The soft creak of the old chair echoed faintly in the room as Kuragane Yami leaned forward, the worn leather of his journal crinkling beneath his fingertips. The familiar scent of ink and dried paper, once comforting, now felt foreign—distant, even. He slowly flipped to the next page.
Blank.
He blinked.
Another page.
Still blank.
His heart thumped once.
Then again.
Flip.
Blank.
Blank again.
Then suddenly—without warning—the next page appeared different. Unlike the sterile emptiness of the others, this one was smudged with ink that bled across the lines, almost violently written, as if someone had clawed the words into the paper in a frenzy. The words screamed at him, hand-scrawled in large, all-capitals.
"SO, YOU FORGOT TO WRITE YOUR LIFE?"
The moment his eyes landed on that sentence, a sudden tightness clutched his chest. A strange ringing began in his ears. The silence of the room collapsed under the weight of those simple, accusing words.
He flipped again. This time the sentence clawed deeper.
"SO, YOU DECIDED TO BREAK THE COMMITMENT?"
He didn't understand. Commitment?
Another page.
"SO, YOU GOT TOO COMFORTABLE WITH HER? HUH?"
He froze.
The words seemed to throb with intensity on the page, as if they were alive, shouting directly into the core of his consciousness. His throat tightened. He could feel his heart pounding so violently that it hurt—slamming against his ribs like it wanted to burst out.
Each phrase struck him like a punch to the gut.
Each flip of the page was a blow to the identity he was so desperately trying to hold on to.
Each word twisted the knife of guilt that had long been sleeping inside him.
The thought started crawling back—the memory of her—Momo.
The gentle conversations. The shared jokes. The time they spent under the cherry blossom trees, drinking cheap vending machine coffee like they had all the time in the world. He remembered how her presence brought a rare silence to the chaos of his inner world.
Too much time.
Too easy.
Too peaceful.
And in that comfort… he had stopped writing.
The journal had been his lifeline. A ritual that grounded him. A desperate, painstaking attempt to preserve fragments of his identity—because he knew how fragile the mind could be. He wrote not just to remember—but to not forget. Each word had been an anchor. A nail driven into the wall of memory.
And he had stopped.
He had let go of the pen.
Let go of himself.
The guilt now pressed down on his chest like a massive stone slab. He felt like vomiting. Not because of the words, but because he couldn't deny their truth. He hadn't just missed an entry. He had let his guard down. Let his identity dissolve into the normalcy of a life that didn't belong to him.
His trembling fingers turned to the next page. It had a date. Unlike the frantic scribbles from before, this one was strangely calm—precise. It was written neatly. Too neatly.
He glanced at the date again.
Yesterday.
A chill ran down his spine.
And then he read:
"I know. Most probably you lost your memory, right? I knew this might happen. I had prepared for it. You want to know why? Here's the reason—
Two years have passed. You already finished Tokyo Tech. You even took the entrance exam for the University of Tokyo's medical program. The result is tomorrow. No—today.
This is it. The last wall. The final test. Fail here, and we lose everything.
All the times we buried ourselves just to survive.
All the lies we swallowed to keep the peace.
Every scream we choked back, every dream we set on fire—
None of it meant a damn thing.
We played their game. Followed their rules. Let them erase us, piece by piece.
And for what?
If we fall now?
GAME OVER. No continues. No second life.
Just the hollowed-out shell of what we could've been.
So I thought… before it ends, I wanted one last memory.
We assembled the KSociety higher-ups. We went to the world's biggest IT fest in Tokyo. A CTF. A final hackathon—one last blaze of glory. I didn't sleep for four days. I thought I could handle it. But I knew what the lack of sleep does to you. So I took something—something synthetic. Something experimental. A drug that makes you feel like you've rested even when you haven't.
But maybe it hit too hard. The side effect was memory loss. Temporary? Maybe. But I knew this might be the price. That's why I wrote this. That's why I left this trail. So you could find yourself again.
Don't forget. The result is at 12 PM. Count your time"
Yami dropped the journal.
He stood up like he had just been electrocuted. His limbs were numb but heavy, as if they belonged to someone else. A deep fear gripped him—not fear of failure, but the horrifying realization that he hadn't even known what his present life meant until now.
Everything felt like it was crashing down.
He stumbled toward the hallway, gripping the walls for support. He checked the time.
10:00 AM.
He exhaled, long and slow. It was like returning from a deep underwater dive. His mind was spinning. But with every breath, pieces of his life began clicking back together. The dorms. The lectures. The late-night code reviews. The sleepless nights chasing both dreams and demons.
And the girl. Sakurai Momo.
He peeked into the living room. His parents weren't home. Both had left for work.
He was grateful. He needed this silence. This moment. Alone.
In the bathroom mirror, he stared at his reflection—his sunken eyes, his slightly disheveled hair, the faint scar beneath his chin. He brushed his teeth slowly, like it was a ritual cleansing not just of his mouth, but of the haze that fogged his mind. Every step he took to get ready felt heavier than it should be.
He changed into a black hoodie and black jeans—his usual attire for days that carried too much weight. The hoodie had a small emblem stitched on the sleeve. ksociety's crest.
Even that felt distant now.
He moved toward his desk. The sunlight through the window stretched long golden beams across the floor. Dust particles floated in the light like suspended memories. The monitor was already on. The browser open.
A single tab.
A single URL.
The official University of Tokyo result portal.
He sat.
A thousand voices inside him started screaming.
He meditated.
He closed his eyes and started remembering everything he had done to reach this point.
But in his mind… one thought kept creeping in.
"What if I didn't make it?"
His hands shook.
He opened his eyes.
11:45 AM.
Fifteen minutes to go.
He stared at the blinking cursor in the search bar.
He stared at the digital clock on the lower right corner.
Time slowed down.
He remembered the first time he hacked a database at age 12.
He remembered the abuse of his parents which caused him to want to become a doctor so he is not abused anymore.
He remembered the blackout panic attacks.
He remembered the hallucinations.
He remembered his own promises written on crumpled post-its stuck to his wall.
"Don't die before you live."
"Root128 is not Yami. But Yami remembers Root128."
His eyes watered.
11:59 AM.
He placed his hand over his heart. It was racing uncontrollably.
60 seconds.
He could feel sweat trickling down his spine.
50 seconds.
The sound of the ticking wall clock became louder and louder until it was deafening.
40 seconds.
His right hand moved over the keyboard.
30 seconds.
He placed his left hand on the mouse. The cursor hovered over the "Reload" button.
20 seconds.
He muttered quietly under his breath.
"Please… just once."
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
He clicked.
The page blinked.
Updated.
He pressed Ctrl + F with a trembling hand. The find box appeared.
He typed slowly:
K U R A G A N E Y A M I
The system searched.
Loading...
"No results found."
Everything stopped.
Time. Sound. Breath.
Silence fell like snow—slow, cold, and suffocating.
He stared at the message.
"No results found."
He blinked. Once. Twice. It didn't change.
It wasn't a system glitch.
It wasn't a loading delay.
He wasn't on the wrong page.
He had simply not made it.