The closer I looked at the posters, the more details emerged. Dates written in bold letters: "25th – Get Tickets Now!", "Grand Re—Opening!", "Live Performance!". Some posters listed ticket counters and phone numbers; others had arrows pointing toward said counters. People gathered beneath them, hammering, tacking, stepping back to check their work. The excitement was tangible—even from inside the bus.
Excited for what again?
Unwillingly, my eyes followed the river of posters as it flowed past every corner of the street, growing thicker and denser the closer it came to the theater. At first they were only scattered along the walls, but soon they began to multiply, appearing on lampposts, shop windows, even nailed to wooden boards propped against buildings.
And then I saw it.
Placed higher than all the rest, impossible to miss even through the rain, my gaze landed on the final poster stretched across the middle of the street like a gate welcoming people into something grand.
Celeste Auguste, announced as the new protégée of Junya Kikuchi.
It hit me instantly. As if my head had been placed right beside one of those massive gongs—the kind hanging in Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurants, the same ones I used to visit almost every Saturday to drown myself in gluttony—and someone struck it with everything they had.
The vibration exploded through my skull.
My head began throbbing violently, as if every small headache from earlier had suddenly gathered together and combined into a single crushing pulse.
Again.
And again.
Each beat felt like someone had grabbed my head and was shaking it relentlessly. My vision began to waver and blur. The longer I sat there, the harder it became to focus on anything. Outside the window the rain was no longer individual drops—it had turned into long streaks of light sliding across the glass as the bus moved forward.
Protégée.
The word rang somewhere deep inside my mind.
Through the ringing and the pressure inside my skull, a voice slowly surfaced. One I knew far too well. Even buried beneath the noise and the pain, I could recognize it immediately.
It's a voice I could discern even miles away.
Junya Kikuchi, my former teacher.
"…my protégée's concert on Christmas." , I heard the voice whisper.
It was as if seeing that word had unlocked something hidden inside me.
Not clearly. Never clearly. Just broken fragments.
A woman with red hair.
The cold, rough feeling of wet cobblestones against my skin.
The faint metallic smell of iron in the air.
Green eyes staring straight into mine, so close that the world seemed to shrink until only the iris remained.
None of it made sense.
The images felt distant, almost unreal.
Yet at the same time they felt familiar.
Terribly familiar.
Every image, every sound and every sensation came with another stab of pain in my head, sharper than the one before. It felt as though something inside my mind was trying desperately to break through, pushing against a barrier that refused to give in.
My body reacted before I could think.
I curled forward in my seat, folding into myself like an armadillo trying to hide from the world outside.
It didn't help.
All it did was draw attention.
When I looked up again, people were staring at me.
Their eyes moved quickly away when they noticed I had caught them looking, but it was too late. I had already seen it.
The confusion.
The concern.
And perhaps a little fear.
Getting off the bus suddenly felt like the only thing that mattered.
I grabbed the metal handle on the seat in front of me, trying to steady myself. The bus swayed gently along the road, but to me it felt like standing on the deck of a ship during a storm. Every movement made the pounding in my head worse.
I pushed myself to my feet and slowly stumbled toward the exit.
By now the attention of the entire back half of the bus had shifted toward me.
Naturally.
Anyone would stare at a man in his mid-twenties clutching his head, breathing unevenly, and staggering toward the door like he had just lost his mind.
As the bus slowed near the next stop, a man standing beside the exit turned towards me."Hey… are you alright?" he asked cautiously. "Do you need something?"
His voice reached my ears, but it felt distant, as though it had traveled through water.
It wasn't that I didn't want to answer.
It was simply impossible.
The sounds around me had grown painfully loud. The rain hitting the windows, the engine humming beneath the floor, the quiet chatter of passengers—all of it mixed together into a sharp, unbearable noise inside my head.
"Hey," the man repeated, more firmly this time, reaching out toward my shoulder.
The moment his hand touched me, my body reacted instantly.
I flinched and knocked his hand away.
For a brief second the world snapped back into focus.
Realizing what I had done, I looked at him quickly.
"I—I didn't mean to… sor—sorry."
The apology barely left my mouth before another pulse of pain struck me.
"Argh…"
Right then the bus doors hissed open.
That was enough. Enough to make me squeeze myself outside through the opening door.
I stumbled outside immediately, pushing past the people waiting to get on. My foot caught on the edge of the step and I lost my balance, falling forward onto the wet pavement in front of them.
Someone gasped. Another person stepped back. But I didn't care.
Not about their reactions. Not about their stares.
All I cared about was getting away from that bus. Away from this huge amount of posters that were haunting me.
I forced myself back onto my feet, struggling slightly as my legs wobbled beneath me. Behind me I heard the man from the bus shouting something.
"Wait!"
But I kept moving. Struggling to my way up.
To my misfortune, the posters were everywhere.
They covered the street like a colorful tide—on walls, poles, windows, fences. No matter where I looked, another one appeared.
I had no idea where to go, but I still needed to get to school.
I knew I was close. Even though I had gotten off one stop too early, I knew the way.
Every time my eyes accidentally drifted toward one of the posters, the pain flared again.
Especially when I saw the name.
Celeste.
So I lowered my head.
The ground became the only safe thing to look at.Step after step, I focused only on the wet pavement beneath my shoes. The small puddles. The reflections of streetlights. Anything except the posters surrounding me.
Eventually—after what felt far longer than it probably was—I reached the school.
Nearly twenty minutes later. And as such, the pain began to fade slowly.
The closer I got, the fewer posters there were. One by one they disappeared from the streets behind me, until finally none remained.
My head cleared. The pounding stopped. I could think again, finally.
Yet this lingering feeling from earlier didn't.
Something was still there.
That strange, stubborn sensation—like a memory sitting right at the edge of my mind, waiting to surface but refusing to show itself.
Almost like a word resting on the tip of your tongue.
As I stepped through the school gates, the sound of children shouting and playing filled the air. Compared to the chaos that had been raging inside my head only minutes ago, it felt almost peaceful.
Yet two thoughts refused to leave my mind.
Why were people suddenly looking out for me?
Helping me?
Speaking to me as if they cared?
Someone who looks like me… acts like me… is me.
And more importantly—
What was this strange sensation that had been following me ever since I left my lousy apartment this morning?
Not quite exactly a memory. Yet… something that felt close to one.
Just this strange, unsettling sense that something about this day… felt strangely familiar.
As if I had already stood here before.
As if somewhere, somehow—
I had been here before.
Unfortunately for me, it wouldn't take long for me to realize this had been the moment just before it all began.