Chapter 3
The Memory.
Aira woke with a strange feeling that something was missing.
She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling.
Then she remembered.
The station.
The photograph.
Ren.
The seven days.
She sat up and immediately looked at her wrist.
Four white lines remained.
Aira stared at them.
Yesterday there were five.
Her heart began to race.
She grabbed her phone and called Ren.
He answered after the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Look at your wrist.”
There was silence.
Then Ren said quietly,
“Four.”
Aira closed her eyes.
“So it happens while we're sleeping.”
“I guess so.”
“We lost another day.”
“Yes.”
Neither of them spoke.
Aira looked out her window.
The morning seemed completely ordinary.
People were walking to work. Cars moved through the streets. A woman across the road was watering plants.
Nothing looked different.
But Aira knew better.
Their lives were disappearing one day at a time.
“I'll meet you at the station,” Ren said.
“Why there?”
“Because that's where this started.”
Aira agreed.
When she arrived, Ren was already waiting.
He was holding two cups of coffee.
He handed one to her.
“You look tired.”
“So do you.”
“I slept.”
“Badly?”
“Very.”
Aira smiled.
For a few seconds, neither of them mentioned the countdown.
They simply stood together, drinking coffee and watching people pass through the station.
Then Aira noticed something.
“Ren.”
He looked at her.
“What's wrong?”
“Look at that.”
She pointed toward a large advertising board.
There was a photograph of a woman smiling beside a product.
Aira stared at the woman's face.
She knew her.
Not personally.
But she had seen her before.
In one of her old photographs.
Aira took out her camera and searched through the gallery.
The photograph was there.
It had been taken three years earlier.
The woman was standing behind Aira's sister.
Aira's hands began to shake.
“That's her.”
“Who?”
“My sister.”
Ren looked at the photograph.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Aira zoomed in.
Her sister was smiling.
Beside her stood the same woman from the advertisement.
But there was something else.
Aira's sister was holding a little boy's hand.
Ren stared at the screen.
“That boy…”
Aira looked at him.
“What?”
“I know him.”
Her heart skipped.
“How?”
Ren took the camera from her.
He pointed at the boy.
“That was me.”
Aira stared at him.
“No.”
“I don't remember this.”
She looked at the photograph again.
The little boy had the same eyes.
The same dark hair.
It was Ren.
But if that photograph was real, then they hadn't met for the first time at the station.
They had known each other before.
Aira's voice became quiet.
“Why don't we remember?”
Ren didn't answer.
They spent the next few hours searching through old photographs, records, and newspaper articles.
Most of the information they found was incomplete.
Some photographs were damaged.
Some names were missing.
Several documents had been altered.
But eventually they found something.
A newspaper article about an accident at an old railway station.
The article was dated three years earlier.
Aira read it carefully.
A group of children had been waiting near the station with their families when a sudden electrical failure caused part of the platform to collapse.
Several people were injured.
One child was reported missing.
Aira stopped reading.
“Missing?”
Ren nodded.
“Your sister?”
Aira's fingers tightened around the paper.
Her sister's name wasn't mentioned.
Neither was Ren's.
But at the bottom of the article was a photograph.
Aira recognized the station immediately.
The same station where she and Ren had met.
She looked at Ren.
“We were there.”
He nodded.
“And your sister was there too.”
Aira couldn't understand.
“If we were all there, why don't I remember you?”
Ren looked at the photograph.
“Maybe someone wanted us to forget.”
The words stayed with Aira.
They returned to the station that evening.
Aira carried her camera.
Ren brought his father's old watch.
Neither of them knew what they were looking for.
They simply knew that the station held the answers.
They walked along the empty platform.
Aira stopped near an old bench.
“I remember this.”
Ren looked at her.
“What?”
“My sister used to sit here.”
She touched the wooden seat.
“She would wait for me after school.”
A memory suddenly appeared in her mind.
Her sister laughed.
Rain falling.
A little boy standing nearby.
Aira blinked.
The memory disappeared.
She grabbed the bench.
“Did you see that?”
Ren moved closer.
“See what?”
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“I don't know.”
She closed her eyes.
Then another memory came.
A little boy was crying.
Her sister was kneeling beside him.
Aira heard her sister's voice.
“Don't be afraid. We'll find your mother.”
Then the memory changed.
A train.
A bright light.
Someone shouting.
And a little boy holding Aira's hand.
Aira opened her eyes.
She looked at Ren.
“You were crying.”
Ren went still.
“What?”
“In the memory.”
She looked directly at him.
“You were a little boy.”
Ren's face changed.
He suddenly remembered too.
He remembered Aira.
Not as a stranger.
Not as someone from a dream.
As a girl who had once held his hand while he was afraid.
He remembered her sister.
He remembered the accident.
And then he remembered something else.
Aira's sister had pushed him away from the tracks.
Aira screamed.
The memory vanished.
Ren staggered backward.
Aira grabbed his arm.
“Ren?”
He looked at her.
“Your sister saved me.”
Aira's eyes filled with tears.
“My sister…”
“She pushed me away.”
Aira covered her mouth.
For three years, she had believed her sister had simply disappeared.
She had blamed herself for their final argument.
She had believed that she had lost her forever.
But now she understood.
Her sister had disappeared while saving someone.
She had saved Ren.
Aira began crying.
Ren didn't know what to say.
So he stayed beside her.
He didn't tell her not to cry.
He didn't tell her everything would be fine.
He simply stood there until she was ready.
After a while, Aira wiped her eyes.
“I thought she left me.”
“She didn't.”
“I spent three years being angry with her.”
Ren looked at her gently.
“You were a child.”
“I should have known.”
“You couldn't have known.”
Aira looked down.
“I wish I could tell her I'm sorry.”
Ren's voice was quiet.
“Maybe she already knows.”
Aira looked at him.
“How could she?”
“Because she brought us here.”
Aira didn't answer.
Her camera suddenly clicked.
They both looked down.
A new photograph had appeared.
It showed Aira and Ren standing together as children.
Between them stood Aira's sister.
But her face was blurred.
On the back of the photograph, words had appeared.
REMEMBER ME.
Aira touched the image.
Tears filled her eyes again.
Then she noticed something behind them.
A dark figure stood at the far end of the platform.
The man in the railway uniform.
The Conductor.
Aira turned.
He was gone.
Ren looked at the photograph.
“Someone wants us to remember.”
Aira nodded.
“But who?”
Her camera screen flickered.
Another photograph appeared.
This one showed the same station.
Empty.
Except for a single train waiting in the darkness.
Written across the photograph were four words:
SHE IS STILL WAITING.
Aira stared at them.
Her sister was alive.
Somewhere.
Waiting for them.
She looked at Ren.
“We have to find her.”
Ren nodded.
“We will.”
Aira looked at the four remaining lines on her wrist.
Then she looked at Ren.
For the first time, she understood that their seven days weren't only about disappearing.
They had been given seven days to remember something the world had tried to erase.
And whatever was waiting for them at the end of those seven days had already known their names for a very long time.