The hidden room was nothing like the rest of the school. It wasn't sleek, sterile, or filled with glowing panels. It was old—dirt-under-the-fingernails old. Cracked tile floors, rust-stained walls, bundles of unauthorized wires looping across the ceiling like digital ivy. Dust hung in the air, disturbed only by the hum of outdated servers stacked along one side. There was no central AI. No glowing interface. Only blinking red lights and the low, steady breathing of machines too stubborn to die.
Kaito stood motionless, heart still hammering from the chase. Misaki leaned against the wall beside him, arms crossed, eyes on the only working screen in the room. It displayed a single symbol: a red circle with a line through it.
Root Access: Manual Override Enabled
The voice that had spoken before crackled again, this time louder. No video feed. Just audio, filtered through analog noise.
"I've been watching you for a long time, Kaito."
"Cool," Kaito said dryly. "Always wanted a fan club of cryptic weirdos."
Misaki elbowed him, but the voice chuckled. "You joke like someone who doesn't know what he is. That's good. Means your mind hasn't fractured yet."
"Yet?" Kaito said. "That's comforting."
The voice paused, as if choosing its next words carefully. "Let me start simple. You weren't born inside the system."
"No kidding."
"I mean not at all. You have no digital birth record. No scan logs. No upload signature. Nothing. Your name exists, but your data doesn't. You are a zero-record entity. A ghost."
Kaito blinked. "Then how do I go to school? How do I eat, walk, exist?"
"Because the system fakes it. It builds placeholder data around you. Think of it like painting a shadow where a person should be."
Misaki stepped forward, frowning. "But how is that even possible? No one gets past the national ID scan without system integration."
The voice sighed. "That's because he didn't come from the system. He came from outside it."
Kaito's chest tightened. "Outside? You mean… what, a different country?"
"No," the voice said. "I mean before the system existed. Before the digital override. You are living legacy code—somehow carried over from the analog world. And that makes you dangerous."
Kaito's head spun. He sat down on a crate, his knees weak. "You're saying I'm not just systemless. I'm prehistoric."
The voice hesitated. "I'm saying you're unbound. You can't be overwritten. You can't be reprogrammed. That's why the antivirus units can't just delete you. They're not designed for something outside protocol."
Misaki shook her head. "That's impossible. The system replaced everything twenty years ago."
"Everything but him," the voice replied.
Silence fell.
Then Misaki asked, "Why now? Why are they hunting him now?"
"Because he's waking up," the voice said. "Something in the system is cracking. And when it does, people like Kaito won't be invisible anymore. They'll be visible to everyone. And when that happens…" The voice trailed off, static replacing the words.
Kaito stood again, his hands shaking. "Tell me what I have to do."
A panel slid open behind one of the server towers. Inside: an old handheld device, shaped like a black rectangular brick. No screen. Just a red light and a jack for something—maybe audio, maybe memory.
"You carry that," the voice said. "It will record everything the system tries to hide from you. Audio, visuals, interactions. It will store it all in raw format."
"And then what?"
"When the time comes," the voice said, "you'll plug it in at the root."
"Where's the root?"
"You'll know it when you see it."
The speaker clicked off.
Kaito stared at the device in his hands. It was heavy. Cold. Real.
Misaki leaned in close. "What the hell are you?"
"I don't know," he said.
But for the first time…
He wanted to find out.