Girrrii. Girrrii.

  The brass above her groaned, and with every grind it shaved color off the world’s edges.

  It wasn’t only the scenery that got scraped away.

  The outline of sound. The temperature of scent.

  Yurie’s now—the present itself.

  The gear’s weight sank all the way into the back of her throat. Breathing made her lungs creak. She could almost taste metal dust sticking beneath her tongue.

  At the nucleus of that dissonance stood the Magician with four arms.

  He did not so much as twitch. He simply idled there, toying with the single thing on the workbench—a rusted silver needle.

  Each time the needle tip caught the light, the space tightened by one more stitch. Blinking lagged. Her breathing cut off halfway.

  “…Give it back.”

  The words came out. And yet her throat hurt as if she’d dragged them through broken glass. Yurie swallowed down the sour rise of acid and forced one step forward.

  Her knees laughed. A screw underfoot gouged at her sole.

  The pain arrived late—delayed, unreal—and in its place her mind flashed only a black absence, on and off like a faulty bulb.

  She didn’t know what was missing.

  She didn’t know, and yet that spot hurt.

  The hole hurt.

  “What will you do by moving?” the Magician asked. His voice slid over her brain like cold fingertips. “Move, and you will only break ■■■ again.”

  ■■■.

  The lump shattered before it could become a word. In her ears it only rasped like sand.

  Yurie refused—on reflex—to let it turn into meaning. She pretended she hadn’t heard. She pushed it into the category of noise and crushed it down.

  —I don’t want to know.

  It’s fine if I never know.

  (No. That’s not it. If I know… something will break.)

  It smelled like resignation. A temptation that carried the familiar scent of giving up—of bowing her head and letting the world decide.

  She wanted to feel lighter.

  She wanted to stop.

  She wanted to sink into this quiet junkyard and disappear.

  Under the gear, she could simply stop breathing.

  That was what it whispered.

  It wore a gentle face when it killed you.

  Yurie’s foot nearly stopped.

  Right. The Magician was correct. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t remember what she had lost. If so—why not end it here, in this place where nothing moved? Why not just stop breathing?

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  But—

  The iron-rust smell rising from underfoot hammered rejection into her spine.

  She had certainty so sharp it made her nauseous: if she stopped here, she would betray herself forever. Not once—endlessly, again and again.

  She didn’t need a reason.

  This texture, this pressure, this wrongness—was the answer.

  “…Shut up.”

  Her brick-colored shoulder-strap Gamaguchi was scuffed, its color worn at the edges. She worried the cold metal knobs with her fingertips—then kicked through the iron debris and ran.

  Run. Run.

  She almost tripped.

  She ran anyway.

  The ache in her knees and the rust that burned her lungs were nothing but noise now. She tangled her feet, sprinted like something ugly, threw herself toward the workbench as if she could tackle the world into changing.

  If she stopped, she’d be sewn.

  If she stopped, she’d lose the ability to move.

  If she stopped—■■■ would break.

  (…So I won’t stop.)

  Before the Magician’s arms could spread—before that puppet rhythm could turn into a net—Yurie slammed every nerve she had into the needle on the table.

  “—!”

  Cold.

  No—her fingers weren’t cold. The needle was cold. Too cold.

  She ripped the rusted silver needle from the Magician’s fingers by force.

  Pain like frozen lightning snapped through her palm.

  The rusted tip split skin and drove deep into flesh. Her blood was hot, but the needle stayed cold—so cold it felt like coldness itself had become a shape of pain and was pouring into her.

  From the wound, “cold” overflowed like a dam breaking.

  A choking pressure clamped her throat. Her palm went unnaturally numb and dead, like it had been replaced with a corpse’s fingertips.

  —and the helplessness of that day, when she couldn’t do anything, turned into black mud and raced through her veins.

  Not words.

  Only the sensation of again sank into her bones.

  “Aaaa—aaah!”

  She screamed and clenched the needle.

  She had to hold it. If she let go, something would come undone. Something important would unravel.

  And yet it was strange.

  The agony scorching her hand was brute-stitching the shattered pieces of “Yurie” back together. Her frayed outline, scattered into fragments, was being forced into a single line.

  This pain—this pain alone—proved that she was standing here.

  It hurt.

  Therefore, she existed.

  “…See, Yuri?” Mermi’s voice came from the edge of the workbench. “You are capable, when you choose to be.”

  At some point her legs had stopped trembling. She rubbed her nose with a short forepaw and narrowed her eyes.

  It wasn’t a smile.

  It was the expression of someone swallowing a word—help—that had almost reached her throat, forcing it down with sheer will as if refusing to make it easy on Yuri.

  “…The way you snatched that, wearing such an idiotic expression,” Mermi added, “has shortened my lifespan.”

  She clicked her tongue and looked away.

  And yet her back was close. Closer than it had been.

  Half a step ahead.

  Gasping, Yurie lifted her bleeding hand toward the Gamaguchi’s clasp.

  “…You’re obnoxious. I don’t care about your lifespan.”

  With trembling fingers she twisted the Gamaguchi’s metal knobs. Kich, kich—a rusty protest.

  Pachin.

  The mouth opened, packed with a greedy dark that seemed eager enough to swallow even light.

  She let the blood-wet needle drop into that darkness.

  The bottom—once as light as lint—took a real weight and let it sink.

  Heavy.

  Finally—heavy.

  This weight was proof she hadn’t run.

  “Oh? Is that so.” Mermi’s mohawk shivered with pride as she turned her back again. “Then carry that ‘painful souvenir’ for the rest of your life. Cherish it.”

  She paused as if the thought amused her.

  “Your Gamaguchi has grown heavier. Perhaps it will serve as ballast—something that keeps you tethered to the ground.”

  Mermi walked on, small and unwavering. No matter how clumsily Yurie struggled, that back carried the same resolve: to accept it all, and keep moving first.

  With the last drop of strength she had, Yurie snapped the Gamaguchi shut.

  Pachin.

  The hard metal sound pulverized the workshop’s silence.

  With that sound, the clockmaker’s shop began to collapse—peeling away like old paint and crumbling into the void.

  And then—

  White.

  A blank-white silence that stole color, scent, sound—stealing even the outline of emotion.

  She did not yet know it was the beginning of something cruel.