At dawn Shigure left the shack
Kenta didn't follow
Didn't wake
Or maybe just pretended not to
Some people knew when a goodbye would hurt more than a silence
The road curved east through thick woods
Then opened to cracked hills
And just beyond that
Ruins of a village still pretending to be alive
Smoke rose from crooked chimneys
Children played in silence
And elders stared at the sky like it owed them answers
Shigure entered with slow steps
And felt something was wrong
Not dangerous
Just…wrong
No one looked at him
No one asked his name
A woman sweeping her doorstep paused as he passed
Then kept sweeping the same spot
Over and over
Even after the dust was gone
He approached an old man sitting by a well
"Excuse me
What's this place called"
The old man blinked
Once
Twice
Then smiled
"Home"
Shigure frowned
"No I mean the name"
The man tilted his head
"Name"
He nodded
"The name of the village"
The man looked around
As if the buildings might whisper it to him
Then his smile cracked
Like old paint splitting
"We had one once" he said
"Before the river turned black"
"What happened"
"No one remembers
We tried
Every year we carve new signs
But the wood rots before we finish"
Shigure looked around again
The air felt too still
Too heavy
Like grief with no grave
A girl approached
Maybe eight
Eyes dull
She held out a flower
Petals wilted
Stem broken
"For the graves" she said
"What graves"
She pointed behind a burnt house
Shigure followed
There were no tombstones
Just wooden planks stuck into the dirt
No names
No dates
Only symbols
And all of them scratched out
He felt a cold pressure in his chest
Like someone had taken a memory from him too
He turned to leave
But the girl was still there
Staring
"I used to have a sister" she whispered
Shigure knelt
"What happened to her"
"I don't remember
But I miss her every morning"
Her eyes didn't water
She'd forgotten how
Back in the center of the village
People went about their routines
Eating
Working
Smiling
But none of them knew why
He passed a man chopping wood
Over and over
No logs nearby
Just the sound
Shigure left the village without another word
When he looked back from the hilltop
He saw them all freeze
Like puppets with cut strings
Then slowly
They turned
And went back to their loops
As if forgetting was the only way they knew how to live
And he
A man cursed to remember everything
Walked on with their pain dragging behind his shadow