Chapter 9: Ink and Fragments
[System Notification – Scene Slicing Tool Active]
[You may now select, edit, and release scenes no longer than 90 seconds with precision controls]
[New Passive Mission Available: "Fragment Drop – Level 1"]
[Objective: Release an emotionally charged slice of media with no context. Estimated Impact: Medium-low]
[Reward: +30 points]
[Recommended Titles: "A Silent Voice" | "5 Centimeters per Second" | "Clannad: After Story"]
Cal leaned back in his chair.
He stared at the prompt longer than usual.
There was something pure about this method. No thumbnails. No overlays. Just moments. Feelings. Cracks in the heart delivered in silence.
He scrolled to A Silent Voice.
The system offered three potential fragments.
— Shouya standing on the bridge, remembering.
— Shouko trying to speak with trembling hands.
— The fireworks scene.
He chose the bridge.
90 seconds. No music. No edits. Just raw animation and ambient sound.
[Scene Sliced – "Bridge Regret"]
[Target Timeline: 2010-A]
[Delivery Method: Shadow drop via anonymous FTP link]
[Viewer Seed Estimate: 600 initial | Echo probability: 18%]
He uploaded it.
No fanfare.
No stream.
Just a single moment delivered to the past.
Then, he left his desk and stepped outside.
The air was crisp.
A breeze drifted through narrow alleys as Cal walked aimlessly, hoodie zipped halfway, hands stuffed into pockets. He didn't carry a phone, didn't wear earbuds. He just listened—to the present, to his breathing, to the quiet noise of a city that didn't know a timewalker lived within it.
He walked past an old movie rental shop.
A flickering screen in the window showed clips of 2010s-era films. Some familiar, some forgotten.
He stared at it for a while, as though trying to will his uploads into the window. But of course, it didn't work like that.
What he gave to the past would take years—sometimes lifetimes—to ripple forward.
But that was okay.
The right stories always found their way.
[Meanwhile – Tokyo, 2010-A]
Kenji Oura frowned at his laptop.
He'd been animating for twelve hours straight—freelance clean-up work for a mid-tier studio no one would remember five years later. His eyes burned. His fingers ached. His tea had gone cold.
But something in his feed caught his attention.
A strange link.
Just a file called bridgescene_final.mp4.
He clicked it.
There was no studio mark. No credits. No watermarks.
Just 90 seconds of hand-drawn pain.
A boy stood on a bridge, staring at the water.
The colors were soft, washed in grey light.
The sound of cicadas, distant voices, a bike wheel spinning.
Then the boy closed his eyes. A flash of a memory. A silent apology.
It ended.
Kenji sat frozen.
He didn't know who made it.
But it felt real—more real than anything he'd drawn in months.
He scrubbed back and watched it again.
Noticing the tiny things: the twitch in the hand, the blur of tears that never fell, the way the shadows shifted across the concrete.
"This isn't amateur," he whispered. "But I've never seen this studio style before…"
A deep chill crept into his bones.
Was this… from the future?
No. That was stupid.
But it felt like it.
He saved the file.
Filed it under a folder titled: "Reference – Emotion."
Back in 2025, Cal saw the update.
[Passive Mission Complete – "Fragment Drop – Level 1"]
[Points Earned: +30]
[Anonymous Viewer Activity Detected – User "Oura_KJ" has saved fragment for study]
[Creative Trend Detected: Slow Influence – Draft File Created (Animation Style Experimentation)]
Cal blinked.
Kenji Oura.
The name rang a bell.
He did a quick system-safe search through the built-in archives.
Kenji would go on to become a keyframe animator in several studios post-2015, eventually directing an award-winning short in 2019—a piece widely known for its intimate portrayal of adolescent regret.
The title?
"What the River Took."
Cal sat back, slowly understanding.
That short hadn't existed before. At least, not in the version of history he remembered.
He whispered aloud:
"I changed something."
The realization didn't thrill him.
It humbled him.
He hadn't wanted to reshape futures. Only to offer feeling. A hand in the dark.
But perhaps the smallest fragment was enough.
[System Notification – Passive Mission Tree Unlocked]
[New Tier Available – "Ink Trail"]
[Track passive creative echoes seeded by scene uploads. Forecast low interference threshold unless intentionally escalated.]
He marked it as active.
The system compiled a branching map.
One of the lines glowed faintly—Kenji's.
Projected timeline deviation: 3.2%
Safe. Subtle.
Just a better story, blooming from a single unseen bridge.
That night, Cal prepared two more slices:
One from 5 Centimeters per Second—the final scene, where two people turn and never meet.
One from Clannad: After Story—Ushio crying in the field.
Both trimmed to 60 seconds.
Both tagged "No Source."
He uploaded them slowly, one at a time.
He imagined them drifting across forums, chat boards, anonymous video rips.
A generation of artists seeing pain before they were ready for it.
And still, maybe needing it.
Later, as the rain began to fall again, Cal sat by the window and opened his sketchbook.
He didn't draw much tonight.
Just a single image:
A paper boat floating in the gutter, carried by the stream.
On its sail, he wrote one word:
"Hope."
End of Chapter 9