The first step was a statement.The second, a confirmation.With every step I took on the cold, uneven stone, the muscles in my calves and thighs protested. It was an ascent—there was no doubt. My body fought gravity, my breathing became labored, and sweat began to bead on my forehead in the stale, lifeless air. I felt the effort in every fiber of my being—the unmistakable strain of lifting my weight upward.
And yet, part of me refused to accept it. A deep sensation, rooted somewhere behind my sternum, insisted the direction was the opposite. It felt like being in an elevator that rises so smoothly it seems like you're descending—but magnified a thousandfold. With each step I conquered, a growing pressure swelled in my ears, the same sensation as driving down a mountain or diving into a pool. The air, if that's what you could call it, felt denser, heavier. The darkness above me didn't lessen, and the platform I'd left behind faded into an equally absolute blackness. I was suspended in an infinite flight of stairs, in a universe without up or down—only the effort of my legs and the silent terror in my mind.
I don't know how long I climbed. Minutes? Hours? Time had lost all meaning the moment the train vanished. The only markers were the monotonous rhythm of my feet on the stone and the beating of my heart in my ears. My mind, desperate for an anchor, replayed the events over and over: the subway. The empty car. The desolate platform. The staircase. It wasn't a dream. The burning in my lungs was too real, the metallic taste of fear in my mouth too vivid.
Finally, a different texture appeared in the darkness above me. It wasn't a light, but a change in the blackness—the outline of an arch. My steps quickened, propelled by a mix of hope and dread. At the last step, I found myself standing before an arched passage carved into the same featureless rock as the stairs. Beyond it, the space wasn't black—it was a dull, murky gray, like a perpetually stalled dawn.
I hesitated only for a moment. The staircase offered nothing but a return to nothingness. With my heart hammering against my ribs, I crossed the threshold.
The transition was dizzying and complete. The dense, dead air of the stairwell was replaced by a humid, cold atmosphere, filled with the scent of damp earth, rust, and something else—something vaguely sweet and putrid, like decaying leaves. The silence was broken by a subtle sound: the moan of wind passing through hollow metal.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. I was in a park. The recognition struck like ice in my gut—more terrifying than if I had arrived in a completely alien landscape. I knew this place. Or rather, I knew the version it once was. This was a sick, terrible copy. It was Fushimi Park, near my grandparents' house in Kyoto. But everything was wrong.
The sky was an immutable gray—no sun, no moon, no clouds. A flat, featureless light bathed everything, stripping objects of shadows and depth. The cherry trees I remembered bursting with pink blossoms in spring were now twisted black skeletons, their bare branches clawing at the opaque sky. The sandbox where I'd spent countless hours building castles was filled with dark, stagnant mud, from which sickly pale weeds sprouted.
In the park's center, where colorful swings and a slide should have been, a tangle of rusted metal lay twisted at impossible angles, as if crushed by a titanic force. One swing hung from a single chain, swaying slowly back and forth in the silent breeze, emitting the same plaintive creak I'd heard upon arrival.
I walked forward, my feet sinking slightly into the soaked, spongy grass. Every detail was a desecration of a cherished memory. The dragon-shaped water fountain that had always seemed so majestic was now cracked and covered in dark mold. From its open mouth flowed not water, but a thin trickle of blackish liquid that stained the stone below.
"Is anybody here?" I shouted.
My voice sounded thin, swallowed by the heavy atmosphere. There was no response—only the rhythmic creak of the lonely swing. The panic I'd felt in the station returned, but this time layered with deep sorrow. This place had been a sanctuary in my memory, a stronghold of happy summer days. Seeing it like this—profane and dying—felt like a personal violence.
My gaze landed on a wooden bench beneath the largest of the skeletal cherry trees. Remarkably intact, though the wood was faded and gray. I felt drawn to it, as though it were the only point of order in this chaos of decay. That was where my grandfather taught me origami, and where I waited for my friend Yuki on the last day I saw her.
As I approached, a faint murmur began to seep into the edges of my hearing. It was soft, like the whisper of leaves—though there were none on these dead trees. The sound grew louder, becoming the distant echo of a child's laughter. My laughter.
I stopped a few meters from the bench. The world around me began to tremble, to ripple like a reflection on water. The gray light intensified, turning bright and warm. Colors flooded the scene: the vibrant green of the grass, the explosive pink of cherry blossoms, the deep blue of a summer sky. The air buzzed with cicadas, the laughter of children. Fushimi Park was alive again, just as I remembered it.
But something was different. I looked at my hands—they were small and delicate, nails painted pale pink. I was wearing a yellow summer dress. I wasn't watching my memory—I was in it, but not as myself.
"Kenji-kun is so slow!"
The voice came from my mouth—but it wasn't my voice. It was the sweet, lilting voice of a little girl. Yuki's voice. I was seeing the world through her eyes. I felt the light fabric of her dress brushing against my—no, her—knees as she ran toward the bench. I felt her heart pounding with the excitement of an eight‑year‑old on a perfect day.
In front of me was a boy. Me. My eight‑year‑old self, hair cut in a bowl style and wearing an anime T‑shirt. He was panting, trying to catch up, a smile on his face.
"That's not fair, Yuki‑chan! You started running before me!" my younger self yelled.
The sensation was indescribably strange. I was inside Yuki's head, feeling her affection and mild annoyance at her friend's clumsiness, while watching a version of myself I barely remembered. I could sense her thoughts and emotions as if they were mine.
"I have to tell him," Yuki thought. I felt her nervousness, a knot forming in her stomach. "I have to give him the gift before he leaves for Mexico forever."
I watched young Kenji finally catch up, collapsing beside her on the bench. As Yuki, I sat too, smoothing the dress across my knees. I felt the sun's warmth on her skin, the scent of flowers on the breeze. Everything was so real.
"Tomorrow you leave," Yuki said, and I felt the sadness in her voice, a weight I'd never detected in my memory.
"Yes," young Kenji replied, with the indifference of a child who doesn't grasp the finality of goodbye. "But I'll come back next summer."
A harmless lie. My parents already knew the move was permanent. I didn't return the next summer—or any after that.
I felt Yuki take a deep breath. "I made you something," she said, and I felt her hands dig into a small, brightly wrapped package in her dress pocket. "So you won't forget me."
But just as she was about to hand it over, another boy, a friend named Takeru, came running up, holding a rhinoceros beetle in his hands.
"Look! I caught one!" Takeru shouted, proud.
Through Yuki's eyes, I saw Kenji's attention shift instantly. His eyes lit up with fascination for the insect, forgetting the conversation, the moment, the unspoken promise hanging in the air.
"Amazing!" my younger self exclaimed, jumping up to get a better look at the beetle. "Let's make it fight another!"
And just like that, without a second glance, young Kenji ran off with Takeru toward the sandbox, leaving Yuki alone on the bench.
That's when I felt it—the full weight of her disappointment. It wasn't a burst of sadness, but a slow, silent deflation. The vibrant world around us lost some of its color. I felt her tiny fingers clutch the gift in her pocket. I felt the knot in her throat, the sting of being invisible, of being less important than a bug. She stayed there for what felt like hours, watching her best friend laugh and play, completely oblivious to her broken little heart. He never came back to the bench. He never asked what she was going to say.
The scene dissolved. Colors faded, warmth turned cold. The sound of cicadas was replaced once more by the creak of the rusted swing. I was back in the dead park, standing before the empty bench. But I wasn't alone. The weight of Yuki's viewpoint had crashed into me. It wasn't just a memory of a summer day—it was the memory of my first significant act of indifference. A tiny betrayal, insignificant in the grand scheme—yet at that moment, it meant everything to her. Guilt throbbed like ice in my chest, spreading a chill through my limbs.
Then I saw them.
At first, they were only distortions in the air, in the corners of my vision. Spots of darkness deeper than the park itself. Slowly, they took form. Tall, slender humanoid figures, made from what seemed like black smoke and ash. They had no faces or features—just silhouettes of pure blackness.
They didn't walk. They glided over the soaked grass without disturbing it. And they whispered. The same words I'd felt in Yuki's mind now echoed around me—incorporeal voices coming from everywhere and nowhere.
"You forgot…"
"She waited…"
"You never came back…"
I froze, terror taking hold of my body. There were six or seven of them, surrounding me in slow closure, forming a circle.
"Less important than an insect…" a voice whispered directly into my ear, though nothing was there.
I screamed and ran. I ran without direction, slipping in the muddy ground, my heart pumping acid in my veins. The figures didn't chase me—they simply appeared ahead wherever I turned, materializing from the shadows of the skeletal trees. Their whispers became a cacophonous choir of my failures:
"Broken promise…""Broken heart…""Forgotten…"
I tripped over a protruding root and fell face-first into the mud. The impact knocked the air out of me. I turned over, gasping, trying to crawl back. The shadowy figures loomed over me, a half‑circle of silent accusation. They didn't touch me. They didn't need to. The sheer intensity of their presence was crushing—a mental pressure I couldn't withstand. Guilt and terror swirled together in an unsustainable vortex.
My vision began to darken at the edges. Sound dimmed. The feeling in my limbs faded. It wasn't painful—it was a dissolution, as if my consciousness was fraying, unable to bear the weight of this revelation. The final whisper I heard was the clearest of all:
"This is only the beginning."
And then—nothing. A total void. No thought, no sensation, no being.
The next sensation was like waking from a violent jolting. A harsh tug brought me back to existence. I was standing. My clothes were dry. No mud on my hands. I looked around, breathing heavily.
I was once again at the park's edge—the very spot where I'd crossed the staircase threshold.
The dead park stretched out before me, exactly as I'd first seen it. The lone swing creaked in the wind. The shadowy figures were gone. Everything was exactly the same. It had reset.
But I was not the same. The memory of that experience, Yuki's pain, the terror of the shadows, and the sensation of my own dissolution were seared into my mind. I died. I truly died. And I came back.
A new kind of horror—a colder, deeper dread than panic—settled in my soul. I understood one of the rules of this infernal place. There was no escape in death. Only repetition. I was trapped in a loop, condemned to face my past again and again until… until what?
I looked at the park—the physical manifestation of my first regret. I knew what I had to do. I had to cross it again. I had to reach the other side. And I knew, with terrible certainty, that the shadows and their whispers were waiting for me.