Chapter 3 – Part II-A: Echoes Beneath the Rain
POV: Mixed (Marino · Reika · Harbinger)
The autumn rain returned the next day. It fell in thin, silver threads — neither heavy nor gentle — just persistent enough to soak through uniforms and make the streets smell faintly of petrichor.
Reika and I stood under the same awning at the school gates, waiting for the rain to slow. She held her umbrella closed at her side, as if unsure whether to open it. I held nothing at all — not because I didn't care about the rain, but because the sensation was grounding. Every drop reminded me that I was still here, still bound to this fragile, finite world.
"Do you like the rain?" she asked suddenly.
Her voice was softer than the rainfall, but it pulled me from my thoughts.
"I used to hate it," I admitted. "Where I'm from… rain meant endings. But now…" I looked up at the cloud-choked sky. "Now I think I understand why people find it comforting."
She gave a faint smile — a small, fleeting thing, but real. "I like the rain too. It's like the sky is crying for you when you can't."
There was something so painfully honest in the way she said it that I didn't respond. Instead, I simply opened my palm and let the rain gather there.
"Walk with me?" she asked after a moment.
"Always."
We shared her umbrella, though it did little to keep us dry. The streets were quiet — the kind of quiet where even the neon signs seemed muted. Shops closed early on rainy days here. People hurried home. But we walked slowly, as if the rain had nowhere else to fall but on us.
"You know," she said, watching the water swirl into the gutter, "I used to hate walking home."
"Why?"
"Because home isn't… home." She hesitated, as if weighing whether to continue. "It's a place you return to because you have to. Not because you want to."
"Is someone hurting you?" I asked, the words sharper than I intended.
She shook her head. "Not anymore. Just… ghosts. Memories."
I didn't press her. She wasn't ready — I could feel it in the way her grip on the umbrella tightened. But the fact that she said anything at all was a sign of trust. And trust, in this world, was sacred.
We stopped by a vending machine, its fluorescent glow painting the rain-soaked pavement in blue and white. I bought two cans of coffee — the bitter kind that humans seem to enjoy torturing themselves with — and handed one to her.
"Thanks," she murmured, warming her hands against the can. "You're weird, you know that?"
"Frequently told."
"But I don't mind weird."
The faintest blush colored her cheeks. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it wasn't.
POV: Harbinger
From the rooftop across the street, I watched them. The rain did not touch me. The wind did not move me. I was, as I have always been, an observer of inevitability.
Yet as I looked upon the Watcher — that ancient, arrogant fool who once swore never to intervene — and the girl cursed by design, I felt something disturbingly close to curiosity.
He is changing.
She is softening.
And for the first time, the threads did not align the way they should have. The narrative trembled — imperceptible to mortals, but deafening to me.
If this continues, I thought, the Architects will not stay silent.
POV: Reika
It had been years since I'd let anyone walk me home. People always stopped coming back eventually. They always decided I was too much — too quiet, too broken, too far gone.
But Marino was different. He didn't fill the silence with empty words. He didn't try to fix me. He just walked beside me, step by step, like the world wasn't something that needed to be rushed through.
At the corner near my apartment, I stopped. "This is me."
He glanced up at the building — old, cracked, and unremarkable. "Will you be alright?"
"I'm always alright," I lied.
The truth was, the walls of that place held more pain than comfort. Every time I stepped inside, I felt a little more of myself disappear.
But then he said something that made me pause at the door.
"Reika… if you ever don't want to go home, you don't have to."
I turned to him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you don't have to do anything just because you're used to it. The world is full of exits — even from the places that hurt."
I wanted to laugh, to tell him that the world didn't work that way. But the sincerity in his eyes stopped me. And for the first time in a long time, I wanted to believe someone.
"Thank you," I whispered.
And then I went inside.
POV: Marino
The rain followed me all the way back to the Soohyuk apartment. My borrowed family was out — my "mother" at work, my "father" on a business trip. Their absence was convenient. It allowed me to think.
The Harbinger was watching. That much was certain. But what unsettled me most wasn't his presence — it was his patience. He wasn't attacking. He wasn't interfering. He was waiting.
For what?
For me to fail?
For her to break?
Or for something far worse?
I stared out the window at the city lights, rain streaking the glass like tears. For the first time since descending to this world, I felt doubt creep into my resolve.
What if saving her wasn't possible?
What if I was never meant to?