Chapter 5: Fragmented Dream
Void. In the void, A faint light resonated in the miasma of the emptiness, echoing through the corners of the infinite. The small speck that had once drifted in the void was the creation. Upon awakening, it saw the scene that was already familiar. Upon realizing it was in the void, a void that consumed its vision and its senses. It simply thought.
-The darkness... the darkness is not as silent as I thought. It never was.-
-Again I float in the darkness. I don't feel... whole. Without a body, without any form, I only feel... dissolved. Only my consciousness suspended in the void.-
But it was not all emptiness. In the distances it could perceive, fleeting sparks igniting in the darkness began to reveal fragments of glass. Upon noticing these objects, its consciousness drifted toward them as though pushed by a gust of wind. Focusing more on these fragments, the light emanating from them absorbed its consciousness.
Shortly after the light faded, it began to feel. It realized it had a human body, though it could not feel its own face. It watched as the fragments began to move erratically around it.
The fragments were forming a scene, replicating its memories. A scene that was fragmented and blurry. It analyzed its surroundings and recognized the place.
-(This place isn't...)-
But before it could say the name of the place, it was interrupted.
"Rain, are you even listening to me?"
A feminine voice with a sweet tone. A familiar one. Warm but distant, as though speaking from the other side of a fogged pane of glass. The words were not precise, blurring before they could reach full clarity.
It tried to respond to that person, but its voice wouldn't come. It didn't exist. It could only observe.
The fragments swirled, and for one fleeting instant, it saw blurry shapes. A room. White lights. A hospital. An office. All these places blended together as though they were one.
"Rain, you can't keep going like this. You can't stop taking care of yourself."
The sweet voice again, with its worried tone.
-(She isn't...?)-
It vaguely remembered who she was. Her name it could not recall, as though it slipped through its nonexistent tongue.
"I'm fine."
That was its own voice. A voice that sounded tired and hollow.
"No you're not! You've gone weeks without sleeping or eating properly. He wouldn't want to see you like this."
The fragments began to tremble, rearranging the scene and forming another memory. This one was sharper, but just as fleeting.
A large room. Flowers everywhere. Oil paintings covering the walls throughout. A fresh smell.
It felt something warm in its chest, and at the same time something that constricted within it. What was it? Nostalgia? Pain? Guilt? Or anger?
The image of the room shattered like breaking glass, and the fragments replicated another scene: a hallway. Its body began to move, rushing forward. The echo of its own ragged breathing resonated around it.
"Wait! Rain! Don't go in there!"
The feminine voice called its name, screaming from behind it, but its body didn't respond. It had run anyway.
"Why? What had happened? I thought I could..."
It couldn't remember what came next. The fragments and the void distorted the scene.
And it was then, in the midst of the void and the absolute darkness, that a voice cut through all the fragments.
"Rain..."
It stopped. The void went calm. The fragments scattered. Its entire consciousness was paralyzed.
A weak voice, yet at the same time soft and warm.
"Rain... are you here?"
It was not the voice of that girl. It was that person. It wanted to scream. It wanted to move. It wanted to reach him. To reach the source of the voice. But the void held it trapped.
The fragments began to swirl faster and more erratically, as though trying to reconstruct something lost. Blurry faces, faint smiles. Tears it couldn't remember having shed.
"Rain... You can rest... Don't worry about me... Alright, Rain?"
The voice grew more distant, more faint.
-Wait!-
It cried out desperately into the void, yet its own voice did not carry even a trace of sound.
"Rain!"
The fragments began to fade, merging with the darkness one by one.
"Take care of yourself, Rain..."
The voice was barely a whisper, swallowed by the darkness. An absolute silence.
The void felt even heavier. Colder. There was only Rain, surrounded by nothing. The memories had faded. All that remained were the echoing remnants of that voice, etched somewhere deep within its being.
-Wait! Don't leave me... Don't leave me alone...-
"I will save you, and you will have a normal life. That I promise."
Those had been Rain's words. A promise made without knowing the cost, without knowing that time would not wait.
"No matter what it takes."
And he had only asked for one thing in return. Just one.
-"Promise me you'll never forget me, Rain?"-
She had promised to save him. He had asked her to remember him. And here she was, having failed to save him, with his name being the one thing she had been unable to forget.
-Eduard...-
The memory was gone. No image remained, no place, no outline of his face. Only that name floating in the darkness, the sole thing that had survived the forgetting.
And with it, a feeling she didn't know whether to call pain or rage. It was probably both. It probably didn't matter to distinguish between them.
And then, from the very depths of the void, "that presence" appeared. That entity. It had no form. It had no face. It existed only as an oppression of the absolute void that enveloped everything.
-"Wake up."-
The voice thundered through the corners of the void, merciless and ancient.
-"Wake up."-
It was then that she felt her consciousness being pulled, dragged toward somewhere.
-"Wake up."-
The darkness began to stir.
-"Wake up, Rain."-
-"You have not yet finished the work you must do."-