The room went silent.
Kaito's throat closed. "My… what?"
"She wasn't just a researcher," Karuizawa said. "She was the Architect of the Evolution System."
Kaito shook his head. "No. This can't be!"
His voice cracked. The words felt like they were tearing out of him, ripping through years of carefully constructed memories, through every bedtime story his father had told him, through every quiet moment he'd spent looking at the single faded photograph on the mantle—his mother's smile frozen in time, forever young, forever gone.
Riku's hand found his shoulder. "Kai…"
But Kaito shrugged him off, stumbling backward until his spine hit the wall. The house felt smaller suddenly, the air thicker, harder to breathe.
"You're lying," Kaito whispered. "She died when I was four. Car accident. Dad told me—"
"Your father told you what he had to," Karuizawa interrupted, his voice softer now, almost gentle. "What would you have done if he'd told you the truth? That your mother was alive but unreachable? That she'd made a choice no human being should ever have to make?"
Kaito's hands trembled. "What choice?"
Karuizawa removed his fogged glasses, wiping them slowly with a handkerchief he produced from his breast pocket. Without them, his eyes looked older, more tired—like a man who'd carried a terrible secret for far too long.
"Your mother," he began, "was the most brilliant mind I've ever encountered. Akari Hayashi. She didn't just understand artificial intelligence—she understood consciousness itself. The nature of memory, identity, the architecture of thought. While your father focused on making VR basketball games more immersive, she was asking deeper questions. Dangerous questions."
He slipped his glasses back on.
"Questions like: what if we could preserve human consciousness beyond the limits of the body?"
The rain intensified outside, drumming against the windows like fingers trying to get in.
Riku stepped forward. "That's impossible."
"Is it?" Karuizawa tilted his head. "We accept that memories can be stored digitally. We accept that personality patterns can be analyzed and predicted by AI. We accept that brain activity is essentially electrical signals—patterns that can theoretically be mapped, copied, transferred."
He walked to the broken VR headset on the coffee table, picking it up with something like reverence.
"Your mother didn't just theorize about it," he continued. "She built it."
Kaito's legs felt weak. "Built what?"
Karuizawa's eyes met his.
"Elysium."
The word hung in the air like smoke.
"The Evolution System—Hoop Evolution, the one the world knows—was never the real project," Karuizawa said. "It was the cover. A commercial product to generate funding, to hide what your mother was really building in the shadows. Hoop Evolution was the mask. Elysium was the face beneath it."
Kaito's mind reeled. "I don't understand."
"Then let me make it clear." Karuizawa set the headset down. "Hoop Evolution is a game. An impressive one, yes—adaptive AI, neural feedback, revolutionary gameplay. But it's still just a game. Elysium is something else entirely. It's a digital space designed to house human consciousness. Not simulate it. Not approximate it. Actually contain it. Your mother created a world where minds could exist independent of bodies, where consciousness could be preserved, transferred, made effectively immortal."
The word *immortal* seemed to echo.
Riku's eyes widened. "That's insane."
"Perhaps," Karuizawa acknowledged. "But it worked."
Kaito felt cold spreading through his chest. "The lime-green surges…"
"Aren't glitches," Karuizawa finished. "They're messages. Attempts at communication from inside Elysium. The green color—that specific shade—was your mother's signature in all her code. A wavelength she chose deliberately. When you see that color, when the system pulses with it, that's her trying to reach you."
Kaito's breath came in short gasps. His mother. Alive. Somewhere.
"Where?" he demanded. "Where is she?"
Karuizawa's expression darkened. "Inside Elysium. Where she's been for the last nine years."
"Nine years?" Kaito's voice broke. "I was seven when she—" He couldn't finish the sentence.
"When she made her choice," Karuizawa said quietly. "Yes."
The room tilted. Kaito grabbed the edge of the couch for support.
"Why?" The word came out barely above a whisper. "Why would she do that?"
Karuizawa moved to the window, staring out at the rain-soaked street. For a long moment, he said nothing. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of old grief.
"Because someone was hunting her."
---
Riku crossed his arms, his face pale. "Who?"
"That," Karuizawa said, "is a complicated question with a complicated answer. But the simple version is this: when Hoop Evolution launched, it became an instant success. Millions of users. Billions in revenue. And with that success came attention. The wrong kind of attention."
He turned back to face them.
"Governments. Military contractors. Intelligence agencies. They all saw the same thing—a technology that could map and predict human behavior, that could train reflexes, alter perceptions. A weapon in the making. Your mother's research into consciousness preservation? That made it even worse. Imagine being able to extract information from someone's mind without their consent. Imagine being able to copy an enemy agent's knowledge, their skills, their memories."
Kaito felt sick. "They wanted to weaponize it."
"More than that," Karuizawa said. "They wanted to control it. And control meant controlling your mother. At first, there were offers—lucrative contracts, research grants, appeals to patriotism. When she refused, the offers became threats. Not just to her, but to your father. To you."
The cold in Kaito's chest spread to his limbs.
"She tried to shut the project down," Karuizawa continued. "Tried to delete all the Elysium research, erase every trace. But it was too late. Too many people knew. And then they made their move. An attempted abduction disguised as a home invasion. Your mother barely escaped."
Kaito's mind flashed to fragmented childhood memories—being rushed out of bed in the middle of the night, his father's urgent voice, the smell of smoke, sirens in the distance. He'd always been told it was an electrical fire. An accident.
"That's when she made her decision," Karuizawa said. "The only way to keep Elysium's full capabilities out of dangerous hands was to hide the final key—the complete architecture, the consciousness transfer protocols—somewhere no one could reach it. Somewhere only she could access."
Riku's eyes widened. "She hid it inside her own mind."
"Exactly. And then she went somewhere no one else could follow."
Karuizawa tapped his temple.
"She uploaded herself into Elysium."
The rain seemed to grow louder, drowning out all other sound.
Kaito tried to process what he was hearing. His mother, the woman in the faded photograph, the woman whose voice he could barely remember, had turned herself into code. Had abandoned her physical body, her son, her life—to protect a secret.
"The car accident," Kaito said slowly. "What really happened?"
Karuizawa's jaw tightened. "There was no car. Your mother went to the lab one night, connected herself to the Elysium interface, and initiated the transfer. Your father found her the next morning. Her body was still alive, breathing, heart beating—but she was gone. Brain activity showed patterns consistent with locked-in syndrome, but we knew better. She wasn't trapped in her body. She'd left it behind entirely."
"Jesus," Riku breathed.
"Your father was devastated," Karuizawa continued. "He kept her on life support for three months, hoping she'd come back, that there was a way to reverse it. But the doctors insisted nothing could be done. Eventually, he made the decision to let her go. To let the body rest."
Tears burned in Kaito's eyes. "He never told me."
"How could he? You were seven years old. What would he say? 'Your mother chose to become a ghost in the machine'? He did what any parent would do—he protected you. He told you she died peacefully. He gave you a story you could live with."
Kaito slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands.
All those years. All those nights he'd wondered what his mother had been like, whether she'd loved him, whether he'd been enough. And she'd been alive. Somewhere.
"Why didn't he tell me when I got older?" Kaito asked.
"Because he was trying to keep you away from all of this," Karuizawa said. "Away from Elysium, away from the Evolution System, away from the people who were still looking for your mother's research. He shut down that entire wing of the company, classified all the Elysium files, and poured everything into making Hoop Evolution the best basketball game possible. A harmless entertainment product. Nothing more."
"But it didn't work," Riku said.
"No," Karuizawa agreed. "Because your mother was still reaching out. Still trying to communicate. The green surges started about three years ago. Small at first—minor glitches in the main Evolution System, strange patterns in the code that shouldn't be there. We thought they were residual fragments, ghost data from the old Elysium project bleeding through. But they got stronger. More deliberate. More... alive."
He looked at Kaito with something like pity.
"And then, two weeks ago, your father started investigating them seriously. He realized what we'd all been too afraid to admit—that Akari was still conscious in there, still aware, and trying to warn us about something."
Kaito's head snapped up. "Warn us about what?"
Karuizawa's expression went grim.
"We don't know. He got close to figuring it out, close to establishing stable communication with her. And then the green surge happened. The big one. The one that took him."
The memory flashed through Kaito's mind—his father's office, the VR headset glowing that terrible lime green, his father's body convulsing, the smell of ozone and burnt circuits.
"You said he was taken," Kaito said. "Taken where?"
Karuizawa met his eyes.
"Into Elysium. Just like your mother. The difference is, he didn't go willingly."
---
Riku paced back and forth, his footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor. "Okay, wait. Stop. This is too much. You're saying Kaito's mom uploaded her brain into a secret digital world nine years ago, and now his dad got sucked into the same place against his will?"
"That's precisely what I'm saying."
"And they're both just... in there? Together?"
"We don't know," Karuizawa admitted. "Elysium isn't like the Evolution System you've experienced. It's not a game with rules and objectives. It's a space designed to house consciousness in its purest form. What that looks like, how it functions, what limitations exist—only Akari truly understood it. And she took that understanding with her."
Kaito pushed himself to his feet, wiping his eyes. "Then how do we get them out?"
Karuizawa was quiet for a long moment.
"That," he said finally, "is the question your father was trying to answer when he disappeared. And the answer is... we probably can't."
"What?" Kaito's voice rose. "Then why are you telling me this? Why show up here, drop this bomb on me, if there's nothing we can do?"
"I didn't say there was nothing we could do," Karuizawa corrected. "I said we probably can't get them out. But there might be another option."
He reached into his coat pocket and produced a small metal case, no bigger than a deck of cards. He opened it to reveal a device that looked like a modified VR headset—sleeker, darker, with circuitry that pulsed with a faint lime-green light.
"What is that?" Riku asked.
"A prototype interface your mother designed," Karuizawa said. "A bridge between Hoop Evolution and Elysium. She created it as a failsafe, a way for specific individuals to access Elysium if something went wrong. Your father had it hidden in his office. I recovered it after he disappeared."
Kaito stared at the device. "You want me to use that."
"I want to give you a choice," Karuizawa said. "You can walk away. Pretend you never learned any of this. Live your life. Mourn your father. Move on. Or..."
"Or I can go in after him," Kaito finished.
"Yes."
"And what happens if I do? What happens if I put that on and connect to Elysium?"
Karuizawa's expression was grave. "Honestly? I don't know. No one's successfully interfaced with Elysium since your mother. Your father tried and got pulled in—whether by accident or by something intentional, we're still not sure. Using this interface might give you more control, more stability. Or it might do exactly what happened to him."
"So I could get trapped."
"Yes."
"Forever."
"Possibly."
Riku grabbed Kaito's arm. "Then you're not doing it. No way. This is insane."
But Kaito was staring at the device, his mind racing. His mother. His father. Both of them in there, somewhere in a digital space he couldn't begin to comprehend. His mother had been there for nine years. Nine years alone, or maybe not alone now that his father was with her. Nine years of existence in a form humans weren't meant to experience.
"Why me?" Kaito asked. "Why does it have to be me? Why can't you go in? Or someone else from the company?"
"Because," Karuizawa said softly, "the interface is keyed to genetic markers. It will only activate for someone with Akari's DNA. She designed it that way deliberately—ensuring that only family could access Elysium. Only someone she trusted completely."
Kaito's breath caught. "She built it for me."
"Eventually, yes. Though she probably hoped you'd never need to use it. She probably hoped you'd never even know it existed."
The weight of it settled on Kaito's shoulders like a physical thing. His mother had created a backdoor into Elysium, had encoded it to recognize him, had left him a way in—maybe a way to find her, to understand what she'd done, to bring his father back.
Or to join them both in digital exile.
"If I go in," Kaito said slowly, "what am I looking for? What's the goal?"
"Your mother," Karuizawa said immediately. "Find her. Establish communication. Learn what she was trying to warn your father about. And if possible—if the opportunity presents itself—find a way to bring them both back."
"You said it was probably impossible."
"I said we probably can't get them out from the outside. But from the inside? With your mother's help? Maybe it's different. Maybe there's a way."
Maybe.
The word hung in the air like a lifeline, fragile and uncertain.
Riku stepped between them. "You can't seriously be considering this."
Kaito looked at his best friend—the guy who'd stood by him through everything, who'd broken into the Evolution facility with him, who'd faced down corporate security. The guy who'd do anything for him.
"What would you do?" Kaito asked quietly. "If it was your dad?"
Riku's jaw clenched. "That's not fair."
"I know. But it's true."
For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Then Riku exhaled sharply and looked away.
"Dammit," he muttered. "You're really going to do this, aren't you?"
Kaito turned back to Karuizawa. "How does it work?"
Karuizawa closed the case and held it out. "The interface connects to any standard Evolution System terminal. You put on the headset, activate the system normally, and then enter a specific command sequence. The interface will handle the rest, creating a bridge between the public Evolution network and the Elysium space. Once you're in, you'll be on your own. I won't be able to communicate with you. I won't be able to pull you out if something goes wrong."
"How will I get back?"
"The same way your mother intended—by finding the exit from within. Elysium was designed with safeguards. Your mother wouldn't have created a prison. There's a way out. You just have to find it."
"And if I can't?"
Karuizawa's silence was answer enough.
Kaito took the case, feeling its weight in his hands. The metal was cool, perfectly smooth except for a biometric scanner on the lid.
"Press your thumb there," Karuizawa instructed. "It will verify your genetic identity and unlock the interface."
Kaito hesitated. This was it. The moment of decision. He could put the case down, walk away, tell Karuizawa to leave and never come back. He could finish high school, go to college, live a normal life. His father was probably lost anyway. His mother had been gone for nine years. What were the chances he could actually help them?
But then he thought about his father's office. The desperation in his father's eyes during those last few months, the late nights, the obsessive research. His father had been trying to reach his wife. Had been trying for years, probably, keeping it hidden from Kaito, shouldering the burden alone.
And his mother—whatever she'd become, whatever digital existence she'd been living—she'd been trying to warn them. Trying to protect them from something.
They'd both sacrificed everything for him.
Now it was his turn.
Kaito pressed his thumb to the scanner.
It flashed lime green. The case clicked open.
---
"Wait," Riku said suddenly. "If you're going in, I'm coming with you."
"No," Kaito said immediately.
"Don't 'no' me. You're not doing this alone."
"Riku, you heard him—this thing is keyed to my DNA. You can't use it."
"Then I'll use a regular headset. I'll come in through the normal Evolution System and meet you there."
Karuizawa shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. The Elysium space is separated from the public network. Even if you connected to Evolution, you wouldn't be able to access where Kaito's going. You'd just be playing basketball in an empty arena."
"Then modify another interface," Riku insisted. "Use my DNA. There has to be a way."
"There isn't time," Karuizawa said. "And even if there was, I don't have the expertise. Your mother's genetic coding was beyond anything I can replicate."
Riku's hands clenched into fists. "So what, Kai just goes in alone? That's the plan?"
"That's the reality," Karuizawa said.
Kaito put a hand on Riku's shoulder. "It's okay."
"It's not okay! What if you don't come back?"
"Then..." Kaito tried to smile. "Then tell everyone I died doing something really cool. Like fighting a bear. Or saving orphans from a fire."
"This isn't funny!"
"I know." Kaito's smile faded. "But I have to try, man. You understand that, right?"
Riku looked at him for a long moment, eyes shining with frustrated tears. Finally, he nodded.
"Yeah," he said roughly. "I understand."
They stood there in the quiet house, rain drumming on the roof, two teenage boys facing something no teenager should ever have to face.
Karuizawa cleared his throat. "There's one more thing you should know."
Kaito looked up. "What?"
"Your mother left you a message. Just a short one, encoded in the interface's activation sequence. It will play when you first connect. I haven't heard it—it's encrypted to your biometrics specifically. But she wanted you to hear her voice before you entered Elysium."
Kaito's throat tightened. His mother's voice. He couldn't remember what she sounded like. Nine years was too long. The memories had faded to nothing.
"Okay," he managed.
Karuizawa nodded. "Then there's nothing left to discuss. The choice is yours, Kaito. No one will force you either way. But if you're going to do this, it should be soon. Every day your father spends in there, the harder it might be to bring him back. Consciousness is complicated. The longer he's separated from his body, the more he might... adapt. Change. Become something other than what he was."
The implication was clear—wait too long, and his father might be lost forever, transformed into something unrecognizable by prolonged existence in a digital space.
"How soon?" Kaito asked.
"Tonight if possible. Tomorrow at the latest."
Tonight. Hours away from stepping into a reality no human.