Inside the carriage of the Mist Train.
Through the windowpanes, the world outside had lost its terrestrial silhouette, transforming into a boundless "Sea of Information" as far as the eye could reach. Amidst the swells, the ruins of towers and the skeletal remains of great bridges—remnants of cities that must have once existed—poked through the surface like icebergs. They rotated slowly, buffeted by the currents of the Logic, continuing their silent, relentless collapse. A chromatic "oil slick," looking as if every color in existence had been bled together, drifted across the water’s surface. Every time it reflected the light with a harsh, metallic glare, visions of a past he had never known were seared into Koyoi’s retinas.
The light bleeding through the window shifted its hue by the second; each shade felt like the twilight of a nameless, foreign land. The wooden frame of the seats creaked faintly in sync with the train’s swaying. The flame of the oil lamp, fanned by a wind heavy with the scent of the tide, narrowed until it was a thin thread at the base of the wick. Every crack running across the ceiling stood as mute testimony to just how many eons this carriage had spent in motion.
Koyoi realized he had clasped his hands over his knees so tightly that his fingertips had turned white. The iridescent light radiating from the Sea of Information seeped through the glass, casting mottled, shifting patterns across his cheeks and neck. Each time the light touched his skin, fragments of someone else’s memories flashed through his mind like lightning, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut.
Yet, even behind his eyelids, the phantoms pursued him. The festive music of an unknown town and the laughter of an unknown child echoed deep in his ears like a persistent haunting. Inside his drawstring pouch, the Droplet of the Rain God reacted, pulsing gently as if to soothe its master’s anxiety.
Kuon sat with the golden volume—the Catalog of Truth—spread reverently across his lap. The eerie blue light emitting from his prosthetic left eye was focused on a "giant clock face" drifting among the waves. The book’s binding had swollen unnaturally from the sea’s moisture; as the edges of the pages curled, the Catalog twitched in its master’s hands like a living creature. Kuon’s gaunt fingers pressed down on the pages with practiced ease, the blue beam of light crawling over the script as if licking the words clean.
The clock face floating on the sea was immense—perhaps the size of ten train cars. Its Roman numerals were half-melted, eroded by the encroachment of the Logic. The long and short hands remained tangled at the twelve o’clock position, frozen for eternity. The moment Kuon’s artificial eye locked onto the dial, countless sequences of numbers materialized within the blue light, as if attempting to strip away the mask of the last moment the clock had ever ticked. On the pages of the book, the ink characters began to rearrange themselves autonomously. Kuon followed their movement, his jaw set tight.
Asahi sat on the aisle side, his sword propped against his knees. Only his right hand, resting on the hilt, was gripped so hard his knuckles showed white.
"...Look. There they are. The 'Graveposts' of the Logic. When time becomes too much for them to manage, they physically sever it. They’ve been dumping it into this sea for a long time."
Kuon’s voice was low, nearly lost in the rattle of the wheels, but his words had a sharpness to them—like a razor blade sliding sideways. The blue light from his eye grew even more piercing, lancing through the iridescent film on the water to illuminate the wreckage of the clock. Kuon turned a page of the Catalog, and once he confirmed that the recorded sequences were fading like bleeding ink, he snapped the book shut with a heavy thud, pressing his fist firmly against the cover.
He was pressing down so hard his joints were turning pale. Koyoi did not miss the faint flicker of rage in Kuon’s profile. It was an indignation directed at the Observers, but it also seemed to be his own clumsy way of offering a funeral rite to the countless corpses of time sinking beneath the waves.
The fact that Kuon had chosen the word "gravepost" struck a chord in Koyoi’s heart. In that sentiment—calling discarded waste a headstone—Kuon’s true kindness breathed, though it was guarded behind a thicket of iron thorns.
"...Discarded? Then, is that why the hands of that clock are stopped? Because that time... will never move again?"
Koyoi tore his gaze away from the window and turned his whole body toward Kuon to ask. His voice didn't tremble, but the droplet in his pouch pulsed with a cold rhythm, resonating with his unease. He clenched his palms against his chest, his thoughts drifting to the wreckage of the infinite hours cast into the sea.
Inside that clock, there must have been mornings and nights that someone had once cherished. Afternoons where a child walked holding their mother’s hand, or twilights where an old man sat on a veranda sipping tea while watching the sunset—all of it was being submerged at the bottom of this ocean. The cold-bloodedness of those who judged such things "unnecessary," stripping them down to mere data and throwing them away, left a dull, nail-like ache deep in Koyoi’s chest.
Deep within his pouch, the cold presence of the River God stirred, clashing with the warmth of the Rain God. The two divine emotions swirled into a small vortex in the pit of his stomach. Koyoi bit his lip and looked back out the window.
Beneath the iridescent slick, he could see more clock ruins—too many to count—sinking without a sound. Asahi leaned back deeply into his seat, his right hand still resting on his sword hilt as he stared toward the distant horizon. The toe of his crossed leg tapped against the floorboards at a steady interval; that rhythmic pulse was the only outward sign of the emotions churning within him.
Every time the rainbow oil shifted on the waves, a sharp glint flickered in the depths of Asahi's eyes. He seemed to view those frozen clock hands not with lamentation or fear, but as a pure, direct challenge. His back was perfectly straight, possessed of a resolve like a sailor bracing his sails before a storm—a tension that reached every single muscle in his body.
Koyoi had been saved by this man’s back more times than he could count, but never had his presence felt as dependable as it did in this moment. Even caught in the reflection of the glass, bombarded by the psychedelic light, Asahi’s profile remained strangely, vividly clear.
"...If they’re stopped, we just have to move them. At least, as long as our own time is still here."
There was no hesitation in Asahi’s voice. As he bared his teeth in a grin, his expression bore the grit—the rough-hewn, mud-caked strength—of one who refused to break, even before the countless graveposts at the bottom of a sea of information. Koyoi felt himself straighten his posture at his words, feeling the droplet in his pouch regain a faint, steady warmth.
To move time that has stopped.
Asahi had uttered that impossible declaration without a hint of pretension. Kuon said nothing, but he tapped the cover of the Catalog twice with his finger before casting the blue light onto the pages once more. In that gesture lay a quiet trust that refused to deny Asahi's words.
The shadows of the three overlapped on the wall, separated, and met again as the oil lamp flickered. From the coupling of the cars came the sharp screech of grinding iron, and the floorboards gave a sudden lurch. Outside, the iridescent slick continued to crawl across the sea as the frozen remains of clocks were churned by the tide, sinking slowly into the depths.
Koyoi hugged his pouch with both hands, syncing his own breath to the pulsation of the droplet. He etched a wordless prayer behind his lips: that one day, he would surely make the needles move again for the times sleeping at the bottom of this sea. The train continued its relentless journey across the Sea of Information, dragging behind it the long, metallic scream of its wheels.