Tang-Ji went breathless the moment she stepped inside. A cold thrill ran up her spine; she spun back—only to find the door gone, a scatter of glass winking where it had been.
It struck her as odd that her mind reached for warmth just then: the kind of room you step into after snow, air fogged with breath and safe noise. The thought vanished like vapor.
"Hey, open up! Is there anyone there? Kazami?" She called out, her voice echoing off the surface of the water beneath her feet.
As she turned back around, she noticed that there were multiple, shadowy figures in the distance.
As she inched closer cautiously, her eyes widened, and she caught her breath in her throat. At that moment, she was staring at one of her greatest fears: what lay before her was a group of grossly contorted mannequins.
"This... this can't be real." She whispered, her words trembling beneath the darkness. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, searching for something—anything—to anchor her to reality.
She also noticed that her surroundings were different somehow; they were dark, but not like in a dark room, but instead like she had stumbled into a lightless void.
Where she stood was a space devoid of light, a boundless, eternal expanse, where no beginning marks its birth and no darkness finds its refuge. It was a realm that defied all comprehension.
Tang-Ji's next step answered with a soft splash. The floorboards were gone; in their place a shallow wash slipped around her ankles as she moved. Other times, water had meant relief—blue tiles, the hum of a fan, a damp towel cooling the back of her neck. Here it was drinking the remaining heat from her skin and gave nothing back.
She looked back at the distorted mannequins, checking for movement. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that they were hideous caricatures of the human form, their shapes twisted and deformed.
They had an eerie, nightmarish appearance due to their extended limbs and joints being twisted and splayed at strange angles. Their faces were almost featureless and contained no traces of eyes or noses, with only empty sockets and flat, smooth surfaces.
They did, however, have lips—colourless lips that were locked in a mocking, silent laugh that seemed to go on forever. With ragged breaths, Tang-Ji's voice was scarcely audible above a whisper as she staggered around the sinister-looking chamber.
Suddenly, the clicking from before began to grow louder and more insistent, as if mocking her attempts to rationalise the horrors surrounding her. Her eyes darted around in a panic, searching for a way out, before stopping at the mannequin's face. Her heart sank.
They wore her people like masks: classmates, parents, even a version of her. Affection turned cardboard, then cruel, all dressed in the same three-piece suit. "Kazami, Ukiyo, why... why are you here?" She turned to face the deformed being that vaguely resembled her mother.
"Mum, is that you?" She uttered it in disbelief as she came closer, lightly shaking its shoulders; however, there was no response.
She could feel her fingers brush against the suit's fabric. The texture was far from being close to human skin. The mannequin's surface was strangely cold, sending a shiver down Tang-Ji's spine as her fingers brushed against its weathered form.
"Dad, why... why are you all here?" She asked, knowing full well that those things weren't her friends and family.
She fixed her gaze on her own face, eerily replicated on one of the figures, as a surge of dread clawed at her chest.
'No, no, this can't be happening. It's not real,' she thought to herself while clutching her head, 'I need to keep moving and find a way out.'
Suddenly, in the corner of her eye, Tang-Ji caught a flicker of movement. "Huh!? Who's there?" She called out; however, there was no one there except for the mannequins.
Confused by this, she held her breath and walked closer to the mannequins before she suddenly felt a cold pressure on her left shoulder.
She turned to face one of the mannequins; it was the one who resembled Ukiyo. Tang-Ji screeched and swiftly slapped its cold hand off of her shoulder.
The mannequin, for the first time, appeared to be alive. The faceless being looked at and gently cradled its hand, the one that she had slapped away, and seemed to express remorse or sadness from being rejected so harshly.
The mannequin turned back to face her and returned to an unreadable, neutral expression.
Tang-Ji stepped back a few paces, confused and horrified.
Fear began to gather in the pit of her stomach as she felt like she was dancing on a monkey's paw. She knew she couldn't stay here, but every step forward seemed to be met with an equal pull of terror, urging her to flee.
With every second that went by, the walls of the room seemed to close in on her like a cage.
Without warning, the other mannequins sprang to life, startling Tang-Ji out of her reverie. Their limbs were twisted at strange angles, and their motions were irregular and jagged.
The room echoed with a chorus of creaks and groans, a disconcerting symphony of wooden joints straining against their limitations. Without hesitation, she turned and fled, her footsteps a frenzied staccato against the cold, unforgiving water.
Her breath came in ragged gasps as she ran on, disregarding everything that she came across. As she swallowed down her intrusive thoughts with a 'gulp,' she whispered, "Kazami, where are you?"
She could slowly feel her legs getting weaker, yet just as soon as she was about to give into exhaustion, she saw a faint glimmer of light ahead of her.
In a desperate attempt to outrun the encroaching darkness, she activated a movement skill, cloaking her body in a golden aura before sending herself flying out of the darkness.
She broke straight through the wooden door, reducing its once proud yet decrepit form into splinters. Tang-Ji grunted softly and picked herself up off the ground, now looking up.
She was in yet another room.
All the walls seemed to be throbbing with a sickening brightness that gradually dimmed to reveal the dark outlines of what seemed to be a bedroom.
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The large, ornate bed in the room's centre caught her eye as she adjusted to the dim light. The creaking of the boards under her feet only added to the unsettling ambience. Only her faint breathing broke the eerie stillness of the room.
Every rustle of the curtains and each faint squeak of the floorboards seemed to taunt her, fuelling her imagination with another nightmarish possibility.
Tang-Ji approached the bed warily, and her heart plummeted as she saw the two corpses lying motionless on top. Her palm sprang up to cover her mouth as a cry of shock escaped her lips.
A man and a woman were locked in a perpetual embrace of death, they had never been apart. Their empty, lifeless eyes mirrored the terror carved into their faces.
Despite the fact that she understood rationally that these individuals were only computer-generated, her eyes refused to accept it because of how real they looked, almost indistinguishable from real humans. She began to feel uneasy as the shadows slid menacingly over the walls. She felt a hand close in on her heart as it slowly crushed her inside.
The air grew stale, and the smell of decay was now creeping in, making her want to retch. The smell had her mind wandering back to the time when she found a dead cat in the alleyway and tried to help it—how the stench had lingered on her clothes for days, but this time, it was worse, sharper, suffocating.
Dusk Protocol can manipulate all five senses, making the stench of rotting flesh feel disturbingly real. It's a big selling point for hardcore players, the kind who crave full immersion.
Not me, though. I still prefer old-school arcade games—flashing lights, clunky buttons, and sticky floors—the simple magic modern games just don't have.
Tang-Ji, shaking, backed away from the nauseating scene on the bed as she staggered towards the shattered door. Kazami—she needed to find him. Desperation clawed at her throat as she shouted his name.
Kazami crashed through the door, his eyes wide. The moment he saw the bed, his body seemed to drain of strength. His knees buckled, sinking to the floor, his face pale, and his mouth parted in silent horror. He was unable to tear his gaze from the grotesque scene before him.
His voice was reduced to a whisper, trembling with a vulnerability she had never heard before.
"We... we're not the heroes of this story. We can't save everyone. Not everyone can be saved. Tang-Ji... you... just look at them?"
The weight of his words hit her like a blow, and her stomach twisted. The despair in his tone and the starkness of their situation seemed to crush the air from her lungs. She wanted to speak—to reassure him, to say something, anything—but the words tangled in her throat, refusing to come out.
"Is it possible that we could become like... like them?" Kazami's voice broke, raw and exposed.
The once-unshakeable strength she'd always seen in him was unravelling, slipping away under the suffocating pressure of fear and doubt. His anxiety rippled through the space between them, and for the first time, she saw the cracks in the iron resolve she'd thought could never break.
Kazami could not stomach the sight of another lifeless body, even though he knew deep down they weren't real. They looked real, and that was enough to make his chest tighten, enough to churn his stomach.
Tang-Ji blinked back the tears that were threatening to spill; her throat tightened as she felt the weight of his despair. She understood his hopelessness, the desperate need for a light in the dark, but she could not let him give in now.
"Kazami," her voice wavered, but she forced a steadiness into it.
"We can't lose hope. We must go on. It doesn't matter if we're not the heroes that can save everyone; our efforts will have an impact on those around us. If we keep advancing and levelling up our stats, we'll eventually be strong enough to beat this game."
Pain flickered in his eyes as he glared at her.
"Why did you become heroic all of a sudden? Where was that when we needed it the most? "You never show any emotions," his voice was sharp, biting.
"You're so robotic in your behaviour; you never explain your actions. When you keep everything to yourself, how can I put my trust in you?"
His words hit Tang-Ji like a cold gust, shattering the walls that she had constructed around herself.
She thought that if she buried her feelings, she would be able to keep her strength and competence. But now she saw how it had cut her off from others and alienated her from her only friend.
Even in the real world, she had kept her distance from others, fearing arguments and the burden of being someone's problem. She hid behind a calm, rational facade, believing that avoiding conflict meant keeping a wall between herself and everyone else.
Here, the truth was plain: it wasn't caution; it was insecurity. Losing her memory left her unfinished, afraid she could never live up to the girl she'd been. Without that map, she doubted her ability to understand and to connect.
The fear gnawed at her.
'What if I could never be as strong or capable as 'she' had been before?'
These were the thoughts that dwell within her soul.
Her composure was only a mask for that doubt. With the weight of her missing past pressing in, she couldn't pretend otherwise. The danger around her was real, but so was the quieter one inside—the fear of not being enough, of never becoming who she needed to be.
It wasn't like this before she lost everything that night. If only we could meet in person, I would have told you how stupid and naive you were back then, but then again, that would probably result in me disappearing if we ever saw eye to eye.
At least you're finally somewhat mature now; too bad you find the worst place to act indifferent. Not only that, but the person that you're acting this way towards is Kazami, no less. Unbelievable.
'I'll protect the one thing I want to protect until the very end.' You said that yourself, yet you are willing to throw all of it away. Despite getting all of his attention, you still haven't been able to change anything. This feeling... It's definitely envy.
"I'm sorry, Kazami," she whimpered.
His eyes shot wide, the anger in them searing through the dim room.
"NO!" he shouted, his voice cracking like dry wood splintering.
He staggered back a step, hands trembling at his sides.
"I've had enough of your apologies!" he barked, his words sharp like the air around them. "Do you not see? We're completely cut off from the world. No one's coming to save us!"
Kazami crumpled to the floor, his body sinking like a puppet whose strings had been severed. The dusty room seemed to close in on him. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath.
"I'm not strong, and I'm not... emotionless like you."
His gaze dropped to the bed, the corpse lying there cold and unmoving, its presence an eerie reminder of how much had already been lost.
He gripped the floor, eyes narrowing as his voice dropped to a bitter growl. "All you do is wear that mask. A cold, stone wall. Nothing gets through to you. It's your choice to hide behind that. But I... I can't—"
He paused, the weight of his words sinking in. His mind flickered with hesitation, but the fire in his chest refused to be extinguished.
The anger had always been there, simmering just beneath the surface, and now it was spilling out uncontrollably. He couldn't stop it. Didn't care about the fallout. It was like that night—like every night before it—when the fury cut through, tearing at the ones he cared for, leaving wounds that would never fully heal.
He swallowed hard. "Don't bring your personal tragedies into a game where our lives are on the line."
His words hung heavy in the room, swallowed by the suffocating silence.
Tang-Ji bit down on her lip as the light in her once jewel-like eyes faded. She trembled a bit before clenching her fists tightly.
"I'm sorry, Senpai; I just wanted to help." She whispered weakly before swiftly exiting the room, leaving Kazami alone, slumped on the floor.