Rain in the Land of Waves never listened to reason.
By the time Serina and Mingchen reached Naruto Bridge, the rain had wrapped the whole bridge in a gray curtain. Dazujirō's landing was deserted-the boat was tied to a post, its mooring rope hanging slack, as though someone had casually loosened it and never bothered with it again. The stone marker reading "Naruto Bridge" still stood at the bridgehead, but someone had rubbed out the lettering with their fingers, stroke by stroke, until it was all blurred. This wasn't erosion from wind and rain. Someone had done it deliberately. The fingerprints were fresh, and the rain couldn't wash them away.
"Disconnecting Nothingness is already here." Soundless crouched before the marker, his fingers hovering an inch above the blurred strokes, afraid to touch them. "It doesn't destroy things directly. First, it pulls out the thread connecting you to them. Dazujirō touches this marker every day when he passes it. Now-look."
He pointed to the ground beside the marker. There was a trail of footprints-Dazujirō's. The pattern of his straw sandals was clear, stretching from the bridgehead toward the marker, and then... stopping. Three feet from the marker, the footprints suddenly vanished, as though he had reached that point and then been erased.
It wasn't teleportation. It was "from this point onward, this person no longer has any connection to anything here." Dazujirō was still on the bridge-they later found him midway across, crouching beside the railing, with a hammer and a few iron nails beside him, tapping marks into the railing, one after another.
When he saw Serina and the others approach, his eyes were empty. Not bewildered, but empty in a way that said, "What are you saying to me? Who are you?" Yet his hands never stopped. The hammer