Junyo shifted his weight, thumb worrying the ridge of his wrist. "I'll leave you guys to it," he murmured, catching the edge of the tension. A small two-finger nod, then he peeled off towards the stairs, boots ticking down until the sound thinned.
Tang-Ji didn't notice Kazami at first—not until he stepped forward, the creak of his boots grinding softly against rusted gravel. The wind had quieted now, leaving only the dying echoes of riots far below and the neon flicker of broken signs humming like nerves stretched too thin.
Then he spoke.
"Tang-Ji…" His voice was low. "Would you mind if I had a word with Ukiyo? Alone."
She turned to him, ready to nod, but the moment her eyes met his, the words caught behind her teeth.
It wasn't the Kazami she knew.
Not the one who stumbled through sword swings or smirked when he knew he would win in a battle. Not the Kazami whose quiet steadiness grounded her in the middle of chaos. His presence alone was enough to drive away her doubts, like a hand steadying hers in the dark. However, this expression—it didn't fit in any of the boxes she'd built for him. His eyes, usually sharp or irritated or vaguely distant, were glassed over, storming with something sinister.
A bitterness that burned around the edges. Regret like rust down to the marrow. And a kind of flame that could not be put out by water alone. Like he'd spent a long time trying to undo something.
Tang-Ji didn't know what it was, but it hollowed something in her gut just looking at it.
She nodded.
Didn't speak. Didn't need to.
As she rose from the ledge, brushing imaginary dust from her knees, a whisper—no louder than a breath—slipped past Ukiyo's lips behind her.
"You're right," it came, barely audible.
Tang-Ji paused, just for a fraction of a second.
"Unfortunately, I'm not like any normal person," Ukiyo continued. "That one person will be me."
The words were vague. Almost dreamlike. A soft fracture in time. Tang-Ji's breath caught, but she didn't turn around. Whatever Ukiyo meant—whatever truth was tangled in that voice—it wasn't hers to grasp right now.
She passed Kazami, the cool air brushing between them like a thread cut too soon, and walked forward into the metallic quiet. Her footsteps disappeared into the distant static of the city, but her thoughts lingered, like a hand brushing a memory just out of reach.
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Tang-Ji hadn't expected the silence to be so loud. Not here, high above the city, where the dying sun leaked across the metal bones of Green Digitalus and the riot below screamed like a beast tearing at its own skin. And yet, as Kazami stepped forward, the silence sharpened.
He walked past her and sat down at the far end of the bench. They did not speak, but their eyes did. A language without syllables, only shadows and weight. It was as if they already knew the shape of the conversation—how it would curve, how it would crack.
Between them, a bitter wind crawled through the metal latticework of the structure. The air tasted like dust and static. Every now and then, the screen panels flickered, humming a deep synthetic tone that faded into silence.
Kazami looked at her.
Her face was pale, almost paper-thin in the gold dusk, and her eyes had grown darker since the last time. Beneath the corner of her right sleeve, the edge of an old scar peeked out—jagged, white like thread pulled too tight. It pulsed in his vision, quiet and cruel. The kind of wound that doesn't bleed anymore. He had given her that. Once.
He swallowed and turned his head slightly, just enough to glance at the floating HUD to his left. A sleek strip of transparent blue hovered near his peripheral vision, softly ticking. He scanned the bars—health, mana, hunger—for the party. And there she was.
[ Ukiyo — 0 / 100 Hunger ]
The bar was hollow. Depleted.
Kazami blinked. The noise of the interface opening broke the silence like a bubble pop—thup. His hand flicked, and his inventory expanded in a warm blue glow, icons neatly stacked: berries, grilled tofu, preserved rolls, and instant meals. He selected one—a warm rice bun with sweet red bean paste—and placed it gently on the edge of the bench beside her.
"You should eat," he said.
Ukiyo didn't even look at it.
He tried again. "Even if it's not real. Even if we won't die from it. The hunger—it still hurts. You know that. You can't die from it here, but the pain doesn't go away. In the real world, at least you'd pass out. Here, it just... lingers. Forever."
Still, no response. The wind rustled the hem of her coat.
Kazami's voice dropped lower. "Please."
"No," she said, as calmly as if reciting a number.
He clenched his jaw. "Why do you always do this?"
"Because I remember." Her eyes didn't flinch. "I remember the hot chocolate."
Kazami froze.
She continued, cold and precise: "You gave it to me that morning. Said I deserved something nice. You smiled—do you remember that? Then that night, you asked if I drank it. And I said yes."
He turned his face away, almost flinching.
"You got angry. Not over the drink. But the lie. And all the other little lies that I instinctively made. And what came after... I see it in my dreams. Every time."
"I—"
"You always said you just wanted me to be honest. But what you really wanted was control. Like when you made me wear those clothes you picked. Like when you screamed because I didn't obey. You wanted love, but you made it hurt. Over and over."
Kazami gritted his teeth. His voice cracked despite himself. "I thought you said you forgive me."
"I didn't… forgive doesn't mean forget," her eyes distant. "I dreamed them instead. I wake to the echo of your voice. And the scar you gave me never fades in here."
The wind pulled at the stray hairs on her face. Her fingers remained still on her lap.
"I thought you changed," she said, quiet. "But I guess some things never do."
The weight of it pressed down on him. For a moment, he felt like he couldn't breathe. "You think I don't know?"
He turned to face her fully. "After that day—after they tore us apart—I lived in hell. You think I slept? I didn't even know if you were alive. You could've died at any moment, and I wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere. I didn't know if they cured you or if you just disappeared. And every day I hated myself for not protecting you better."
He exhaled, a sound like rusted metal splitting.
"When I first came to Japan... I didn't understand anything. Couldn't read. Couldn't speak. I was raised in a glass house—sheltered and stupid. But you..." He looked at her now with trembling eyes. "You taught me words. Not just how to say them, but how deep they went."
He inhaled. "The first word you taught me was your name. Ukiyo."
Her gaze flickered.
He spoke softly now, like dragging memory from smoke. "The floating world. Fleeting, delicate. A life full of longing and impermanence. A world built on illusions, where people smiled while they drowned. You were always the one who saw past the surface."
He smiled, bitter. "But you were never fleeting. You were the most stubborn person I knew. Even when I broke you... you never disappeared."
"When you got angry," her voice firmer now. "That I didn't wear the clothes you chose. You said I embarrassed you. That I was ruining what you made for me."
He closed his eyes.
"You wanted to build me into something," she continued. "But you never asked what I wanted. You just told me who to be."
"I wanted what was best for you," Kazami muttered.
"You were trying to fix me."
Silence fell again. The riot below still howled like a wounded creature, but it was a distant noise, barely reaching the high perch where they sat.
He looked down. "I thought I could make things right. That if I tried hard enough, you'd see I changed."
Her voice was like frost. "Change isn't measured by how hard you try. It's measured by how you treat the people who no longer trust you."
Kazami's hands curled into fists.
"Then why," he asked, cracking, "why are you still doing this?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"Why are you helping everyone? You know what fighting this game means. You're choosing to die, aren't you?"
Ukiyo looked towards the skyline where the sun finally dipped below the towers. Neon reflections shivered across glass. "I don't care what happens to me."
Kazami blinked. "What?"
"I can hear them," she said. "Voices. Agony. Desperation. They echo in my head like static. Every cry, every scream. Even when I sleep."
She turned to him now. "Even when you hurt me, I could hear you. Your pain. You thought I didn't feel anything. You once called me cold. Emotionless."
His mouth opened, then closed.
"But I do feel. I feel it all. I just chose not to show it. Because someone had to stay strong. Even if it tore me apart."
The wind slowed, like the air itself was listening.
"I don't do this for glory," she said. "Or revenge. I do it because I believe people can be better. Even the ones who break others."
Kazami looked down at his hands. Trembling. Silent.
He stood up.
"You've always been like that," he whispered. "Ever since the day I met you."
And with that, he walked away, the sounds of his footsteps muffled by the steel beneath. Ukiyo didn't watch him go.
She just closed her eyes.
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The shouting had grown sharper, more discordant, even though Tang-Ji had walked far from the plaza where the riot began. The echoes of raised voices spilt down every alley and side street, bouncing between flickering neon signs and broken glass. It was like the city itself was arguing—every billboard, every siren, every screen pulsing with disagreement.
She stopped in the middle of the cracked road, shadows spilling beneath her feet as an LED ad buzzed above. "A perfect world," one voice from the crowd called, filtered through static. "A place where all wishes come true," another echoed, distant, like a thought slipping between memories.
"A perfect world—my ass!" someone shouted just ahead, a man's voice flaring with disbelief. "You think this is some utopia? This was planned. All of this. Every announcement, every system reset—they built this prison on purpose!"
She blinked slowly. Those words again.
"Of course they did," a woman snapped back, her voice shrill. "These Japanese players knew. That system announcement wasn't random. It's why they grouped up first and hoarded all the starting loot. Why do you think the missions on the east side stopped spawning? They're locking us in."
Someone else added, "A place where all wishes come true? Bullshit. All I see is a city falling apart while the locals play gods."
More shouting erupted behind her, overlapping into a blur of sound that scraped against her eardrums. "A world that completely eliminates violence, pain, and death? Then what the hell is this?" That voice cracked into a scream, followed by a heavy crash—maybe a bottle, maybe a face against metal.
She flinched. A fight had broken out nearby. A bottle clattered across the sidewalk, its label blinking
"I told you, they built this place! This whole game's rigged against us—!"
"It's not even our fault! You think we'd trap ourselves?! We were just playing—"
"No, they're locals—they had an edge from the start. Look at their gear!"
A scuffle broke out. Tang-Ji took a step back. Somewhere, a system sound chimed.
She wrapped her arms around herself. Her tattered coat barely reached her elbows now, the seams fraying like straw in the wind. Underneath, her long-sleeved black top was threadbare, scorched and full of holes. Her combat skirt hung lopsided, torn halfway down the side. Nothing about her outfit felt like it belonged anymore—not in this place, not in this body.
She sighed. 'I look like a shadow of who I was… or maybe I never looked like anyone at all.'
Her boots crunched over crushed plastic and shattered bone-like debris as she moved again, slowly, the riot dulling into an ambient roar behind her.
"Desires are the toughest prison to break free from," a voice hissed through a static-blasted speaker near a half-collapsed building.
She froze.
That line stirred something. Not in her ears—but somewhere deeper, like the ghost of a memory pulling her sleeve.
Her eyes dropped to the flickering puddle beside her. The rain hadn't fallen in hours, but the water remained—still and oddly shallow, as if clinging to the cracked asphalt out of spite. In it, her reflection stared back, though something was wrong. Off.
Both eyes shimmered red.
Not the dull red of fatigue, but something deeper, glossier—like glass held over fire. Her lips were still, but the reflection smiled faintly, too faint for comfort. It was watching her.
She blinked. The reflection didn't.
Then a sound reached her from somewhere further down the street.
Her gaze snagged on movement at the edge of the street—a small rabbit, ears twitching, nosing through a line of trash bags. In the bushes beyond the kerb, two low, steady eyes watched, yellow and patient. A beast slipped from the green with no sound at all, a grey streak that crossed the gap; jaws closed, a soft crack, and the rabbit fell still, dangling from its teeth. When the animal lifted its head, muzzle dark and wet, she caught a distant flash of red in its eyes and felt her own gaze answer.
Her heart thudded once, sharp against her ribs. Her face did not move. No flinch, no sound—only a hollow, steady calm where emotions should have been.
A ripple. Just one.
The smile vanished. Her reflection fractured, dissolved into broken rings of light.
In its place, the puddle darkened—stretching wide like a stage curtain pulled open—and silhouettes emerged, warped by water and neon, their gestures sharp and violent. Voices bled into one another, rising and falling like a glitching chorus of blame.
She let out a thin breath before biting hard on the inside of her cheek. 'How bitter.' At this point, she had already come to terms with the illusions around her.
'A puppet show?' she thought. 'That's what this is starting to feel like.'
She remembered now, faintly. Her mother used to tell her stories—old ones, stories passed down like hand-me-down robes with patterns too delicate to discard. Her mother's voice had always been calm, strict, and measured. A woman who believed in doing things the right way—no shortcuts, no indulgences. Tang-Ji hadn't always agreed with her traditional mindset, but she tried to honour what she could.
'Do not watch it if you are going to take stories lightly,' her mother would say. 'Even stories have spirits.'
But she had watched it once—hidden under the altar table during the spring festival, peeking from beneath the cloth while the older kids whispered and gathered. The puppets weren't carved like usual—they were too human. Too soft.
It was Ukiyo's Eternal Journey.
A tale of a girl who tampered with fate and lost all her emotions in return. A girl trapped in an endless loop of scenes—each act a desperate reach for something human. Joy. Sadness. Anger. Love. The show was told without dialogue, only strings and motions and the sickening creak of wood. But the emotion lingered.
Some said it was just a story. Others, that it was real—that it was created by a sorcerer who wanted to trap the worst feelings of mankind into a single cursed performance.
Back then, she'd been too young to understand the emotions. Now… Now it felt like she was inside it.