The first light of dawn filtered through my window, but it brought no warmth, only the cold realization that a full week had passed since Yuna entered my life. These seven days felt like seven grueling centuries. I had tried every possible way to maintain my distance, to remain the detached observer I always was, but she was like a persistent shadow, woven into the very fabric of my daily routine.
Every morning followed the same uncanny rhythm. I would walk to school, and she would be there, waiting with a smile that felt too perfect to be real. I watched the world around me with a cynical eye, much like Hachiman. The way the students laughed at the same jokes, the way the teachers repeated the same phrases—it was all too synchronized. I began to realize that this entire town was a scripted loop, a beautiful cage designed to keep us frozen in a fake paradise.
"Kaito! You're staring into space again," Yuna's voice broke through my thoughts. She was sitting at the desk next to mine, her eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
"I'm just observing the cracks in this 'perfect' world, Yuna," I replied coldly, not bothering to look at her. "Don't you find it strange? How everyone seems to be reading from a script?"
She laughed, a sound that should have been sweet but felt hollow. "You think too much, Kaito. Why can't you just enjoy the peace? Isn't this what everyone wants? A world without pain?"
"A world without pain is a world without reality," I muttered, turning back to my book.
That night, the loop finally began to fray at the edges. I fell into a nightmare that felt more real than my waking hours. I was standing in the middle of our school, but the walls were crumbling into digital ash. Out of the darkness stepped a figure that shared my face, but his eyes were pits of absolute void.
"How long, Kaito?" the Dark Double asked, his voice a distorted echo of my own. "How long will you let her keep you in this velvet prison? You are a glitch, a mistake in her perfect design. If you don't destroy this world, it will consume you."
He lunged at me, and I felt a searing pain behind my eyes, as if my very soul was being overwritten. I woke up gasping for air, cold sweat drenching my sheets. I wasn't alone. Yuna was sitting right there, on the edge of my bed, her hand hovering just inches from my forehead.
"You were dreaming of the end again," she said softly, her voice devoid of its usual cheer. "I told you, Kaito, the outside world is cruel. I'm only trying to keep you safe."How did you get in here, Yuna? And why are you watching me sleep?" I demanded, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"It's time for the School Festival," she said, ignoring my questions as she stood up. "The play is today. You are the Prince, and I am your Princess. We have a role to perform."
The festival was a sea of forced joy. I saw Kenji and Daiki at the food stalls, waving at me with the same programmed enthusiasm. "Hey Kaito! You better not mess up the dance!" Kenji shouted, his voice blending into the cacophony of the crowd.
I felt like a ghost walking among the living. As I went backstage to change into the Prince's attire, I saw the 'Momos Lane' crew—all the people from our neighborhood—cheering in the front row. They had no idea they were merely extras in a cosmic drama.
When Yuna stepped out in her white and gold gown, the entire hall fell into a hushed trance. She looked like a celestial being, an angel sent to offer salvation. But as we took our positions on stage, I could see the subtle glitches in the air around her—static flickering in her hair, the lights behind her stituttering in a non-existent wind.
The music began, a haunting melody that seemed to pull at the strings of my memories. We started to dance, a synchronized movement of two souls bound by a lie.
"Why are you doing this, Yuna?" I whispered as I spun her around. "This isn't love. It's an obsession. You've turned us into dolls."
"I am giving you a life without suffering!" she hissed back, her grip on my shoulder tightening until it hurt. "In the real world, you are nothing but a target for deletion. Here, you are a King!"
As we reached the climax of the dance, I performed the final dip, lowering her toward the stage floor. At that exact moment, the friction between my dark energy and her golden cage reached a breaking point. An explosion of pure logic-defying force erupted from my mind.
The reality of the school festival shattered like a mirror hit by a sledgehammer. The lights, the crowd, the music—everything dissolved into jagged shards of light. We were suddenly standing in a vast, grey void. The sky above was a mess of flickering digital codes.
"No! It wasn't supposed to end like this!" Yuna screamed. Her form began to flicker violently. From the shadows behind her, a colossal, formless monster began to rise—a manifestation of the very power that was keeping this world together, now turned feral.
"Stop it, Yuna! Look at what you've done!" I yelled, my own dark aura flaring up to protect me.
"I won't let you go!" she cried, her voice cracking with pure, human desperation. "I will erase everything before I let you face the void alone!"
The monster lunged, its limbs made of corrupted data. I fought back, my strikes tearing through the digital flesh of the beast. We were locked in a battle that threatened to unmake what was left of our existence.
Suddenly, through the static, I heard voices. Kenji and Daiki were there, their forms translucent and fading, but their eyes were clear for the first time.
"Yuna, please!" Kenji's voice echoed through the void. "We saw how he looked at you when you weren't looking. He kept your music close to his heart. He loves the girl you are, not this prison you've built!"He wants to save you, Yuna!" Daiki added. "Let him go so he can fix what's broken!"
Yuna froze. The monster behind her slowed its assault. She looked at me, her eyes filled with a heartbreaking clarity. She saw the pain I was in, the way my body was breaking under the weight of her 'protection.'
"Bigger brother..." she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of the collapsing dimension. "I was so afraid of being alone in the dark. I thought if I kept you here, the dark could never touch us."
She ran to me, not as a powerful entity, but as the scared girl she truly was. She threw her arms around me, burying her face in my chest.
"I'm sorry, Kaito. My dictionary only had one word for love... and that word was 'Stay'. But I see now that staying is killing you."
"Yuna, what are you doing?" I asked, a sense of dread washing over me.
"I'm giving you the only thing I have left," she said, looking up at me with a sad, beautiful smile. "I'm giving you my existence. Use it to rewrite the ending. Use it to save them all."
Before I could protest, her body began to glow with a brilliant, blinding gold. The energy was warm, filled with her memories, her songs, and her unspoken apologies. It flowed into my chest, merging with my dark core, creating a balance I had never known. Her form became translucent, turning into motes of light that drifted away into the cold air.
"I will always be the beat in your heart, Kaito," were her final words before she vanished completely.
The light faded, leaving me in a graveyard of silence. The school was gone. The festival was gone. All that remained were the thousands of lifeless bodies scattered across the grey plains—my friends, my neighbors, everyone. I sat in the center of that silence, a Prince of a dead world.
I looked at my hands, now pulsing with a combined power of light and shadow. I looked at the corpses of Kenji and Daiki, their faces peaceful in death. I placed a hand over my heart and felt the double thrumming—my own pulse, and the lingering echo of hers.
"I promise you, Yuna," I whispered into the void, my voice becoming a vow that shook the very foundations of the deleted sky. "I will find the one who wrote this tragedy. I will find the source of this deletion. And I will rewrite our story until the last page belongs to us."