Day 4, August 21, 2015
Aria didn't wake up. She came back online.
There was no alarm, no sunlight piercing the window in dramatic shafts. Just the faint hum of the CRT in the other room and the soft weight of her own breath, steady but hollow.
She sat up slowly.
The tatami had left creases on her cheek.
The brokerage app was still open on her laptop from the night before. The cursor blinked beside her ¥15,700 balance like it was mocking her.
She didn't wince.
She didn't need to. The pain was already baked into her chest—warm, low, constant. Like a failed fever that forgot to leave.
She didn't rush to check news, price tickers, or forums.
Instead, she reached for her notepad.
On the first page: "I remembered the candle. Not the wick." Underneath it, her own handwriting from last night, scrawled in a tighter hand: "Memory is a liar with good lighting."
She ran her fingers over the words like they were braille.
She'd known this would happen. Maybe not so soon, not this sharp, but something in her had always known the market wouldn't hand her victory like a gift basket for surviving death.
She stood up, brushed the tatami dust from her shorts, and went to brush her teeth.
By 8:07 a.m., she was staring at her bank app.
There it was.
Her salary had landed.
¥230,000, right on schedule.
She exhaled like she'd been holding that breath all week.
It felt... fictional. Like monopoly money. Her actual job felt like it belonged to a parallel life—one she had already left but forgot to file the paperwork for.
She transferred ¥50,000 into her day-to-day account.
Food, transport, and bills. Maybe one decent pair of shoes. She didn't need more. The rest she labeled in her notebook: "War chest."
¥180,000 of live ammo.
"Don't waste this one," she muttered, tapping the pen twice on the page.
Chatwork pinged.
Of course.
Kobayashi's name lit up like a summons from the underworld.
"Please resend the onboarding form for the new client system. Deadline is EOD."
She typed back:
"Noted."
She didn't even open the file.
At 9:47 a.m., Chatwork pinged again.
This time it wasn't Kobayashi. It was Yamada, from the system admin. Aria barely remembered his face, just that he always smelled faintly of printer ink.
Yamada: "Hey… did you get pulled into the Onishi mess too? Lol. They're looking for someone to blame."
She stared at the message. Five years ago, this would've made her stomach flip. Now?
She typed back:
"I'm just background noise."
Yamada: "Huh?"
She didn't reply. Closed the window. The moment didn't deserve elaboration.
Some part of her still needed this job, for cash flow, for camouflage. But the rest of her had already resigned.
The company was a cardboard cutout now. Thin, brittle, easily replaced.
She closed the chat tab.
Around 11:30, hunger finally overpowered inertia.
She pulled on a hoodie and headed to the corner of Lawson.
Tokyo was loud in its usual, organized chaos. Buses hissed, taxis weaved, and a pair of schoolgirls squealed over something on their phones.
She used to feel invisible here. One more cog in the concrete.
Now, she felt... watching. Not watched. Just aware. More present than she'd ever been in this body.
Inside the store, she reached for an onigiri and a canned coffee.
And that's when she heard:
"Aria? No way!"
She turned slowly.
It was Kumi from her old department. Always wore too much blush and said "sugoi" like she meant it.
"Oh my god, I haven't seen you in forever! You changed your hair?" Kumi leaned in. "You look… intense."
Aria forced a smile. "Just tired."
"You still with client ops?"
Aria shrugged. "Kinda. Doing some trading on the side."
Kumi blinked. "Like, stocks?"
"Yeah. Trying to get smarter."
Kumi's face twisted into a friendly sort of concern, like a puppy watching someone juggle knives.
"Well… be careful, okay? My cousin lost like a ton of money doing that."
"Good to know," Aria said, grabbing a chopstick packet like a weapon.
They exchanged awkward goodbyes, and Aria paid in silence.
Outside, under the buzz of a vending machine, she let out a breath that was more a hiss.
Later that night, she stopped by the same Lawson, mostly out of habit. The lighting buzzed in its usual tired hum, but the staff had changed. The day the girl was gone. In her place stood a small, sharp-eyed woman in her fifties.
Aria placed her bento and canned beer on the counter.
The woman scanned the items without a word, then glanced up.
"You're always alone," she said not unkindly. Just noticing.
Aria blinked. "Guess I like my own company."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Or you're the only one who tells yourself the truth."
Aria smiled as the register beeped.
For some reason, that stung more than any trading loss.
She wasn't mad. Kumi didn't mean harm.
But it confirmed something Aria had felt since Day One:
You can't explain a new version of yourself to people still reading the old manual.
Back home, she set her lunch aside and opened her trading screen.
She didn't place any orders.
Just watched.
Several of the stocks she'd tracked yesterday were inching upward. She pulled up the 5-minute candles. Annotated patterns. Read volume like tea leaves.
She also pulled up Yahoo Finance Japan, scanned the forums.
Panic had turned to boredom.
That was always when the real shifts started.
"Markets turn not on logic, but on exhaustion," she wrote.
She checked her memory of a 2015 small-cap run, realized she'd gotten the order of news events wrong.
"Again," she scrawled on the margin, "Memory ≠ signal."
She started building a list:
- Stocks that were flat but had high volume
- Sectors with media silence
- The ones nobody was posting about
"If it's quiet, it's probably loading."
By 6:00 p.m., she was back downstairs at Ramesh's curry shop.
That evening, as she paid for her curry, Ramesh leaned across the counter, wiping his hands on a towel.
"You ever play chess?" he asked.
Aria shrugged. "Badly."
"My father played every day. Always safe moves. Never lost a piece without a plan."
"Sounds smart."
Ramesh smiled without warmth. "He also never won. He'd rather draw than risk."
He slid the curry container toward her.
"You're not playing to draw. I can tell."
She took the container and said nothing.
But inside, something locked into place.
He handed her the usual, with extra ginger.
"You look like someone who's starting to enjoy the burn," he said.
Aria grinned. "I'm learning to taste it."
Night fell in slow gradients.
Aria sat by the window, bowl in lap, laptop humming.
Yuji's voice note was still unopened.
The phone buzzed just as she stepped back into her apartment.
A second message from Yuji.
She let it play this time.
"Hey. I know you've been quiet. That's okay. I'm not here to ask questions. I just… I hope you're sleeping. Eating. Doing something dumb but harmless."
"You don't have to prove anything, Aria. Not to me. Not to the world."
"You're not a mission."
The message ended.
She sat in silence for a long time, the curry cooling untouched in her lap.
"I'm not a mission," she whispered.
Then, almost laughing: "No. I'm a fucking countdown."
She thought about clicking it.
Instead, she reached for her notebook again.
"Love isn't ballast," she wrote. "It's wind. But I don't need wind right now. I need an anchor."
She set the pen down. Listened to the hum of the fridge. The distant train. Her own pulse.
The world hadn't noticed she'd come back. It never would.
But the market had noticed her mistake.
And that was good.
Because now it was watching.
And she was ready to watch it back.
She closed her eyes and whispered,
"Day Four. Still alive."
No triumph. No drama.
Just quiet. Just breathe. Just her.
And the war chest waited.