The Tokyo evening was slowly dissolving the outlines of the skyscrapers into a hazy dusk. The streets that had been swarming with people only recently were now deserted, as if everyone had vanished. Kaito walked along the sidewalk, the monotone hum of the rare passing cars in his ears taking the place of music. He felt neither hatred nor sorrow. More than anything, there was a heavy, inexplicable emptiness somewhere behind his breastbone, as if there were a room inside him from which all the furniture had been taken away.
Tomorrow, a thought flickered through his mind, dry and lifeless as a fallen leaf. Lectures again. The same assignments. The same faces in the lecture hall saying the same words.
His life was like a perfectly calibrated metronome, beating out identical measures day after day. No mistakes, no glitches. And inside that flawless monotony lay the deepest kind of weariness. There was no meaning in it, no purpose, only an endless, predictable "tomorrow."
With the edge of his awareness he watched his reflection in a shop window — a pale face, an empty stare. And then, completely detached, a question rose up from the depths of his mind as calmly as if he were thinking about the weather:
I wonder… if I disappeared, would anyone notice?
There was no pain in that thought, no despair. Only a cold, almost scientific curiosity about his own existence, which seemed as insignificant a detail of the landscape as the cracked paving tile beneath his feet.
The warm light of a 24-hour convenience store seemed, at this late hour, to be the only living patch in the empty block. Kaito stood by the shelf with chilled instant noodles, staring blankly at the rows of identical plastic containers. His hand reached out automatically for his usual flavor, "pork cutlet." He didn't even look at the label.
Well, here we are, he sighed inwardly, walking up to the register. The climax of the day.
After paying, he stepped back outside, and the cold night air burned his lungs. The bag with its solitary container dangled from his hand like some pitiful prize for participating in his own personal Groundhog Day. And then, looking at his lone silhouette cast onto the asphalt by the store window's light, he couldn't hold it in anymore. The silence had grown too loud, and he wanted to fill it with something, even if it was only his own voice.
He drew in a breath and said quietly, almost in a whisper:
"Okay, Kaito, let's be honest. Your life is a textbook example of boredom. But objectively, it could be worse."
He took a few steps, his sneakers rustling over the concrete. The standard consolations he always offered himself spun in his head. He decided to voice one of them, trying to make it sound convincing.
"Well, for example… you could have been born in a country at war. Or you could be working some dangerous job where you risk your life every day. You see? It's not that bad. You've got a roof over your head and…" He froze for a second, searching for the word. "…noodles."
At that very moment his foot sank into something soft and unyielding. He didn't even have time to react before his body lurched forward, almost sending him flying. Barely keeping his balance, he flailed awkwardly on one leg and finally looked down. There, in the shadows, lay a half-torn black garbage bag, leaking the sour smell of spoiled food.
He straightened up, brushed off his pant leg and stared at the bag in mute reproach. The irony of the situation crashed over him. The corner of his mouth twitched of its own accord. He sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice no longer held the slightest trace of the earlier attempt to cheer himself up; it carried only total, unconditional surrender to the absurdity of it all.
"Yes," he said flatly. "For example, this."
He picked up his noodles, once more dangling in the bag, and trudged on, leaving behind the unlucky trash bag and the silence, which now seemed even louder after that stupid, lonely monologue. The comedy was over, leaving behind only the faintly bitter aftertaste of truth. He had tried to joke, but in this auditorium he was the only spectator, and no laughter followed.
He had almost reached his building — or rather, the concrete box where he slept — when his gaze slid across the dark window of a closed flower shop. The glass, washed clean during the day, now stood perfectly black and mirror-like in the night. He stopped, spellbound.
A boy was standing there. A stranger. With tired, burnt-out eyes that held all the exhaustion of this day and, probably, every day before it. His hair was ruffled slightly by the evening breeze, and a worn, sagging black backpack hung off one shoulder, giving his posture a slight but noticeable stoop. In one hand he clutched a plastic bag with a single container of noodles, and his whole figure screamed of some deep, existential fatigue.
Kaito blinked. The stranger in the glass blinked back.
And then it dawned on him. Slowly, with an icy, almost unreal clarity. It was him.
He didn't look at himself with hatred or contempt. No. What seized him was a strange, almost clinical astonishment, as if he were seeing himself from the outside for the very first time. He studied those features, that posture, that empty gaze, trying to match them with what he felt inside. Inside there was a quiet, humming emptiness, a vague confusion. And outside… outside there was this boy.
So this… is me? something whispered inside him. The thought wasn't bitter; it was a statement, like the conclusion of a scientist examining a strange, unknown organism under a microscope.
He tilted his head. The reflection copied the movement. He tried to smile — and produced a crooked, strained grimace that only highlighted the hopelessness of the whole picture.
Do you really look like this? he asked his double behind the glass. Like a real background NPC. The kind that flickers past in the frame just to fill the space. Who has no name, no story, no purpose. Who exists simply because the world happens to be arranged that way.
*
He ran a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it down. The reflection did the same, but it didn't make him look any more important or alive. It was just a gesture, stripped of meaning.
He stood like that for a few more seconds, holding a silent conversation with the most critical and impartial partner he had—himself. In the end, he drew a deep breath, turned around and trudged away, leaving his reflection frozen in the cold glass. It felt as if he had just met a stranger and, finding nothing to say, simply walked off. And in his chest there remained only the same heavy, inexplicable emptiness, now given a visible shape.
The air had grown cooler, and Kaito—still carrying the weight of that encounter with his own reflection—automatically lifted his gaze to check if it was about to rain. And then he froze.
Above the dark, jagged line of rooftops, in the gap between two gray apartment buildings, something impossible was drifting.
The northern lights.
A green band, glowing unnaturally bright, almost poisonous, wavered in the night sky. But it wasn't the majestic, mesmerizing spectacle they show in documentaries. This was… different. The color was too saturated, acidic, as if someone had painted it on with neon paint. And it didn't move in smooth waves; it streamed like liquid light, like an oily film on water, rippling and curling with a cloying, almost intoxicating fluidity.
Kaito pinched the back of his hand without thinking. The pain was real. So he wasn't asleep.
What… is that? flashed through his mind. He knew basic geography. He was in Tokyo. There was no northern lights here. Ever.
He kept staring, feeling goosebumps run down his back—not from awe, but from a growing anxiety. His cynical, logic-overloaded brain was desperately trying to find a rational explanation. A light show? A fatigue-induced hallucination?
Either I've finally gone insane, he thought slowly, still not looking away from the anomaly, or… or the world has just forgotten where north is supposed to be.
He didn't know that this ghostly, flowing harmony in the sky was the first, barely audible note of a symphony from another world. The first song of the Principle, whispering in a crack of reality, a call addressed to him alone. But he simply stood on an empty street, a bag of cooling noodles in his hand, and watched, feeling the familiar borders of things begin to melt right before his eyes.
The narrow alley between the supermarket and the apartment complex was short, but Kaito always instinctively quickened his pace there. Tonight he was late. Three figures detached themselves from the shadows near the dumpsters. Schoolboys, fourteen or fifteen at most. They smelled of cheap energy drinks and showy bravado.
"Hey, nerd," clicked the tallest one, blocking his path. "What've you got in the backpack? Hand it over. And your phone."
Kaito sighed. It was so banal, so stupid it didn't even scare him. They weren't professional thugs. They were… idiots. Playing at being adults, copying what they'd seen online.
"Guys," he said, his voice sounding surprisingly calm, almost tired. "Seriously? There's just a noodle box and a notebook with lecture notes. It's really not worth it."
He looked at their empty, angry faces and realized words wouldn't work. They didn't care about the result, only about the process—to humiliate, to feel powerful.
"Don't get smart!" one of them snarled and shoved Kaito hard in the chest.
He didn't have time to brace himself. Tripping over his own uncertainty and the uneven asphalt, he crashed down on one knee. A sharp pain stabbed through the joint, and the plastic bag with the noodles landed in a puddle with a dull slap.
So here he was, sitting on the cold asphalt with a filthy knee, his dignity bruised and his notebooks scattered. And instead of fear or rage, a new wave of that same crushing sense of his own insignificance rolled over him.
Good Lord… flashed through his mind as he winced and tried to get up. I'm not even worth a proper mugging. Everything that happens to me looks like a bad parody. Even the criminals I get stuck with are pathetic.
And then he started laughing. A quiet, strangled laugh, more like broken breathing. He laughed at the absurdity, at himself, at these kids, at this whole miserable situation. It wasn't laughter of joy; it was a last defensive reflex—if you can't change reality, at least laugh at it before it finally crushes you.
The foolish laugh caught in his throat when one of the boys—the sturdier one—jerked forward in irritation. The show-off bravado was gone; in his movement there was only blunt, animal rage.
"Laughing at us, freak?" he rasped, his hands slamming into Kaito's chest.
The shove was surprisingly strong. Still not fully back on his feet after the fall, Kaito flew backwards. The back of his head hit the rough, cold brick wall with a hollow thud. The sound—like a hammer striking a sack of sand—echoed inside his skull.
For a moment the world disappeared. A firework of white and gold specks exploded before his eyes, dancing in time with the throbbing pain. A ringing filled his ears, drowning out all other sounds. He couldn't feel his body, only a deafening emptiness and a rising nausea.
Then the world began to change. The sharp edges of reality softened, like the picture on an old TV when you smack the side of it. The bright colors of the night city—the neon signs, the yellow streetlights—started to dim, to fade, as if a dirty haze were being drawn over them. Everything around him lost its focus, became blurry and unreal. The last thing he clearly registered was that his knee no longer hurt, and the asphalt beneath him felt unnaturally soft. As if the world itself were turning into a pale, unfinished copy of itself, ready to dissolve in the next instant.
Through the veil over his eyes and the growing roar in his ears, Kaito lifted his gaze again. His breath caught.
The same radiance he'd seen over the rooftops was now right here in the alley. It filled the entire space above him, unnaturally close and frighteningly solid. It wasn't just shining—it was moving. Not in waves, but like a liquid pouring from an invisible vessel, surging in clumps of shimmering light. The colors—that same poisonous green, that piercing violet—didn't mix, but collided, knotting themselves into patterns that shattered at once, like shards of glass in a kaleidoscope.
He understood: this wasn't light. At least, not the kind born in a lamp or a star. It was something else. It felt as though he were looking not at a glow, but at a wound itself—at a tear between two kinds of light, at a seam running through the fabric of reality.
And the longer he stared, the stronger a strange, unnamable feeling grew inside him. Not the kind of fear that freezes your blood. Not the kind of amazement that the mind refuses to accept. It was something deeper and more disturbing—a sense of fundamental wrongness. The feeling that the world, the entire universe, had made a mistake. Enormous, structural, like a crack in the pattern that holds everything together. And that crack, that flaw in the great design, had opened here, in this Tokyo alley—choosing him, Kaito, as the doorway through which it would step. As if something meant for another place and another time had taken a wrong turn and arrived at his address instead. And he just happened to be the one who came to the door.
*
The world froze.
The pain in the back of his head ebbed away, yielding to a deafening silence. And through that silence, out of the air itself, a sound emerged. Not loud, which only made it more terrifying. It sounded like a tear—not an electrical crackle, not a branch snapping, but like thick paper stretched tight finally ripping from within. Or the fabric of reality itself.
Kaito instinctively tried to push off from the wall, to stand up, to run. But his body wouldn't obey. His legs had turned to cotton, completely alien, unable to hold his weight. All he could do was helplessly slide his back down the rough brick, remaining seated in the puddle.
And then he realized there were other things missing. The wind was gone. The sharp gust that had been prowling the alley a second ago had vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed. The distant but constant roar of cars from the main street had disappeared too. An absolute, unnatural silence settled in, and in it only that eerie, inner tearing sound kept growing.
The darkness around him was thickening. It didn't just fall—it grew denser, heavier, like ink dissolving in water. The light of the streetlamp at the far end of the alley faded, shrank to a dull point, and went out. His own breathing became the only sound in that sudden void, and even it felt alien. He sat there, paralyzed, in complete, soundless darkness, listening to the world slowly coming apart at the seams.
And then the radiance crashed down.
It didn't disperse in the air, but dropped as a single, solid curtain of phosphorescent light, like a falling stage drape. It swallowed him whole, and the first thing he felt was not pain, but cold. Absolute, bone-deep cold, as if he had been plunged into liquid nitrogen.
His shadow, flung against the wall, suddenly jerked, stretched into an unnaturally long, warped streak, and then began to blur, bleeding at the edges like a blot of ink on wet paper.
Then came the feeling of emptiness. Not emotional, but physical. A strange, surreal sensation that his own body was collapsing inward on itself. Flesh stopped feeling solid, bones lost their hold. He wasn't falling—he was dissolving, like a lump of sugar in water. Disappearing.
But the eeriest paradox was in his mind. There was no panic. No blind terror in the face of death. His overworked, exhausted brain simply stated the fact, refusing to take the catastrophe seriously. And before the darkness swallowed him completely, only one quiet, almost casual exclamation slipped from his lips, full of pure, indifferent bewilderment:
"Uh… seriously? Like this?"
That final, absurd phrase became the perfect last shield—the mask of comedy he put on at the most serious moment of his life, as if trying to convince himself that all of this was just another ridiculous joke the universe was playing on him.
He wasn't falling down. He was slipping through.
It felt as if not only the asphalt had vanished under his feet, but the very support of the world itself. There was no dizzying sense of height, only a rapid, soundless distortion of space around him. It squeezed, stretched, warped, as though he were being dragged through the eye of the needle of reality itself.
And then—a sudden, stunning impact. Not against a hard surface, but against his entire being at once. The air was punched out of his lungs, and his body, clenched in invisible jaws, finally regained shape and weight.
Cold. A wet, piercing cold that soaked into his clothes and skin in seconds. He was lying face down in something soft and damp. Snow. Wet, melting snow that smelled not of winter freshness, but of acrid smoke and soggy ash.
With effort he pried his head up from the icy pillow and tried to get his bearings. The first thing he saw was the sky. It was different. No city glow, no familiar constellations. Only a thick, velvety blackness, studded with alien, too-bright, unfamiliar stars.
And silence. Not the temporary kind that had filled the alley, but something constant, deep, alive. A dense, tar-like silence of a dead forest where it seemed that solitude itself lay in wait.
The snow crunched under his body as he tried to push himself up on shaking elbows. His whole body ached, every muscle screaming about the overload. The air, thick and frosty, burned his lungs. He lay there, face buried in icy moisture, and listened. Silence. So overwhelming that a ringing began in his ears.
And then it started.
At first—a vibration, barely felt through his skin, coming from the ground itself. Then it took form as a sound. A low, hoarse rumbling, like rocks rolling over each other in a cave. It was so deep it didn't echo in his ears but somewhere near his solar plexus, stirring a nauseating tremor.
Slowly, with effort, he turned his stiff neck toward the source of the sound.
And froze.
Right in front of him, half a meter from his face, a pair of eyes was staring back at him.
Bright yellow, like molten brimstone, with narrow vertical pupils fixed on him in soundless concentration. They did not blink. They simply existed there—predatory, bottomless, belonging to something large, dark, and completely unknown.
They were too close. Terrifyingly, suffocatingly close. He could see every glint inside their soulless depths. His breath caught in his throat. The whole world shrank to those two burning points in the darkness, promising only one inevitable outcome.
Instinct—ancient, blind survival instinct—jerked his body. His mind, still not fully understanding where he was or what was happening, was already screaming one thing: Move. Fight. Kaito tried to reach with his hand for anything—for a branch jutting from the snow, for a stone, for a handful of frozen dirt. Any weapon. Any straw.
But his body was not his. Muscles, numb from cold and shock, refused to serve. His hands only twitched helplessly, digging deeper into the slushy snow. He was pinned to the ground by his own weakness, a perfect target.
The yellow eyes drew closer. Warm, animal breath, smelling of blood and rotting meat, washed over his face. Darkness thickened at the edges of his vision, not from fainting, but from the bulk of the approaching beast blocking out the stars.
And in that final moment, when his mind was already giving up the fight, what escaped his parched lips was not a scream, not a plea, but only a quiet, resigned whisper, full of the most ridiculous and human kind of grievance:
"I… didn't even get to eat my noodles…"
It wasn't a heroic last thought. It was a pitiful, comic verdict. A line that perfectly summed up his dull, failed life. And as those words slowly faded into the frozen air, the thick, impenetrable darkness finally closed over him, putting a period at the end of the most ridiculous episode of his biography.