and a strange pressure in her chest, as if something heavy was resting just beneath her ribs.
She pressed her hand there.
It didn't feel like pain.
It felt like weight.
The next morning, Aira visited the old library.
No one guarded the entrance. No sign announced its closure. The doors simply opened, as if they had been waiting for her.
Inside, dust rested undisturbed on every surface, yet the air didn't feel stale. Shelves stretched endlessly, filled with books whose titles were either missing or written in ink too faded to read.
Aira wandered until she found a staircase leading down.
She hesitated.
Then she descended.
In the basement, she found records.
Not books.
Lists.
Pages and pages of neatly written names.
No dates.No descriptions.No categories.
Just names.
Her fingers trembled as she scanned them.
She didn't know what she was looking for.
Until she found it.
Hoshino Aira.
The ink was dry.
Old.
As if it had been written long before she ever thought to look.
Aira stepped back, her breath shallow.
She searched again.
Another name caught her eye.
Aoyama Elin.
Her hands dropped to her sides.
The silence in the room felt heavier than anywhere else in the city.
As if this place remembered everything the streets had chosen to forget.
That evening, Aira returned to the park.
Elin was already there, standing beneath the same tree as always.
"You went to the library," Elin said, without turning around.
Aira swallowed.
"Why are our names there?"
Elin looked at her then.
Her eyes were gentle.
Almost relieved.
"Because," she said softly,"this is where everyone ends up… when they don't leave."
The city lights flickered behind them.
For a moment, Aira thought she could see letters forming on the ground at her feet.
Spelling her name.