Saturday came without fanfare.
Yuuya's alarm didn't go off. Not because he forgot to set it, but because time stopped tracking him for the night. His phone showed 7:42, then 7:41, then 7:44—all while he stood in the same spot brushing his teeth.
> [Time Drift: Local Node – Phase Lag Detected]
He rinsed his mouth and didn't blink. He was watching the faucet water slow down in frames, like the world had buffering issues.
He tried refreshing reality by opening the window.
The street outside looked… paused. A crow in mid-flight, wings only halfway through the flap. A jogger frozen mid-stride. Only the clouds moved.
> [System Correction Delay – Rendering Priority Adjusted]
He closed the window.
> "I'm syncing too fast," he said aloud.
---
He kept moving. Normal things. Made breakfast. Ate slowly. Every motion felt ten frames ahead.
At one point, the spoon in his cereal bowl made a full rotation without him touching it.
> [Echo Feedback Loop Engaged – Kinetic Desync Observed]
He didn't mention it to his parents.
They were starting to forget small things—like how many steps it took to get upstairs, or how long coffee had been brewing. It wasn't just drift anymore. It was cognitive fallout.
> "The sync spreads," he whispered.
---
Later, he took a walk. Not to go anywhere. Just to observe.
At a stoplight, a man crossed before the green. But instead of honking, the cars just sat there. Idle. Still. Their drivers blinked in sync. All at once. All together.
> [Civilian Desync Level 01 – Passive Drift State]
He turned down a smaller street and passed by a child holding a toy robot. It glitched once. The toy—not the child. Its arm flickered between plastic and metal.
> [Localized Reality Compression – Device Memory Leak Detected]
He didn't say anything. He just kept walking.
---
At the library, he sat near the window with a philosophy book open and his device tucked inside the pages. He was mapping spike locations now—places where the system layered thin.
The map looked like a disease pattern. Mostly centered in cities. Mostly near people with strong emotional output.
> "Emotion affects the field," he muttered.
> [Correct – Emotional Charge Accelerates Local Index Drift]
The system answered this time. Not as a voice. Just as an acceptance.
> "So love, rage, panic—they all open the door wider."
> [Confirmed – Influence Threshold: 4.21 Emotional Delta Units]
He stared at the number. It was too clean. Too exact.
> "How long have you been measuring us?"
No answer.
He closed the book and looked outside.
A cat crossed the street, but its shadow kept walking five seconds longer.
---
By late afternoon, he had questions. And so he tried something stupid.
He stood in the center of his room.
Closed his eyes.
Let go of all thought.
And said:
> "Tell me a lie."
The system responded immediately.
> [Processing Request: Invalid – Statement Contradiction Detected]
> "I didn't ask for truth. I asked for a lie."
Silence.
Then:
> [Lie: You are the only one.]
Yuuya opened his eyes.
> "That's what I thought."
The room darkened slightly. The shadows bent again.
> "You said I was syncing… but I'm not the only one syncing. Am I?"
No response.
> "Then how do I find the others?"
Still nothing. But his tracker blinked once.
Not a location. A name:
> [Node 019 – Echo Signature: Active – ID: MIKA?]
---
He met Mika once or twice. She wasn't special. Quiet. Normal. Good grades. But now she was a node.
He pulled up her name. Just stared. Then the system flashed another message:
> [Echo Drift Pattern: Divergent – Alignment Type: UNKNOWN]
Divergent?
> "You're hiding things."
> [System Error: Insufficient Clearance]
That was new. The system had always obeyed. Now it was pulling rank.
> "So it's not just a tool," he whispered. "It's a watcher too."
---
He left his house around dusk. No destination. Just followed the ping.
The streets looked fine. Too fine.
Children laughed in slow motion. Dogs barked without sound. An old man swept the same spot on the sidewalk over and over.
He passed a mirror nailed to a telephone pole. In the reflection, he wasn't blinking.
> [Sync Overshadow: Stage 2 Initiated – Observer Bleed Imminent]
He stepped back. The reflection stayed still a second longer than it should. Then smiled.
He kept walking.
---
The signal brought him to an abandoned train station. Rust. Graffiti. Stillness. But in the air—vibration.
Not sound. Not heat. Just presence.
Mika stood near the tracks.
Alone.
Staring at a tunnel that no longer connected to anything.
> [Echo Signature Verified – Node 019 Confirmed]
He walked forward slowly. She turned before he spoke.
"Mika," he said.
"I knew it was you," she replied. Her voice was calm. Like this wasn't strange at all.
He hesitated. "When did you start seeing it?"
She smiled faintly.
> "It wasn't something I saw. It was something I remembered."
That answer shook him.
> "Remembered?"
She pointed toward the tunnel.
> "It's not a dungeon. It's a memory leak. The system doesn't clean them. Just pushes them where people don't look."
> [Field Interference – Echo Dialogue Disrupting Standard Sync Logic]
He took a step back. Mika turned again.
> "You think we're syncing. But maybe we're just being reset."
He blinked.
She was gone.
And the tunnel?
It hummed.
---
Back home, the lights in
his room flickered. The mirror was blank now. Just… gray.
No reflection.
No message.
And the system whispered:
> [First Lie Identified: You are the only one.]
[Second Lie Pending…]
Yuuya didn't answer. He just picked up his pen.
> "Then let's find the rest."