Time is supposed to be a river. A steady, forward-flowing current. But in that dusty, chemical-scented room, time shattered. It became a million frozen shards of a mirror, and in every single one, I saw the reflection of an impossible truth.
A girl with long, shimmering silver hair.
My fingers, slick with a sudden cold sweat, tightened on the photograph. It was a standard 4x6 print, a piece of processed paper coated in emulsion. It had weight, texture, and a faint, papery smell. It was real. And the image captured on it—an image of Yuki Amasawa, taken months ago by a boy who no longer existed—was therefore also real.
Every single premise my new, terrifying reality was built on crumbled to dust in that instant.
Yuki was erased years ago. Yuki was invisible to everyone but me. Yuki couldn't be captured by a camera.
Lies. All of it. Or, if not lies, then mistakes. And in a world where a single mistake could get you deleted from existence, I had no idea which was worse.
"Hoshino-kun." Aoi Serizawa's voice sliced through the roaring static in my head. "Your heart rate has accelerated to approximately 120 beats per minute, and your respiration is shallow. You are exhibiting a classic fight-or-flight response. The stimulus is a photograph of the Misaki Shrine. This is an illogical reaction. Please provide the relevant data."
I stared at her, my mind a blank slate. Data? What data could I possibly give her? 'The ghost only I can see, who is my primary source for understanding the supernatural apocalypse we're in, just appeared in a photo taken by a boy she claims not to know, and I think my brain is about to leak out of my ears.' It wasn't the kind of data you could put in a chart.
"I..." I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. "It's... nothing. Dust in here. Hay fever."
"The primary airborne particulates in this room are silver halide and acetic acid residue, not pollen," Aoi countered instantly. "Your excuse is suboptimal. Furthermore, you are not looking at the shrine. You are looking at the figure in the bottom left quadrant." She leaned closer, her eyes narrowing at the print. "A female student. Unidentified. Her presence seems to be the source of your distress. Is she one of them? A sublimated individual?"
"No," I said, the word coming out sharper than I intended. I had to protect Yuki, but I didn't even know what I was protecting her from anymore. From Aoi? From the truth? From herself?
It was at that moment that I finally registered the silence from my left. The constant, witty, insightful stream of commentary from my personal ghost had ceased. I risked a glance. I couldn't see her, of course, but I could feel her. The space she occupied was suddenly dense and cold, the air vibrating with a shocked stillness that was more profound than any sound.
"Kaito," she finally whispered, her voice so faint it was like the sigh of the wind. "That's... That can't be."
Her confusion was genuine. The shock in her voice was raw. This wasn't the sound of someone whose lie had been exposed. It was the sound of someone whose own reality had just been ripped apart. And somehow, that was infinitely more terrifying.
"I need to go," I said abruptly, turning away from Aoi. I carefully, reverently, placed the stack of photos back on the desk, but my fingers refused to let go of the one. The impossible one. I slipped it into the inside pocket of my school jacket. An artifact. A paradox. A ticking time bomb against my heart.
"Our investigation is not complete," Aoi stated, her tone laced with the frustration of a scientist whose experiment was going off the rails. "Your erratic behavior is compromising the integrity of the data-gathering process."
"I have a headache," I said, pressing my fingers to my temple. It wasn't even a lie. The dull throb was back with a vengeance. "A backlash from yesterday. I need some air."
I didn't wait for her to argue. I walked out of the clubroom, leaving her in the chemical-scented darkness with the ghosts of a dozen other photographs. I could feel her analytical gaze on my back, could almost hear the scratch of her pen in her notebook, cataloging my every move under the heading: Subject Kaito Hoshino - Unstable Variable.
I fled to the one place that felt like our territory. The rooftop.
The late afternoon sun was beginning its slow descent, painting the sky in strokes of orange and gold. The wind was a steady, sighing presence, whipping my hair across my face and tugging at my uniform. I walked to the chain-link fence, the same spot where Yuki had first explained the horrifying rules of our world to me. It felt like a lifetime ago.
She materialized beside me, not with her usual playful shimmer, but with a hesitant flicker, like a faulty lightbulb. She looked... insubstantial. Faded. Her silver hair seemed less luminous, her ice-blue eyes clouded with a deep, bewildering turmoil.
I pulled the photograph from my pocket. The wind tugged at it, trying to rip it from my grasp. I held it tight, my knuckles white.
"Explain this," I said. My voice was quiet, but it was heavy with the weight of my shattered trust. "If you were erased years ago, how are you in a picture taken three months ago by Ryoichi Tanaka?"
Yuki stared at the image, her expression one of profound dislocation, like a person seeing their own face on a stranger. "I don't know," she whispered.
"That's not good enough!" The words erupted out of me, louder and angrier than I expected. "My entire understanding of this... this madness... is based on what you've told me. I remember, you were forgotten. I'm the anchor, you're the ghost. Those are the rules. But this photo breaks every single one of them. So I'm asking you again. Who are you, Yuki Amasawa?"
The question hung between us, as sharp and cold as the wind. Was her name even Yuki Amasawa?
She looked away from the photo, her gaze fixed on the sprawling city below. "I told you what I remember," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "I remember... fading. The feeling of my friends' memories slipping away from me. The terror of my key not fitting in the lock of my own front door. The day I looked in the mirror and my reflection was... blurry. I remember the loneliness. The silence. That part is real, Kaito. I know it is."
"But the details?" I pressed. "The when? The how?"
She shook her head, a gesture of deep, frustrating futility. "It's like... like a dream you were sure you'd remember, but the moment you try to grasp it, it turns to smoke. My memory of my own past is full of holes. I have the emotions, the scars... but the concrete data is corrupted." She looked back at me, her icy eyes pleading. "I truly believed I was erased years ago. I have no memory of this Ryoichi Tanaka. I have no memory of ever being at that shrine when this photo was taken. Seeing this... it's like reading a page from a book about my life that I've never seen before."
I stared at her, at the genuine anguish on her face. My anger began to cool, replaced by a vast, chilling empathy. She wasn't a liar. She was just as lost as I was. In fact, she was more lost. I was the boy who remembered, but she was the girl who had forgotten herself. Her one anchor to her own identity was her story of being erased, and I had just shown her that even that story was wrong.
"So what does this mean?" I asked, my voice softer now.
She reached out a hesitant, translucent hand, her fingers hovering just over the photograph without touching it. "It means Ryoichi Tanaka was special," she murmured, her mind already shifting from emotional turmoil to analysis. It was a coping mechanism I was beginning to understand. "It means he could see me. Not just see me, but... capture me. On film."
"But how?" I asked. "You're a ghost. A cognitive anomaly. You're not supposed to reflect light."
"Maybe it wasn't about light," she said, a new theory dawning in her eyes. "His theme. 'A Moment of Eternity.' What if that wasn't just an artistic choice? What if it was a methodology? A form of... incantation. He wasn't just taking a picture of a place. He was trying to capture the feeling of the place. Its memory. Its soul. And the Misaki Shrine, that old place... it's heavy with memories. My echo must be stronger there. He didn't take a picture of me, Kaito. He took a picture of my ghost."
A ghost of a ghost. The concept was dizzying.
"And his camera," she continued, her voice gaining intensity. "It wasn't just a machine. In his hands, with his intent, it became an instrument capable of perceiving things outside the normal spectrum of reality. He wasn't just a photographer. He was an exorcist, and his camera was his holy scripture."
This was the new truth. Ryoichi Tanaka, the boy whose erasure had seemed like just another random tragedy, was actually a key player. He was a "sensitive," someone who could perceive the seams of reality. And his talent had, apparently, gotten him killed. Erased. Swept under the cosmic rug.
"It's why he was targeted," I said, voicing the thought aloud. "He saw too much."
"He didn't just see," Yuki corrected me. "He recorded. He created proof. And if there's one thing the Phenomenon hates, it's proof." She looked at the photograph in my hand. "This thing... it's not just an Artifact, Kaito. It's a miracle. A paradox of the highest order. It shouldn't exist. The fact that it does means Ryoichi Tanaka was probably the most dangerous person in the world to whatever is behind all this."
I held the photograph, the piece of paper suddenly feeling as heavy as a block of lead. It was evidence. It was a weapon. And I was holding it. As I focused on the image, on the impossible girl in the corner, a strange thing happened.
The world around me faded. The sound of the wind was replaced by the gentle tinkling of wind chimes and the buzz of summer cicadas. I could feel the solid weight of a camera in my hands, the cool metal against my skin. I could smell the cinnamon and old wood of the charm shop. And I felt a profound sense of awe, a feeling of standing on the precipice of a great and beautiful mystery. A feeling of... recognition. Of seeing someone you knew you were meant to find.
Then, just as quickly, it was gone. I was back on the rooftop, the wind cold on my face, my heart pounding.
"Whoa," I breathed.
"What was that?" Yuki asked, her form flickering with concern. "You... you resonated with it."
"I was there," I whispered. "Just for a second. I felt... what he felt, I think. Ryoichi."
The photograph wasn't just an image. It was a vessel. It held a fragment of the photographer's own memory, of his own feelings. It was a gateway.
And it gave us our next step.
"His camera," I said, a sudden, absolute certainty solidifying in my gut. "We need to find his camera. If this one photo can do that, what could the camera itself do? The instrument that captured it?"
"It would be a master Artifact," Yuki breathed, her eyes wide with the implication. "A Rosetta Stone for the Phenomenon. It could be the key to everything. To understanding why this is happening. To understanding... me."
Returning to Aoi Serizawa required a level of mental gymnastics I hadn't thought myself capable of. I had to project an aura of "I've calmed down now" while my entire universe had been fundamentally restructured. It was the ultimate test of my "cool indifference" facade.
I found her still in the photography clubroom. She hadn't moved. She was examining the negatives on the light table, her focus absolute.
"Your vital signs have returned to baseline," she said without looking at me. "I have concluded that your adverse reaction was a form of cognitive dissonance caused by an unknown emotional variable connected to the subject in the photograph. I will table that line of inquiry for now, as it is proving inefficient."
I was grateful for her clinical detachment. Anyone else would have peppered me with questions I couldn't answer. Aoi simply classified my existential crisis as an "inefficient data point" and moved on.
"I have a new theory," I said, deciding to use her own language. "My analysis of the Artifact"—I gestured vaguely towards my pocket where the photo was hidden—"has yielded a new hypothesis. The photographer, Ryoichi Tanaka, was not a standard human. He possessed a heightened perceptual ability. He was able to observe and record phenomena outside the normative reality."
Aoi stopped what she was doing and looked at me. I could see the gears turning in her brilliant, logical mind. She was processing my insane, supernatural claim as a scientific hypothesis.
"A 'sensitive'," she mused. "The concept is common in pseudoscientific literature, but in the context of our current reality, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Your own abilities serve as proof that deviations are possible. What is your evidence for this claim regarding Tanaka?"
"The photograph," I said. "It contains data that should not be there. It's... a paradox. I believe his camera, the instrument he used, is the key. It may be uniquely calibrated to his abilities. We need to find it."
Aoi considered this for a long moment. "The proposition is a logical leap based on an unconfirmed premise," she stated. "However, given the anomalous nature of all data surrounding Ryoichi Tanaka, investigating his primary tool is a sound next step. A master Artifact, as you call it."
I blinked. Had I said that out loud? Or was she just so logical that she'd arrived at the same term independently?
"The question," she continued, already moving on, "is its location. School records indicate all of the club's equipment was school property and remains accounted for, here in this room. However, photographers of Tanaka's skill level often possess their own personal equipment. It is highly probable he used his own camera for a project this important."
"So where would it be?" I asked.
"There are two primary probabilities," she said, already pulling up a file on her phone she had almost certainly prepared in advance. "It could have been returned to his family's residence post-erasure, in which case it is likely gone, wiped from existence along with all other personal effects. The second, more promising probability, is that it remains in the possession of his closest associate."
"Renji Kurobane," I finished.
"Correct," Aoi confirmed. "A keepsake from a forgotten friend. An object of high emotional resonance. He may not even consciously know why he kept it. It is the most likely lead."
The path forward was clear. We needed to get to Renji. We needed to get that camera. But after his violent outburst earlier, just walking up and asking for it was out of the question. He was guarding the memory of his friend like a dragon hoarding treasure, even as he tried to convince himself the treasure never existed.
We left the old building, the new, fragile alliance between me and Aoi solidified by a shared, insane goal. Hina was waiting for us by the school gate, her sunflower charm a small spot of defiant color in the deepening twilight. She'd seen me run off earlier and had waited, worried.
"Is everything okay, Hoshino-kun?" she asked, her eyes flicking from my face to the stoic Aoi beside me.
"Everything's fine," I said. "We just... found a new lead."
"Hina Yuzuki," Aoi said, giving Hina a clinical once-over. "Your emotional stability has increased by 47% since the acquisition of your Artifact. This is a positive development."
Hina just blinked, completely bewildered by Aoi's assessment. I decided then and there to appoint myself Aoi's official translator to the rest of the human race. "She means she's glad you're feeling better," I clarified.
We walked toward the station, a strange and mismatched quartet. The Boy Who Remembered. The Girl Who Counted the Ghosts. The Girl Who Grieved for One. And the Ghost Girl at the heart of the whole mystery, walking silently beside me, her own past now a complete unknown.
My hand rested on the photograph in my pocket. The truth had fractured, but the pieces were beginning to point in a single direction. It wasn't just about people being randomly erased anymore. It all seemed to revolve around a single, pivotal event: the disappearance of Ryoichi Tanaka. And at the center of that event, somehow, was Yuki.
My trust in her was shaken, yes. But looking at her now, seeing the quiet turmoil in her eyes, I felt a new, fiercer kind of protectiveness. She wasn't just my guide to this broken world anymore. She was the mystery I had to solve. And I had a sinking feeling that if I couldn't help her remember who she was, we would all be forgotten for good.