I didn't mean to start running.
It just… happened.
One second I was staring at a vending machine that refused to give me my change, and the next — the sidewalk split down the middle like a cracked phone screen. The sound wasn't thunder. It wasn't even like an earthquake. It was this high-pitched ping, like someone dropped a wine glass on reality.
People kept walking past me, eyes glued to their phones, not noticing the blue light oozing from the split in the pavement. Not hearing the static buzz, like a radio stuck between stations.
I blinked.
And then the sky broke.
It didn't explode or rain fire or anything Hollywood. It just fractured — silently — like a mirror webbing from the center, except the lines glowed this soft blue-white. Behind the cracks, there was nothing. Not clouds. Not stars. Just… void.
Everyone still acted like nothing was wrong.
Except me.
And that's when I heard her voice again.
"Keep running, Rei. No matter what."
It echoed — clear, distant, and warm — right in my ears. I hadn't heard Airi's voice in over a year. Not since the Incident. Not since she vanished. Not since the news reported a freak accident during track meet practice that left no traces but an empty field and a melted stopwatch.
My legs started moving before my brain did.
Run.
The first step burned. Like my body forgot what motion was. My shoes slapped the pavement, and the moment I moved — the world shuddered. I don't mean like an earthquake. I mean the buildings actually glitched.
Like a bad stream buffering.
The old ramen shop flickered into a different style — brick turned to steel, neon signs became wooden lanterns, the air smelled like rain for a second — then everything snapped back. My chest pounded.
I ran harder.
Run.
Every few steps, a different piece of the world snapped and flickered. A tree turned to crystal. A streetlight warped into a floating lantern. The guy in front of me turned into a blur of numbers before re-solidifying, completely unaware.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" I yelled.
No one answered.
But I kept running.
And then, after what felt like fifteen minutes of sprinting, dodging unreality, and sweating through every layer I had on — I stopped. My knees hit the ground. My heart felt like it wanted to punch a hole through my chest.
That's when the world calmed.
The cracks in the sky faded.
The weird static hum stopped.
Everything was… back.
A cat yawned on top of a trash can. A car honked at a biker. A woman cursed at her GPS. Life resumed like nothing happened. Except one thing.
Where I had just knelt — a faint, glowing trail of footprints stretched behind me. My own. Glowing blue like stardust.
They hovered on the pavement, fading after a few seconds, like someone sketching my path with light.
And I swear to you, I heard her voice again.
"You're not going crazy, Onii-chan.
You're finally waking up."