The morning light was gentle.
Too gentle.
It slid across the room, catching the edge of my desk, the window frame, the folds of my blanket — everything looked soft, harmless, unreal.
For a moment, I almost convinced myself that everything from before — the roots, Aya's voice, the mirror of myself — had been a fever dream.
Almost.
Then I moved my hand.
And felt it again.
The faint hum.
Barely there — like a vibration beneath the skin, following the rhythm of my pulse.
I pressed my fingers against my wrist.
Nothing.
Just warmth.
But when I closed my eyes…
I heard it.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
It was patient now, quieter than before — not calling, not demanding.
Just waiting.
I sat there a long time, staring at the ceiling, trying to breathe normally. Every breath felt heavy, like the air itself resisted.
Finally, I got up.
The house was silent.
No creak of floorboards. No kettle on the stove. No voice calling my name.
My aunt's shoes were still by the door.
Just like before.
Just like always.
---
When I stepped outside, the world was… normal.
Children running. Old men gossiping near the temple steps. The smell of rain somewhere distant.
But the longer I walked, the more wrong it felt.
The colors were brighter than they should've been — too saturated, too alive.
The air shimmered faintly, like heat rising from the ground.
And the villagers' smiles —
They were perfect.
Every single one.
The clerk waved at me again, the same exact way he had yesterday. The same rhythm. The same tilt of his hand.
Even his words were the same.
> "Good morning, Miss Mizu!"
His voice had no cracks, no variation — like a recording played on loop.
I forced a smile and nodded. "Good morning."
As I walked past him, I glanced at the reflection in his shop window.
For a split second, I saw roots beneath his skin.
---
At school, everything was back to normal.
The halls were bright. The chatter constant. The teachers smiling too much.
Aya wasn't there.
When I asked the other students where she was, they blinked in confusion.
"Who?"
"The nurse," I said. "Aya."
Blank stares.
"There's no nurse named Aya," one of them finally said. "We haven't had a nurse in years."
The air went cold.
I laughed softly, because that was the only thing I could do.
But no one else laughed.
When I reached the infirmary, the door was locked. Dust covered the handle. Through the window, I saw only empty beds.
No trace of her.
No trace of me from before.
Just silence.
---
At lunch, I sat under the same tree where Aya used to meet me.
The breeze was warm. The leaves whispered faintly overhead.
And then, out of nowhere, a petal landed on my hand.
White.
Soft.
I held my breath.
Another fell. Then another.
Within seconds, the ground was covered in them.
A quiet rain of white petals, falling from a tree that wasn't flowering.
The others around me didn't notice. They laughed, ate, scrolled through their phones — petals passing straight through them like dust through light.
I watched until the last one fell and dissolved against my skin, leaving behind a faint trace of green.
> "You're still connected," a voice whispered.
I froze.
It wasn't Aya's.
It wasn't mine.
It came from below.
The soil beneath the roots.
> "Don't fight it," it said softly.
"The world's only pretending."
---
I stood slowly, my knees weak.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
No answer.
Only the hum again, faint and rhythmic — like a lullaby played underground.
I pressed my foot against the earth.
The hum grew louder.
And then, just for a heartbeat, I saw it —
The faint pulse beneath the dirt.
Like veins.
Like the world itself was alive.
I stepped back, my chest tight.
It wasn't gone.
It was never gone.
I didn't go back to class.
I just walked.
Through the narrow hallways, down the back stairs, past the empty storage room that always smelled faintly of mold and chalk.
My body moved on its own — my thoughts didn't matter anymore.
Outside, the air was heavy, the sky turning that dull gray that always comes before rain.
The other students laughed and shouted as they passed me, their shoes squeaking against the floor — but none of it felt real.
Every sound was distant, muffled, as if coming from somewhere else.
When I reached the school office, I stopped.
There, behind the dusty glass window, were stacks of old student files.
I asked the secretary — an old woman with bright, too-wide eyes — if I could see the staff records.
She smiled politely. "Why, dear?"
"I'm looking for someone. Aya."
Her hand froze midair.
The smile didn't move.
"I'm afraid there's no one by that name."
"But she worked here," I insisted. "The school nurse. She helped me—"
"Maybe you're mistaken."
Her tone didn't change. Her eyes didn't blink.
And then she leaned slightly forward, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow reached straight into my ears:
> "Some names are better forgotten."
The sound of it made the air hum again.
Low. Deep.
Like the ground under my feet was listening.
---
I stepped back from the counter.
Behind her, I noticed a faint movement — one of the old file cabinets trembling ever so slightly, as if something inside it was shifting.
The old woman turned her head just a little, her neck moving too slow.
"You should go home, dear," she said gently. "The air isn't good today."
Her eyes flicked to the window.
I followed her gaze.
Outside, petals were falling again.
Only this time, they weren't white.
They were green.
And when they touched the glass, they didn't slide down.
They stuck — veins pressing flat against the surface, pulsing faintly.
---
I ran.
The corridors blurred. Every door looked the same, every face turned toward me but didn't move.
By the time I reached the gates, I was shaking.
The air outside was thick, sweet, heavy with the scent of flowers that weren't there.
The world had gone quiet.
Even the wind had stopped.
Only the hum remained.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
It followed me through the streets, through the empty park, past the stone bridge.
Every step I took made the sound stronger, until I couldn't tell if it was coming from beneath the ground or inside my body.
When I finally reached home, I slammed the door shut and locked it.
The sound didn't stop.
It echoed through the wood.
I pressed my hands over my ears — it was useless.
The hum wasn't in the air anymore.
It was in me.
---
I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the sink.
The water ran clear at first — then clouded, faintly green.
I stared at it, trembling.
And then, as if mocking me, the reflection in the mirror shifted.
It was me.
But not quite.
Her skin was pale, her eyes slightly brighter, and from the edge of her collarbone —
a thin green line pulsed.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
Her lips moved before mine did.
> "You're almost ready."
I stumbled back, knocking over the cup by the sink. It shattered on the floor.
My reflection didn't flinch.
It smiled.
---
Rain began to fall outside — soft at first, then harder, until it drowned the sound of everything else.
I slid down against the wall, pulling my knees close.
I could hear the rain hitting the roof, the windows, the earth.
But beneath it, the hum still lingered — quieter now, almost soothing.
Like a heartbeat buried beneath the world.
And in that moment, I realized something terrifying.
It wasn't trying to hurt me.
It was trying to grow me.
I didn't sleep that night.
Not even for a moment.
Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the hum beneath my skin — soft, steady, patient.
Like it was waiting for me to stop resisting.
By dawn, my head ached.
The rain hadn't stopped. It fell in a constant drizzle, soaking the earth, coating everything in a sheen that made the world look dreamlike.
When I looked outside, the street was empty.
Not unusual — the village woke slowly — but still, the silence was heavier than before.
I touched the windowpane.
The glass was cold, and beneath it, I could almost feel a faint pulse — as if the house itself was breathing.
---
At breakfast, I tried to act normal.
The tea was cold. The chair creaked.
Everything in its place.
Except for the wall across from me.
A crack had formed — thin, green, almost invisible unless you looked directly at it.
It ran from the ceiling down to the floor like a vein.
When I blinked, it wasn't there anymore.
But the hum grew louder.
---
I told myself I was imagining it.
I had to be.
So I tested it.
I took a notebook and started writing — simple things, ordinary things.
Dates. Times. Descriptions.
> "Chair, brown.
Table, round.
Cup, chipped.
Wall, white."
When I looked up, the cup wasn't chipped anymore.
The wall wasn't white.
It had turned pale green.
My pen dropped.
I wrote again, faster this time.
> "Wall, white."
And just like that — it changed back.
The air trembled faintly, like a held breath.
I could feel the hum in my fingers now, crawling along my bones.
Every word I wrote seemed to make it react.
> "The roots listen," I whispered.
The phrase didn't come from me — not consciously.
It just slipped out, like a memory from someone else's mouth.
---
By afternoon, I couldn't tell what time it was anymore.
The clock on the wall kept ticking, but every time I checked, the hands pointed somewhere new.
Two o'clock. Six. Three again.
Outside, the light never changed — gray and dim, as though the sun had stopped moving.
I stepped outside for air.
The rain had lessened to a fine mist, turning the world into watercolor.
Across the street, the old woman from the school office stood beneath her umbrella, smiling at me.
She shouldn't have been there.
She raised her hand slowly and waved.
Her wrist bent wrong.
> "You wrote the wrong word," she said, though her mouth never moved.
Then, before I could react, she turned and walked into the fog — the hum echoing softly behind her.
---
I ran back inside.
My notebook still sat open on the table.
The last line had changed.
It no longer said, "The roots listen."
Now it read:
> "The roots remember."
I didn't write that.
I swear I didn't.
I picked up the pen, my hand trembling, and scratched through the sentence — once, twice, until the paper tore.
But beneath the tear, on the page below, faint green letters bled through.
> "Stop fighting."
I threw the notebook across the room.
The hum flared — loud and sharp, like a heartbeat behind my eyes.
Then silence.
---
I stood there, frozen, breathing hard.
And then, from the kitchen doorway, I heard it — the faint sound of something sliding across the floor.
Slow. Wet.
Like roots dragging themselves closer.
I turned my head, just enough to see.
A small sprout was growing between the floorboards — thin, trembling, pale.
I stared, unable to move.
It grew an inch, then two.
A soft crack as the wood split wider.
And from within the gap, I saw something glint — not a root, not a rock.
An eye.
Human.
It blinked once.
And the hum returned, softer this time, almost tender.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
For a long time, I couldn't move.
The air in the kitchen had thickened — heavy with the scent of wet soil and something sweeter underneath.
The sprout kept growing.
Its stem twisted as it rose, curling toward the light leaking through the window.
The eye blinked again.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped, staring straight at me.
It didn't look frightened.
It looked curious.
My throat was dry. "What are you?"
The hum deepened in response, vibrating through the floorboards.
The plates in the cabinet rattled softly.
> "We are what you left behind," the voice murmured — not aloud, but from inside my chest.
"We grew where you fell."
I took a step back, but the hum followed, pulsing inside the bones of the house.
Every breath I took came out slower, thicker, like breathing through syrup.
The sprout split.
Two stems. Four. Eight.
Tiny white petals unfurled at their tips, trembling with every heartbeat.
And from somewhere within them, I heard whispers.
Not words.
Memories.
Laughter by the shrine.
The echo of Aya's voice.
My own footsteps the night the fog rolled in.
All tangled together, speaking in the same rhythm.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
---
I backed into the hallway, shaking.
The walls pulsed faintly as I passed, veins glowing and fading like breath.
In the living room, my reflection in the glass door was already waiting for me.
She stood still, hands at her sides, eyes calm.
The green line at her neck glowed faintly, pulsing with mine.
> "You understand now," she said.
I swallowed. "Understand what?"
> "That we aren't separate. You were never apart from it. From us."
"I don't want this."
> "You already chose."
Her voice was steady, patient — the way my aunt used to sound when I was small and she was teaching me to fold paper cranes.
> "You looked. You listened. And it remembered you."
The hum filled the room again, soft and full, and I realized it wasn't coming from the floor anymore.
It was coming from me.
---
I stumbled toward the mirror and slammed my hand against it.
The glass rippled beneath my touch — like water.
For a moment, I saw something move beneath the surface.
A shape, a garden, endless green.
And in the center, my aunt.
She was kneeling by the roots, hands buried in soil, smiling up at me.
The same warm smile she'd given me the day I arrived.
> "See, Mizu?" she said. "It's all blooming again."
I pressed harder against the glass. "Where are you?"
> "Here," she said gently. "Where everything begins."
The roots around her pulsed, spreading outward — through the reflection, into the walls, into me.
---
The hum swelled.
It was inside my head, my chest, my throat.
My heartbeat no longer belonged to me.
> thrum… thrum… thrum…
I tried to scream, but what came out wasn't a sound — it was a breath of green mist.
It drifted toward the mirror, curling like smoke, and the reflection smiled wider.
> "You're becoming beautiful," it whispered.
I fell backward, gasping, hands shaking.
When I looked down, my skin was pale, almost translucent — and beneath it, faint lines were forming.
Veins.
Roots.
Moving.
---
I don't remember how long I stayed there.
When I finally opened my eyes again, the house was silent.
The sprout on the floor had vanished.
The crack in the wall was gone.
The mirror showed only me — tired, pale, human.
But the hum remained, soft and constant beneath my ribs.
And in the corner of the room, where the light didn't reach, something new was growing.
Tiny.
Green.