Craving the alpha soldier のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 101 - チャプター 110

Tyla povI do not expect to wake up.Expectation belongs to futures, and I am no longer oriented that way.What arrives instead is awareness—soft, unhurried, without edges. Not light. Not darkness. A noticing.I am not afraid.That is the first thing I registered, and it surprises me only because I was trained, once, to think fear was the correct response to thresholds. But there is no threshold here. No line crossed. Just widening.If I still had a body, I might have described this as breathing out.There is no pain. No sudden comprehension. No voice explaining anything. Whatever waits beyond effort does not feel the need to justify itself.For a while—if time still exists, which feels doubtful—I simply remain present with that.Then memory stirs.Not in sequence. Not as review. It comes the way weather once did, rolling through without asking permission.Arthur’s hands, years before they slowed. The way he used to brace his thumb against his forefinger when thinking, as if holding a

Arthur povIf there is a self here, it is not arranged the way I remember.There is awareness, but it is not centered behind my eyes. There is thought, but it does not move in lines. There is memory, but it no longer insists on sequence or ownership.Still, I know myself.Not by name. By inclination.I notice balance before outcome. I notice strain before failure. I notice when something is being held together by force rather than coherence.These habits persist.If this is an after, it is not one that asks anything of me.I am not summoned.I am not assigned.That, perhaps, is the first mercy.For a long time—if duration still applies—I do nothing but observe without effort. Motion without direction. Pattern without pressure.I sense Tyla.Not as a figure.As a resonance that requires no adjustment.We are not reunited. We are not separated.We simply no longer need to account for distance.In life, I was often praised for decisiveness.It was a quality forged under necessity. Crisis

UnfinishedThere is no moment when the world realizes it is unfinished.No bell sounds. No consensus forms. No collective acknowledgment passes quietly between people like a secret finally shared.Unfinishedness is not announced.It is tolerated.For a long time, that tolerance is mistaken for weakness.Critics say things are slipping. That no one is in charge. That systems wander without direction, that values blur, that authority erodes into endless discussion.They are not entirely wrong.Discussion does increase.So does fatigue.So does the discomfort of living without the illusion that someone else will eventually settle things.But beneath the complaints, beneath the nostalgia for firmer edges, something else is happening—something slower, harder to chart.People are learning how to stop mid-motion.Not permanently.Not passively.But deliberately.A city plans an expansion and halts construction halfway through the proposal phase—not because of protest, not because of cost ove

Tyla povThe morning does not arrive all at once.It loosens.Light enters the room the way breath returns after a held panic—thin at first, uncertain, then gradually more confident. Dust wakes before I do, rising in pale motes that drift through the air as if rehearsing motion for the rest of us.I lie still and let the day decide whether it needs me yet.This is something I learned after Arthur left—not when he vanished, but when his absence stopped echoing. There was a long period where I mistook stillness for waiting. I thought if I remained attentive enough, something would resume. A signal. A summons. Proof that the shape of the world was incomplete without him.But nothing resumed.Instead, other things began.The kettle clicks off in the kitchen. I must have turned it on earlier, moving through routine without awareness. Muscle memory is persuasive that way. It tells you the future is predictable, even when it isn’t.I sit up slowly. My joints complain—not dramatically, just e

OpeningsThe world does not close all at once.It does not announce completion. It does not issue a certificate or leave a marker. It simply shifts, and those who remain notice—or fail to notice—how the pressure changes, how the patterns loosen, how movement becomes less about enforcement and more about care.This is the work that follows presence. The work that exists after the architects of absence have gone.Somewhere, a city debates reconstruction. Not rebuilding the past, not reclaiming a lost authority, but considering what it actually needs to sustain itself. Engineers measure, planners propose, administrators argue. The discussion goes on far longer than any one person desires, but it persists. Consensus is not achieved. Decisions are staggered, half-formed, tentative. Some of them fail. Some succeed in small, unpredictable ways.That is enough.Elsewhere, a council dissolves a long-standing committee. It is unpopular. The committee had maintained order, enforced rules, resolv