“You finally looked in the right category, Emi-chan,” Hikari said softly. “I’m not in Books or News. I’m in All Categories because I chose to be in none.”
Hikari Ninomiya wasn’t missing. She was the search itself—the longing, the empty result, the refusal to stop looking.
Or had she been erased?
The cursor blinked on the cracked screen of the library’s public terminal. It was 11:47 PM, seventeen minutes before the system would automatically purge the day’s search history.
She reached into her raincoat and pulled out a small, folded paper crane. “Search for Yuki again. This time, add ‘survivor’s guilt’ to the keywords. You’ll find 1,248 results. The one I hid.” Searching for- hikari ninomiya in-All Categorie...
Hikari tilted her head. “I didn’t vanish. I deleted. Every photo, every record, every mention. Even from memories, if I could. But yours held.” She touched the cracked screen. “Searching for me in ‘All Categories’ was the only way to find the one place I left myself—the delete command. A ghost in the machine.”
Not a librarian. Not a security guard.
And that, Emi realized, was the only category that truly mattered.