The glow of the monitor reflected faintly on Reina's glasses as she leaned over her desk, her fingers flying across the keyboard with precise movements. The lab was unusually quiet tonight—no humming machines, no clattering tools. Just Reina, her computer, and the hundreds of video clips she had recorded over the past two weeks.
Her eyes narrowed slightly at the timeline of her editing software. Rows upon rows of recordings. Notes. Experiments. Failures. Adjustments. A visual map of her entire journey with the Halo project.
"…Cut here. Add transition. Trim that part," she muttered to herself, dragging clips across the screen with methodical precision.
The first clip played. Reina herself appeared on screen, stiff as a board, introducing herself.
"My name is Reina Saeki. Second-year, Hokkaido Prefectural High. a lone student. This project is my work."
Her voice was cold, blunt, professional. No smiles, no attempt to look friendly. She didn't care about being charismatic—she just wanted the truth documented.
The footage cut into her messy first sketches. The old notebook pages filled with shaky circles and scattered equations. Her first rough drawings of the halo prototype.
Then the next clip. A shaky camera showing the first halo. Too heavy. Wobbling. Barely hovering.
"Unstable," her recorded voice muttered. "The design is inefficient."
The video cut again. The second attempt—smaller, lighter, but still too heavy.
The third attempt, where she had mounted the chip on the mannequin's head. Reina clicked the timeline forward, watching as the halo hovered—then slammed down like a guillotine, crushing the mannequin's head instantly.
Reina winced slightly at the memory, but she didn't delete the clip. "Important data," she told herself.
The next cut. A new design. Thinner, lighter. Hovering, but trembling. Still unstable.
A time-lapse followed—hours of Reina at her desk, soldering, sketching, testing, reworking. The footage sped by in silence.
Finally, the clip showed the breakthrough. The current design. Sleek, stable, glowing softly as it floated above the mannequin's head.
Reina's voice in the video explained calmly: "This is Prototype Halo II. The current stable version. EMF radiation has been reduced to safe levels after adjustments."
The last clip was her sitting at her desk, facing the camera directly. No scripts. No filters. Just her and the halo.
"…This is not a toy. It's not for decoration. This halo is my first step. The first huge step toward my dream of reaching space. I will continue. And one day, I will make it there."
The video ended. Reina exhaled slowly, leaning back in her chair. She had pieced together hours of footage into a single twenty-minute video. No fluff. No music. Just pure documentation.
She clicked upload.
The file processed, the progress bar crawled forward, and finally, the video appeared on her YouTube channel.
For a while, she did nothing. She leaned back, arms folded, waiting for her computer to finish saving everything. She wasn't expecting much. A few hundred views maybe. A couple of curious comments. That was all she needed anyway—a record.
But then…
The numbers began to rise.
1,000 views.10,000 views.50,000 views.
Reina frowned slightly. "…Strange."
She refreshed the page.
200,000 views.500,000 views.1 million views.
Her phone buzzed furiously beside her. Notifications stacked endlessly. Subscriptions. Comments. Mentions. People all over the world reacting to her video.
By the time the sun had set outside her lab window, the number had already passed 3 million.
Reina sat there silently, watching the screen. Her own face staring back at her from the thumbnail.
"…Millions?" she whispered.
She didn't smile. She didn't panic. But her fingers trembled just a little as she reached up to adjust the halo above her head.
Her video wasn't just a record anymore. It was a statement. And the whole world had just heard it.