The Margins didn't let us leave cleanly.
You'd think that after surviving a scribble-demon in a tavern made of napkins and nervous metaphors, I'd earned a smooth exit. Nope. Every step out felt like dragging emotional paper cuts across reality.
Even the sky looked like it had been edited by someone with commitment issues—fold lines that didn't line up, clouds that were mostly erased.
Rin walked ahead. Not saying much. She walked like her thoughts had been folded into shapes I couldn't recognize.
I trailed behind, staring at the inkbrand on my wrist.
My name—Kairo—glowed faintly. Like a label I'd stuck on too fast, and the world was still deciding whether to peel it off.
The city looked different when we returned from the Margins.
Sharper. More brittle.
The streets were quieter. Less color in the folds. As if the world could sense that something unstable had been let in.
"Back there," I said, "you showed me what happens when a name breaks. The man with no voice…"
Rin nodded once.
"You called it an echo. But what happens to them—really?"
She didn't stop walking, but her voice lowered.
"Depends on the break. Some fade quietly. Some splinter. Some repeat until they wear through the page they're on."
"Can they ever be fixed?"
"If caught early, maybe. That's what the Restorers hope. But most echoes… they're just noise now. Forgotten stories still trying to be heard."
We turned into an alley where a torn page pinned to the wall fluttered—not from wind, but from memory.
At the next plaza, she pointed.
"That."
A figure stood across the plaza. Or what was left of one.
A sketch someone had abandoned. His mouth moved, repeating a wordless sound. His namebrand was a smear of black ink. His body trembled like a page caught between edits.
"What happened to him?"
"His name shattered," Rin said. "The world couldn't hold it. Now it's chewing him back."
"Can't someone help?"
"Some try. That's what the Restorers' Guild is for."
She glanced back the way we came.
"They patch broken stories. Seal leaks. Keep names from unraveling."
"And Forgers like Quila?"
"Illegal. But necessary. The Guild knows they can't seal everything. That's why they made the Bleedwatchers."
We rounded a corner.
A figure stood atop a cracked signpost.
Ink-draped robes. A smooth mask with the kanji for revision. No face.
Ink coiled at its fingers like breath, changing shape.
A Bleedwatcher.
He didn't speak. Just watched.
"Don't stop," Rin said. "And don't look back."
"Why's he here?"
"Because your name is new. Unproven. He's here to see if it holds."
"…And if it doesn't?"
She didn't answer.
We walked.
He didn't follow.
But he didn't disappear either.
We stopped in a narrow lane between a whispering bookstore and a clothesline hung with rejection slips.
Rin tapped her foot.
"You're spiraling."
"Am not."
"You've got existential dread in your eyebrows," she said. "Come on."
She dragged me under an archway with no sign, just a scribble of a smile. Inside was a courtyard full of Paperkin, mismatched tables, and half-formed games in progress.
"This," Rin said, "is where scripts come to relax."
The Alley Games
"Game night?" I asked.
"More like game day, game dusk, and game again," Rin said. "Nobody here sleeps unless they've been erased."
She pointed toward a cluster of activity.
One group was playing Tactile Titles, a guessing game where you had to describe famous burned names using only textures and folded metaphors.
Another group tossed glowing word chips in a ring—Synonym Toss, I was told—where players tried to land a theme arc without contradicting their previous metaphors
"This one," Rin said, pushing me toward a table, "is the cure."
A man in a fedora made of blackout poetry waved us over. "Two seats open," he rasped. "House rules apply. No lies. No ink theft. Vomiting voidshade will result in immediate disqualification."
"…Voidshade?"
Rin leaned in. "That's the greenish one. Bitterness, poetry, probably mold."
Fantastic.
On the table lay a pair of ink-stained dice—twelve sides each, colors pulsing faintly.
Rin handed me a cup.
"You roll. You drink. You tell a story tied to the ink color. If you refuse? You chug poetic bitterness instead."
"Is this game legally recognized?"
"It helps people stay anchored. Spiritually cathartic. Close enough."
I rolled the dice.
Gold. Memory.
The room hushed.
Rin raised an eyebrow. "Got anything?"
I hesitated.
Then, slowly: "When I was little, I'd fake sleep just to hear my parents talk in the kitchen. I thought I'd catch secret spy stuff or bedtime gossip. Instead… I found out they used code names for snack stashes."
Laughter rippled around the table. Someone toasted me with a shot of regret-infused espresso.
I took a sip from the gold-ink tea. It tasted like warm light and late-night whispers. The cup shimmered faintly—truth accepted.
Her turn. She rolled.
Violet. Secrecy.
Everyone leaned in.
She smirked. "I once forged a name that wasn't mine. Burned it clean. Lived as someone else for two years… until they tried to come back."
Murmurs. Respectful horror. A guy near the wall clapped once and then disappeared.
"You win this round," I said.
She poured us another cup. "No. You remembered something. That's worth more."
Rin nudged the ink-stained dice toward me again.
"Another round?" she asked.
I hesitated. My tea cup was still half full, and my wrist still tingled with leftover memory-glow from the last truth. But something about her expression—half challenge, half something softer—made me nod.
I rolled.
The dice tumbled across the table, clinking faintly against a chipped ceramic cup.
Blue. Dreaming.
A few people at the table murmured. Rin arched an eyebrow.
"…Okay. Back in college, I had this dream. So vivid, so perfect, it lingered for months. I was living in a quiet seaside city—working in a little book café."
Around the table, things got quieter. Even the background clatter of word chips faded.
"Every morning I'd make chai ink-tea and recommend secondhand stories to strangers. People always came in already knowing what they needed, but they wanted to hear me say it."
I looked down at my hands, steam curling from my cup.
"In that dream, I was happy. Not the big, dramatic kind. Just... peaceful. Like I belonged. No deadlines. No panic. Just spines on shelves and the smell of dust."
I exhaled slowly.
"Then I woke up. In a cubicle. With thirty-two overdue emails."
Someone across the table toasted me with a shot of green ink.
Rin's voice, softer this time: "That's a good one."
The cup shimmered a soft blue. I drank.
It tasted like déjà vu and the sound of rain on glass.
Then—Rin rolled.
The dice bounced once, twice—then landed, sharp and final.
Red. Rage.
One of the sketchier players near the edge muttered, "Spicy."
Rin didn't flinch.
"When I was fifteen," she said evenly, "another scribe forged my handwriting. Blamed me for vandalizing a first-draft sacred script."
Someone near the door winced.
"I didn't get a trial. Just redacted and reassigned. Script privileges revoked. Trust burned."
She paused, sipping from her own crimson cup.
"It took years to earn my ink back. And when I did… I rewrote their signature into a lie so convincing they forgot who they were."
My mouth went dry. "What happened to them?"
Rin looked at me, eyes calm.
"They don't write anymore."
No one laughed.
She drank the rest of her tea in one swallow.
"…You win this round," I said.
Rin tilted her head.
"No," she said quietly. "I just stopped losing."
Rin looked more alive here.
Still guarded, still sharp—but softer at the edges. She didn't smile much, but when she did, it felt like turning a page that had been sealed shut.
"Why bring me here?" I asked as the night stretched on.
"You're too tense," she said. "New names crack if you hold them too tightly."
I glanced at the mark on my wrist.
Still faint. But holding.
"Also," Rin added, "I wanted to see if you'd cheat."
"I didn't."
"I know. That's why I'm still helping you."
---
Later, when we left, one Paperkin just watched us. Blank—but not like I'd been. His emptiness felt hungry.
"Some people come looking for words they lost," Rin said. "Some because their stories paused."
"Paused?"
"Every unfinished story lands somewhere," she said. "Some land here. Some end up with him."
A flicker of shadow passed in the alley.
Not the Smudged Man.
But something not whole.
"Let's go," she said quietly.
We left through the back.
And for the first time…
I didn't ask where we were going next.