Theories and Clues

Victor traced the lines on the makeshift map with the tip of his knife, the blade gliding silently over the paper’s surface. His eyes flicked between the three crimson X marks, the triangle they formed almost unsettling in its precision.

Coincidence didn’t fit.

Not in this world.

Not anymore.

The first mark—their house—the place where everything began. Where he and Azumi had carved out the fragile illusion of a life together after the world collapsed three years ago.

The second—the Safehouse—their current refuge, a sanctuary built for who-knows how, tucked away just far enough from the main roads to avoid the infected hordes.

The third—the building where they found Kento and Esther—and where his mind had fractured beneath the weight of a memory he never knew existed.

Together, they formed a pattern—a perfect, equilateral triangle. The shape was too deliberate, too precise for mere happenstance.

Victor’s temples throbbed beneath the weight of his theories. His fingers drummed against the map, following the invisible lines connecting the three locations. His mind raced—mapping distances, calculating trajectories, replaying every detail they had seen along the way.

The corpses.

Victor’s brow furrowed deeper.

Those bodies in the third location—still fresh, some no more than a day, two, or three. He had counted them, memorized every detail without even realizing as they walked pass them. The way their blood clung to the cracked concrete. The angles of their limbs. The smell—pungent, metallic, not yet fully claimed by rot.

Gunshot wounds.

Shotguns.

His own weapon felt heavier on his shoulder, as if accusing him of missing something.

Those corpses mostly died as humans.

At that distance—barely three miles from his and Azumi's house—they should have heard the shots. Even suppressed, they would have carried through the dead silence of the city.

But they had heard nothing.

Nothing except the scream Azumi claimed to have heard. A scream Victor didn't even hear.

His breath caught in his throat.

What if the Codes are the only ones allowed to hear it? Should he ask Amanda? Better not—not yet, whatsoever.

Victor leaned back, staring hard at the map as if the paper itself might surrender its secrets.

What if the triangle wasn’t just a pattern—what if it was a perimeter?

A controlled zone.

A cage without walls.

Will it make sense?

He rubbed at his temple, the ache behind his eyes building. The pieces were there—scattered fragments waiting to be forced together—but something was still missing. Something buried just beneath their noses.

"Hiroshi," Victor muttered, not lifting his eyes from the map.

"Yeah?"

"When we first arrived at the Safehouse... how long did it take for you to hear your first gunshot out here?"

Hiroshi blinked, clearly thrown by the question. "Uh... I don’t know. Probably from Amanda's sniper shot earlier."

"Before that?"

Hiroshi shrugged, his expression distant. "Nothing, as far as I remember. I didn't even know there were still survivors out there — not until Adelina and I showed up at your doorstep."

His voice carried a hint of weariness, as if the weight of everything he'd seen had dulled the edges of his memories.

"Right?" Victor hissed. "Then how am I supposed to understand those corpses in the streets?"

"I don't know either, man!" Hiroshi tapped his chin. "I thought I was the only one who noticed it since you were so fixated with that photo and the others are not even talking about it."

Victor set the map down fully, his fingers lingering on its creased edges. "Perhaps... they heard the gunshots — the ones that killed those people?"

Hiroshi's eyes widened, the realization flickering across his face. "Could be... We could ask Amanda when she gets back."

"Or anyone else out there," Victor added, methodically folding the handmade map into four precise sections, as if organizing his thoughts along with the paper.

Hiroshi's lips thinned. Yeah, right. Victor was doing everything to keep him from getting involved with Amanda — and for some reason, it was starting to amuse him.

They were already back in the safehouse, supposedly resting in their shared room. But sleep was a distant luxury with Victor pacing around, letting out those deep, drawn-out, intellectual sighs — the kind that made Hiroshi feel like he was trapped in some philosophical debate he never signed up for.

"You're gonna think yourself to death at this rate," Hiroshi muttered, half-lidded eyes following Victor's silhouette against the dim light.

"I can't die without finding Azumi yet," Victor mumbled and finally lied down his wooden bed.

They had been walking through a dying world—one overrun with infected, probably bandits, and desperate survivors—but the city around them had always been too quiet.

Gunfire should have been constant with those corpses scattered in different places. Probably, they could hear sirens. Screams. The familiar soundtrack of civilization tearing itself apart.

Instead, the silence hung over them like a lead blanket and Victor refused to believe it's possible.

At this point, everything felt like it's manufactured—enforced.

"What if someone isn't just erasing memories... but controlling what we can hear, what we can see—what we can remember?" Victor thought, heart pounding against his ribcage. His breathing quickened.

He glanced back at the similar three women outside since the door is slightly ajar. They are still chatting among themselves. None of them seemed to realize what they had said earlier— how strange it was that they couldn’t remember Xianyu Zhao’s face despite his omnipresence before the outbreak.

How many other memories had been stripped from them without their knowledge?

Victor’s fingers curled into a fist.

Someone had been playing god long before the virus ever spread.

And if they had the power to rewrite the past... Then maybe they could control the future, too.

He swallowed hard, forcing down the rising dread in his throat.

If there was one thing Victor hated more than not knowing the truth—

—it was realizing that someone else had stolen it from him.

He stared at the rusting ceiling, heart pounding louder in his ears.

Three locations. Three points.

Perhaps, was something buried at the center of this triangle? If this is some kind of a tragic, mystery/thriller, sci-fi movie, shits like that would make sense... right?

Like something the world wasn’t supposed to remember?

Victor carefully pulled the worn photo from the inside pocket of his coat. His heart squeezed the moment Azumi's gentle smile met his eyes — a haunting echo of a life that felt like a distant dream. He had been staring at this photo since the day he got it, yet each glance only carved the ache in his chest deeper.

"Where are you, love?" he whispered, voice barely above a breath, cracking beneath the weight of longing.

A mist of tears blurred his vision, but he didn't blink them away. Slowly, he pressed the photo against his face, the faint scent of old paper doing little to ease the emptiness inside him. With a shaky bre

ath, he closed his eyes, surrendering to the fragile hope that — if nowhere else — he'd find her waiting for him in the sanctuary of his dreams.