A girl stood at the edge of the room. Her face was slightly distorted, just out of the light. She was about my age but looked slightly taller, or at least she seemed to be. I didn't recognize her at first. But a memory kept pulling at the back of my mind.

As she stepped closer, her features came more into focus: her long black hair and piercing eyes, which seemed to look right through me.

“Akira?” The boy whispered.

She turned but not to me. Her eyes were fixed on my younger self who had just entered the room.

“What's wrong, Kaito?” she asked.

Her voice was soft, but it hit me like a brick of ice, resonating in me in a way I could not even begin to explain. She was speaking to him, but her words felt like she was speaking to me, present me now.

Who is she? Why is she here with me? Why don't I remember this? Questions came rushing into my head with no answers in sight. My legs started rushing towards her, my hands extended to grab her trying to question her, but the room flickered.

The scene began to warp.

Her face began to distort like a corrupted image on a screen. The light in the room dimmed, my hands barely touching her faded right through her.

The room began to show fragments of lights breaking off. My legs weakened and fell to my knees, gripping my head trying to drown out the shattering sounds.

Everything dissolved.

I opened my eyes, I was lying cold on the floor of my room outside the bathroom, my chest gasping for air. My heart pounding on my chest.

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“Akira…” I whispered but she wasn't there. She never was.

I sat up slowly, the chill of the wooden floor clinging to my skin, anchoring me. The echoes of her voice “What’s wrong kaito?”

The memory, or whatever it was, refused to leave my brain like a cruel echo.

I attempted to steady myself, pressing a trembling hand against my forehead. My thoughts spiral, but one thing is clearer than ever. This was not just a dream.

The scenes and the sensations were too vivid. The color, the sounds, the voices all felt too real. But there was something. The way her face distorted, the way the room broke apart and glitched. None of it made sense.

I glanced at the clock. It was past midnight, although time itself felt useless. My mind had begun racing to process and try to rationalize the chaos stuck inside my head.

“This isn’t insanity,” I muttered under my breath.

Rushing towards my desk I pulled out a book that had been sitting beneath a pile of notes from earlier that week. The title of the book was faded and stained with coffee. Unreadable after years of usage, but the name was as clear as day.

Aya Kistue.

Aya kitsue. A scientist whose name was ridiculed among scientists. Her theories on “Residual Reality Imprints” had been laughed out of every university. Dismissed as pseudoscience.

Journalists called it the ramblings of the delusional mind, a once-promising genius turned to delusion.

I had kept her book out of curiosity when I first started doing research at the Technology Institute of Tokyo.

Back then I would read it just out of curiosity and marveling at her wild ideas looking for any inspiration I could find to do something with my life.

I flipped through the pages, skimming past the quite lengthy explanation on Residual Reality Imprints.

My eyes stopped moving landing on a phrase in her book that I’d underlined and highlighted as delusional and had dismissed completely:

“Moments of intense emotional resonance can leave behind a tangible imprint, which is identified as an echo in the timeline. While this hasn’t been proven physically due to limited resources and specific conditions of viewing these imprints, it's hard to tell anything about how they work. ”

My hands trembled as I read this. Could this be true? Could these imprints be the explanation I have been searching for?

It sounded absurd yet… it was the only viable explanation my mind could come up with.

I leaned further back in my chair and my eyes stared at the ceiling. If these imprints were real I need to figure out how to see them again.

What if there was another way?

Could I create something viable enough for me to view these imprints again?

The idea seemed ridiculous, but it was already taking shape. A device capable of viewing these imprints. Something that could allow me to understand what they are and what they mean.

My heart pounded with dread. The air that was filled with silence now brimming with ideas escaping from my mind.

“This is madness,” I muttered silently, yet my thoughts still spiraled around the room.

And this may be the key to lead me to her.