I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse

Chapter 239  Memories

Kairos closed his eyes tightly, crouching down in the corner. After all, there wasn't much else he could do but attempt to endure it. Though it obviously wasn't going to be very easy. The voices outside weren't relenting in the slightest.

"Someone... save me... anybody, please!"

"S-Stop! No... I don't want to do this! No! Sally, I'm so sorry!"

"Why is this happening to me... it hurts... it hurts..."

Kairos didn't actually understand why it was hurting, as although the voices themselves were grating on the ears, it wouldn't have caused such a high degree of pain. While he was suffering rather intensely, the wolf came over with a whimper, gently putting a paw onto his leg in an attempt to comfort him.

And it worked.

A little bit too well.

All of the pain had suddenly disappeared. However, all the voices had become far louder. No, that wasn't accurate. Rather, they became clearer. Far too clear.

Instead of vague figures in the distance, Kairos now saw people. People who were horribly mutilated, and some that had directly turned into monsters. Although it was quite horrifying, it also wasn't anything that Kairos wasn't used to.

However, it was more than just that.

While the pain had lessened to almost nothing, his head became cluttered with countless different voices coming from people dying in various ways. Though that wasn't what caused him the most concern.

It was more so the fact that he was able to actually "see" the memories of people as they died various agonizing deaths, or transformed into a monster. Although he was already used to seeing two things at the same time, that was more of the same kind of thing.

Right now, he was somehow visualizing three different memories at the same time. Although it was an absolute mess in his head, he was still able to comprehend them. He was even able to tell that two of the separate memories came from the same person.

It appeared that it would be inaccurate to call the figures he saw around here "people". But rather, as Azami said, they would be closer to something like a memory. From the looks of things, that was probably the reason he was able to read the memories of his companions.

All in all, Kairos was grateful for the pain disappearing. However, while it stopped hurting, a new sensation assaulted him. He was feeling the emotions that were in those memories.

And naturally, since they were all quite impressionable memories, the emotions were naturally very strong as well. It came to the point that it confused him on which emotions were actually his.

His own more or less lackluster emotions were suppressed by those at their dying breaths, or turning points akin to it. Strangely enough, it was starting to get hard to even recognize who he was anymore.

If he was told that merely seeing memories and feeling others' emotions was enough to make him question who he was, yet this was the situation he was in now. His own thoughts were not enough to overpower the countless emotions he was feeling.

As such, while a tiny part of him realized that this situation was potentially far worse than just suffering the pain, that tiny part wasn't able to grasp control of his body enough to voice out his concerns.

In fact, it was only getting worse as other vague memories started to fill his mind as well.

Both the wolf and Azami only thought that somehow everything was fixed. With those thoughts, the wolf made sure it remained close, while Azami didn't do anything to stop it. Though what Azami found strange was that she could no longer hear any of Kairos' thoughts.

She did find it a bit odd, but she thought that it might've been the fact he was just feeling relief. However, her ability to read another's mind was unable to pick up on emotions, or anything that wasn't at the surface conscious level.

"So you're ok now?"

Naturally, there was no response. Frankly, it wasn't that he didn't hear it, but rather he could not parse that it was Azami's in the discordant collection of voices ringing in his ears. His future vision wasn't helping either.

Not to mention, even if he could, there wasn't much he could do about it.

After all, he didn't even realize his thoughts were fading away within the chaotic cacophony. Yet, despite having nearly no thoughts, he ended up standing on his own, as though driven by some sort of mysterious force.

Azami furrowed her brows, realizing that something was up.

She looked at the wolf with a serious expression.

"Hey, you need to let go of him."

However, the wolf let out a defensive growl. Azami was able to read the wolf's thoughts, showing that it believed Kairos needed its help once more. She got a mild headache and put a hand on her forehead.

"Look, somethings wrong, ok little guy? I know you think you're helping him, but it's not that simple."

The wolf was visibly confused. It let out a whimper, before contemplating by itself. At the same time, Kairos was walking forward in a daze. Seeing this, the wolf let out a bark before going underneath him and putting Kairos on its back.

Azami's eyelid twitched. Naturally, reading the wolf's thoughts, she knew that it was going to do something stupid.

"Wait, no don't-"

Before she could even finish her sentence, the wolf ran off into the Abstract, as Azami called it.

"What? No! That's a terrible idea!"

However, the wolf paid no heed to Azami, not really understanding her logic. Not that it really had any logic of its own, but it wasn't intelligent enough to realize acting on it was a bad idea. That and it was also experiencing something quite similar to Kairos.

Granted, it was born just a few days ago, but going on a whim definitely wasn't the smartest thing.

By being in contact with Kairos, the wolf appeared to share its own abilities with him. And while one of them was a good thing that provided resistance to this strange place, the other power seemed to give the ability to 'see' other people's emotions.

While the wolf wasn't really affected that badly, mostly because it didn't really understand anything and ignored it.

In fact, it grew curious about the various memories and emotions it felt and began walking around the abstract. Though it didn't take very long for the wolf to enter a similar state, practically going into a daze from sensory overload in a matter of seconds.

Azami stood at the edge of the room, a headache forming.

Perhaps if it was her main consciousness or body, then solving the situation would be incredibly easy. She would just clear the memories and bring them back. However, this current iteration of her was only a replication manifested by Tiara.

While she was fine inside the room, if she left, then Azami knew she would be affected by the decay and might not even last longer than them.

In the end, she just yelled at them.

"Hey! Come back here! You need to come back! I can't help you over there!"

Unfortunately, the wolf was unable to do anything other than walk slowly in a daze. Azami cursed under her breath several times, before continuing to scream. Still, it didn't seem to have much of an effect.

As for Kairos, he was going through a rather strange experience, to say the least.

"Why... won't it end... I don't want to. I don't want to..."

"So this is how I die... If you can somehow hear me, sorry for not waving back at you, little girl."

"May I ask what you believe the ideal is, Manager?"

He was surrounded by miserable experiences. All of them played in his head, not caring to wait their turn. Some of the misery came from visceral painful experiences. Others came from terrors, whether it was from monsters attacking them, or even being the monster themselves.

And while incredibly few, there were a select few that were overcome with emotions, but could only act apathetically to them.

Kairos was having difficulty focusing on his own life, instead enraptured by the countless different stories he saw.

He saw a man curiously peeking out the window as the red sun appeared, only to turn into a monster and kill their entire family. While the man killed his own child and wife, his own internal screams matched the visceral ones coming from his victims.

Mixed in were also memories of how the man's life had previously gone. He had a serious drinking problem due to his reckless teenage days. While not the best father, but rather abusive, he tried his best to control and after years of rehab, finally got over his problem.

Unfortunately, it was on the first day, he once again became the monster he desperately wished not to be.

Kairos nearly believed himself to be that person but was just barely able to hold onto himself to know that wasn't true.

Though, whether that would last much longer was another question.