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In a world underground after Earth becomes uninhabitable, citizens rent artificial sunlight to survive the psychological effects of living beneath concrete skies. Entire companies exist to recreate memories using holograms, scent simulations, artificial weather, and reconstructed voices. For a few hours, people can step into old summers again. Sit beneath fake sunsets. Hear the ocean. Pretend grief is reversible.
Harua works at one of these companies.
His job is simple: maintain memory sessions for clients too attached to the past to let it die naturally. Most people revisit harmless things. Childhood parks. Dead parents. Former lovers. But one anonymous client unsettles him immediately. Every week, without fail, the client requests the exact same reconstruction.
A late afternoon apartment scene.
Orange sunlight through the window.
Half-finished tea growing cold on a table.
A boy named Maki sitting quietly on the edge of a bed.
The session never changes. The client never modifies details. Never skips ahead. Never asks for happier memories. He only replays those final thirty-seven minutes over and over like a prayer spoken to something that cannot answer back.
At first Harua assumes it is ordinary grief.
Then he notices strange things. The client always watches from the same corner of the room. He never speaks during the reconstruction. But sometimes, just before the simulation ends, he whispers apologies under his breath. Not dramatic apologies. Small ones. Fragile ones. The kind that sound too late.
“I should’ve held him longer.”
Harua begins memorizing the scene unintentionally: Maki’s tired smile. The way he glances toward the window before speaking. The slight tremble in his fingers hidden beneath oversized sleeves. The room itself feels painfully intimate, like stepping inside somebody’s ribcage.
Then comes the moment that changes everything. Near the end of the memory, Maki quietly asks: “Can you hold me for a little while?”
And the unseen version of the other person in the room says no. Not cruelly. Just distracted. Exhausted. Thoughtless in the ordinary human way that becomes unbearable after death. Maki smiles anyway. Soft. Understanding. Like he already expected rejection. The session always ends there.
Harua cannot stop thinking about it afterward. Something about the memory feels wrong in a way he cannot explain. Familiar, almost. He starts staying late at work just to watch fragments of the reconstruction logs alone. The more he studies them, the stranger things become.
The apartment layout matches one from Harua’s childhood district. The voice waveform of the unseen person resembles his own. Even the tea brand on the table is one Harua drinks daily without realizing why. Eventually curiosity mutates into obsession. Against company policy, Harua accesses the client identification files. The name attached to the account freezes the air in his lungs.
- Shigeta Harua
- Age: 31
The client is him.
Or rather, an older version of him.
When future Harua finally appears in person, he looks exhausted beyond age itself. Like grief has physically hollowed him into something quieter than a human being. He does not seem surprised that Harua discovered the truth.
“You weren’t supposed to look yet,” the older Harua says.
Little by little, the truth unfolds.
Maki was Harua’s lover years in the future. The afternoon in the simulation is the last time they ever see each other alive. After leaving the apartment that evening, Maki dies in a transit collapse during a surface maintenance accident. But the worst part is not the death. It is the final conversation.
Maki had not asked for anything complicated. No grand confession. No impossible promise. He had simply looked exhausted and quietly asked to be held for a little while. Harua refused. Not because he stopped loving him, not because they were fighting. Simply because he assumed there would be another chance tomorrow.
There wasn’t.
Future Harua has spent decades replaying that afternoon beneath artificial sunlight because it is the only place Maki still exists with warmth in his skin and breath in his lungs. The simulations became an addiction. Then a punishment. Then the only thing keeping him alive.
“You’ll think you have time,” future Harua says quietly. “That’s the dangerous part.”
Harua asks the question anyway. The desperate question every grieving person asks even when they already know the answer.
“Can I change it?”
Future Harua looks toward the hologram where Maki sits bathed in endless orange light. “No,” he says. “That’s why this hurts.”
Because the memory never changes.
No matter how many times Harua watches it.
No matter how badly future Harua begs the hologram to stay.
No matter how many artificial sunsets bloom across the ceiling.
Maki always smiles softly after being refused.
Maki always says goodbye gently.
Maki always leaves the apartment alive for the last time.
And somewhere beyond the simulation, in a future still approaching like slow-moving ash, Harua realizes he is destined to spend the rest of his life haunted not by hatred, but by one ordinary moment of tenderness he failed to return.
Harua tells himself at first that he is only curious. That this is research. Preparation. A pathetic attempt to understand the person whose absence will one day ruin him. But curiosity becomes something alive.
The next morning, he searches public citizen records for Maki’s name with trembling fingers. There are thousands. He narrows it down using the district from the memory reconstruction. Then the transit routes. Then school archives. Tiny fragments. Breadcrumbs scattered beneath fluorescent underground cities where artificial suns bloom every six hours across concrete ceilings.
Eventually, he finds him.
Maki is twenty, alive, ordinary.
Harua almost hates how normal it feels. Maki works at a small repair shop that restores old surface-era electronics nobody really needs anymore. He has ink stains on his fingers. He drinks the instant coffee he brews too quickly and burns his tongue nearly every morning. He wears oversized sweaters with sleeves that hide half his hands exactly like the hologram. The first time Harua sees him in person, it feels like stepping into a ghost before the death has even happened.
Maki notices him staring.
“…Can I help you?”
Harua forgets how language works.
After that, things become embarrassing very quickly. Harua starts inventing excuses to visit the repair shop. Broken headphones. Malfunctioning projectors. A music player that was perfectly fine before he intentionally dropped it down the stairs. Maki grows suspicious within days.
“You come here a lot,” Maki says one afternoon.
“I support local businesses.”
“You looked emotionally devastated over a toaster yesterday.”
“It was a very important toaster.”
Maki laughs at that. Harua nearly breaks apart hearing it outside the simulation for the first time. Because it is warmer here. Real laughter sounds different from reconstructed laughter. Messier. Alive. It fills space imperfectly. And slowly, impossibly, they become close. Not instantly. Not dramatically. It happens in tiny pieces.
Shared train rides home beneath flickering artificial skies. Cheap noodle shops open past midnight. Maki rambling sleepily about surface myths while Harua pretends not to memorize every word. Rain simulations echoing through underground districts while they sit shoulder-to-shoulder in silence. Sometimes Harua catches himself staring too long. Not because he is falling in love. Because somewhere inside him, grief already has.
Maki notices eventually.
“You look at me like you miss me,” he says quietly one night.
Harua goes still. The hologram memory never included this conversation.
“I don’t even know you that well yet,” Maki adds with a small laugh, trying to lighten the strange tension between them.
But Harua does know him. He knows the shape of Maki’s final afternoon. Knows the exact angle sunlight touches his cheek at 5.42 PM. Knows the sound of his voice saying goodbye forever without realizing it. And most horrifying of all: he knows how it ends.
So Harua begins loving him desperately in advance. Every regret future Harua carried for decades becomes something he tries to repair before it exists.
When Maki is tired, Harua pulls him close gently, burying his face against Maki’s chest without waiting to be asked. When Maki falls asleep during movie nights, Harua lets him rest against his shoulder instead of waking him. When Maki reaches for his hand absentmindedly beneath crowded transit tunnels, Harua intertwines their fingers immediately.
The rain simulation starts sometime after midnight. Soft artificial droplets tap against the apartment windows while the underground city dims itself into imitation sleep. Orange sunset light has long faded from the ceiling projectors, leaving the room washed in low amber shadows and the quiet hum of ventilation systems beneath the floor. Harua is halfway through putting his shoes back on when Maki speaks from the bed.
“…Stay a little longer.”
It is such a small request, narely louder than the rain. But Harua freezes instantly. Because somewhere in another lifetime, another version of this room exists only as a wound now. Maki sits cross-legged beneath tangled blankets, oversized sleeves hiding his hands again. His hair is messy from sleep and his expression carries that same exhausted softness Harua knows too well from the reconstruction logs. Except here it is alive, warm, breathing.
“You don’t have work tomorrow anyway,” Maki mumbles. “And the trains are probably awful right now.”
Harua stares at him for a moment too long.
Then quietly: “…Okay.”
Maki blinks, almost surprised the answer came so easily. Usually Harua hesitates before accepting affection, like someone still learning how to receive sunlight after years underground. But tonight he crosses the room immediately, without a trace of hesitation. Like he already knows time is cruel, and is terrified the universe might snatch the moment away if he moves too slowly.
The mattress dips beneath his weight. For a while they just sit there listening to artificial rain. Then Harua leans against him naturally, forehead resting on Maki’s shoulder. Harua exhales shakily and wraps both arms around him almost too tightly. Maki laughs softly into his shirt.
“You’re clingy tonight.”
You have no idea, Harua thinks. Instead, he buries his face into Maki’s chest and closes his eyes. Maki presses a soft kiss to the top of his head. The scent of tea still lingers faintly in the room. Half-finished cups sit forgotten near the window. Orange city glow spills weakly across the floor. The memory. It looks too much like the memory. Panic flickers somewhere deep inside Harua’s ribs. Before it can grow teeth, he kisses Maki suddenly.
Maki makes a small startled sound against his mouth, but melts into it almost immediately. Warm hands find Harua’s waist. Their breaths tangle together clumsily, desperately, like both of them are trying to consume time itself before it disappears. Harua kisses him like someone drowning. Too intense. Too desperate. Every touch trembling with grief Maki cannot see yet. Maki laughs breathlessly between kisses.
“Hey,” he whispers, smiling against Harua’s lips. “Slow down a little.”
But Harua only pulls him closer. The fear inside him is unbearable tonight. Ancient, irrational and enormous. Every second feels temporary. Every heartbeat sounds borrowed. So he kisses Maki again. And again. Hands tangled in his sweater. Foreheads knocking together carelessly. Breathing each other in like oxygen might stop existing tomorrow. Eventually Maki catches Harua’s face gently between both hands.
“Harua.”
The name lands softly. Maki’s thumbs brush beneath Harua’s eyes before he even realizes tears are there.
“…Why are you crying?”
Harua looks away immediately. “I’m not.”
“You literally are.”
Maki’s voice stays light, teasing almost, but concern slowly folds itself beneath the words. He shifts closer until their knees touch beneath the blankets.
“Did something happen?”
Harua cannot answer that. How is he supposed to?
Maki brushes the damp hair away from Harua’s forehead. “I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
The words nearly destroy him. Because Maki says them so casually, so sincerely without knowing. Harua lets out one broken sound that almost resembles a laugh before wrapping his arms tightly around Maki, burying himself against Maki’s chest hard enough to make the blankets shift. Maki lets out a small startled squeak.
“Harua, I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry.”
But he doesn’t loosen his grip much.
After a while, Maki simply relaxes there anyway, warm and boneless against him. One hand slips beneath Harua’s shirt absentmindedly, tracing slow circles against his back.
“You’re weird tonight,” Maki murmurs.
“I know.”
“You wanna tell me what’s happening in your head?”
No, Harua thinks. Because if I say it out loud, it might become real faster. So instead he presses one last kiss against Maki’s temple and whispers quietly into his hair: “I’ll stay with you tonight.”
Maki hums softly. “Obviously.”
Later, when exhaustion finally drags them both under, they fall asleep tangled together beneath artificial rain and dim underground light. Harua stays awake longer than he should. Just listening Maki’s breathing. Maki’s heartbeat. The tiny unconscious noises he makes when dreaming. Harua memorizes all of it like someone trying to carry sunlight through the end of the world.
One evening, after weeks of rain simulations flooding the underground districts, the city finally projects a clear artificial sunset across the ceiling. The entire sector glows gold and orange like the world is trying to remember what the real sky used to look like.
Harua takes Maki to the upper recreational levels without telling him where they are going. Maki complains the entire train ride, half curious and half dramatic, until the doors open into a massive artificial park filled with hologram fireflies and warm synthetic wind. Maki stops walking immediately.
“…No way.”
Harua laughs quietly at the expression on his face. It is small, but real. The kind of laugh that only appears when he forgets the future for a few seconds.
The park is crowded with people escaping their concrete lives for the evening. Children chase projected birds through fake grass. Couples lie beneath a digital sky painted in impossible shades of peach and violet. Somewhere in the distance, old speakers play reconstructed ocean sounds. Maki spins slowly beneath the light, staring upward like someone witnessing magic. The artificial sunset reflects gold across his eyes.
“It almost feels real,” he whispers.
Harua looks at him instead of the sky. “It does.”
They spend hours there doing nothing particularly important, yet Harua wants every remaining second of Maki’s time anyway.
Drinking overly sweet vending machine coffee. Eating melting ice cream too quickly before it drips onto their hands. Maki buys two overloaded hotdogs from a tiny food stand near the lake and immediately burns his tongue because he refuses to wait for it to cool down.
Maki jerks back with a strangled noise. “Hot. Hot. Hot.”
Harua nearly chokes laughing. “I literally told you to wait.”
“This thing was forged in hell,” Maki mumbles miserably, fanning his mouth with one hand. “I can’t feel my tongue anymore.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m dying.”
“You said that ten minutes ago over melted ice cream.”
“That’s different medical emergency.”
Still laughing softly, Harua reaches over and wipes a bit of sauce from the corner of Maki’s mouth with his thumb. Maki blinks at him for a second, suddenly quieter. The artificial sunset spills warm gold across his face, catching softly in his eyes like candlelight. Without really thinking about it, Harua leans closer and presses a quick kiss against Maki’s lips. Just a tiny peck. Warm and fleeting and embarrassingly gentle.
“There,” Harua murmurs afterward. “Better?”
Maki stares at him like his brain has completely stopped functioning. “…What kind of treatment was that?”
Harua shrugs, pretending to stay calm even while his own heartbeat trips over itself. Maki’s face turns pink almost immediately, but then his expression slowly shifts into something dangerously playful.
“But my tongue is the one that got burned,” he says innocently. “So why did you only kiss my lips?”
Harua nearly drops his hotdog.
“Maki.”
“I’m just asking logically.”
“There was nothing logical about that sentence.”
Maki grins, clearly pleased with himself now that Harua is the flustered one instead.
“So your medical treatment isn’t very thorough, huh?”
Harua stares at him for a long second. Then he leans a little closer and says quietly, “Here?”
Maki’s breath catches instantly. The teasing expression on his face flickers apart so fast it almost feels unfair. Harua finally laughs under his breath, softer this time, because now Maki is the one short-circuiting beside him.
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet you like me anyway.”
The words come out teasingly, casually, but Harua feels his chest tighten with unbearable fondness all the same. Because yes. He does. So much it terrifies
They take blurry photo booth pictures Maki insists are ugly even while smiling at every single one. Later, they stop at a souvenir kiosk glowing beneath hologram lanterns. Maki suddenly grabs a fluffy white rabbit ear headband and places it onto Harua’s head before he can protest. Harua stares at him flatly.
“…Seriously?”
Maki is already laughing. “It suits you.”
“Is that so?”
“It does. You look approachable now.”
“I was approachable before.”
Maki squints at him. “Debatable.”
Before Harua can remove the rabbit ears, Maki picks up another headband with floppy brown dog ears attached to it. Harua immediately reaches over and places it onto Maki’s head in retaliation.
“There,” Harua says calmly. “Perfect.”
Maki gasps in betrayal. “You think I look like a dog?”
“You started this.”
“Yeah, but I’m cute about it.”
Harua snorts quietly, and for a second Maki just stares at him like he got distracted by the sound itself. The glowing amusement lights reflect softly against his face, against the ridiculous dog ears slipping slightly sideways in his hair. Harua feels his chest ache again. Not painfully this time. Just full. So full it almost scares him. At one point Maki suddenly grabs Harua’s sleeve and starts running.
“Come on, hurry!”
“Where are we even going?” Harua laughs breathlessly.
“You ask too many questions.”
They end up at the edge of the artificial lake just as the nightly light show begins. Thousands of holographic stars bloom across the ceiling above them, reflecting beautifully against dark water until it feels like the universe has opened underground just for them. Harua stares upward silently for a long moment before leaning against Maki’s shoulder. For once, he looks completely peaceful. No sadness hidden beneath his smile. No exhaustion. Just warm and alive and here.
Harua feels something inside him ache with terrifying tenderness. Because this is what he wanted. Not to change destiny. Not to outrun death. Just this. This ordinary happiness. So Harua reaches for Maki’s hand first this time. Intertwines their fingers carefully like handling something precious. Maki glances at him in surprise before smiling softly.
“You’ve been weird lately,” Maki murmurs.
“I know.”
“Like… really weird.”
Harua laughs under his breath.Maki studies him for a second longer, then squeezes his hand tighter instead of pulling away.
“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I think I like this version of you better.”
Harua freezes for a moment.
The words hit him harder than they should. Like somebody reaching directly into an old wound and finding it still open. Because somewhere in another timeline, another version of him existed. A colder version. A distracted version. Someone who loved Maki but forgot to show it in the small moments that mattered most.
And Maki had noticed the difference without knowing why. Harua looks away quickly before the emotion on his face becomes too obvious. The hologram stars shimmer softly across the water beside them, fragile and beautiful and temporary.
“…You do?” he asks, quieter than intended.
Maki hums. “Mm. Before, it kinda felt like you were always somewhere else.”
Harua’s chest tightens violently.
“But now,” Maki continues, smiling faintly as he leans closer against him, “it feels like you’re really here.”
For a second, Harua cannot breathe at all. Because that was everything future Harua spent decades grieving. Not the grand tragedies. Not fate itself. Just the unbearable realization that when Maki reached for him, Harua had only been half present. So Harua tightens his grip on Maki’s hand carefully, like he is trying to anchor himself inside this moment before time steals it away.
“I am here,” Harua whispers.
And this time, he means it completely.
Maki quietly stops going back to his own apartment. It happens so gradually neither of them notices at first. A toothbrush appears beside Harua’s sink. Then sweaters draped over the back of chairs. Chargers tangled near the couch. Half-finished repair projects abandoned on the kitchen table beside Harua’s work documents.
Eventually Maki is simply there all the time.Curled up beneath blankets during Harua’s late shifts. Sleepy in the mornings with terrible bed hair and oversized shirts hanging off one shoulder. Standing barefoot in the kitchen at 2 AM eating instant noodles straight from the pot while insisting this is “peak adult behavior.”
One evening Harua opens a cabinet looking for tea and finds it already reorganized.
“Did you move into my apartment without telling me?”
Maki glances up from the couch completely unbothered.
“Technically I migrated.”
“That’s not better.”
“I pay emotional rent.”
“You ate my emergency pudding yesterday.”
“It was delicious.”
Harua tries not to laugh. Fails immediately. The truth settles softly after that. Not through confessions. Not through dramatic conversations. Just through habit. Maki existing naturally inside every corner of Harua’s life until the apartment no longer feels correct without him in it.
One night, Harua lies half-asleep beneath tangled blankets when Maki suddenly settles on top of him, caging him gently between both arms braced beside Harua’s head on the mattress.
Harua lets out a startled noise. “Maki.”
Maki ignores him completely.
He stays hovering above Harua afterward, knees resting on either side of his hips while one of his hands slips beneath Harua’s shirt lazily, warm fingertips tracing slow circles against his chest. Sleepy affection clings to him like gravity.
“You’re heavy,” Harua murmurs weakly.
“You love me anyway.”
Unfortunately true.
Maki grins triumphantly before leaning down until their foreheads touch. His hair falls messily into his eyes as he looks at Harua quietly for a moment. Not teasing this time. Just soft and oddly sincere in a way that always catches Harua off guard.
Then Maki says very quietly: “I’m so lucky to have you.”
The words hit harder than they should. Because somewhere in the future, Harua already knows what it feels like to lose him. Harua’s throat tightens instantly. Maki notices the shift in his expression almost immediately.
“Hey,” he murmurs, brushing his thumbs gently beneath Harua’s eyes. “Why do you always look sad when I say nice things?”
Because loving you already feels haunted, Harua thinks helplessly. Instead he wraps both arms around Maki’s waist and pulls him down closer until their chests press together completely.
Maki laughs softly against his mouth when Harua kisses him. So careful. Like handling something precious enough to survive the end of the world. When they finally separate, Maki rests his forehead against Harua’s shoulder and mumbles sleepily: “You’re really clingy lately.”
Harua closes his eyes and holds him tighter anyway. “I know.”
He says yes to everything now.
Yes, stay longer.
Yes, tell me about your day.
Yes, take a walk with me.
Yes, let me hold you.
Especially that last one. Sometimes Maki seems startled by how carefully Harua loves him. Like Harua is handling something already broken.
One evening they lie together beneath a rented sunset projection in Harua’s apartment. Artificial orange light spills across the walls exactly like the memory reconstruction. The resemblance is so precise it makes Harua nauseous.
Maki notices him trembling. “What’s wrong?”
Harua cannot explain that he feels trapped inside a future corpse of a moment. Instead, he pulls Maki closer. Maki melts against him instantly, Harua’s forehead resting beneath his chin.
“Someone should hold you more often,” Harua whispers before he can stop himself.
Maki smiles sleepily. “You already do.”
That almost destroys him. Because this time, when Maki quietly asks, “Can you stay like this a little longer?”
Harua answers immediately. “Always.”
For a while, Harua begins believing fate might actually bend. Future Harua watches silently from afar, hollow-eyed and exhausted, saying nothing when Harua excitedly explains every difference. Every changed detail. Every new memory that never existed before.
“We’re different now,” younger Harua insists. “The timeline’s changing.”
But future Harua only looks tired.
“You still think tragedy announces itself,” he says softly.
The accident happens one year later. Exactly the same way. A surface maintenance transit collapse. Structural failure. Twenty-seven dead. Maki among them. Harua arrives too late. Again.
The universe does not care that he loved better this time. It does not care that he held Maki every chance he got. That he kissed him goodbye that morning. That he learned all his favorite songs. That he memorized the shape of his laughter outside simulations and holograms and reconstructed grief. Death arrives anyway. Cruel and ordinary. For a long time afterward, Harua cannot enter rooms with artificial sunlight. The color orange becomes unbearable.
But something inside the grief is different now. Not lighter. Never lighter. Just gentler around the edges. Because when Harua closes his eyes now, the memory that returns first is no longer the one from the reconstruction. It is real. Harua half-asleep in Maki’s arms, curled against his chest while holding him just as tightly in return. Maki laughing softly against his hair. Maki asking quietly, “Can you hold me a little longer?”
And this time, Harua had. Again and again and again. The pain remains enormous. Ancient. Planet-sized. But regret no longer lives inside it like rot. Years later, future Harua finally stops renting the hologram reconstruction. Not because he forgets Maki. Never that. But eventually, Harua stops returning to the reconstruction. Not because he forgets Maki. Never that. But because that final afternoon is no longer the memory that defines him most.
Now, when Harua thinks of Maki, he remembers warmth before grief ever has the chance to arrive. He remembers sleepy laughter against his shoulder, intertwined fingers beneath artificial sunsets, quiet evenings stretched lazily across borrowed hours. He remembers every embrace he once denied in another lifetime, and how this time, he gave them freely. Again and again. Until love itself became something larger than regret.
A few months after the funeral, orange light begins to feel cruel in ways Harua never understood before.
The underground city continues projecting artificial sunsets every evening anyway, flooding concrete ceilings with colors that no longer feel comforting. People still walk beneath them laughing, carrying groceries, falling in love, surviving. The world does not pause long enough for grief to catch its breath.
Harua returns to work because eventually survival becomes muscle memory. The memory reconstruction office feels quieter now. Or maybe he is the one who became quieter inside it. Most nights he stays late after everyone leaves. Monitoring hologram calibration. Reviewing emotional stability logs. Sitting alone beneath dim monitor light while artificial rain taps softly against the building exterior.
Tonight, one of the old private channels opens by itself. Harua freezes when the screen flickers. Then he sees himself. Older. Thinner. Familiar in the unbearable way mirrors sometimes are. Future Harua sits beneath pale monitor glow with exhaustion carved permanently into his face, but there is something softer there now too. Something less haunted. For a moment neither of them speaks.
Younger Harua looks first.
“You stopped renting the reconstruction.”
Future Harua gives a small nod.
“Yeah.”
His voice sounds quieter than before. Not hollow anymore. Just tired in a human way. Silence stretches gently between them. Behind future Harua, the room is dark except for one faint strip of orange evening light bleeding across the floor from an unseen projector somewhere outside frame.
Younger Harua stares at it for a second before asking carefully: “Does it ever stop hurting?”
Future Harua smiles then. Not happily. Not sadly either. Just honestly.
“No,” he says softly. “But eventually the pain stops being the only thing left of him.”
Harua lowers his eyes. His chest still feels like collapsed architecture. Like grief caved inward and left the ruins standing anyway.
“I thought if I loved him enough…” His voice breaks quietly. “Maybe the universe would spare him.”
Future Harua watches him for a long moment.
“We loved him,” he corrects gently.
Not you. Not me. We.
The word lands strangely warm. Future Harua leans back slightly in his chair.
“For a long time I thought this was punishment. That I was doomed to spend the rest of my life trapped inside one terrible moment.”
His gaze drifts somewhere distant, somewhere full of hologram sunsets and memory ghosts.
“But that wasn’t actually the memory that stayed with me most.”
Younger Harua already knows.
Rain simulations after midnight. Dog ears tilted sideways beneath amusement lights. Maki laughing with burnt tongue complaints between bites of hotdog. Warm hands pulling him closer without hesitation.
Future Harua exhales softly through his nose, almost a laugh.
“He was happy,” he murmurs. “That’s the part I couldn’t survive losing before.”
Another silence. Then suddenly, from somewhere beyond the screen: “I’m home.” A soft rustling sound follows, plastic bags shifting somewhere off camera. Future Harua glances away immediately. A soft knock echoes through the apartment.“Are you still working?”a familiar voice asks from somewhere outside the camera’s view.
For one impossible, heart-stopping second, younger Harua forgets how to breathe. Not because the voice is Maki. It isn’t. But because the sound contains life. Continuation. The terrifying proof that even after grief, mornings still arrive somehow.
Future Harua looks back toward the screen. And for the first time since they met, he smiles fully. The expression transforms him.
“You should go home,” future Harua says quietly. “Don’t stay in ghosts longer than necessary.”
Younger Harua swallows hard. “…Will I be okay?”
Future Harua’s eyes soften.
“No,” he answers honestly. Then, after a beat: “But you’ll keep living anyway.”
Another voice calls his name from offscreen, closer now. Future Harua glances back once more before reaching toward the monitor.
“Goodbye, Harua.”
The screen goes black. Silence floods the room afterward. Only the low hum of machinery remains. Harua stares at his own reflection in the dark monitor for a long time, trying to steady the strange ache inside his chest. Then a knock sounds lightly against the open office door. Harua looks up.
Someone stands there holding a stack of physical documents against their chest. A man maybe three years older than him stands there wearing an identification lanyard from another department. Dark hair slightly messy from rushing through transit levels. Sharp eyes softened only slightly by exhaustion. Gentle posture.
“Sorry,” the stranger says awkwardly. “I was told someone from reconstruction was still here.”
His voice catches somewhere deep inside Harua immediately. Familiar. Not recognizable exactly. Just… strangely warm. The man steps closer and offers the paperwork with a small apologetic smile.
“I’m Nicholas Wang. Surface Data Analysis division.” He lifts the folders slightly. “These were supposed to be delivered before tomorrow morning.”
Harua stares at him for half a second too long. Because something about the moment feels oddly suspended. The dark monitor beside him. The fading orange glow outside the office windows. The echo of a goodbye still lingering in the air. And that voice. Harua slowly reaches out to accept the documents, eyes flickering once toward the black screen before lifting back to Nicholas again.
For the first time in weeks, something inside his grief shifts quietly. Not healed. Never healed. Just opening. Like somewhere beneath all the buried sunlight and ruins of old futures, life is still stubbornly continuing forward anyway.
And somewhere beneath the endless concrete sky of humanity’s underground world, Harua finally understands something both devastating and gentle: We cannot change fate. Some endings will find us no matter how desperately we try to outrun them. Some losses are written into the architecture of existence long before we ever notice the cracks forming beneath us.
But maybe living was never meant to be about rewriting the inevitable. Maybe it is about loving people while they are still here. Holding them while we still can. Answering tenderness with tenderness before time steals the opportunity away.
And maybe surviving grief does not mean learning how to forget. Maybe it means learning how to continue breathing afterward, carrying the warmth they left behind like sunlight the world could not completely bury.