Author's Note: So, I have officially decided that the story ends here. Thank you all for sharing my little itty-bitty journey.
Oh, by the way... OMFG SO MANY FAVORITES/REVIEWS IN ONE DAY. I've never had that many for one story in a single day, and it wasn't even a full twelve hours after I posted the last chapter! Thank you all so much! Enjoy the final chapter!
Chapter Four
Finding the Girl
She said to me, "Where is your reactor?"
The second my feet left the floor of the reactor site and my body entered the actual nuclear reactor, my sense of logic dissolved. No matter what happened now, I knew I would find her. The entire world could digest and regurgitate itself and I would not be fazed. My Fate was set.
I flew.
Actually, I fell, but I fell so gracefully down that reactor that I felt like I had become extremely streamlined and just floated down to where I needed to go.
Something sparkled around me, but I didn't spare it a glance until I felt my body shifting; like a cat, I was turning around to land on my feet. The sparkling was the reactor tube changing, morphing into the room into which I was arriving. My feet tapped lightly on the ground, and as my hair fell down around my body, I looked at the room.
It wasn't a room so much as a long hallway (the whole site is nothing but hallways, right?) shining golden with the light of a dying sun. The windows were wide and ancient, but they were blank, it seemed there was nothing outside, or else the sun was shining directly on them so that I couldn't see anything outside.
"Hello?" I whispered, taking a few steps forward. Like out of a dream, I heard a song floating up out of nowhere; the source seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. I stopped and listened...
...and I can't sleep The lighter's out of oil I dreamed of wrapping my hands around your neck I want to dive into a nuclear reactor
Everything is changing so fast
The pit of my stomach's on fire
If everything is such a lie
Then it really would be better
on an early afternoon overflowing with light
I dreamed, with eyes full of tears,
of cinching your narrow throat
surrounded by beautiful blue light
If I dive into the nuclear reactor
then I can let it all go...
Rin's song. It was Rin's song I was hearing. It played on an endless loop, gradually fading in and out. It didn't sound like anyone was physically singing it...perhaps it was merely springing into being from the depths of her soul itself.
At that moment I happened to glance at my watch and almost gasped with surprise; ten of my precious thirty minutes had already passed. The fall down the tube had taken longer than I thought, and then I'd dawdled...
I had to find her. I walked on, at a slightly faster pace than normal.
I walked for five more minutes down that dusty, sunlit corridor before I heard something other than the pressuring silence. I heard footsteps, but not in the same room, as if someone were following me. I heard them as if through a thin wall. But there were no doors in this hallway, that I could see, and therefore it was impossible for that person to be so close.
Slowly, I approached the wall and leaned my ear against it. The footsteps had stopped. I raised my knuckles...
The exact second I knocked on the wall, someone else did the same thing...right on the spot of wall my ear was on. The sound was excruciatingly loud. I shrieked at the same time the other person did, and jumped back.
"What the hell was that for?" I shouted at the wall.
"I could ask you the same thing!"
"You just tried to knock out my eardrums!"
"At the same time you tried to bust mine!"
I glared at the wall, even if I knew the girl on the other side—and I knew it was a girl—couldn't see me. "How come you aren't over here?"
"Why aren't you over here?"
"This is where the reactor put me."
"Well, this is where the reactor put me. And I'm still looking for that brat."
"What brat?"
"The one I'm trying to strangle."
I blinked. "Why?"
"Because she taunts me."
"Isn't she you?"
There was a pause. "...What?"
"I said, isn't she you?"
"Does it matter?"
"If you strangle her, won't you kill yourself?"
The other girl thought about this. "It doesn't matter anyway. No one cares about me. The world would be better without me. I just take up space. No one's even been to look for me yet."
"How do you know?"
"Because I haven't seen them yet."
"Maybe it's because the reactor won't let you."
There was a long pause, and I almost thought she'd been taken from me. Then she said to me, "Where is your reactor?"
Finally, finally I could answer her. "In my heart."
The pause that followed was the longest yet. I glanced at my watch and realized I only had four minutes left. But Rin had something else to say to me. "Who are you?"
"My name is Hatsune Miku. I met you two days ago."
"I remember."
"I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to talk to you more. You're interesting, and I blew you off."
"I was on my way here by then. It wouldn't have mattered."
"Wouldn't've it?" I said. I put my hand against the wall. "I think about that a lot. What my life would be if I hadn't made the choices I did. If I'd gone down the other path. The people around me...would their lives be different? Would the world still be the same way if I was a different person?"
"One person doesn't matter to the world."
My forehead joined my hand, against the cool surface of the wall. "How do you know? We don't have a god's view of this world. For all we know, our meager lives...we could have such an effect on worldly matters, even if we don't know it."
Rin was silent. I looked at my watch. Two minutes.
"You have a point."
"Will you look to defy your Fate now?"
A single-second pause. "You read my notes."
"I took your case. I read your notes to figure out where you were."
Watch. One minute. Rin said, "The girl came back."
"Did she?"
"I think she's here to take me to it."
"To where?"
Thirty seconds. "Miku-san, I think I know where my reactor is."
"...Where?"
"It's in my future."
As soon as she finished that sentence, I looked down the hall, and there she was, a ghostly echo of herself, dressed in a black-and-white dress similar to mine, holding the hand of her past self, who was wearing a flowing white dress. They were far away, down towards the end of the hall. I smiled, and felt a single tear slide down my cheek.
"Good luck, Rin-san."
My watch showed 00:00:00. The entire hallway grew brighter and brighter, and Rin's scream of triumphant defiance rang in my ears as the hall faded to white and I was lifted high into the air...
The next thing I knew, I was outside the reactor site, and the thing was blowing up. The materials that made up the hallways were melting, and explosions were heard almost continuously. The reactor was dying. It had finished its purpose. I leaned against the chain-link fence, the first of the reactor core's many barriers.
I had been restored, just as Little Miku had predicted. I had also found Rin and apologized, just as I had promised. I wondered for a moment what happened to Shion and the other reactor guards, but in my heart I knew they were safe.
I felt different for my experiences, buy not as different as I thought I would be. When my past self had said I would be a different person, I assumed she meant drastically different. But even in the end, it was the simple, subtle things that mattered in life. I had learned that. Perhaps that was all the change I required.
It started to rain, a cleansing rain to douse the fire of the reactor and wash it away. I reached into my coat pockets and my right hand touched something small. Two somethings small.
I pulled out the note first. It was written in my hand.
Thought you might like to have this. Good luck with your case.
I pulled out the other object, and my tears mingled with the cold, cold rain.
It was a little toy model of an ancient roadroller, with Rin's name etched on the side.
11 October 20XX.
I succeeded in finding her fragment.