Day 17 - April 17, 2024
The Weight of Dreams
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I woke in my bed. Not to the familiar blare of my alarm clock but to silence. A silence that was not gentle or restful. It felt heavy, like the air had thickened overnight, pressing against my skin and sinking into my bones. My eyes blinked open to the pale white ceiling above me. Blank. Lifeless. I turned my head slowly.
The red digits glowed back at me. Seven o'clock in the morning.
My breath caught in my throat.
It was supposed to ring at six thirty. Always. Every morning. Without fail. I never missed it. I hadn't touched it. I was sure. My hand reached for the clock, cold fingers brushing the plastic. It was set. The volume was up. Nothing was wrong. And yet it had not made a sound.
A strange chill slid down my back like a drop of icy water. I sat there, frozen for a moment, trying to shake the weight crawling up my spine. Something felt off. Something was not right. But I didn't have the luxury to dwell on it.
I was late.
The meeting. The project. Mr. Shibata's sharp voice echoed in my memory, his eyes boring into me during yesterday's briefing. My first day as project lead. Of all days. My hands moved before my mind fully caught up. Shirt. Tie. Slacks. My fingers fumbled, knotting the fabric with uneven urgency. My shirt clung awkwardly to my skin, still warm from sleep. I didn't even stop to look in the mirror. I could feel my hair sticking up in defiance, but I didn't care. Not now.
I grabbed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder as I stormed out of the room. The apartment groaned beneath me. Each step down the narrow wooden stairs felt louder than it should have. Echoing. Hollow. Almost as if the walls were listening.
Then. Crash.
The collision hit me like a shockwave, knocking the breath clean out of my lungs. I stumbled back, blinking fast, disoriented.
"I'm so sorry!" I blurted, reaching out instinctively. My chest pounded with the sudden jolt, adrenaline rushing through my veins like ice water. "It's my fault, I wasn't looking—"
He was sprawled on the floor.
My neighbor.
Roughly my age. Lived just across the hall. Always gave a polite nod in passing. But now, he lay there motionless for a moment, before slowly, rigidly, pushing himself upright.
His face was pale. Expressionless. Hollow in a way that made my stomach twist. His eyes—those eyes—did not blink. Did not move. They stared blankly at the floor, wide open and glassy, as if trying to see something that wasn't there.
Not a flinch. Not a wince. Not a word.
No breath.
"Hey... are you okay?" I asked, voice faltering, barely more than a whisper now. The question felt useless, as if it had no place in this moment.
Then he stood.
Not with the awkwardness of someone startled or hurt. Not with the confusion you'd expect from a fall. He rose with unnerving precision. Every movement smooth, deliberate, slow. Too slow. And completely wrong.
He did not look at me. Did not speak. Did not even seem to notice I existed.
He turned.
And walked away.
As if I were invisible. As if I had never touched him. As if none of this had happened.
My hand hung in the air, forgotten. My body was frozen in place, suspended in the wake of something I could not understand. The air was colder now. Heavier.
It felt like the world had tilted, just slightly. Enough to throw everything off balance.
Something was not right.
But I had no time. My legs moved on their own, pushing me into a run, away from the silence, away from the stranger who used to be someone I knew. Away from whatever was beginning to wake.
The city streets were alive. Or they wanted me to believe they were. People walked. People talked. Some even laughed. On the surface, it was all familiar. Orderly. Safe. But something in the air vibrated with falsehood. A wrongness that seeped beneath the cracks of the concrete.
It was in the way they moved.
Every step taken in perfect time. Every head turned at just the right moment. Conversations ebbed and flowed with unnatural rhythm. There were no hesitations. No awkward gestures. No human error. Only fluid, mechanical grace.
Like puppets.
I turned a corner and passed an alley. The kind I normally wouldn't notice. Narrow. Deep. Carved between two aging buildings. But something pulled at me. A chill against my neck. I glanced, just for a second.
And saw him.
A silhouette half swallowed by shadow. A man, or something shaped like one, standing impossibly still. No breath. No sway. Just watching. Eyes invisible but unmistakably locked on me.
Then he coughed.
Only it was not a cough. The sound tore through the silence with a sickening rasp, wet and thick, like metal scraping across soaked gravel. It rattled with something feral, something that did not come from any human throat.
BEEEEP.
A car horn split the air. My body jerked back on instinct, crashing to the pavement. Pain surged through my palms as they scraped against the rough ground. My chest heaved, breath lost somewhere between panic and disbelief.
I looked up.
The alley was empty.
Empty.
The figure had vanished, swallowed whole by shadow or something worse. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, too loud, too fast. A cold pressure wrapped around my ribs.
Something was watching me. Something had already seen me.
At the train station, I stood among them.
The crowd. Familiar faces I had passed countless times. The old man in the coat too big for his frame. The woman with the green scarf who always boarded the third car. The teenager glued to his phone.
They were all here.
And yet they were not.
Their eyes were empty. Not tired. Not distracted. Empty. As if the soul had been gently peeled away, leaving only the shell. Their mouths moved in pleasant, rehearsed expressions. Their breathing rose and fell in perfect, mechanical unison.
My gaze moved across the sea of faces and felt no warmth. No flicker of life.
It was them. But it was not them.
By the time I reached the company building, the clock had already betrayed me. 8:05 am. The sharp red digits on the glass door's reflection mocked me as I stumbled inside, drenched in sweat, lungs clawing for breath. Mr. Shibata would be livid. He had made it clear. Today was the day. No room for error.
I flung the door to the meeting room open, heart pounding like a war drum.
But it was empty.
Utterly, impossibly empty.
Not just in the way of a meeting that had ended early. There were no signs of life. No folders left behind. No spilled coffee. No misaligned chairs. No crumpled post-it notes clinging to the edge of a table. It was sterile. Unused. As though no one had ever entered the room. As though the meeting had never existed.
I stood frozen in the doorway, the silence pressing against my ears, louder than any shout.
I stepped back, numb, and walked the halls. Fluorescent lights flickered faintly above, but there was no hum of machines. No footsteps. No voices behind office doors. Only the quiet, vast and suffocating, like the building itself was holding its breath.
By the vending machine, my fingers shook as I retrieved an energy drink. The cold metal against my palm grounded me, if only for a moment. I opened it. The hiss echoed like a scream.
Still, no one.
I made my way to my desk. And found it there. A stack of documents, towering and pristine.
Relief flickered, until I flipped the first page.
Blank.
The second. The third. The entire stack. Empty. Not a single word. Not a line. No diagrams, no reports. Just the dull weight of white paper mocking the very concept of purpose.
My temples throbbed. A slow, pulsing ache began to dig into my skull.
And then... suddenly, they were there.
My coworkers.
All of them.
Sitting neatly at their desks. Typing, sketching, flipping papers. Laughing even. It was all back, all restored, like a switch had been flipped.
But something was wrong.
Deeply, unmistakably wrong.
The rhythm. It was too exact. Too synchronized. The typing came in waves, identical patterns repeating without variation. The scribbling of pens and pencils followed the same tempo, like an invisible metronome was dictating every motion.
I stepped closer, squinting at the papers they worked on.
Blank.
Every sheet. Just like mine.
Yet they moved with certainty, as if they saw something written in invisible ink. As if they were part of a play I had never been given the script to.
The nausea crept in slowly. A thick, oily dread curling in the pit of my stomach.
I staggered to Hiroshi's desk. My friend. The one person who always had an answer. Who always had a joke to defuse the tension.
Gone.
Not just absent. Erased.
No chair. No mug with the chipped rim. No half-scribbled notes. No warmth. No trace of his scent in the air.
It was as if Hiroshi had never existed.
My breath hitched. The air thickened. Every step felt like walking through water.
Then. impact.
A collision.
I stumbled into a woman, a colleague I recognized but could not name. Her papers flew from her grasp, fluttering to the floor in slow motion. I dropped to help, stammering apologies, hands trembling, desperate for something, anything, human.
She rose before I could finish.
Slowly. Without expression. Her eyes never found mine. Her face was smooth, unreadable. A mask with no soul behind it.
She walked away.
No words. No acknowledgment.
I did not exist.
I was not seen.
My heartbeat roared in my ears. The edges of my vision blurred. The room spun slowly, methodically, as if dragged by unseen hands.
And deep inside, I felt it.
Not fear.
Something worse.
Airi.
Fujimoto Airi.
If anything in this world still made sense, it was her.
I ran. Stumbled. My knees slammed against the stairs, the pain sharp, immediate—meaningless. I climbed, driven by something primal. Something desperate.
Her office.
I burst through the door, breathless, heart frantic.
Empty.
No scent of perfume lingering in the air. No humming from her lips. No warmth clinging to the corners of the room. Only a suffocating void. The kind that did not just whisper absence, but screamed it.
My lungs seized. My throat burned.
"Airi!"
Her name tore from my lips, raw and shaking.
Nothing.
No answer.
The silence was cruel. Indifferent.
Tears surged without warning, spilling down my face. I did not wipe them away.
What is happening to me?
I ran.
Through corridors that swallowed sound. Past people whose shoulders I collided with—yet none turned. None recoiled. They moved like mist. Shadows. Unaware of my existence. Or pretending not to see.
I ran.
The world blurred, every breath ragged, every heartbeat pounding against my ribs like a drum of war.
Until I reached her apartment.
Her door.
Ajar.
I froze.
Airi never left her door open. Never.
My pulse thundered in my ears. My hand trembled as I reached out and pushed it further.
The creak echoed into a silence so deep it felt like falling.
Inside—nothing.
No laughter. No light. No trace of the life that once filled this space.
"Airi!"
My voice broke in the stillness.
No answer.
I fell to my knees.
My body collapsed beneath the weight of fear. Despair crashed over me, wave after wave. My chest heaved, my sobs ragged, my fingers clutching the floor like it might anchor me.
Tears pooled beneath me, painting the cold tiles with grief.
"Please... where are you..."
Then.
A sound.
A voice.
Soft. Familiar. Fragile.
"I'm sorry... Haruki..."
My breath caught. I turned so fast my vision spun.
"Airi?"
No one.
Nothing.
"Who's there?!"
The air held its breath.
Silence.
I clutched my head, fingers digging into my scalp. I screamed. I sobbed. My voice cracked and broke.
Then it came.
Not her voice.
Not even human.
A voice from beneath thought. From the marrow. From the dark place behind my own heartbeat.
RUN!
A roar. A command. A monstrous echo not spoken with lips, but etched into my soul.
I jolted awake.
Air rushed into my lungs like I had been drowning. My chest ached with the force of it. My hands trembled. Sweat clung to my skin. My eyes searched, wild and disoriented.
This wasn't my room.
The air was still. Dim morning light filtered through unfamiliar curtains. The silence was thick. Unnerving.
Then.
Arms.
Soft. Warm. Wrapping around me from behind.
A pulse against my back. A breath on my neck. Steady. Comforting.
Alive.
Airi.
Her presence anchored me in an instant. The tremor in my limbs eased, replaced by something deeper. A trembling relief. A desperate kind of peace.
Her fingers slid slowly up my chest, featherlight, tracing the panic away. Her touch was real. Her warmth undeniable. I closed my eyes.
She moved over me, swinging one leg across to straddle my lap. Her body pressed close. Her skin against mine. We faced each other, and the room faded.
Her eyes held me there, wet with emotion, glistening with all the words she could not say. Longing. Fear. Love. Everything unspoken shimmered between us.
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, pressing my forehead to her shoulder. I clung to her like a man barely pulled from the edge of something that wanted to devour him whole.
"Are you okay now?" she whispered. Her voice trembled. It held both a question and a plea. As if she needed me to say yes, even if I couldn't mean it yet.
I couldn't speak.
I just held her tighter. I buried myself in her scent. Her warmth. Her being.
Then she kissed me.
Not hungrily. Not out of passion or desire.
It was something deeper. A kiss that steadied the soul. That promised she was here. That she was real. That I had not imagined her.
We fell back onto the bed together, her body never leaving mine. Her lips lingered on mine even as morning crept gently across the sheets.
She stayed there.
Breathing with me.
Holding me.
Loving me.
And in that fragile, fleeting moment, I believed again.
She was real.
She was mine.
Later, back at work, I stood alone at the center of the meeting room. The new head of the project. The title echoed in my ears like it belonged to someone else. My hands fidgeted behind my back. My heart, though steady in rhythm, felt distant. Lost. Drifting.
Sasaki stepped beside me and rested a hand on my shoulder, firm but kind.
"You've got this," she said gently. "Even if you don't believe it yet, I do."
I tried to smile. It barely reached my eyes.
From across the table, Nakamura leaned back in his chair with his usual lopsided grin.
"If you crash and burn," he said with mock sincerity, "at least make sure I look good standing next to the wreckage."
A laugh broke from my throat before I could stop it. Weak, but real. And then.
Bang.
Mikami's fist slammed down on the table, the sharp sound snapping the air in two.
"Enough!" he barked. His eyes burned. "Stop wasting our time with your uncertainty. If you're not ready, you should not be in that seat."
The room froze. His voice cut deep.
He shoved his chair back and stormed out, the door slamming behind him like thunder.
Sasaki gave me a strained half-smile, clearly torn, then turned and followed Mikami without another word.
Only Nakamura remained.
He tilted his head, studying me with those unreadable eyes, then slowly stepped closer. Too close. I tensed.
He reached up, brushing a finger against my cheek. The touch was fleeting, teasing, but somehow sincere.
"Don't fall for me, alright?" he said, voice low, playful. A wink followed. Lighthearted, but I sensed something heavier beneath.
I rolled my eyes, chuckling despite everything, the laughter catching in my throat like a thread pulling me back from the edge.
The day dragged like a weight through water, every second slow and suffocating. Mikami's voice still echoed, sharp and accusing, long after he had gone.
What was I doing?
How could I lead anyone when I could barely trust the thoughts unraveling inside my own mind?
By evening, the office had emptied. Shadows stretched across the floor. I sat slouched over a mountain of reports that blurred together like a language I had never learned. Nothing made sense. Not the numbers. Not the words. Not even me.
Then.
Click.
Click.
Heels against tile. Precise. Familiar.
A quiet clink. A warm cup of coffee settled gently on my desk.
I looked up.
Before I could speak, before a single word passed between us, her lips found my forehead.
A touch so soft, so simple, it shattered me.
"Don't stress yourself," Airi said, her voice low and tender, a balm on raw skin. "If you need help... I am always here."
The world paused.
The ache in my chest eased.
Her hand, warm in mine, pulled me back from the abyss. Not with force. Not with logic. But with presence. With love.
I looked at her and smiled, the first real smile of the day.
"Thank you."
Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe the cracks in reality were more than I could fix.
But if she was part of that madness
I did not want to be saved.