The world was louder back then. Not with the roar of dragons or the hum of alien cities, but with the simple, crushing noise of a life I was supposed to be living. I was fourteen. The silence Doraemon left behind had started to fossilize.
Dinner was the worst. The table felt too big.
"...and that new promotion is just around the corner, I can feel it," Dad said, shoveling rice into his mouth.
"Just make sure you don't overwork yourself, dear," Mom replied, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. There was a pause. A space in the conversation that had a specific, cat-shaped outline.
"You know," Mom started, her voice softer. "I was cleaning the attic today. I found one of those little bean-paste buns he loved so much. Must have rolled under a box."
My fork stilled. He. They never said his name. It was always 'he' or 'that robot' or 'your friend'. As if saying 'Doraemon' too loudly might break some fragile spell.
"Yeah," I said, my voice a little too bright. "He was always so messy." I forced a smile. "But hey, more taiyaki for me, right?"
The smile felt like a crack in my face. I was the curator of a museum no one else could see, cheerfully polishing the exhibits for an audience of one.
School was a different kind of quiet. The halls felt emptier. Suneo's family had moved to Paris for his father's business six months ago. Dekisugi had been accepted into some elite science academy in Switzerland. And Shizuka... her mother had gotten a once-in-a-lifetime transfer to a university in America. They'd all left for high school prep in a whirlwind of goodbyes and promises to write.
Only Gian and I were left, two relics in a museum of our own. He didn't talk about the past much either. It was easier to just pretend we were always like this.
I was walking home, my shadow stretching long in the afternoon sun, when the world turned white.
It wasn't a sound first. It was a pressure, a sudden, physical weight that shoved the air from my lungs. Then came the noise,a deep, visceral THUMP that wasn't heard so much as felt in the marrow of my bones. The ground trembled. Car alarms screamed to life in a cascading wave of panic.
My head snapped up. A pillar of smoke, thick and black, was already coiling into the sky. My blood went cold. It was rising from the exact center of my neighborhood.
My feet were moving before the thought fully formed, the schoolbag falling from my shoulder.
"No. No, no, no."
I ran, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs, the world blurring into a smear of panic-stricken faces and screaming sirens.
I skidded to a halt at the edge of our street. Or what was left of it.
Where my house should have been was a crater. A smoldering, ugly wound in the earth. The surrounding homes were shredded, their walls peeled back like the skin of a fruit. The air tasted of ash and burned plastic.
I stood there, frozen. My home. My room. The desk where he used to sit. The drawer he slept in. All of it, gone.
"MOM! DAD!!!"
"They're safe"
"Huh-?"
Then, they appeared. Not firefighters. Men and women in sleek, silver uniforms that seemed to drink the light.
The Time Patrol. They moved with an efficiency that was alien, putting up shimmering barriers, scanning the area with devices that hummed with a familiar, futuristic energy.
One of them, a woman with a face as cold and smooth as marble, approached me. Her eyes scanned a data-slate.
"Nobita Nobi," she stated, her voice devoid of emotion. "The temporal explosive was keyed to a specific memory resonance. A latent engram from a conflict with the… undersea radical faction you encountered at age twelve. Your retention of that memory created a causality anchor. A beacon. They found your timeline through you."
"What does that mean?!"
The words landed like physical blows. My fault. It was my fault. It was my fault? Why's no one denying this?!
"Your parents had not returned from work yet. They'll be safe."
My memories, the very things I clung to, had become a weapon that destroyed my home. My family could have been in there. They were at work, they were safe, but… they could have been in there.
My body Felt goosebumps from the thought.
That night, as I sat in a temporary shelter, numb and hollow, another visitor came. The air in my room shimmered, and a boy stepped out. He looked a few years younger than me, with my own hopeless hair and a grim set to his jaw I didn't recognize.
"Grandfather," he said softly.
I just stared. I was too empty to be surprised.
"They told you what happened," he said. It wasn't a question. "The memory is the trigger. As long as anyone remembers, you are all targets. The past will keep trying to correct itself."
"What are you going to do?" I whispered, my voice raw.
"What we should have done from the beginning," he said, his eyes full of a pity that felt ancient. "We're going to make you safe. We're going to sever the connection. Everyone's memories of him, of the gadgets, of the other worlds… all of it. It will be like it never happened."
"Everyone?" The word was a breath.
"Everyone," he confirmed. "Except you. If you're fine with that....that is."
"I see." My eyes carried more of an approval than my words.
He left as quietly as he came. The procedure, they said, was clean. Painless.
A week later, we moved. A new city. A new house. A "promotion" for my dad that came out of nowhere.
The first dinner in the new house was quiet.
"...and that new promotion is just around the corner, I can feel it," Dad said, shoveling rice into his mouth.
"Just make sure you don't overwork yourself, dear," Mom replied, her smile genuine this time.
There was no pause. No cat-shaped silence. The space was just… space.
I tried, once. "Hey, Mom? Remember that time I-"
"Not now, Nobita, the news is on," she said, not unkindly, her eyes glued to the television.
It was the same at school. A new school. I saw Gian across the yard. I walked over, a fragile hope in my chest.
"Hey, Gian."
He looked at me, his face a blank slate. Then his eyes narrowed with a familiar, dismissive contempt. "What do you want, Nobi-the-Stupid? Get lost."
He turned his back and walked away. Suneo wasn't there to smirk. Shizuka wasn't there to scold him. It was just him, and me, and the same old dynamic, stripped of the years of friendship and shared, impossible adventures that had once redeemed it.
The hole in my chest didn't feel like sadness. It felt like satisfaction. A cold, grim satisfaction. They were safe. They were normal.
Everyone was happy. Everyone could be happy. Except me, of course.