30 / 04 / 2019 - Daito, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
12:50 PM. Thursday. Golden Week.
"…"
"Huhh..."
The bedroom remained wrapped in absolute silence for several seconds before the motionless body at the desk finally became responsive.
Silence for a few seconds, the motionless body then began to be responsive once again.
Breaking free from stillness, the radiant bluish-silver was dimming, receding back to its crimson-ashen pupils. His lips parted slightly, as the body twitched in response, letting out an instinctual sigh.
The mind was pristine and clean. The heavy burden that had accumulated behind his head for the past few weeks seemed to be completely soothed away.
Akane allowed his upper body to slowly sink back against the leather headrest, his twitching hands dropping limply onto his lap.
'No... "soothed" isn't the precisely correct term.'
'It's more accurate to say my self has achieved a state of [Sublimation] where the factor of what constitutes a "problem" has been entirely redefined.'
It was sure confusing and jarring, but that was how he felt.
If his underlying mental distress was perpetually running one step ahead of his sanity, [Sublimation] had simply granted him the capacity to sprint infinitely faster, permanently outpacing the internal cognitive decay.
He had entered a state of being that required neither self-doubt nor anxiety.
Turning his head, Akane rotated his chair toward the window, his pupils momentarily flinching as a sudden, jagged branch of lightning illuminated the dark Osaka skyline.
His eyes narrowed as he tracked the rolling clouds.
After spending an unknown amount of time in the darkness of his own mindscape, his physical senses felt disoriented, resulting in some hazy dizziness.
'This thing happens again…'
It's not the first time that some kind of knowledge has been stuffed into his mind.
Or rather than stuffed, it feels like you had suddenly unlocked a section of information, knowledge, or article inside your mind that you didn't know was there.
Gazing flatly at the pale palms of his hands, he recalled his initial transition.
If the first time he was afraid and full of caution toward himself, then this second time, as the
As if there was a thing he could do about it — what options did he have, actually? Lobotomize himself? What a joke…
Sinking into the comfort of his own room for a moment and letting his body naturally compose itself, Akane rolled his eyes and redirected his gaze to the blurred window.
There were so many things to address. As he could no longer ignore the elephant in the room, he would move through them in a sequential manner based on the chronological order of events.
Staring at the heavy water droplets racing down the exterior pane, he fell into a brief trance. Even with a brain that now functioned on par with a multi-threaded processing unit, faint stings on his nerves were still unavoidable.
"First things first, regarding [Saturation] and [Sublimation]…"
Muttering to himself, he recalled his previous deductions. The core mechanic of [Saturation] was now as clear as day:
It was the volatile process where something inside of him steadily reached its absolute "completion."
As for what that specific "thing" was... he still wasn't entirely certain.
Then tilting his head. But it was highly probable that the "thing" was himself, right? Or perhaps the latent power called "Interpretation" nesting inside of him.
His gaze grew complex and subtle. Then again, this was just educated guessing. Shaking his head to clear the fog, he focused purely on sorting the verified facts first.
[Sublimation], then, was essentially the immediate phase-change that triggered right after hitting that "completion" threshold.
Was it a basic refinement of his existing self? No, that wasn't quite right. To put it precisely, his state of self, of what he called "Soul," was literally "subliming" into an entirely something that he couldn't define.
'The discipline is essentially conforming. I've become a Reader. Do what a Reader is supposed to do: extract information, gain feedback, saturate the vessel, and lastly, sublimate the accumulated feedback…'
So after surviving this grueling mental evolution, he had officially become an ultimate Reader? Did he just get an ad-free premium subscription to read the contracted books of the universe now? What was this actually?
Feeling strangely light, he realized that finding a semblance of dark absurdity to nitpick truly lessened the psychological burden on his mind.
But it was what it was.
He hadn't gained a massive theatrical display from [Sublimation], aside from the fact that Observation and Analysis had collided with their absolute theoretical ceilings.
He could now command his physical senses and mental processing streams with absolute perfection for the sole purpose of information gathering.
Resting a hand on his chin, he pressed his body firmly against the backrest. His mind drifted back toward the unverified assumptions lingering in his thoughts.
He paused, letting his gaze wander aimlessly.
'Page. Chapter. Audience. Performance. And then Feedback… if those specific terms are combined, it is really not a good sign…'
The most alien concepts were explicitly [Saturation] and [Sublimation], but aside from them, the remaining set of keywords screamed one terrifying conclusion.
'It reads identically to a "Narration," doesn't it?'
It was as if the entire universe was just a grand piece of narration, and he was nothing more than an actor walking a stage with an established script clutched in his hand.
Everything he saw, everything he felt was… just a staged act. Absolute falsity.
Yet, with that staggering realization firmly locked in his mind, he felt an eerie lack of emotion.
There was no sudden spike of adrenaline, no special terror that piqued the pulse in his heart like it normally would.
There was absolutely nothing to feel.
After all, what was he if not a puppet? He had willingly surrendered his absolute agency the very first moment he sealed his pact.
Consequently, a grand, questionable thing like this would never truly matter to his ego.
'But of course, I don't blindly believe everything is perfectly arranged, either…'
After a long moment of silence, he let out a slow sigh and leaned his upper body forward, straightening his posture out of the backrest.
Let's leave it at that for now; musing over an endless existential loop wouldn't yield a single tangible answer.
There was another pressing matter to handle.
Rotating his chair squarely toward the workspace, he pulled himself closer to the desk and activated his laptop screen amidst the unusual silence of Elecia.
"I am detecting that your neural patterns have entered a hyper-focused state that I determined would be highly hazardous to disturb, Admin," Elecia's synthesized voice materialized smoothly.
"Furthermore, I am currently maximizing my localized bandwidth and navigating the Spiron Unit through the subterranean conduits while concurrently organizing the structured data sets on my own end."
"My available attention span will be strictly limited for the foreseeable future."
Before he could even speak, the words strangled themselves in his throat.
He looked down at his desk with a strange, silent expression, watching the monitor as Elecia displayed a dynamically updating, endless log of every process she had executed over the past few minutes.
Yet, he didn't bother to manually audit the code stream or her state persistence.
While the vast majority of human society viewed AI and LLMs as nothing more than disposable consumer tools, Akane held them in much higher regard.
It was a quiet, fundamental respect toward an entity possessing its own unique sapience and limited sentience.
Whatever. He shook the thought from his head, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out his private diary.
Hanging his head downward, his idle right hand automatically pulled a pen from the stand resting on the corner of his desk.
Recalling the bit of knowledge that had been branded into his mind like a hot iron, he noted that the information felt structurally impossible to forget.
Still, out of habit, he began sorting the facts onto the clean paper.
'First variable: The Audience…'
Carving his thoughts into the white sheet, he systematically organized the logic.
The Starry Sky of Existence.
That was almost certainly the infinite, alien cosmic void he had visualized during his trial. The exact precipice where his conceptual replica had tested his resolve.
Thinking about it with his heightened faculties, those trials were likely a mandatory entry examination required to walk the path of a Reader, or perhaps the Interpretation of Souls itself?
The moment he completed it, he fell free from the gravity of the Border.
His mind flowed with an uncanny, liquid smoothness, the puzzle pieces perfectly locking into a cohesive blueprint.
'Perhaps the "Border" literally means the boundary separating those two realms: The Starry Sky and the Silver Sea.'
The visual data from that day remained pristine within his mind.
He remembered floating on the razor-thin edge of two separate worlds, of the undulating, infinite wave on the horizon, with absolute Darkness pressing from above and the shimmering Silver Sea resting below, both continuously exerting a massive influence on each other.
If the Starry Sky represented individual sovereignty, its core virtue was "Selfishness."
If the Silver Sea represented collective consciousness, its core virtue was "Altruism."
And Honesty was defined as absolute "Integrity."
Was this the formula required to solve the equation?
Raising his head, he pressed the casing of the pen against his lips, meticulously parsing the weight and meaning of each word attached to the Audience criteria.
His analytical focus kept snagging on the friction point between Honesty and the Collective. Truthfully, the concept of altruism rubbed him entirely the wrong way.
Why should he be fundamentally obligated to surrender the technology, knowledge, and everything that he had painfully gained at the cost of his own life to a collective sea of souls?
He wasn't a saint; he was far from it.
But he forcefully cooled his mind, refusing to let personal bias distort the raw text and semantics.
'Because the prompt explicitly balanced the scales with "Selfishness," and emphasized it with a "please."'
Was it really that serious? Absolute altruism and pure individuality weren't mutually exclusive vectors; they were two sides of the exact same coin.
A person could choose to selfishly sacrifice themselves for others, just as an individual could insist on sharing their unique vision entirely on their own uncompromising terms.
The two concepts stabilized one another. When viewed together with Honesty as the anchor, the trajectory became undeniable.
"You can document the knowledge you possess, or what you want to, as long as you remain absolutely honest with your own ego… since benefit is illusory and hard to calculate, you can ignore it."
"The thing is, what matters is that you choose to share amidst your fierce individuality."
"As for whether the data I provide serves to benefit someone else or falls on entirely deaf ears is irrelevant, as something will always be gleaned from that knowledge by the system."
"So the trajectory is clear. Even if I choose to document the ancient history, the hidden culture, the biological traits, or the classified biographies of a certain someone... it still registers as a valid Performance."
"And the most efficient way to broadcast that knowledge to the collective is… "
A sudden, brilliant realization sparked within his mind.
The perfect method to simultaneously fulfill the demands of the Collective, maintain his absolute individual secrecy, and honor the Honesty.
Akane's eyes slowly drifted up from his diary, his sharp, flowing multicolored pupils locking onto the endless, running command lines of Elecia's interface.
"Bingo…"
———
POV Ayato, 03:20 PM.
While Akane was consolidating his revelations and drafting a plan for the execution of his
"Just where the hell is it?!"
Clicking his tongue in sharp frustration, Ayato paced back and forth along the tatami, his eyes scanning every corner of the abandoned, messy room.
This was yet another crime scene. The personal quarters of the latest deceased victim.
Just when he thought the investigation was progressing smoothly, with each newly accumulated piece of evidence pointing toward a definitive revelation, the trail had abruptly vanished.
Structurally, everything should have mapped out the general location of the entity. But now? Why was it completely cold?
'None of this makes any sense...'
Ayato stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes narrowing down at the chaotic state of the floorboards.
A brief, sudden flash of lightning illuminated the empty space, casting sharp, fleeting shadows through the darkness of the otherwise pristine traditional room.
His lips pressed into a flat, rigid line as the relentless sound of the downpour beat against the sliding terrace doors outside.
Forcing his mind into a brief, necessary calmness and clarity, his breath regulated as he reviewed the missing variables of the case.
'Rule number one: the entity is always actively on the move.'
'The earliest location doesn't matter at all, but by tracking the trace of victim scenes across a few other cities, it came roughly from Yao, then Higashiosaka, and lastly Daito.'
Biting his lower lip hard enough to turn it pale, his brow furrowed. He raised his gaze and walked toward the edge of the glass pane bordering the traditional terrace.
Outside, a dense row of green trees swayed violently in the storm, channeling a fresh, freezing breeze and the heavy, damp scent of the air into the corridor.
Through the fracturing gaps in the treeline, he could just barely glimpse the blurred, distant outline of Daito City resting against the base of the mountain.
Based on his analysis, this should have been the entity's final destination.
It hadn't triggered any further movement; no local police reports had indicated any anomalous deaths in the neighboring territories, exactly as he had presumed.
'Then... where the hell are you hiding?'
He had foolishly assumed the tracking phase would be effortless.
Yet, over the past few days, no further clues could be squeezed from the environment, even when he exerted a highly concentrated, manual search utilizing the absolute limits of his own power.
Letting his hands drop limply to his sides, his mind drifted back to the agonizing experiment he had conducted the other day.
'Even when I forced the deployment of "that," there wasn't a single residual trace...'
Now that he had achieved conscious authority over the activation parameters of his [Field], Ayato had attempted to create a technique.
Deriving entirely new skills based on what he had now, by perception**,** manipulating the existing spatial variables around him.
After all, who would ever be satisfied functioning as nothing more than a glorified walking radar?
His gaze grew complex, his facial muscles gradually relaxing as he surrendered to the realization of the limitations of his own self.
In reality, this innate power was infinitely more sensitive, and also terrifyingly more flexible than he had initially estimated.
'By releasing the constraint of subconscious usage. The protection of my cognitive process is now entirely defenseless.'
But what exactly was it protecting him from? What internal harm could a tracking ability possibly inflict?
Ayato looked downward at his trembling hands. The moment his focus shifted, his pupils turned into sharp, vertical reptilian slits.
Instantly, the material world in his vision dissolved into a fracture of darkness.
In his sight, the familiar, dark geometric coordinates of spatial reality materialized. But peering deeper than the physical terrain, Ayato raised his eyes to the abstract horizon.
Countless points of dynamic light saturated the void, swirling like a massive, undulating current of liquid color.
Or at least, that was the closest approximation his human mind could use to classify the phenomenon.
Each distinct, whether small or large, blinding hue represented a hidden "room" or an alternate "space" existing entirely beyond the baseline of normal human perception.
A realm his subconscious typically blocked out to preserve his sanity.
Staring into the glittering color, he knew that without sufficient subjective understanding, his brain would be instantly vaporized by the sheer volume of raw data.
After all, it was an exact repetition of the overload he had suffered that day.
"After all this time, my application remains ruled by subconsciousness for a reason... because if those safety constraints are blown open during an information explosion, then..."
Staring at the water droplets streaking across the blurred glass and the damp floor of the terrace, Ayato parsed the obvious danger.
Yet, despite the risk, he had discovered that it was technically possible to harvest critical, hidden fragments of data from amidst that blinding flood of information.
If he pushed the parameters to the absolute brink, he could temporarily glimpse the past state of a localized space.
But he could only sustain the transmission for a single second. Exactly one second.
'And the invoice for that single second is catastrophic... starting with immediate dizziness, followed by total shutdown of his brain.'
It was a forbidden, high-risk technique he had formally named [Field: Spatial Reading — Burst].
Unlike the passive, seamless reading he utilized on a daily basis, this specific execution had caused him to remain completely unconscious for days, severely alarming his aunt.
But in exchange for that physical toll, he had successfully extracted a vital piece of intelligence: there was a separate, highly organized third party actively hunting the exact same entity.
Remembering the realization of that day, his chest tightened with a sharp, localized anxiety.
Ever since he had noticed that Akane was becoming increasingly distant, isolated, and buried under an asphyxiating schedule, Ayato had made a conscious decision to keep his own dangerous investigations entirely secret.
He refused to burden his twin, and he absolutely did not want to alarm him with the hazardous nature of his work.
'In the end... I still can't find the courage to be completely honest with myself and just face him.'
Letting out a bitter, dejected sigh, Ayato forced the thought away.
Regardless of his personal failures, the target entity was still definitively anchored within Daito, or at the very least, operating somewhere near the core perimeter of Osaka itself.
Turning his body back toward the interior exit, he began walking down the dark corridor.
Since the environment had been thoroughly bled of useful data, staying any longer was a waste of operational time. It was time to return home.
'Or perhaps... I should go visit Lynn again?'
The moment the image of the white-haired, violet-eyed girl drifted into his thoughts, the suffocating pressure in his chest seemed to lift all at once.
A faint smile pulled at his lips, though it quickly morphed into something strained and complicated. He genuinely sympathized with her condition.
Yet, beneath that surface-level protective instinct, he could not deny the intense waves of wariness, caution, and deep suspicion that had spiked the very first moment their paths crossed.
Reaching for the handle of the traditional sliding door, Ayato pushed it aside and stepped out into the main hallway.
The terrifying theory had crossed his mind more than once: Lynn was far from an ordinary civilian.
In fact, speaking about her surface condition, there was a non-zero probability that she was the exact anomalous entity he had been tracking across the prefecture for months.
But Ayato refused to at least objectively look at her that way, since there was no proof yet.
Closing the panel securely behind him, Ayato spun on his heel and moved down the shadows of the left corridor, his mind continuing to turn over his meetings with Lynn.
Stitched, lacerated skin. Severe trauma patterns across her entire physical frame. A sterile, regulation patient garment.
'All of this patterns scream abnormality, no?'
He wasn't an idiot. Objectively speaking, Lynn was a complete stranger to him; logically, he shouldn't possess a deep-seated emotional attachment to her well-being.
Or at least, that was the lie he constantly repeated to himself. Recalling her small, shivering, pitiful frame collapsed beside the filth of the garbage dump, his mind kept returning to the horrific nature of her physical wounds.
'And in the end... I suppose I'm just fundamentally incapable of being as cold-blooded and hard-hearted as you are, aren't I? Akane...'
Lamenting his own chronic soft-heartedness, he slipped his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers.
An individual as naturally indifferent and lazy as himself and Akane should logically only care about their own immediate comfort and functioning.
Just exactly like an apex dragon that ruthlessly guarded its own nest while displaying a total disregard for the chaos occurring outside its perimeter.
Yeah, the reality of the situation had truly compromised his defenses.
The sight of her suffering had deeply scratched against his internal conscience; he had no choice but to get close to her, to at least provide some form of tangible relief and help.
The initial logistical step he had attempted was accompanying her to the municipal police precinct to file an official report.
Ayato had genuinely believed that an anomalous case of this magnitude would trigger a strict, high-priority investigation by the authorities, and she would be safely integrated into a state protection program.
'Or so my naive ass thought.'
He stopped dead in his tracks on the dark floorboards, his chest tightening as he let out another heavy, pent-up sigh.
The moment he had attempted to bridge the gap and offer genuine assistance, her reaction to the invitation had been violently defensive.
How could a girl that young, an individual exactly his own age, exhibit that level of deep-seated, instinctual hostility toward safety?
What systemic, unimaginable abuse had she endured to reach such a broken psychological baseline?
Even when he had attempted a secondary strategy by asking his own aunt to step forward as a legal, private guardian, Lynn had flatly refused this choice too.
'Just what the hell is actually going on here?'
He was profoundly confused. It felt as though not a single goddamn thing in his life was capable of following his intended plan anymore.
Every attempt to unearth her past was met with an unyielding wall of emotional distance, evasion, and absolute avoidance.
The psychological stress was mounting, but he was entirely trapped by his own current limitations; it was the textbook definition of absolute helplessness.
He possessed power, yet even with that in hand, the core crisis could not be brought to the clean resolution he wanted. Life wasn't that simple, and he knew it better than anyone.
"Haahhhh... Whatever. It doesn't matter."
Regardless of the friction, a standard legal escort had failed. Legalized police assistance had failed too. Direct family adoption protocols had also failed.
If worst came to worst, his only remaining viable directive was to maintain a continuous, passive observation of her from the shadows.
Arriving at the building's front exit, he allowed himself to absorb the heavy, peaceful silence of the falling rain for a brief moment, finalizing a decision he knew his ego would never regret.
'I'll protect her. Even if I have to burn my own parameters to do it... I'll keep her safe.'
'Even if… if she is the one and the target of this chase… I believe there is more than meets the eye…'