Chapter 2: The Whisper That Wasn't Heard
The corridor didn't exist yesterday.
It stretched longer than the building should allow, lined with doors that lacked handles and numbers that didn't count in any known sequence.
Ranzō stood still.
Not deciding to move.
Not deciding to stay.
But the world shifted around him, interpreting his silence as intention.
A woman passed by without seeing him. Her heels clacked against the floor—until they didn't.
Her shadow vanished for a breath. Her lips moved as if in prayer, though no sound escaped.
Ranzō turned to the wall. It flickered, faintly—like old paper touched by flame.
He raised his needle-pen and wrote nothing.
The wall absorbed it anyway.
> "Memory is an agreement between liars."
— the writing appeared, only for a second, then faded into the concrete like it had never been.
Behind him, a door opened on its own. It groaned softly, like something trying to remember how to scream.
Inside:
An office frozen in time. Coffee steam unmoving. A phone mid-ring, stuck in an eternal blink of noise.
A man sat at the desk, blinking rapidly—confused, then frightened, then still.
He looked at Ranzō. Not directly, but in that way people sense the shape of something wrong.
"You're..."
The man's voice cracked before finishing the sentence.
Ranzō stepped forward. The floor beneath him made no sound. His coat didn't ripple. Air bent around him like a page curling at the edge of fire.
The man opened a drawer, fumbling for something—a file, maybe?
Instead, he pulled out a photo that didn't exist the day before. It was blank, except for one smudge in the center that looked vaguely... human.
"Who wrote you?" the man whispered.
Ranzō didn't answer.
But behind the man's eyes, something rewrote itself.
In the hallway again, the lights blinked.
This time, the walls wrote back:
> "He sees us."
"He's not bound."
"Erase the script."
The voices didn't echo. They weren't heard by ears.
They were heard by thoughts.
Ranzō closed his notebook.
It didn't matter what was next.
He was already inside it.
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