CHAPTER 6: REVELATION

After everything had settled, Tenka rose from her chair, slightly larger than the others, and walked over to the small table on her right. She picked up the mocha latte Haruka had prepared for her and began sipping it calmly.

Kentaro avoided making eye contact. What he had just witnessed gave him the unsettling impression that one wrong move around this "different" version of Tenka could mean instant death. It was hard to reconcile this side of her with the Tenka he knew, the kind, gentle girl who never raised a hand to anyone, let alone deliver what should have been a finishing move, capable of killing someone.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at her. She was now standing beside him, silently watching the large screen ahead. Despite her calm demeanour, Kentaro couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. It was as if he were meeting her for the first time.

"Ken"

She leaned in, her voice barely above a whisper, which startled Kentaro.

"I know you’ve got a ton of questions, but don’t forget, I’m still Tenka." Her eyes flicked downward before she dared, a sideways glance. "So maybe... hold off on giving me that look you give around girls."

He didn’t answer right away; he stood there frozen, before what she had said hit him.

Kentaro snapped his head towards her, frustration flaring. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAY ’AROUND GIRLS’?! ARE YOU SAYING I CAN’T TALK TO WOMEN?!" he thundered.

The hum of keyboards and murmurs in the room stopped instantly. Every head turned towards them. Kentaro’s face burned hot as he realised how outlandish his outburst sounded, especially at the commander.

"What the..." he muttered under his breath.

Then, out of nowhere, Tenka burst into laughter, deep, unstoppable laughter that filled the room. His embarrassment only grew.

"W-what’s so funny, Tenka?" he stammered, voice shaky.

She was doubled over, wiping tears from her cheeks between giggles. It took her a moment to compose herself before she finally managed: "Oh my God... your face?!" She shook her head, still smiling. "You’re hopeless, Ken."

He sank into himself, cheeks crimson, while Tenka’s laughter echoed around the room, lightening the tension in the air, even as he vowed never to live that moment down. Kentaro would try to defend himself, but would ultimately give up trying. Mainly because of Tenka’s reaction. Sure, it was at him, but anything to make her smile and laugh that hard was something he could put up with.

"I’ll let you guys laugh this time, but wait for my amazing revenge," he said, declaring his revenge to Tenka.

But before Tenka could even respond to Kentaro’s declaration, one of the soldiers came up to her.

"Commander, I believe we have everything you requested," the woman with blonde hair said, also wearing a uniform similar to Shogo’s. As her eyes gazed and flickered through the contents, Tenka’s face switched along with her personality.

Back to her ’commander mode.’

"Yes, thank you, just what we needed." The blonde woman in the uniform handed over a couple more pieces of paper that clearly had something on them. From what Kentaro could make out with a slight view, there was a bar chart. Tenka scanned the data sheet beneath the bar chart with a swift flick of her eyes.

The air shattered.

Gone was the playful grin. Gone was the teasing glint.

"Haruka. Bring up the projection."

Haruka didn’t speak or ask any questions, just tapped a series of keys. The control room dimmed around them, and from the floor rose a faint blue cylinder of light. It flickered static, dancing across its surface, before stabilising into a floating silhouette, a blurred figure, outline fractured and pulsating like a heartbeat skipping rhythm.

Kentaro’s breath caught in his throat.

Even if it was distorted, even half erased....

He knew that shape. That Hair.

"...Rin..." he whispered, so softly it barely left his lips.

Tenka turned, catching his voice. Her tone sharpened. "I presume the girl’s name is Rin."

Kentaro nodded, agreeing to what Tenka had asked.

"Hmm, that’s the name she’s given herself?" Tenka whispered to herself while still looking at the screen.

Kentaro took a glance at Tenka, as she was mumbling to herself, before telling her all the information he had.

"That’s her name, you see, at least what she said. No last name, j-just... Rin. Like it was the only thing she had left of her."

His voice was quiet, almost hollow. Tenka’s gaze lingered on him for a moment longer than usual. They turned back to the display.

"I see... Well. There is more to this Rin than you think, Kentaro."

That last word hit different.

She rarely called him by his full name. Not Ken, not Ren, none of the, but just Kentaro. It was one of those rare moments, counted on one hand, where everything else dropped away. Kentaro’s stomach tightened. He turned his head towards her, his face caught between fear and curiosity.

He gave a small nod.

"Go on."

Tenka did not soften her tone; it was unnecessary for what she was about to say.

"Rin is what you call an Alberline."

Kentaro looked back at the screen as the frozen image of the mysterious girl lingered.

"Alberline.... Huh, I see..." His eyes slightly widened in hearing that word, but he would let Tenka continue without asking any questions.

Yet.

"From what we thought before, Alberlines were these creatures that took the form of women trying to wreak havoc on our world, causing different types of disasters, sometimes leading to death, sometimes leading to missing people..."

She paused, clearing her throat before continuing.

"But the main problem is that there is one lingering fact. It’s that they have the power to make everyone forget. We don’t know how far this power goes in terms of distance and surrounding areas, but as far as we have gathered, it’s everyone who finds themselves in one of the Blooms."

Kentaro’s eyes still wide, couldn’t help him self but to interject.

"So... How the hell do you guys remember any of this?"

Kentaro’s voice cut through the tension like a crack in the wall, half disbelief, half demand. Tenka didn’t answer straight away. She just gave him a look, that of a smug one, a slightly infuriating smirk she reserved for moments when she knew something he didn’t.

"Well." She began, drawing out the word like a teacher stalling before dropping a pop quiz.

"We at Halcyon are protected by something called NAS."

Kentaro tilted his head like a confused puppy, repeating what Tenka had just said.

"...NAS?"

"Yes. Neural Anchor System," She said, still grinning like a cat that just threw someone off a cliff.

"A bit of experimental tech developed by our division to stop the drift from rewriting our memories, along with having the ability to get close to an Alberline."

Haruka chimed in, always the serious one.

"When someone’s exposed to a fracture bloom, reality breaks, but it’s not just space and time, it’s also perception. The human mind can’t process the emotional distortion... So it edits itself out like a corrupted file."

"So, that’s why Civilians Forget," Kentaro muttered.

"Even if they were there by accident, their brains just... erase it?"

Haruka nodded.

"Exactly. It’s not mercy. It’s a trauma response on a global scale. When a drift bloom erupts, it doesn’t just distort space, it shatters logic, emotion, memory. The human brain can’t handle that kind of break, so it edits the whole event, and sometimes the brain can’t do that."

She paused

"And if that happens, they die, and it’s a painful one as well."

She tapped a few buttons on her tablet, and a short, silent video played. It was buildings twisting inward like they were being sucked through themselves in reverse. There were cars folding, people vanishing, and time freezing in mid-air.

Kentaro leaned in, stunned.

Haruka’s voice was calm, almost too calm.

"This is a Drift Bloom collapse."

She looked at Kentaro, eyes sharp behind her glasses.

"When an Aberline loses emotional control, the world around them starts to glitch, like their feelings are rewriting the rules of reality. Time stutters. Gravity breaks. The laws that hold our world together... unravel."

She paused, then swiped to the next clip.

The video jumped. Now the entire block was vanishing, piece by piece.

Like reality was hitting ’undo’ but only halfway.

"If the pressure builds too far, the zone enters a collapse. That’s what you’re seeing here."

Kentaro’s jaw tightened.

"But... where does everything go?"

Haruka didn’t answer right away. Then she pointed to the blank, gray crater at the end of the video.

"When the system can’t handle the overload... it tries to reset. It deletes everything it can’t stabilize. People, buildings. Memories."

Kentaro stared, cold creeping into his chest.

"So reality just... gives up?"

Haruka looked back at the screen.

"No. It tries to heal itself. But sometimes it heals wrong. Or.. not at all."

Kentaro swallowed hard, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"And everyone also just forgets?"

"If they’re lucky," Tenka added. "If not, they remember pieces, and those pieces of trauma come to them suddenly, and just like for most people, it breaks them in ways we cannot fix, no matter how much tech we have."

Kentaro stood there shocked, and imagining the unimaginable sorrow that people were going through because of these ’Fractures.’

"S-so. What do you do, Tenka?" he asked quietly, his voice tightening.

"D-do you... k-kill them?"

Tenka didn’t answer right away. Her eyes remained fixed on the frozen image of Rin’s silhouette. Then slowly, she turned her head towards him.

"We used to think they were monsters. Aberrations of space. Code breaking errors in the emotional structure of the world."

"But the," Haruka added from beside the console, "One of them spoke a name, and cried, and bled!"

The air shifted again. Cold, but not just from the tech.

It was from the truth...

"That’s when the people of our organisation realised that Alberlines are people," Tenka added.

"Shattered people. Fragments of life pushed too far."

Kentaro swallowed. The tension in his throat felt heavier than before.

"So. We don’t kill them."

She continued. "We try to save them. By anchoring them, pulling them back from that emotional edge."

She paused for a brief moment, her face twisted as she bit her lip.

"But. We aren’t the only organisation that knows about all of this."

Haruka stepped forward, her expression unreadable.

"There’s CRADLE."

The air changed. Even the hum of the control room seemed to quiet. Kentaro glanced between them.

"C-cradle, What is it?"

Tenka folded her arms, her back now to the display.

"Cradle stands for Cognitive Rift Anomaly Disposal, Lock Down Enforcement. To put it simply, their missions sound like ours on paper. But they don’t stabilise. They erase."

Haruka pulled up another projection footage, this time distorted and grainy, like it had been recovered from a half-melted surveillance feed. Armoured soldiers in matte black moved through a collapsed city block. Their visors glowed red. No insignias. No hesitation. In the clip, a girl in her late teens stood crying near the remains of a storefront. Then just as she turned to look at the camera, a red beam cut through, attacking the girl. The image froze on her shocked expression.

Kentaro’s breath hitched.

Tenka spoke quietly.

"They know Alberlines are humans. In fact, if I’m being honest, they have just as much if not even more information about the Alberlines than we do."

She paused, letting out a long sigh.

"But their philosophy is simple. If emotions can rewrite the law of physics, then people who have the power to feel too deeply and destroy everything and everyone around them are existential threats."

Haruka’s voice was flat.

"They do not believe Alberlines can be saved. They believe drift is a kind of emotional virus, and that the humane thing is to end it before anything happens."

Kentaro clenched his fists.

"S-so they just kill people who’ve been through so much?!"

Haruka took a glance at Tenka before going back to Kentaro.

"They don’t think they’re the villains. They think they’re stopping the next end of the world."

Creek.

As they were talking, they were interrupted by the sound of the door to the command room slowly opening.

Everyone turned around facing towards the door...