Volume 3—Chapter 57: Guilt
Aneira stood frozen at her apartment, staring out the window in disbelief. The world beyond the glass no longer resembled the familiar cityscape of Tsukuru. There were no buildings, no roads, no people. Just an endless expanse of void—blank, white sky stretching in all directions like the world had been half-erased..
“This… this can’t be real…”
It looked like one of those games still in development, where only the playable area was rendered, and everything else beyond was left empty, unfinished. Like the universe had forgotten to load the rest of the world.
A shiver ran down her spine. “Is this the Spectre’s doing…?” she whispered under her breath, barely able to get the words out.
Ever since that encounter with the girl on the train earlier, the Spectre—the cursed entity that had haunted her—had gone silent. It hadn't whispered in her head, hadn’t tried to seize control of her body. For a time, she believed she had broken free of its grasp.
But now, looking at the surreal emptiness beyond the window and the unnatural stillness pressing down on the building, it was clear she’d been wrong.
She tightened her grip on the aluminium baseball bat she had grabbed before stepping outside her apartment. It wasn’t much—just an old bat she kept by the door “just in case.” And now, “just in case” had become reality.
“This is undoubtedly a dimensional crack…” she muttered as she stepped cautiously into the corridor.
Aneira wasn’t completely ignorant of the term. She’d heard it when she registered as an Esper during the basic orientation for civilian Espers. Dimensional cracks were rips in reality, typically linked to dangerous phenomena and creatures not native to this world. But information was limited, and only licensed combatant Espers were briefed on the full scope of it. She had never been one of them. Her power wasn’t impressive—barely stable, and barely useful. She was labeled a “civilian-class Esper,” and dismissed from any active field work.
Still, she remembered enough to know this wasn’t normal.
“I guess some Esper screwed up,” she murmured, scanning the hallway. “Or maybe the Spectre slipped out through a crack that opened in this building…”
Her hands trembled slightly on the bat.
“And now I’m in its world.”
The realization gnawed at her insides. This wasn’t just a random accident—no, this was personal. It had to be. She’d been trying to escape the Spectre’s influence, trying to reclaim some shred of normalcy. But the moment she let her guard down, the moment she thought it was finally over…
It dragged her right back in.
Aneira’s jaw clenched. Her knuckles whitened.
“Fine,” she growled under her breath. “If this is your world… I’ll claw my way out of it. I’ll burn it down if I have to.”
Even if it meant surrendering her freedom again—even if it meant making another deal with the devil just to escape—she wasn’t going to die here.
The hallway was quiet, but Aneira’s grip on the bat never loosened. Every creak of the floor beneath her feet made her muscles tense, and her eyes flicked to the shadows cast along the walls. The lighting in the building was still working—barely. A few ceiling lights flickered inconsistently, casting dim halos and long, jittery shadows that gave the place an otherworldly eeriness. It’s a liminal space between the real world and whatever place this is.
Her breath was steady, but her mind was racing. Every instinct screamed that something was wrong, beyond just being in a dimensional crack. The building itself, though familiar in layout, felt fundamentally changed. The walls seemed to breathe subtly, the air thicker than it should be, humming with invisible tension. It was like stepping into the husk of something.
Then she heard a sound coming from the room down the corridor. Faint, but distinct. A light thud followed by the creaking of floorboards. Someone—or something—was in there.
"Who's there?!" Aneira shout.
Aneira raised the bat and approached slowly. Despite the fear twisting in her gut, she moved with caution, her body alert, her footfalls quiet against the old wooden floor. As she drew closer, the door creaked open slowly from the inside.
A girl stepped out.
Aneira froze.
The girl had short, dark hair, She seemed unfazed despite the strange world around her. the strange world around her. Her clothes were simple, worn slightly from use, but clean. The girl's eyes met Aneira’s for just a moment, and something flickered in the silence between them—recognition.
Then the girl’s voice broke it.
“Hey… you’re the girl who grope my ass.”
Aneira’s jaw dropped, her grip on the bat faltering slightly as her face turned red.
"W-What?! No! That's not what happened!" she sputtered, her eyes wide with disbelief and embarrassment.
"Sure, ass-gropper." The girl’s said.
"Don't call me ass-gropper! I have a name! It's Aneira! And I did not grope you—I was just… trying to stabilise myself! It was an accident!" Aneira said in her defence.
The tension eased as Aneira defended herself, and the girls burst into laughter.
"Okay, okay, Aneira," The girl said, smirking. "But seriously, what are you doing here? And… do you know where this place even is?"
Aneira's expression shifted from irritation to uncertainty. "I… I don't know. I just took a quick nap, then everything went dark. Next thing I knew, I was here. Wherever 'here' is."
The girl glanced around the hallway, with its flickering lights and eerie silence. "Great… So you're just as lost as I am."
“So… what’s your name? I gave you mine.”
The girl blinked, as if only just realizing. “Oh, right—where are my manners? My name’s Aria.”
Aneira hummed softly, turning the name over in her mind. “Aria, huh…” She glanced at the girl’s outfit, posture, and presence. “You live here? I’ve never seen you around.”
Aria shook her head. “Uh, no…”
That response made Aneira’s frown deepen. Her brows drew together as her grip tightened slightly on the bat in her hand. “Then… why are you even here?”
“I just wanted to investigate the disappearances,” Aria said plainly, as if she were describing something far less grim. “You know, all the people who’ve gone missing over the last few months.”
Aneira froze. For the briefest moment, the weight of Aria’s words dropped like a hammer on her chest. Her breath caught, and a bead of cold sweat rolled down the back of her neck.
She didn’t respond right away. How could she? That topic—those disappearances—was her. She was the reason. It had been her body that carried out the will of the spectre, her hands that reached out, drained the life from strangers, neighbors… innocent people. She had felt every second of it. The helplessness. The guilt. And still, she let it happen. Because if she didn’t… she wouldn’t be standing here at all.
Aria kept talking, her voice even, unaware of the storm inside the girl in front of her. “Looking at this place now… I wonder if those people might still be alive. Maybe they’re just… trapped. Like us. In some kind of alternate dimension.”
Aneira’s stomach twisted.
She looked away, jaw clenched tightly. Her grip on the bat loosened slightly, her arm suddenly feeling heavy.
Trapped?
No.
They weren’t trapped.
They were gone.
Aria's theory might have been a comforting one—something hopeful to cling to—but Aneira knew better. She’d felt every death. She still remembered their faces. Not all of them, but enough to haunt her dreams.
They hadn’t vanished into another world.
They’d been killed by the spectre.
Through her.
Comments (0)
Please login or sign up to post a comment.