Chrono Journal Entry #02
Arc: Escape
Theme: サイレントチェーン (Silent Chains) – The sound of a chain that was always there, only now heard.
I didn’t notice the chains until they moved.
They were always there — not loud, not cold, not heavy enough to feel. Just tight enough that I never knew I couldn’t breathe fully. Silence, you see, has a way of disguising itself as calm. And if you grow up in that stillness, you mistake the absence of noise for peace.
But now… I hear them.
Every time I exhale, the air catches on something I never meant to carry. A memory maybe. A restriction. A law.
No one ever told me I couldn’t sing. They didn’t need to. The system was designed so that the idea would never occur. Sound was replaced. Speech was translated. Feeling was filtered. You didn’t need to ban music if no one remembered how it felt.
But when I played that harmonica, even just once, it wasn’t just the note that escaped.
It was everything that had been trapped inside.
The second song I tried to sing — I wasn’t sure what it was. It came out in stutters, slips, half-formed syllables. My throat shook. My hands trembled. And the world, for a brief second, flinched.
That was when I heard it: the clink — the sound of a silence breaking.
Not loudly. Not defiantly. Just truthfully.
It was like hearing your name whispered from behind a wall you didn’t know existed. And suddenly realizing: this isn’t where you’re supposed to be.
I think the chains aren’t on our wrists. They’re around our memory.
The more I try to recall what my mother’s voice sounded like… the more I realize I might never have heard it. The system didn’t just mute people — it erased the idea of voice. It left gaps in the past like redacted files.
But if you listen closely, even silence has an echo.
Even erasure leaves a trace.
I sat by the edge of the same viaduct again tonight. Played a single sustained note. No melody. Just breath.
And when the wind passed through the buildings, it harmonized with it.
Almost like the city — or whatever’s left of it — remembered too.
I wonder how many others are humming alone, unsure if what they’re doing is allowed, or simply forgotten.
I don’t want to fight with noise.
I don’t want to scream just to prove I’m real.
But I also don’t want to vanish quietly.
If my voice can slip through the cracks, maybe it can reach someone.
Maybe it already has.
Watch “Silent Chains” – MV Main Version
Watch “Silent Chains” – Alternate Echo Version
I thought I was alone in this silence.
But tonight, I heard two chains fall.
Mine… and maybe someone else’s.