Saturday morning felt wrong.
Not because the sky was strange or the world looked different—but because nothing looked different. Everything felt too normal. Too still.
Yuuya sat up in bed. His phone showed 7:43. Then 7:39. Then 7:46. He didn't even bother blinking.
> [Sync Interference – Minor Delay Detected]
In the kitchen, his mother poured coffee into a mug she hadn't picked up yet. His father read the headlines aloud:
> "Streamer disappears mid-broadcast. Codex investigating unexplained blackout."
> "Gate opens inside abandoned subway. Authorities deny incident."
> "Football match canceled. Player vanishes after scoring goal."
Yuuya took a bite of toast that was cold before it left the toaster.
"Something's pushing through," he muttered.
His parents didn't ask what he meant. Maybe they didn't hear it. Maybe they'd already forgotten.
---
At school, the front gate was under Codex control.
Gray armored officers scanned every student. A first-year got pulled aside. They didn't say why—just mentioned an unstable signal.
> "Awakened Type: Unknown. Emotional Spike: High. Escort requested."
The student vanished into the van. No questions asked.
Everyone else walked quieter after that.
---
During lunch, the conversation took a turn.
Haruto leaned across the table, grinning. "Bro, I swear, the world's turning into a fantasy novel. Gates, awakenings, monsters? What's next? A hero with cheat powers?"
Yuuya raised an eyebrow but didn't respond.
"I mean, seriously," Haruto continued, "I wonder if I'll awaken something cool. Maybe I'll get teleportation. Or laser eyes."
Someone at the next table cut in—Makoto, tall, serious, always scowling.
"It's not a joke," he said flatly. "If this is really becoming fiction, then what happens when the final boss shows up? What happens when we're not the main characters?"
Haruto blinked. "Jeez, relax. I was just messing around."
Makoto stood up, tray in hand. "Messing around won't help when your neighbor turns into a beast and you're not ready."
He walked off.
Haruto sighed. "Dude needs to chill."
Yuuya finally spoke. "He's not wrong."
They both turned.
"This isn't a story," Yuuya said. "It's the world shifting. And nobody's written the ending yet."
Haruto stared at him. "Man... you always say stuff like that and make me regret joking."
---
In the hallway, one of the mirrors was missing. Haruto said it shattered during lunch yesterday.
"No one touched it. It just cracked, like it saw something it didn't want to."
Yuuya didn't laugh.
Because he knew exactly what it saw.
---
He didn't go to class that day. Not really.
Instead, he followed a signal that had returned the night before—the one tied to Mika.
She wasn't just missing. She was still pinging.
And the signal was coming from a gate that didn't officially exist anymore.
---
It was deep underground. The train station that got shut down months ago—official story said it was a gas leak.
Yuuya walked down the broken steps. The air didn't move. The lights were still, but flickering inside the walls like they wanted to blink.
The gate wasn't glowing like usual. It was dark. Like it had run out of color.
And Mika stood just outside it.
"Thought you'd show up," she said, not turning around.
"You disappeared," Yuuya said quietly.
"Not really. I just… went through a gate that wasn't closed properly."
She looked back at him.
> "This isn't a dungeon anymore. It's a broken one. A forgotten gate. Something the system tried to erase—but couldn't."
He checked his tracker.
> [Gate Classification: Unknown]
[Danger Level: ???]
[Status: Sealed – Incomplete]
It shouldn't even exist.
"Mika, why is it still here?"
"Because it's full of things people forgot. Memories that didn't get deleted."
She turned fully now.
"They don't want us calling it what it is. But it's leaking."
Yuuya stepped forward. "Leaking what?"
The gate pulsed. Just once.
The air changed. He felt it in his bones—weight without mass. Pressure without source.
The system tried to give it a name.
> [Unknown Energy Detected – Partial Identification: D_M_]
[Auto Translation Failed – Foreign Entity Present]
Then it glitched again. This time, for real.
> [Dark Matter Breach – Core Unsealed]
The gate didn't open. It just… broke.
The cracks didn't run along the stone. They ran across reality.
Yuuya stumbled backward as his vision blurred. Not from pain—from overwriting. Like the system was trying to reclassify what he was seeing and failing.
Mika didn't run.
She stepped into the darkness.
"Don't follow yet," she said. "You're not ready to see what's inside people's lost memories."
Then she disappeared.
Not warped. Not teleported.
She was rewritten.
> [Tracking Signal Lost – Divergent Class: Confirmed]
Yuuya looked at the gate. It had already sealed again. Like nothing happened.
He didn't touch it.
He just opened his notebook and wrote three words:
> "The breach started."
And underneath that:
> "This isn't about awakening anymore."
> "It's about remembering what we were never meant to know."
---
That night, his reflection blinked first.
The system sent one message:
> [Lie #3 Identified: The system is under your control.]
He didn't respond.
Because somewhere in the city, a second forgotten gate just opened. And this time, he felt it.