The week after Reina's second video dropped was nothing short of chaos.
Not chaos for her—Reina, as usual, went back to her quiet little world of blueprints, soldering irons, and data logs. For the rest of the school, though? Absolute mayhem.
The floodgates had opened. The sleepy northern campus in Hokkaido, once known only as "that rural school with decent math scores," was suddenly a beacon for journalists, university scouts, and private corporations. Letters and phone calls poured in daily. Funding offers began to trickle in. Donations from wealthy alumni arrived with fancy ribbons and wax-sealed envelopes.
The principal—an older woman who had always carried herself with calm poise—was grateful, yes, but beneath her composure lurked the unmistakable fatigue of someone drowning in paperwork. Her office resembled a warzone of folders and stamped documents. On one particularly busy afternoon, she stood at the window, massaging her temples, watching the snow fall outside.
"…Why couldn't she have waited until graduation?" she muttered to herself.
She wasn't talking about grades or attendance. No—she was talking about Reina Saeki, the girl who had just thrown the entire world into a frenzy with two YouTube uploads.
Student Council Headquarters
That frenzy bled directly into the student council room.
Stacks of envelopes, faxes, and email printouts covered the long table in the center. Each bore some variation of the same message:
"Requesting permission to interview Miss Saeki Reina.""Exclusive offer for partnership with our science division.""Could we arrange a guest lecture featuring your student?"
The president, Akiho Fujimura, was hunched over her desk, hair disheveled, uniform blazer hanging loosely around her shoulders. Normally, she was the embodiment of discipline: top of her class, diligent, endlessly patient. But now, the faint twitch under her eye betrayed her exhaustion.
She dropped another stack of requests onto the growing pile.
"…Why…" she whispered.
A pause. Then her voice rose, cracking.
"WHY ARE THERE SO MANY?!"
The vice president flinched, clutching a clipboard to his chest. The secretary nearly spilled tea all over the forms.
Akiho slammed her forehead onto the table with a dull thud. "We're just a high school student council! Not some global press management office!"
The others murmured half-hearted encouragement. "You're doing great, President…"
But she wasn't listening anymore. She sat back up suddenly, hair sticking out, eyes bloodshot yet sparkling with something else entirely.
"…You know what I really want?!" she burst out, gripping the nearest letter dramatically.
The council leaned back, bracing for another rant.
"I JUST WANT TO SEE REINA'S NEXT VIDEO!"
The room fell silent.
The vice president blinked. "President… are you… a fan?"
"Of course I'm a fan!" Akiho snapped, cheeks flushing. "She's—she's amazing! Don't tell me you didn't see how perfect that AI's voice was?! Or the halo's micro-fan stabilization?! The geometry! The elegance! Do you understand what this means for aerospace?!"
No one in the room understood aerospace, but they nodded vigorously anyway.
Akiho slumped back into her chair, sighing dreamily. "If she uploads again, I'll forgive all this paperwork. Maybe."
The council exchanged wary glances. For once, their tireless president looked less like the bastion of order and more like… well, a fangirl.
Reina's Lab
Meanwhile, in the quiet corner of campus, Reina was entirely unaware of the storm she had unleashed on the student body.
Her lab smelled faintly of solder and ink, with notebooks stacked like miniature towers around her desk. The halo floated lazily nearby, its faint glow pulsing like a heartbeat. On her desk lay half-finished sketches—rings, chips, lenses, and thin outlines of possible designs. A small camera mounted in the corner recorded everything silently, ready for the eventual upload.
Reina sat with her chin resting on her palm, eyes narrowed at a sketch of a contact lens.
"…How do I even fit all of this in?" she murmured.
Her pencil scratched against the paper as she circled the problem areas: power source, display, and, most impossible of all, comfort. The first attempt had been disastrous—a clunky prototype more like a magnifying glass than a lens. She had forced herself to wear it for thirty seconds before her eye started burning.
She sighed, rubbing her temple. "Too thick. Too heavy. Useless."
ANIER's voice chimed softly in her ear. "Reina, would you like me to cross-check possible micro-display technologies with current scientific literature?"
"Go ahead."
Lines of text scrolled across her auxiliary monitor as ANIER rattled off options: OLED microdisplays, transparent LCDs, waveguides. Reina scribbled furiously, crossing out half of them.
She built the second prototype slimmer, lighter, almost like a fragile glass petal. She placed it on her fingertip and carefully pressed it against her eye. For a moment, it worked. The display flickered faintly, showing basic numbers. But the discomfort returned—sharp, stinging. She yanked it out with a grimace.
"Not good enough."
Her pencil flew again. Another design. Another test. Another failure.
Hours passed in this rhythm, the only sounds being her mutters, the scratch of graphite, and the quiet hum of ANIER processing.
Finally, after countless attempts, she stared down at a sketch that felt different.
A lens so thin it was almost invisible. But within its edges, she had carved out microscopic "pockets." Pockets small enough to hide a wafer-thin chip, a micro-LCD, projection layers, all interwoven with the bare minimum of wiring.
Reina leaned back, blinking. "…This… might work."
ANIER's tone carried something like approval. "Probability of success has increased significantly. Shall I generate a 3D model?"
"Yes. Do it."
Her monitor lit up with a rotating wireframe of the new design. Reina's pulse quickened as she began assembling the prototype by hand.
It took delicate precision. Hours more slipped away until finally—finally—the thin lens sat gleaming in her palm. Almost weightless. Almost… perfect.
The First Trial
She slid it carefully onto her eye.
And gasped.
The world didn't blur. Didn't sting. The lens settled naturally, almost like it wasn't there. But overlaying her vision was a faint translucent grid, waiting for input.
"ANIER," she whispered, heart pounding, "project a test image."
The halo pulsed faintly. Then, before her eyes, a floating cube appeared in the middle of her desk. A holographic projection—but perfectly aligned to her vision, as though it existed in the real world.
Reina's breath caught. She reached instinctively, fingers passing through the cube.
"Of course," she muttered, smiling faintly. "Not physical."
But then the cube shifted as if acknowledging her motion. With a thought, with a blink, she could rotate it. Zoom in. Expand. Shrink.
It responded like an extension of herself.
"ANIER… project a star map."
The cube dissolved. A constellation spread across her vision, stretching across the lab ceiling. Stars glittered in perfect 3D alignment, each labeled with coordinates. She turned her head and the map shifted seamlessly, like she was floating in space.
"…This is…" Her voice trembled. "This is real."
ANIER's tone was calm, almost proud. "Interface established successfully. All systems synchronized with halo unit. Reina, I await your next command."
Reina pressed her palms against her desk, laughing softly for the first time in days. "With this… modeling, design, simulations—it'll all be so much easier. No more staring at flat paper or 2D screens."
She stood, walking around the holographic projection. It adjusted perfectly to her perspective.
She could create, dismantle, and rebuild ideas not just on paper, but in her world.
For the first time, the future didn't feel like a dream. It felt like it was already here, right in her hands—or rather, in her eyes.
Back to the Council
Meanwhile, in the student council room, Akiho sneezed mid-complaint and slammed another interview request onto the pile.
Somewhere in her gut, she just knew Reina was cooking up something new.
And she was right.
Because in the quiet of her lab, Reina whispered to ANIER the words that would soon ripple across the globe once again:
"Let's record this. The world needs to see it."