Chapter Text
Futaba Isshiki learned early that water was a privilege.
At Youji Isshiki’s house, it was locked behind a door she wasn’t allowed to touch. The bath was “expensive.” Soap was “wasteful.” Food appeared when it was convenient for him, which meant she learned how long a human body could run on tea and rice crackers before it started shaking. He didn’t hit her. That would’ve required acknowledging her existence. Instead, he talked around her, over her, through her, like she was an inconvenient piece of furniture Wakaba had forgotten to throw out.
She slept on the floor. A towel folded into something that pretended to be a pillow. Her laptop stayed in her bag—dead battery, cracked casing, seams held together with tape and muscle memory. Useless. Conveniently useless.
The USB stayed in the inner pocket, wrapped in a bag, pressed flat against her ribs like a second, colder heart. Sometimes she counted her heartbeats around it, as if that could stop it from turning into proof.
The truth sat closer to the surface than she liked. Every time she thought about the note, something twisted in her chest. A splinter of doubt lodged there, whispering that the words didn’t quite fit, that Wakaba didn’t sound like that.
Futaba crushed that thought immediately. Doubt was dangerous. Doubt meant responsibility.
If she hadn’t asked so many questions.
If she hadn’t needed help.
If she hadn’t taken up space so loudly it turned into a burden.
Wakaba would still be alive.
She remembered standing in a borrowed living room she wasn’t allowed to sit in, surrounded by relatives who wouldn’t meet her eyes. Men in dark suits filled the edges of the space, all posture and polite distance, as if grief were contagious. One of them held a sheet of paper and read it aloud.
The suicide note.
It described Wakaba Isshiki as deeply unhappy. Overworked and overwhelmed. It talked about stress and isolation and responsibility. It apologized. It explained. It framed everything neatly.
It mentioned Futaba. Not by name—just enough to make the implication sting.
It mentioned the pressure of raising her daughter. The exhaustion, the burden…
The sentences were too polite. Her mother was sharp, loud, and incapable of writing anything that neat without complaining about it first. This read like a sanitized rewrite.
(…but what if it was real?)
No one asked Futaba what she thought. The note had made sure of that. And who would ever trust an emotional thirteen-year-old, raw with grief and easy to dismiss?
The memory slipped, uninvited, into another one.
The week before everything happened.
Wakaba hadn’t bothered with pleasantries. She never did when time was short.
“Futaba,” she’d said, pressing a USB into her hand, fingers tight around Futaba’s wrist for half a second too long. “You need to keep this on you. Not in a drawer. Not in your room. On you.”
“What is it?” Futaba had asked, already curious, already anxious.
“My research,” Wakaba said.
Futaba gasped. “You mean your ultra-classified, don’t-touch-or-the-government-kills-us research? The one with the scary passwords and the ‘Futaba do NOT open’ sticky note? That research?”
Wakaba sighed, rubbing at her temple. “There are things I didn’t do right. Things I did that I shouldn’t have. I know that now.” She paused, thinking—always thinking. “I love you. I did my best to raise you. That doesn’t mean my best was good.”
Futaba laughed, sharp and nervous, already trying to turn the moment into a joke. “Wow, okay. Cool. Casual emotional bomb. Mom, are you dying or something?”
Wakaba hadn’t laughed back. She hesitated, just for a fraction of a second.
“There’s a boy,” Wakaba said finally. “He’s willingly thrown himself into the deep end without checking how deep it actually is. And the man he’s tying himself to is… powerful. Enough that backing out isn’t an option anymore.”
Futaba shifted uncomfortably. “So… what does that have to do with you?”
“If something happens to me,” Wakaba said, voice precise, controlled, “it means I failed to convince him that this path ends badly for everyone involved. Including himself.”
“Convince him how?” Futaba asked. “You said he chose this.”
“He did,” Wakaba replied. “That doesn’t mean he understands all of what he’s choosing.”
She hesitated, just long enough to matter. Wakaba then squeezed her hand once, firm and grounding. “And if anything happens to me,” she said, “don’t believe the first explanation you’re given.”
Futaba swallowed. Her throat felt too tight for words. “That’s—” She stopped, then tried again. “That’s a really messed-up thing to say, Mom.”
Wakaba’s mouth twitched. “I know.”
Futaba looked down at their joined hands, at the USB pressed between her fingers. “You’re saying this like you expect me to… what. Investigate you?”
“I’m saying this like I know you,” Wakaba replied calmly. “You won’t let this go. You never do.”
“That’s not— I can let things go,” Futaba protested weakly.
Wakaba raised an eyebrow.
“…Okay, I let things go eventually,” Futaba amended. “After I understand them.”
“Exactly.” Wakaba’s voice softened. “I wish you didn’t have to. I wish you could just be a normal kid, be sad, move on, forget me. But you’re not built that way.” A pause. “And I don’t want you thrown into the deep end blind.”
She turned Futaba’s hand slightly, making sure she felt the weight of the USB. “Keep this secret. Completely. If anyone asks, it doesn’t exist.”
Futaba’s fingers curled around it instinctively. “And then what?”
“Then you do what you will with the information,” Wakaba said. “I trust you.”
That landed harder than anything else she’d said.
“You… trust me?” Futaba asked, voice wobbling despite her best efforts.
Wakaba nodded. “You’re curious. You’re stubborn. You’re thorough to the point of self-destruction.” A faint smile. “If there’s something wrong here, you’ll find it. I’d rather you do that with at least some idea of what you’re dealing with.”
Futaba’s chest hurt. “That’s not comforting.”
“I know,” Wakaba said again. “I’m bad at comforting.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy and fragile.
“I promise,” Futaba said finally, the words shaking but real. “I’ll keep it safe. I won’t let anyone take it. I won’t— I won’t forget.”
Wakaba exhaled, slow and relieved, like she’d been holding that breath for a while. Then, abruptly, her tone shifted—lighter, brisk, almost aggressively normal.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Do you still want to go on that trip I promised you?”
Futaba blinked. “What? You can’t just— yes, obviously yes, but also you don’t get to drop all of this and then change the subject!”
Wakaba smiled, real this time. “I absolutely do.”
“No, you don’t,” Futaba said, indignant now, grateful for the indignation. “You owe me an explanation. A full one. With details. Preferably a flowchart.”
“You’ll get one,” Wakaba said, standing. “On the way back.”
“You said that last time!”
“And I meant it last time too.”
Futaba huffed, but she squeezed Wakaba’s hand back anyway. “You better not disappear on me.”
Wakaba didn’t answer.
The trip happened.
It was short. Too short. Wakaba took too many photos and laughed at things that weren’t that funny. She let Futaba talk nonstop about games, tech, conspiracy theories, whatever came to mind, and actually listened. They ate junk food. They stayed up late. Wakaba didn’t open her laptop once. She didn’t check her messages. She didn’t rush.
Futaba was happy.
That should have been the warning sign.
At the time, she thought it meant things were going to be okay.
She only understood later that Wakaba had been saying goodbye.
Wakaba died on the way back.
She stepped into the road without hesitation, like her body had already made the decision before her mind could catch up. The car didn’t have time to stop.
By the time Futaba realized something was wrong, the best day of her life had turned into the worst.
Back in the present, Futaba swallowed, her throat tight.
What if the note was real?
What if the USB didn’t just explain things, but proved them?
She had stepped in front of the car by her own choice. No one had forced her.
And what if, hidden among files and annotations and unfinished thoughts, there was something worse than answers—confirmation that Wakaba Isshiki had looked at her own daughter and felt resentment, and had carried that feeling to the end?
Futaba’s fingers curled around the USB stick through the fabric of her bag. She hadn’t opened it. Not once. Not in a year. She told herself it was because her laptop was broken, because she didn’t have internet access, because she couldn’t risk anyone seeing. All of that was true.
It wasn’t the whole truth.
When Wakaba had been alive, Futaba had a proper setup. Multiple monitors. Stable connections. Money moving invisibly through systems most adults didn’t understand. Cryptocurrency wallets seeded when she was barely old enough to spell it. She still had that money. Online. Untouchable without access.
Now she had a cracked laptop, a dying battery, and a USB that felt heavier every day.
One day, a voice spoke. It was familiar in a way that made her skin prickle.
“You already know it doesn’t add up.”
Futaba froze.
“You’re not stupid,” the voice continued. “You’re just scared of the answer.”
Her heart hammered. “I’m hallucinating,” she muttered. “Cool. That tracks.”
“If you were hallucinating,” the voice said, amused, “you’d make me nicer.”
Futaba’s breath shook. “Go away.”
“Why?” the voice asked. “So you can keep pretending this is your fault?”
Silence pressed in around her.
“Open it,” the voice urged. “Rebel a little. You’re already paying the price.”
For the first time in months, purpose clicked into place like a solved variable.
She opened her eyes.
Futaba didn’t sleep that night.
She sat on the edge of the room, knees pulled to her chest, hands shaking hard enough that she had to press them together to make it stop. The room was dark and unfamiliar, like all the others had been. Her stomach hurt in a dull, persistent way she’d learned to ignore.
The voice was gone now.
Not gone-gone. Just… quiet. Like it had stepped back to watch.
She breathed in. Out. Too fast. Slower.
“I deserve to do this,” Futaba whispered to herself, because saying it out loud made it feel more real. “They’re horrible people.”
They were.
They forgot to feed her. Locked doors they knew she needed. Took money meant for her and complained about the cost of keeping her alive. Talked about her like she wasn’t there. Like she was a problem Wakaba had left behind on purpose.
Her anger came in late, but when it did, it was sharp.
Futaba slid the door open as quietly as she could. The house was dark, but not silent. A television murmured in the living room, low volume, late-night news looping endlessly. She froze, heart hammering, then crept closer, bare feet cold against the floor.
Her uncle’s wallet sat on the table. Untidy. Careless.
Her hands hovered over it.
Stealing was bad. She knew that. She’d been told that a lot, usually by people who stole from her first.
Her fingers closed around the wallet.
She took what she needed. Not everything. Enough to eat. Enough to survive. Enough to get away. Her hands were shaking worse now, adrenaline flooding in too fast, but beneath it was something steadier. Resolve. A decision that didn’t feel like panic.
The television cut to a different segment.
“…another apparent sudden collapse in the middle of traffic earlier today…”
Futaba stopped breathing.
The anchor’s voice stayed calm as footage played. A man frozen mid-step in a crosswalk. Cars swerving. Screams blurred into background noise. The words felt too familiar, sliding into place like pieces Futaba hadn’t wanted to name.
“…authorities are investigating what may be another case of a so-called mental shutdown…”
Her chest tightened painfully.
That wasn’t an accident. That wasn’t random.
The camera cut again, this time to a smiling teenager in a school uniform. He was polished and composed. Too calm for someone his age.
“…and once again, the case was cracked with help from the rising star of the investigation scene, often dubbed the ‘second coming of the Detective Prince.’ Despite being only a high school student—”
Futaba barely heard the rest.
Her mother hadn’t stopped suddenly because she was unhappy.
She had stopped because someone made her.
This wasn’t one incident. It was a pattern.
The realization hit her all at once, brutal and clarifying. This past year hadn’t just been grief and punishment and survival. She’d been cut off. Isolated. Moved from house to house, kept offline, kept quiet, kept small while the world kept moving without her.
While this kept happening.
Futaba backed away from the living room like it might bite her.
She didn’t go back to the room.
She grabbed her bag, shoved her laptop inside, fingers clumsy and fast. The USB followed, pressed deep into the pocket she always checked twice. She didn’t bother cleaning up. Didn’t bother covering tracks. That wasn’t the kind of escape this was.
At the door, she paused for half a second.
No one called her name.
No one noticed.
Futaba stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind her.
She didn’t look back. She pulled her hoodie up and tugged it forward, letting it shadow her face and swallow her hair. She hunched her shoulders, made herself smaller and sharper at the same time. Older. Meaner. Someone you didn’t look at twice.
Her hands were still shaking.
Anger flooded in where fear used to sit, hot and dizzying. It wasn’t clean rage. It was the kind that kept her upright, kept her legs moving when they should have given out. The kind that made everything suddenly very simple.
They killed her.
The confirmation burned through her chest, bright and undeniable. Not a bad accident. Not stress. It was murder, plain and simple. Planned, repeated, and still ongoing.
That thought alone carried her past the corner store lights.
The convenience store was painfully bright, fluorescent glare buzzing overhead. Futaba kept her head down and went straight for the cheapest calories she could find. Onigiri. A packaged bread roll. Something fried and questionably warm. She grabbed her favorite drink without thinking, muscle memory kicking in before guilt could catch up.
She paid in cash. Didn’t linger.
Outside, she tore into the food like it might disappear if she waited too long. She knew it wasn’t polite. She knew it looked bad. She didn’t care. Her hands were greasy, her mouth too full, crumbs sticking to her fingers as she walked.
She was starving.
Not just hungry. Starving in the way that made her dizzy, the way her body demanded repayment for months of neglect all at once. She ate fast, swallowing too quickly, barely tasting anything except relief. The drink burned pleasantly cold going down. She almost laughed from how good it felt.
She didn’t stop walking.
She didn’t want to be seen. Didn’t want to risk someone recognizing her, or worse, someone deciding she looked like an easy problem to report. She stuck to side streets, kept moving until the houses blurred into storefronts and the night noise swallowed her footsteps.
The station lights loomed ahead. Futaba slowed just long enough to steady herself, then headed straight for the gates without hesitation. Akihabara wasn’t far, and once she was there—
Once she was there, she could fix things.
The thought grounded her.
There was a shop tucked between louder, flashier ones. Small. Cluttered. Run by people who remembered her. Who remembered Wakaba. They’d let Futaba sit in the corner while her mom argued about parts and specs and timelines. They’d never talked down to her. Never treated her like she was in the way.
The shop was still there.
Tucked between louder, brighter storefronts, half-hidden behind stacked boxes and faded signage. The lights inside were warmer than the street, yellowed by age and dust and familiarity. Futaba stopped across the road and stared at it longer than she meant to.
Her chest tightened.
This was the first time she’d come here without her mom.
She pulled her hood lower and crossed anyway.
The bell above the door chimed softly. The smell hit her all at once—plastic, metal, solder, old fans working too hard. It was grounding. Familiar in a way that made her throat ache.
Someone looked up from behind the counter.
“Oh,” the man said, blinking. “Futaba?”
She froze.
“I haven’t seen you since—” He stopped himself midsentence, eyes flicking over her too quickly. The hoodie. The too-thin frame. The way she was gripping her bag like it might vanish. His expression shifted. Concern replaced surprise. “Hey. Are you… are you okay?”
“Yes,” Futaba said immediately. Too fast. Too loud. “Yeah. I’m fine. Totally fine. Just— uh—” Her brain stalled, then rebooted. “Laptop broke.”
She held it up like proof.
He nodded slowly, clearly unconvinced, but kind enough not to push. “What happened?”
“Overheating,” Futaba said, slipping into familiar territory like a lifeline. “Thermal throttling, random shutdowns, corrupted memory sectors. It’s been limping along for months and then finally rage-quit.”
“…Right,” he said, smiling faintly. “What do you need?”
Her shoulders loosened a fraction.
“RAM, first,” she said, already unzipping her bag. “DDR3. Eight gigs minimum, but if you’ve got sixteen I’ll take it. Also a new SSD— the old hard drive sounds like it’s dying in real time. Oh, and a replacement fan if you have one that fits this chassis. The bearings are shot.”
She rattled off the model number without looking at it.
The man raised his eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want to just buy a new laptop?”
Futaba recoiled like he’d suggested arson. “U-uh. Absolutely not. This one still has life in it! It just needs love.”
Also I can’t afford it, she didn’t say.
He laughed softly and disappeared into the back.
While he was gone, Futaba set the laptop down on the counter and flipped it over, fingers already finding screws by muscle memory. Her hands stopped shaking once she started working. The world narrowed to panels and ports and problems she knew how to solve.
The man returned with parts. “This should cover it. It’s not top-of-the-line, but—”
“It’s perfect,” Futaba said, eyes lighting up despite herself. “Actually, this RAM’s clock speed is better than the original. And the SSD— wow. This’ll cut boot time in half.”
She paused, then added, quieter, “Thank you.”
He watched as she opened the casing, movements precise and practiced. She grounded herself against the counter, worked carefully, talking under her breath the whole time.
“Okay, memory out… wow, yeah, no wonder you were crashing, buddy, you were running on fumes… new sticks in… click, click—nice—”
“You’ve done this before,” he observed.
“A lot,” Futaba said. “Mom taught me. And YouTube. And trial-and-error-induced suffering.”
He smiled, then hesitated. “Your mother… she’d be impressed.”
That made her hands stutter.
He cleared his throat gently. “I’m sorry. For your loss. Wakaba was… she was special. We miss her here.”
Futaba nodded, sharp and jerky. Her eyes burned. She kept them on the motherboard. “Yeah. Me too.”
She finished installing the parts, sealed the casing, and powered it on.
The startup screen flashed to life.
Futaba exhaled, something close to relief cracking through her ribs. “Yes. Yes! We’re back, baby.”
She paid without looking at the total. Most of the money she’d taken vanished into the register. She didn’t regret it. Not even a little.
At the door, she hesitated.
“Hey,” the man said softly. “If you need anything—”
Futaba panicked.
“I— um—” Her words tripped over each other. Abort. Retry. “Thank you. Really. For the parts. And— and for remembering her.” She bowed too fast, almost hit her head on the counter, and straightened immediately, mortified. “Sorry. I’m bad at this.”
He smiled, gentle and patient. “You’re doing fine.”
She nodded hard, like that settled it, and backed toward the door before her courage timed out.
The bell chimed as she stepped outside.
Cool air hit her face, and she sucked in a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding for the past ten minutes.
Laptop secure. Hardware upgraded. System operational.
Quest complete.
Futaba allowed herself exactly three seconds of satisfaction before the next objective slotted neatly into place.
Phase two: internet access.
Preferably unlimited. Preferably anonymous. Preferably somewhere she could disappear into the background and not be perceived by other humans ever again.
An internet café.
She cracked a grin despite herself. “Okay, Mom,” she muttered, adjusting the strap of her bag. “Watch this!”
With her hood pulled low and her heart still racing, Futaba Isshiki headed deeper into the city, already planning her next move.
Main quest updated.
Futaba treated survival like a speedrun.
Step one: establish base camp.
Internet cafés weren’t ideal, but they were workable. It’s semi-anonymous, opens late, and cheap if you didn’t mind sticky keyboards and the faint smell of despair. She mapped them like spawn points—locations, hours, foot traffic, enforcement vibes. Busy places were better. Busy places didn’t look closely.
Rules existed, technically.
Some cafés asked for ID after certain hours. Some banned minors overnight. Some pretended they cared. Enforcement varied wildly. A quiet kid in a hoodie who paid in cash and didn’t cause problems could slip through easily, especially if she didn’t stay too long.
So she didn’t.
She rotated cafés. Never the same one two nights in a row. Different neighborhoods. Different chains. Different rooms. If a place started recognizing her, she ghosted it. If a clerk looked at her too closely, she left before they could decide she was a problem.
Routine mattered.
She’d arrive late, pay upfront, head straight for a private booth if she could get one. Hoodie up. Bag close. Laptop out. The moment the door slid shut, the world narrowed to the glow of the screen.
Step two: don’t be traceable.
Public Wi-Fi was a joke. Futaba didn’t trust it for anything important. First thing she did was spin up a layered connection—VPN over VPN, bouncing traffic through countries that didn’t talk to each other and definitely didn’t care. She randomized her device fingerprint, spoofed her MAC address, scrubbed logs as she went.
“Okay,” she muttered, fingers flying. “If someone’s watching this, I hope you enjoy static.”
Cameras were next.
Most cafés had them. Cheap ones. Predictable ones. She didn’t bother disabling them outright—that would draw attention. Instead, she looped footage. Footage of Futaba doing mundane stuff on repeat. Anyone checking later would just see nothing happening. Boring and totally nothing suspicious.
Step three: income.
She didn’t touch the crypto wallets unless she had to. That money felt… heavy. Inheritance money. Last-resort money. Instead, she worked.
Anonymous tech jobs. Security audits. Freelance coding. Fixing things people didn’t want to admit were broken. Sometimes she cracked systems. Sometimes she just proved they could be cracked and sent the report. Payment came quietly. Digital transfers. Occasionally straight Bitcoin, no questions asked.
She hoarded most of it online. When she needed food or café time, she converted tiny amounts through peer-to-peer trades or gift cards. Enough to live. Never enough to notice.
She was careful. Careful was alive.
She stopped using the alias Medjed after the third time she saw the symbol pop up attached to things she didn’t like. Scams. Harassment. People using it as a mask instead of a warning.
“Ugh. You ruin everything,” she muttered, closing the tab.
New alias, then.
Alibaba.
This name was totally not because of an old hyperfixation. Totally not. This was a coincidence. A strategic coincidence.
Step four: buy a phone.
Futaba had put it off longer than she should have. Not because it wasn’t important—because it was too important. A phone meant being traceable.
But she needed one.
The electronics store was cramped and dim, the kind of place that sold last year’s models and didn’t ask many questions. Futaba lingered near the back, hood up, pretending to study a display while her pulse climbed.
The phone one of her relative had taken flashed through her mind. Confiscated “for her own good.” Left in a drawer. Forgotten. Another thing stripped away because someone decided she didn’t deserve it.
She clenched her fists.
Not this time.
She approached the counter and asked for a refurbished smartphone. Nothing flashy. Something common enough to blend in. She paid in cash. When the clerk asked if she wanted help setting it up, Futaba shook her head so fast it was almost a blur.
“Nope. Got it.”
She didn’t leave yet.
“Also,” she added, after a beat, “do you sell prepaid phones?”
The clerk glanced at her, then nodded. “Over there.”
Futaba took one too.
Redundancy mattered.
Outside, she sat on a low wall and powered them both on, fingers moving with practiced efficiency. The main phone got locked down immediately—permissions stripped, unnecessary services killed, location off, encryption enabled. She installed only what she needed. Messaging apps routed through layers she trusted. Nothing tied to her real name. Nothing permanent.
The burner stayed clean. Minimal. Emergency use only. No personal data.
She slipped the main phone into her pocket and tucked the burner deep into her bag.
Better.
Her mother died because she was involved in some shady shit relating to cogpsi, and Futaba had seen enough already to know that whoever was behind it didn’t stop once. They repeated and covered their tracks.
Which meant Futaba needed to cover hers.
She exhaled slowly.
Step five: don’t think about the USB.
She put that off for days.
Every night, it sat in her pocket like a loaded weapon. She’d check her setup three times. Then four. Then one more, just in case. She told herself she needed perfect conditions. Total isolation. No trace and no witnesses.
One night, in a private booth with the camera looping clean and the connection airtight, Futaba finally stopped making excuses.
She stared at the USB.
“Okay,” she whispered, heart pounding. “Endgame content.”
She plugged it in.
The drive spun to life.
The volume name blinked into existence at the corner of the screen.
WAKABA_PROTOCOL
Futaba stared at it for a second longer than necessary. Of course her mom had named it something dramatic. Of course it sounded like the kind of thing you’d find buried three layers deep in a government server right before everything went to hell.
She clicked it open.
Folders bloomed across the screen in nested layers, each one splitting into more—subdirectories stacked on subdirectories, tagged with timestamps, version numbers, revisions, notes-on-notes. It kept going. And going.
It was too much.
Weeks. Months. Maybe years of reading.
Futaba scrolled, dazed.
“This is… a lot,” she whispered.
Then she clicked the wrong folder.
Images loaded.
At first, she didn’t understand what she was looking at—grainy photos taken from odd angles, some blurred by motion, others too sharp. A laboratory she recognized distantly from memory. Wakaba’s lab. And in the center of frame after frame—
A teenage boy.
High school age. Brown hair. Expression unreadable in a way that made Futaba’s skin prickle. He was strapped into equipment in some photos. Standing calmly in others. Looking directly into the camera in a few, eyes flat, assessing.
He looked wrong.
And extremely familiar.
Futaba’s gaze snapped back to the paused news tab still open in the background. The smiling face of the teenage detective prince stared back at her.
Her stomach dropped.
“No,” she breathed. “No way.”
She opened the associated logs with shaking hands.
Subject A-01.
Primary test subject.
Only confirmed individual able to access the cognitive world (Metaverse) via spontaneous manifestation of a mobile application.
Futaba froze.
“…App?”
Her phone vibrated on the desk.
She stared at it.
A new icon sat on the screen. Red. Unlabeled.
What the fuck…
Futaba looked back at the monitor, pulse roaring in her ears.
Subject A-01 reports initial access to the app occurred without external trigger. Application appears self-generating, possibly tied to psychological thresholds. Attempts to replicate phenomenon in other subjects were unsuccessful.
There were timestamps. Repeated entries. Wakaba documenting access tests, stress thresholds, environmental variables. Futaba scrolled faster, heart pounding.
Then came the experiments.
Some were benign. Observation runs. Mapping how the cognitive world reacted to the subject’s presence. Measuring distortion levels. Tracking how shadows behaved around him.
Others—
Futaba swallowed hard.
Induced stress tests. Exposure to hostile cognition. Extended durations without exit. Simulated scenarios. Controlled isolation inside Mementos.
All experiments conducted with subject consent.
Subject displays unusually high tolerance for psychological strain, may lack self-preservation prioritization.
Futaba felt sick.
She kept reading.
Initial Persona designation: Loki.
Manifestation driven by intense anger. Motivation remains unclear. Subject refuses to elaborate.
Video files accompanied this section. Futaba couldn’t bring herself to open them.
Wakaba’s notes grew denser here, theory bleeding into observation.
Personas form under extreme emotional pressure. Strong emotion appears to act as catalyst, shaping cognitive armor. Anger is effective. Fear less so. Desire for control shows mixed results.
Secondary Persona emergence.
Subject accessed alternate Persona: Robin Hood.
Trigger event: researcher incapacitation during Mementos traversal.
The following paragraph was shakier, written later.
I was almost killed. Cognitive entities (shadows) reacted aggressively to my presence. Subject intervened. When asked why, subject responded: “You’re necessary.”
Post-event analysis suggests subject’s desire to protect is conditional. Robin Hood appears linked not to empathy, but to preservation of function. Subject requires researcher to continue experiments.
Futaba’s hands clenched into fists.
In the videos, his answers were clipped. Efficient. Emotionally empty in a way that felt intentional.
W: Do you feel distress?
A-01: No.
W: Do you resent this process?
A-01: No.
W: Why do you continue to participate?
A-01: Because it’s useful.
He looked straight into the camera when he said it. Measuring. Cautious. Futaba felt it immediately, the way his gaze lingered a fraction too long. This wasn’t just documentation.
They were both being watched by their superior.
Wakaba must have felt it too. She exhaled, rubbing a hand over her face.
W: Kid, I don’t understand you.
The boy tilted his head slightly, eyes flicking back to her at last.
Then he smiled.
It wasn’t the polished, gentle curve Futaba recognized from television. This smile was sharp. Knowing. Almost smug.
A-01: You don’t need to. Just don’t say anything unnecessary.
The smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Wakaba went very still.
Futaba swallowed, cold settling in her gut.
They were both fully aware that neither of them was alone—and that saying the wrong thing could get them both in trouble.
At the end of the folder, buried beneath layers of theory, test results, and aborted ethics reviews, was Wakaba’s final assessment.
It wasn’t formatted like the others.
It read more like a confession she never sent.
Futaba swallowed.
I have made a grave mistake.
My research was presented to me as preventative. Defensive. Applications in mental health intervention and national security were emphasized. I have since uncovered evidence that it is being repurposed.
Targeted assassinations via the metaverse, extraction of classified information through shadow interrogation…
I was lied to.
Subject A-01 is currently the only confirmed individual capable of entering the cognitive world consistently. As such, my superior has shifted focus from research to control.
He is being shaped.
Language used in recent briefings indicates intent to mold subject into a specialized operative. A Metaverse-based assassin. His age is considered “advantageous.” Subject appears aware of this trajectory. Whether he welcomes it or simply accepts it is unclear. He has not expressed objection.
I am afraid of what will happen when he realizes he no longer needs me—or when they decide I am no longer necessary at all.
The file didn’t end there.
A final log sat beneath the assessment, timestamped late at night, revision count higher than any other entry. Wakaba hadn’t tried to make this one neat.
If you’re reading this, then my usefulness finally dipped below the “worth keeping alive” threshold. Once the data is complete, I stop being an asset and start being a liability. Apparently, knowing too much is unforgivable.
So no. If I’m gone, it wasn’t an accident.
I’ve hidden most of the results from my superiors while I still can. What they have is deliberately incomplete. Sloppy, even. The real work—the conclusions that actually matter—is backed up here on this USB. Keep it on you. Don’t give it to anyone. Especially not people who insist they’re doing this “for your own good.”
Now. About the boy.
Subject A-01 still doesn’t have a real name in my files. That’s not because I didn’t ask. I’m not allowed to speak to him anywhere that isn’t monitored (except the Metaverse), and he knows it. Which makes it all the more interesting that he’s never reported me for hiding data. In fact—somehow—he’s covered for me more than once.
He looks at me when he does it. Right into my face. With the most infuriating, shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen.
Whatever his motivation for working with Shido is, it isn’t loyalty. I’m certain of that now. He was fourteen, Futaba. Nobody that age is genuinely loyal to a man like that. Whatever he thinks he’s doing—revenge, control, survival—it’s the stupidest plan imaginable. Diving headfirst into the deepest possible water and hoping you can outswim gravity.
I won’t pretend I don’t worry about him.
That probably surprises you. It surprised me too.
Shido lied to me. About everything. This research was never meant for mental health or national security. It’s being used for assassination, coercion, information extraction. And now that he knows killing a Shadow kills the person, he doesn’t need my ethical concerns anymore.
He has knowingly forced a teenage boy to do his violence for him. The kid understands that refusal isn’t an option. If he refuses, people like the yakuza don’t come for him first. They come for everyone around him. Including me. Including him afterward, because he knows too much.
That’s the trap.
He isn’t choosing freely. His choices exist in a corridor that’s been set on fire behind him, and everyone involved is pretending that still counts as free will.
And yes—this part matters, so don’t skip it.
Masayoshi Shido is your biological father. I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find out this way, but you deserve the truth more than you deserve my silence. There’s a reason I refused to answer when you begged me before. Saying his name felt like putting a target on your back.
I don’t believe he knows you’re related to him. I made sure of that. I wanted you as far away from his orbit as possible.
He is a very, very good liar. Not the loud kind—the dangerous kind. He hides his intentions behind concern, hides cruelty behind intelligence, hides ambition behind charm. He used me because I let him get close enough to do it, and I hate him for that more than I can put into words.
In another universe—one where adults weren’t catastrophically awful—I think you and that kid would’ve gotten along. I say “kid” very deliberately. He tries so hard to be something sharp and dangerous, but he’s still just that. A kid who never got to be one.
He never opened up to me, even in the Metaverse, even when we had moments without eyes on us. He kept everything locked down tight. And yes, in the Metaverse he wears this ridiculous black mask that covers his entire face. Completely. As if hiding his expressions in real life wasn’t already his favorite hobby. I suppose it’s efficient. Hard to read emotions if no one can see them. Typical him.
I know he doesn’t really have anyone. Not the way a child is supposed to. If we had met earlier under different circumstances, I think I would have taken him in without hesitation. But I don’t want to romanticize this. I’m aware he likely had no choice but to follow orders, even if those orders led him to me. I know that. And yet… I’ve grown rather fond of him anyway. Also—between us—I’m fairly certain he’s a Featherman nerd. He hides it terribly. I caught him correcting lore under his breath once. Don’t ask how.
If something happens to me, I hope—truly—that our relatives surprise me and take proper care of you. I want to believe that adults can still rise to the occasion. But if they don’t, then I hope you find your way to Sojiro. He’s gruff and stubborn, but he’s kind where it counts, and he knows how to stay off the radar. You’d be safe with him.
I know the world isn’t gentle with orphans. It never has been. So I hope you keep your skills sharp, keep asking questions, keep building things no one else can see yet. Your mind is brilliant, Futaba, and I want you to have a future that’s bigger than the mess I’m leaving behind. Even if—let’s be honest—you’re absolutely not the type to let this go. You were never going to accept a neat answer and move on, no matter how much I wanted you to just be a normal kid. So if you’re going to chase the truth anyway, please don’t be reckless. Think first. Plan twice. And try not to get yourself killed proving a point.
I’m sorry I’m leaving you like this. I really am. I wanted more time—for you, for us. But if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that you’ll survive this. And you’ll be amazing, even if the road there is rougher than it should ever have been.
I love you.
—Mom