Fourth Loop, Chapter 20 : 過去の響き (Echoes of the Past)

A few days later, Daichi stood at the edge of the city, his backpack slung over his shoulder. The sun dipped low on the horizon, casting a golden glow over the forest ahead of him. He hesitated, his pulse quickening as memories of his previous life surfaced unbidden.

The journey was unnervingly familiar. Every step felt like walking through a distorted dream—branches snapping underfoot, the rustle of leaves in the distance. Shadows flickered at the edges of his vision, and every time he turned, he found nothing.

As he pushed further into the forest, the sounds of the city faded, replaced by an unnatural stillness. His breath quickened, the weight of the memories pressing against his chest.

Then he saw it.

Daichi froze.

The clearing was just as he remembered, but it wasn't empty.

The ship stood before him, an enormous, otherworldly structure, its curved surface half-buried in the ground. Time had left its mark on the vessel. Vines twisted around its rusted hull, moss clinging to its edges like nature's desperate attempt to erase its presence.

"This can't be real…" Daichi's voice faltered as he stared at the impossible sight.

The ship shouldn't have been here—not yet. In his timeline, its arrival was decades away, heralding the beginning of humanity's downfall. But here it was, ancient and waiting, as though it had always been part of this world.

His legs felt heavy, his instincts screaming at him to turn back. But he couldn't. He stepped forward, his breath hitching with every move.

The metal surface of the ship was cold under his fingertips, sending a jolt up his arm. He swallowed hard, staring at the narrow passage that led into the vessel. The doorway yawned open like a mouth, beckoning him into its depths.

"Let's do this," he whispered, his voice trembling.

Inside, the air was stifling, thick with the scent of decay and something metallic. His flashlight flickered as he stepped deeper, its beam cutting through the oppressive darkness. The sound of his footsteps echoed unnaturally, making the space feel both infinite and claustrophobic.

The corridors were littered with debris—shattered monitors, broken wires, and overturned equipment. Daichi's stomach turned as the smell grew stronger.

And then he saw them.

Bodies.

Dozens of them, their twisted forms sprawled across the floor. They were the aliens from his timeline—eyeless faces, elongated limbs, their gray, leathery skin stretched taut over their skeletal frames.

He covered his mouth, fighting the urge to gag. The sight of them brought back memories he'd tried to bury—memories of battles fought and lives lost.

"What happened here?" he whispered, his voice barely audible.

The silence around him felt alive, pressing against his ears as though the ship itself was listening. He stepped carefully over the corpses, his heart pounding. Each one seemed frozen in their final moments, their limbs outstretched as if reaching for something—or someone.

Deeper into the ship, the atmosphere grew heavier, more suffocating. The walls groaned softly, metal protesting against time. His flashlight flickered again, casting eerie shadows that danced and twisted like phantoms.

Then, in the far corner of the room, he saw it.

A metal desk, half-buried under layers of dust and debris. And on it, something small and faintly gleaming.

Daichi's breath caught in his throat as he approached. A pendrive lay there, its casing scratched and worn but intact. He hesitated for a moment, then reached out and picked it up.

His eyes widened as he read the faded label etched into its surface: Project Daichi.

"What…?" The word escaped him like a gasp.

His name. His life. Connected to this place, to this ship, to this timeline.

Daichi's mind raced. "Why is my name on this? What does it mean?"

The ship groaned again, louder this time, as though it were responding to his discovery. The sound sent a chill down his spine. The air around him seemed to shift, growing more hostile.

Clutching the pendrive tightly, Daichi turned and started back the way he came. His footsteps echoed louder now, overlapping unnaturally, as if someone—or something—was following him. He forced himself not to look back, his pulse racing.

When he finally stumbled out into the open air, he fell to his knees, gasping for breath. The forest was quiet again, the ship standing silently behind him like a specter.

Daichi stared down at the pendrive in his hand, its weight feeling heavier than it should.

"This isn't just about the Vanishing," he murmured, his voice trembling. "This… this is so much bigger than I thought."

For the first time, fear gripped him—not just for himself, but for the world.

The small room was silent except for the faint hum of the ship's systems, a sound so constant that Daichi hadn't even noticed it until now. He stared at the screen, his body frozen in place, his heart thundering in his chest.

"This is Project number 233," the alien scientist's voice crackled through the speakers.

The alien's appearance on the screen was bizarre yet eerily captivating—its elongated head and glistening, grayish skin reflected the pale blue light of the console. Its tone was flat, clinical, and devoid of emotion, but the weight of its words crushed Daichi like a collapsing star.

"We have achieved what we believe is a perfect human. Its body can resist any disease and survive through extreme pressure and temperature, thanks to our successful gene-splicing with human DNA.

The sound of his own name echoed in the hollow chamber.

Daichi's breath caught in his throat. "No… no, no, no." His voice was barely above a whisper, trembling as if he'd been struck.

He staggered back, his legs buckling beneath him. The world around him blurred, spinning wildly out of control. His name—his identity—spoken with cold precision by a creature that felt nothing, yet it carried the weight of revelation that threatened to destroy him.

"That's impossible… this has to be a mistake!" he exclaimed, his voice cracking. He pressed his hands to his temples, trying to drown out the words that seemed to replay endlessly in his mind.

The video flickered, static filling the air for a brief moment before the alien scientist's face returned. This time, its tone was no longer calm. Urgency—and something else, something almost resembling fear—filled its voice.

"To whoever finds this video, please put a stop to Daichi. He escaped from his containment tube and has gone berserk, killing everyone on this ship. Through my hypothesis, his emotions are not like humans'. They are highly unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous."

"No…" Daichi gasped, his voice hoarse. He staggered forward, clutching the console for support. His chest tightened, and his stomach churned. "That's not… I wouldn't…"

The words slammed into him like a physical blow. His breathing grew shallow, each intake of air burning his lungs.

"I… I did what?" he whispered, his voice trembling as if the weight of the revelation would crush him.

The alien continued, unaware of the broken man watching from the future. "Please take the serum on the second floor. It contains our genetic code. You must drink it and gain our power. It is the only way to stop him."

The screen flickered again, the static now a sinister prelude to what followed.

A blur darted across the screen, fast and feral. Daichi's eyes widened, his heart pounding in his ears. He flinched involuntarily as the camera jolted, shaking violently before crashing to the floor.

The scientist let out a shriek—a sound so raw and filled with terror that it sent chills racing down Daichi's spine. The camera settled at an awkward angle, showing a distorted view of the room.

Then he saw it.

A figure emerged from the shadows, moving with an unnatural, predatory grace. Its eyes glowed an eerie, golden light that pierced through the screen. The figure's face was unmistakable.

It was him.

"No…" Daichi whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. His voice cracked as he took a step back, trembling. "No… that's not me. That can't be me!"

The figure in the recording moved closer, its features twisting into something monstrous. Its expression was unrecognizable, a terrifying mix of rage and madness.

"STOP!" Daichi shouted, as though his voice could somehow change what had already happened.

The scientist's screams were abruptly cut off as the creature—his doppelgänger—lunged. The alien was yanked violently out of frame, and the screen went black.

Silence enveloped the room, thick and suffocating. Daichi stared at the darkened screen, his wide eyes reflecting back at him like a ghost.

His legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

"No… no… that's not me…" he muttered, his voice barely audible. "I'm not a monster. I'm not a monster!"

The words rang hollow, drowned out by the images that now burned into his mind. His glowing eyes. His feral rage. The blood-soaked aftermath.

"It's me…" His voice cracked as the realization clawed its way to the surface. "It's always been me."

His hands gripped his hair as he doubled over, memories rushing back in jagged, fragmented waves. The moments he thought were sacrifices for humanity—they weren't acts of salvation. They were echoes of destruction. His destruction.

"I'm the reason…" His voice broke, tears streaming down his face. "I'm the reason everything happened."

The suffocating silence in the room seemed to mock him, the stillness pressing down on his chest like a weight he couldn't lift. He punched the ground with a guttural cry, the sharp pain shooting up his arm a welcome distraction from the chaos inside his head.

"Why?" he choked, glaring at the ceiling as if demanding an answer from the universe itself. "Why did you do this to me? Why create me just to destroy everything?"

His voice echoed in the chamber, raw and broken. For a moment, there was no response, only the distant hum of the ship.

Then his eyes fell on the faint words etched into the console: Project Daichi.

The alien's final words resurfaced in his mind. The serum.

Daichi's breathing steadied, though his body still trembled. Slowly, he rose to his feet, the weight of his despair shifting into something colder—something sharper.

"If I'm the problem," he murmured, his voice low but filled with a dangerous edge, "then I'll find the solution."

His fists clenched, his knuckles stained with his own blood. He wiped them on his pants, his gaze hardening. The overwhelming guilt still burned inside him, but now it fueled something else—resolve.

"I don't care what I was. I don't care what they made me," he said quietly, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion. "I'll fix this. No matter what it takes."

Daichi turned toward the interior of the ship, the path ahead dark and uncertain. His steps were heavy but deliberate, the pendrive still clutched tightly in his hand.

The words of the alien scientist echoed in his mind, a chilling reminder of the monster he might still be.

But Daichi refused to let that be the end of his story.

As he moved deeper into the ship, his voice carried through the suffocating silence, a quiet vow to himself and the universe that had betrayed him.

"I'll save them… even if I have to destroy myself to do it."

The metallic groans of the ancient ship echoed ominously as Daichi stepped back into its dark, suffocating corridors. Each step he took sent a hollow thud reverberating down the halls, a reminder of just how desolate and lifeless this vessel had become. Dust and ash clung to the air, stirred with every movement, while the faint hum of unseen machinery vibrated faintly through the walls.

As Daichi climbed the twisted, rusted stairwell leading to the second floor, his thoughts churned relentlessly.

What am I even doing? he wondered, gripping the railing tighter. His heart pounded with each step, his mind playing and replaying the video of the alien scientist.

The alien's urgent words. The monstrous figure on the screen. His reflection.

The stairwell creaked beneath his weight, pulling him back to the grim present. He glanced down at his trembling hands, flexing them as though to dispel the unease that had seeped into his bones.

"Get it together," he muttered to himself, his voice strained. "You've made it this far. Just… keep going."

At the top of the stairwell, a heavy door hung crooked on its hinges, scorched black as if it had survived an explosion. Daichi pushed it open with effort, the hinges groaning in protest, and stepped into the chamber beyond.

The room was vast and hollow, its walls cracked and scorched. Shattered machinery and debris lay strewn across the floor, remnants of some long-forgotten battle. The air was cold—unnaturally so—prickling at Daichi's skin.

And then he saw it.

In the far corner, half-buried under a pile of rubble, sat a reinforced case. It pulsed faintly, glowing with an otherworldly light that cut through the gloom like a beacon.

Daichi swallowed hard, his steps slow and deliberate as he approached. The faint vibration in the air seemed to grow stronger with each step, resonating in his chest like a warning.

When he reached the case, he knelt, brushing away layers of dust and ash with shaking hands. Beneath the grime, the reinforced glass revealed its contents: a small vial filled with a liquid that shimmered and swirled, glowing faintly with a light that seemed alive.

"This is it…" he whispered, his voice barely audible.

He hesitated, staring at the vial as dread coiled in his gut. It felt wrong—everything about this felt wrong. But deep down, he knew he didn't have a choice.

Daichi reached into the case and grabbed the vial. The glass was icy cold against his palm, the chill spreading through his fingers like frostbite. He shuddered but didn't let go.