Volume 1 · Chapter 3Scarred Memories
Rain began to fall. Not from the sky—because the sky over Cadence was a bruised sheet of greenish static—but from cracks in the old pipes above. Every few seconds, water dripped with a hollow rhythm, as if the world itself wept in Morse code. Chu sat cross-legged on a makeshift cot made of scavenged cushions, her silver hair damp and tangled at the ends. Across from her, Ren leaned against the concrete wall of their hideout, clutching a thermal blanket to his chest.
He wasn't shivering, but he was shaking.
For the last ten minutes, he'd stared at the dozens of drawings tacked on the wall—portraits of himself. Each one slightly different. Some smiling. Some scarred. Some hollow-eyed. One was crying. One had no pupils at all.
"I really am in all of them," he muttered. "Even the early ones?"
Chu looked up, face unreadable. "Yes."
He walked closer, reaching out to touch one labeled Loop 08 – Smile in Rain. In it, he was laughing under an umbrella with Chu, holding a half-broken pastry as if offering her a bite. The memory stirred nothing—but his chest ached with a sharp phantom warmth. "This... never happened, right?"
Chu shook her head. "Not in this loop. But once, yes."
Ren sat down beside the drawing, resting his back against the cold concrete. "Why do you draw me?"
"So I don't forget what you looked like when you still believed in me." Her voice was flat but soft. "When you still fought."
Ren's throat tightened. "So I stop fighting?"
"In most loops, yes. You give up. Or die." She closed her sketchbook slowly. "Or worse, you fall in love."
He flinched. "Why is that worse?"
Chu's eyes locked onto his. "Because anyone who loves me… vanishes."
A silence fell over them, deep and absolute, broken only by the rhythmic drip-drip from above.
Ren lowered his gaze. "You said time resets every forty-two days."
Chu nodded. "Every cycle ends at midnight, day 42. Then the world collapses. Light erases everything. And it begins again."
Ren stared at the floor. "But… I've forgotten all the past loops. And everyone else forgets too, right?"
"Yes."
"But you don't." He looked at her. "Why?"
Chu hesitated. "Because I'm the anchor." She stood and walked toward a rusted steel locker. "I hold the thread. The cycle passes through me. My soul remembers what my mind tries to erase."
Ren's eyes narrowed. "You mean… you've remembered all 134 loops?"
Chu opened the locker, revealing a cluster of candles and a bundle of chalk sticks wrapped in black cloth. "Most of them. Some are blurry. Some are... too painful. But yes."
She lit a candle and set it on the floor between them. Its flickering flame painted soft gold onto her face. For the first time, Ren saw how exhausted she looked—bone-tired, soul-tired.
"Then," Ren whispered, "have we ever—?"
"Don't ask." Her voice broke like dry porcelain.
He didn't press.
Instead, he reached for a piece of chalk. Something pulled at him—a gravity, a desire to understand. He knelt beside the nearest blank wall. "Show me how you mark the cycle."
Chu blinked. "What?"
"You're the anchor. I'm the ghost. But I want to try remembering. Even if it's just something small."
She stared at him a long moment. Then, quietly, she handed him a thin chalk stick.
Ren pressed it to the wall. Slowly, shakily, he wrote:
Cycle 1 – Ren, awake. Met her. Name is Chu. Day 1.
Then beneath it, he drew a crooked spiral.
Chu stared at it in silence. Then, to his surprise, she added her own line beneath:
Cycle 134 – Met him again. His eyes didn't look away.
Their hands brushed.
Neither moved.
That night, Ren dreamed again.
But it wasn't like before—blurry lights, strange symbols, flickering shapes.
This time it was clearer.
He stood on a sunlit rooftop, warm wind tugging his jacket. Chu leaned beside him against a railing, laughing as she held a paper cup of bubble tea. Below them, the city stretched endlessly. It was Cadence—but whole. Unbroken. Alive.
He turned to her.
Her eyes were filled with sunlight.
And she said: "Promise me—if it all ends, you'll find me again."
He opened his mouth to answer.
But thunder cracked the sky in two.
The rooftop crumbled beneath them, and the light tore itself apart—
Ren jolted awake, chest heaving, skin clammy.
Chu sat across the room, candlelight catching the reflection of tears in her eyes.
"You saw it, didn't you?" she whispered. "The dream."
Ren stared at her.
"Have I said that to you before?" he asked, voice raw. "Promise me… if it ends, you'll find me again?"
Chu didn't answer.
She just nodded—once, silently.
Ren's fingers clenched the blanket. "What happened to us?"
Chu closed her eyes.
And said:"You loved me."
She opened them again.
"And that was the beginning of the end."