16th Scene
The afternoon is heavy, the kind of heat that makes the air feel like syrup.
Kiyomi left for her shift at the konbini hours ago.
The house breathes slowly around me, cicadas screaming outside like they're trying to drown something out.
I sit on the floor again, legs crossed, the phone in my lap like it's a loaded weapon.
I'm tired of being afraid of it.
I opened my phone, I know what original Kiyoshi would do
He'd put clues for someone if he ever disappears.
How do I know?
I guess his body is making me think like him bit by bit
I open the first folder.
凛
I read the entire series in one sitting.
Volume one to thirteen, no breaks.
Rin, the voiceless assassin raised in a lab.
Trained to kill without sound, without hesitation.
Each mission strips another piece of him away until he meets the girl who can hear thoughts and hears nothing inside him.
She calls him empty.
He falls in love anyway.
In the end he defies every order, fights every other weapon the facility ever made, and dies on a rooftop holding her corpse, whispering the only word he ever learned to shape with his broken throat:
"Stay."
I wipe my eyes without realizing they're wet.
Next folder:
零
Zero, the boy trapped in a time loop of war.
Dies 4,117 times.
Each loop he tries to save someone new.
Each loop he fails.
Eventually learns he is the original sinner who began the war.
The only escape is to kill his child-self before the first shot is fired.
He does it.
The world is saved.
He is erased.
The final page is blank except for one line:
"Thank you for forgetting me."
My chest hurts.
Third:
影
Kage, the psychic detective who trades his own memories to solve crimes.
Forgets his mother, his first love, his own name.
The final case is the murder of the woman he once loved.
The killer is a future version of himself.
To break the cycle he erases everything left inside his head.
He saves her.
He walks away a polite, smiling stranger.
Fourth: 蒼
Ao, the immortal soldier.
Clone bodies, endless wars.
Watches everyone he loves age and die while he stays seventeen.
The nurse he loves grows old.
He reads her forty years of love letters at her bedside.
She dies holding the hand of a boy who never aged.
He signs up for the next war because pain is the only thing that still feels like proof he exists.
Fifth:
緋
Hi, the girl who burns whatever she loves.
Parents, dog, first kiss — everything turns to ash at her touch.
She locks herself away.
A boy in fireproof armor breaks in, says he loves her, refuses to leave.
He burns slowly, smiling.
In the end her scream melts the concrete bunker.
The world ends because she finally loved something back.
I finish the last page at 7:42 p.m.
The room is dark except for the glow of the phone.
Every single story is about someone who sacrifices everything — identity, memory, existence — for love.
Every single protagonist chooses to disappear so someone else can live.
I stare at the five folder names.
凛 零 影 蒼 緋
I line the first characters up in my head.
凛零影蒼緋
rin rei kage ao hi
A sentence, hidden in plain sight:
"Even if I become a cold, zero, shadow-blue corpse, I will burn for you."
A love letter written in titles.
A suicide note disguised as a bookshelf.
My hands move without permission.
I open the computer.
The password field is waiting.
I type the five characters.
凛零影蒼緋
Enter.
The screen flashes white.
The words appear, stark black on blinding white, centered perfectly.
You are really not Kiyoshi, are you?
I stare at them.
The cursor blinks once.
Twice.
My hands freeze above the keyboard.
Everything slows down: the cicadas outside, the blood in my ears, the dust floating in the last bar of sunset light.
I think of the gun that was cleaned and ready.
I think of the diary written in four layers of ice-cold code.
I think of the five light novels whose titles spell a love letter and a suicide note in one breath.
I think of the boy who chose stories where every protagonist erases himself so someone else can live.
I think of the empty space in this room that still carries his shape.
My vision blurs.
My throat closes.
I type one letter at a time, fingers shaking so hard the keys clack too loud.
No…
I'm not him.
I stop.
Tears drop onto the keyboard, one, two, three.
I keep typing through them.
I'm sorry.
I woke up in your bed.
I wore your skin.
I let your sister hug me and call me your name.
I read your stories and I cried for you and I still don't know who you were protecting.
I'm sorry I'm not strong enough to be you.
I'm sorry I'm too weak to give this body back.
I wish I could tell you thank you.
For the yukata you never got to wear to the fireworks.
For the porridge you never got to taste when you were sick.
For the little sister who still believes her brother is coming home.
I wish I could ask you to forgive me for living the days you didn't get to have.
I wish I knew your real name—the one you hid behind all the codes—so I could say it out loud just once.
The cursor waits.
I wipe my face with my sleeve and type the final truth.
I'm not Kiyoshi.
But I'll try to take care of everything you left behind.
I promise.
I hit Enter.
The second question appears.
Is he dead?
The tears fall faster.
I think of the gun again.
Of the way this body sometimes moves like it remembers things I never learned.
Of the headaches that feel like someone screaming behind a locked door.
I type:
I hope not.
I hope wherever you are, you're finally allowed to be the person who didn't have to disappear.
I hope someone is holding you the way Kiyomi holds me when the pain comes.
I hope you're warm.
I hope you're not alone.
I hit Enter one last time.
The white screen flickers—just once—like a breath.
Then the computer powers down.
The red LED dies.
The fan spins to silence.
I sit in the sudden dark, crying for a boy I never met,
a boy who loved so fiercely he built his entire life around becoming a weapon and then a ghost,
a boy whose last message to the world was hidden in five stories that all end the same way:
I would rather cease to exist than let you get hurt.
I curl forward until my forehead touches the cold, dead monitor.
I whisper into the silence the only thing I have left to give him.
"Thank you…
for letting me borrow your name a little longer.
I'll try to make it mean something gentle."
The room stays quiet.
But for the first time since I woke up in this body,
the silence doesn't feel empty.
It feels like someone, somewhere,
finally heard me say his name the right way