It was on a rainy evening, on her way home from university, that Misaki found the hourglass. It sat in the corner of a dusty shelf at an old, rundown shop in the shopping district. Something about it drew her in—its delicate glass container filled with fine, shimmering sand that sparkled like stardust.
“How strange…” she thought, reaching out without hesitation.
The shopkeeper gave her a warning. “That’s no ordinary hourglass. Use it wrong, and you’ll regret it.”
But Misaki, intrigued by the mysterious allure, brushed off the warning and purchased it without a second thought.
The next morning, running late for her lecture, she decided to test it. Flipping the hourglass over, she whispered, “Please, let me make it on time.”
As the sand began to flow, she felt a sudden pull—like time rewinding itself. When she blinked again, she was standing on the train platform near her university. It was as if reality had bent to her will.
Overjoyed by what seemed like a miracle, Misaki soon made the hourglass an indispensable part of her life. Acing exams, resolving conflicts with friends, fulfilling trivial desires—it seemed there was nothing it couldn’t do. But gradually, the world around her started to feel… off.
First, the clock tower at the station mysteriously stopped working. Then, the ever-smiling face of her closest friend grew eerily vacant, as if something had been drained from her.
One evening, as she gazed at the hourglass, she noticed a fine crack along its base. A wave of unease washed over her.
“Could this hourglass be the cause of all these strange happenings?”
Determined to uncover the truth, Misaki began researching the origins of the hourglass. Scouring libraries and diving into obscure corners of the internet, she uncovered its dark history. It had been crafted centuries ago by an alchemist and carried a dreadful curse—each use of the hourglass granted a wish at the cost of calamities befalling the user’s surroundings. In the end, it would bring about the destruction of everything it touched.
Fear gnawed at Misaki as she resolved to destroy it. But no matter what she tried, the hourglass remained unscathed. Further research revealed only one way to break the curse—by using a final wish.
The final wish required the user to sacrifice their own time, erasing the hourglass’s power forever.
Misaki stood at the crossroads of her fate. Destroying it would mean losing everything she had gained. Yet, she knew deep down that allowing the curse to continue would doom the world around her.
Taking a deep breath, she flipped the hourglass one last time and whispered with unwavering resolve,
“I offer my time. End this curse.”
In an instant, a brilliant light engulfed the hourglass, shattering it into countless sparkling fragments. The strange distortions around her vanished, the station clock chimed once more, and her friend’s smile returned—warm and genuine.
But Misaki herself was gone.
The next day, her friends gathered, feeling an inexplicable emptiness in their hearts. They couldn’t quite remember who Misaki was, yet they sensed that something precious had been lost.
In the end, all that remained was a lingering sense of absence—like a forgotten melody that once played in the background of their lives.
