Akira found himself standing at an unfamiliar street corner. A dim streetlight cast a faint glow, swaying slightly as if beckoning him closer. Yet, he couldn’t recall where he was. The paved road, the old shops standing nostalgically, and the fleeting glances from passersby—all of it felt oddly familiar. A mix of unease and warmth welled up in his chest.
“Where… is this place?” he muttered.
A middle-aged man passing by stopped and looked at him. Feeling awkward, Akira considered walking away, but the man suddenly smiled. “Lost, are you? Wandering here and forgetting the way back home?”
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t know where I am… But it all feels so familiar for some reason.”
“Is that so? Then maybe it’s an important place to you.”
The man’s words struck a chord in Akira, and he nodded before beginning to walk. The street was lined with old bookstores and cafés, the kind he felt he might have visited long ago. Each of them overlapped with fragments of memories buried deep within him. If he reached out, perhaps he could recall everything clearly. But whenever he tried to grasp it, the memory vanished like a fleeting dream.
Turning a corner, he spotted a small park. Benches, swings, and a flower bed on the brink of wilting came into view. A little boy holding his mother’s hand laughed joyfully nearby. The scene stirred a sense of déjà vu in Akira, but he couldn’t place it. A gust of wind blew, and his vision began to blur, as though the world around him was fading.
“Is this town… disappearing?” he murmured, fear creeping into his voice.
An elderly woman passing by noticed his distress and stopped. “What’s the matter, dear?”
“It feels like this town is slowly vanishing…”
The woman smiled gently at him. “Oh, how curious. But memories are like that sometimes. The more you try to recall them, the more they slip away.”
Her words both puzzled and comforted Akira, and he found himself talking with her for a while. Her voice carried a soothing familiarity, like a melody he had long forgotten. After a moment of reflection, Akira nodded quietly.
“This town… it’s the town of my memories.”
As he spoke with newfound certainty, the park’s scenery began to dissolve. The small flower bed, the benches, the swings—all of it faded away as though enveloped in morning mist. The elderly woman smiled softly, bidding him farewell.
“Thank you for retrieving these precious memories.”
She waved at him before disappearing herself. Akira realized she must have been a symbol of his past, and he felt a warmth rise in his chest, bringing tears to his eyes.
When he came to, he was back in the real world. The bustle of the city surrounded him once more, and the sights before him were vivid and tangible. Yet, within his heart, a tender warmth lingered, a remnant of the memories he had reclaimed. Smiling faintly, Akira turned and walked away from the noise of the city, ready at last to face a new future.
