Prologue.

I thought it was over. 

Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I truly believed I died.

Then… why... am I here?

Alive.

Why am I still alive?

I fell...

I’m sure I fell.

No. That’s not right. I was shot. I was shot, then I fell. I saw the world turn red, dyed by blood with my own two eyes, the world faded into obscurity, my conscious mind met its untimely demise.

Who?

Who shot me? 

Myself? 

I shot myself? 

No.

That couldn’t be right. 

The blood splattered out from my forehead, in front of me, rather than the side. I was shot by someone else. Then... just who was it? If it really wasn’t a case of suicide, who was it that shot me?

Before my eyes, it was the exact same scenery from before I fell. This was from before my head presumably splattered across the solid concrete into countless fragmented pieces. High above the ground, those very same walkways from my memories, connected between the central building and the wing I resided in. 

People bustled about the streets below despite the darkened skies. The only difference I could point out from the memories before I fell was how the sun, originally high in the sky, had already almost descended below the horizon. It was much later than I remembered. The gun in my hand had also disappeared like it was only a figment of my imagination.

It seems there was another large gap in my memories. I couldn’t trace a path in my memories between when it was still bright out to the present, nor could I remember what happened to the gun. 

Did I lose myself in a trance contemplating and simulating my death inside my head to the point I’d lost my sense of time?

I took in a deep breath of cold air and cooled my head.

So many absurd things happened so quickly that I never had a chance to relax. I’d gone through too much mental turmoil in too short a timeframe.

Ghosts. There was no such thing as ghosts. They were merely called ghosts because we didn’t understand what they truly were. Higher-dimensional beings, was it? But were there really such beings out there? Existences beyond the understanding of this world?

Fine. 

Have at me. This one time I’ll accept your existence. By no means do I accept that you are something unscientific like a ghost though. You are a phenomenon that can be explained through science.

“You’re there, aren’t you?”

“...”

My eyes darted about from left to right, but alas, there was no answer and my question fell on empty ears. Skeptically, I called out again, “Adele’s sister... Ai, you’re there, right? The reason I don’t see you is only because I don’t want to see you. Because I believe so strongly that you don’t exist, I instinctively filter you out. So if I accept that you exist, I should be able to see you, right?”

As if that's the truth. I just see her when it’s most convenient for me to see her.

To see her here was the only way for me to keep some semblance of my sanity intact right now. I could simply push everything off as being the fault of this internal demon in my head. It was this imaginary ghost that I’d constructed in my head that had driven me to the brink of insanity.

I sincerely hoped she’d make an appearance this one time, but she never showed her face. It was always like this. She never appeared when I wanted her to appear the most. She only made an appearance whenever I least expected it or wanted her to. I really should have known better by now. The world was never kind, and it certainly never gave me what I wanted the most when I asked for it.