Chapter 2: Echoes of Despair
Shredded Through Despair
POV: Marino Soohyuk
I once thought silence was my natural state.
The void between stars, the hush of uncreated space — that was where I existed.
Now silence terrified me.
Silence meant my thoughts were too loud.
It had been two weeks since the rainstorm — two weeks since I first spoke to Aizawa Reika. In that time, we had exchanged no more than a handful of words. Passing greetings in the hallway. A polite nod in the library. Nothing more.
And yet, something had changed in me.
Every time I caught a glimpse of her, a pulse — faint but persistent — beat in the depths of my chest. It wasn't love. Not yet. But it was a direction. A pull. The beginning of something that frightened me far more than any cosmic entity ever had.
But before I could understand her, I needed to understand this world.
Being human was humiliating.
Painfully, endlessly humiliating.
I tripped over uneven sidewalks. I burned my tongue on miso soup. I fumbled over jokes I didn't understand and stared blankly at idioms that made no sense. My body tired. My lungs ached. And sleep — sleep — that strange nightly death that left me vulnerable and senseless — I hated it.
Yet, there was a strange beauty to it all.
I found myself watching the steam rise from my morning tea, fascinated by how it curled and vanished. I stood on the train platform, mesmerized by the chatter and motion, the sheer aliveness of it all. I listened to Mina complain about her math teacher and felt something I had never known before: affection.
Maybe this was the cost of mortality — frustration, weakness, confusion — but maybe it was also the reward.
School was my greatest trial. Marino's body had memories, yes, but memories were not understanding. Teachers asked questions I didn't know how to answer. Students laughed at jokes I didn't find funny. And above all, there were expectations — social rituals that governed every interaction.
But one afternoon, those expectations led me back to her.
"Hey, Soohyuk!" a classmate — Takeda — called out as we left the classroom. "We're grabbing ramen after school. You in?"
I hesitated. The Watcher in me wanted solitude. But Marino — the human I was pretending to be — needed connection. "Sure," I said.
The ramen shop was loud and chaotic. Steam fogged the windows, and the smell of broth clung to my clothes. I tried to follow the conversation, but their words blurred into meaningless noise. My thoughts were elsewhere.
Because across the street, standing beneath a flickering streetlight, was her.
Reika.
She wasn't supposed to be there. Her uniform was soaked from the drizzle, her bag clutched tightly against her chest. She wasn't waiting for anyone. She was just… standing there, eyes fixed on nothing.
"—Yo, Soohyuk!" Takeda nudged me. "You good, man?"
"Yeah," I muttered. "I'll catch up later."
Before anyone could stop me, I stepped out into the rain.
"Reika."
Her name felt strange on my tongue — fragile, like I wasn't worthy to speak it. She turned, startled.
"Oh. You."
"You're standing in the rain again."
"...I like the rain."
I raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"
"No." Her voice was barely a whisper. "But it feels honest."
I wanted to ask what she meant. I wanted to reach out and pull her out of the rain. But before I could, something shifted — something no human eye could see.
The air trembled. Reality shivered.
And I knew we were no longer alone.
They were subtle at first — faint distortions at the edge of perception. To humans, they would look like heat haze or flickering light. But I knew better. They were Enforcers — manifestations sent by the Architects to ensure fate remained undisturbed.
Three of them. Thin, translucent figures moving like shadows with purpose.
"Watcher."
"You were warned."
"Your interference risks the structure."
Their voices weren't heard but felt — vibrations directly into my mind. Reika noticed nothing. She just stared past me, lost in thought, while I faced the remnants of a cosmos that wanted me gone.
"I haven't broken the pact," I whispered under my breath. "I haven't changed her fate."
"You will."
They began to close in, their forms bending the air around them. If I were still The Watcher, I could have destroyed them with a thought. But here, I was human. Powerless.
And yet, I was not defenseless.
"Reika," I said, forcing my voice to stay calm. "Do you trust me?"
She blinked, confused. "What? I barely know you."
"Then trust me anyway. Please."
Maybe it was the desperation in my voice, or maybe some instinct deeper than reason. But she nodded, just once.
"Close your eyes," I whispered.
The moment she did, I moved.
Not with power — with instinct. With every scrap of cosmic awareness still embedded in my mortal shell. I stepped between the Enforcers and her, shifting ever so slightly in the narrow space where their reality met mine.
Their forms wavered, flickered. They couldn't touch me directly — not without breaking the same rules that bound me here.
"You are delaying the inevitable."
"Her despair is written. It cannot be undone."
"Maybe," I hissed. "But it can be shared."
Silence. Then, one by one, the Enforcers dissolved into mist.
When I opened my eyes, the rain had stopped.
"...Are you okay?" Reika asked, her brows furrowed. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have."
I wanted to tell her everything — who I was, why I was here, what hunted her from beyond the stars. But she wouldn't understand. Not yet.
"Let me walk you home," I said instead.
She hesitated. "Why?"
"Because no one deserves to walk alone."
Her lips curved into the faintest ghost of a smile. "You really are weird, Soohyuk."
"I'm aware."
We walked side by side through the wet streets, neither of us speaking much. And yet, the silence felt different now — not empty, but shared. She walked a little closer than before. Our hands brushed once, accidentally. She didn't pull away.
When we reached her apartment building, she paused at the entrance.
"Marino," she said softly. It was the first time she'd used my name.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For… noticing again."
Her words echoed the ones she had spoken before, but this time they carried weight — as if some invisible wall had begun to crack.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she added, and disappeared into the building.
That night, sleep refused to come. I stared at the ceiling, Reika's voice replaying in my mind, over and over.
The Enforcers had been right about one thing: her despair was written. But they were wrong about something far more important.
It could be rewritten.
And I would tear apart the fabric of destiny itself, if that's what it took.
But I was not the only one watching.
Far above the mortal plane, beyond the fabric of time and thought, a figure stirred. Cloaked in crimson, its eyes burned like collapsing stars.
"The Watcher interferes."
"Then we shall send the Harbinger.