Kael hated music.
That was the first thing his teacher noticed about him.
He wasn't tone-deaf. He wasn't rude about it. He just... didn't react to sound the way most people did. Where others felt rhythm, Kael felt pressure. A low pulse under his skin that made him uneasy — like something ancient beating from the earth's core.
He lived in the coastal city of Ishihana, hundreds of miles from Yukinomori. Grey skies, quiet streets, ocean wind that never stopped rattling the windows.
He walked home that evening the same way he always did — backpack slung over one shoulder, hood up, earbuds in (but nothing playing). He liked the illusion of silence. People didn't bother him that way.
But tonight was different.
Somewhere along the walk, he began hearing a distant chime.
Like wind passing through old temple bells — soft, deliberate, and completely out of place.
He pulled out his earbuds. Turned.
No one was there. Just the wide, empty stretch of the street lined with dying cherry trees.
He kept walking.
The chime rang again.
And then again — faster this time.
He froze near a streetlamp. The air felt thick. There was a strange hum in the ground. And for a brief second, he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
A figure.
Not standing. Hanging.
From the streetlamp.
He turned instantly — but it was gone.
Just the lamplight. Just the wind. Just his own pulse pounding in his ears.
Kael's breath caught. He took a step back... and his foot landed on something.
A thin strip of fabric.
Black. Torn. Fraying at the ends.
It looked like it had been part of a suit.
He bent down to pick it up, and as his fingers brushed it — the sound returned.
Not a chime now. A voice.
> "You're the echo. But you're not the first."
Kael dropped it. Heart thudding.
He looked around — but nothing made sense.
The lamplight above him had turned blue.
He was alone on the street.
And in that moment... it started to snow.
But it wasn't cold.
And the snow wasn't real.
It melted before it hit the ground.
Kael stood still, eyes fixed on the flickering blue streetlamp, as the not-snow vanished into steam.
He blinked.
And the street was gone.
He was suddenly standing in a field of mirrors.
No, not mirrors — glass.
Shards.
Hundreds of broken windows scattered across an endless dark plain. They caught no reflection, but every step he took sounded like a heartbeat cracking through ice.
Then came the humming again — faint, beautiful, and sad. It drifted through the still air, drawing him forward.
He saw her.
A girl.
Standing with her back to him, long black hair swaying lightly in a breeze that didn't exist.
She stood in front of a tall, rusted door that floated on nothing.
Kael tried to speak, but no sound came out.
The girl slowly turned her head, only halfway — just enough for him to see her eye.
Golden.
Bright like a dying star.
Then she whispered something, but Kael couldn't hear it. The humming drowned it out — louder now, more chaotic.
The glass below his feet began to crack.
He took a step toward her—
Shatter.
Everything collapsed.
---
Kael woke up on the sidewalk, breath ragged, the torn strip of fabric clenched in his hand.
He was back. Streetlight still flickering blue. Snow gone.
But the memory remained sharp.
Not a dream. Not a hallucination.
Something real.
He looked at his hand.
The fabric was warm.
And somewhere far away — in a city buried in snow — Reina sat up in bed, startled, her eyes wide.
She had seen him too.
Reina sat up in her bed, heart racing. She hadn't screamed, but her breath came in sharp gasps, like she'd been running through a storm.
She clutched her chest.
Her room was silent — the kind of silence that made even the ticking of a clock feel too loud. But she didn't own a clock.
She never liked them.
The snow outside her dormitory window had stopped. Everything was still.
Except her thoughts.
> "A boy… dark hoodie… eyes like shadows. He looked right at me."
She brushed her fingers through her hair and stared at her trembling hands. "It was just a dream," she whispered to herself.
But she didn't believe it.
Reina rarely remembered her dreams — let alone felt them after waking. But this one lingered like a scent in the air. That boy — whoever he was — left behind a feeling.
Loneliness.
And something else… something like the weight of a decision that hadn't been made yet.
She walked to her mirror.
Looked into her own golden eyes.
Suddenly, they didn't feel like they belonged to her.
---
Far from her campus, somewhere beyond the suburbs and alleyways of a city neither Kael nor Reina knew by name, Ren was sketching again. This time, the face on the page wasn't from memory.
It was her.
Golden eyes, half turned.
A rusted door behind her.
He didn't know her name, but somehow his pencil moved with urgency.
> "Why do I feel like I've seen her before?"
And why did his reflection in the train window — just for a second — not look like him at all?
---
The threads were moving.
Not touching.
Not yet.
But the pull had begun — soft, invisible.
Like the gravity between stars destined to collide.