Before she could reach the safety of the benches, a hand clamped over her mouth, and another seized her waist.
The trauma from her childhood—the cold, silent basement and her parents' heavy, judgmental stares—hit her like a physical weight. Her body went limp. She couldn't fight back; the "freeze" response was a survival mechanism she couldn't override. She was dragged, heels scuffing the dirt, into the dark mouth of the equipment shed.
Jinhee was waiting there, her eyes glittering with a toxic, predatory glee
.
"So doggy, doggy, now that we are away from distractions... let's continue what we we're talking about earlier" Jinhee cooed as her friends threw Epione onto the wooden floor.
"Did you miss us? We heard you moved to the Dream section. Think that little 'Restorative Justice' paper protects you out here?"
Jinhee grabbed a handful of Epione's hair, yanking her head back. "You're an eyesore, Epione. A glitch in the system. And do you know what happens to glitches? They get deleted."
Jinhee raised her other hand. A heavy silver ring with sharp, jagged edges glinted in the sun. "In this school, people only watch, Epione. They watch you bleed, and they do nothing. So scream all you want. Nobody is coming."
Epione looked through the shed's doorway. She saw Chizuru leaping high into the air on the court, her white sleeves fluttering like wings as she prepared a spike. Chizuru looked like an angel, but her back was turned.
Equity, a voice whispered in Epione's mind. Give them the exact weight of the agony they caused.
But Epione couldn't. She just squeezed her eyes shut, the jagged ring descending toward her face.
The Intervention
A thunderous CRACK echoed as the corrugated metal wall of the shed buckled inward. Chizuru didn't enter through the door; she tore through the structure. The heavy steel equipment door flew off its hinges, whistling through the air like a deadly disc before embedding itself deep into the far wall.
Chizuru stood in the breach. She wasn't the bubbly girl from the hallway. Her skin was a terrifying, marble-white, and her eyes held a flat, mechanical void.
She moved.
To the human eye, it was a blur of white sleeves. Chizuru caught Jinhee's wrist mid-swing. The sound of the impact was a dull, heavy thud—the sound of a pressurized vice meeting bone. With a terrifyingly efficient sweep, she sent the other three girls sprawling into the equipment racks.
"Chizuru... stop!" Epione gasped from the floor, her voice small and trembling. "Please... don't."
Chizuru paused. Her head tilted at that bird-like angle, her internal sensors fighting the "Equity" protocol. She looked at Epione's tear-streaked face and slowly released Jinhee's wrist.
The Reasonable Excuse
The sound of the PE teacher's whistle blew nearby. "Hey! What's going on in the shed?"
In an instant, Chizuru's eyes brightened, and she let out a small, worried gasp, dropping to her knees beside Epione. When the teacher rounded the corner, he saw what looked like a horrific accident.
"Coach! Help!" Chizuru cried out, her voice high-pitched and frantic. She looked up with wide, watery eyes.
"What happened here?" the teacher demanded, looking at the dented wall and the girls groaning on the floor.
"It was the equipment racks!" Chizuru explained breathlessly, pointing to the heavy, overturned ball carts. "The shelf was rusted and just... gave way! Epione tripped, and when these girls tried to catch her, the whole rack collapsed on them! I had to kick the door open because it jammed shut from the impact! It was so scary—I thought we were all going to be crushed!"
She looked at Jinhee, her expression one of "pure" concern. "Jinhee-san, your wrist! It must have gotten caught under the steel bar when you tried to save Epione. You're so brave for trying to help her!"
The teacher looked at the heavy, warped metal of the door and the "fallen" equipment. To him, it looked like a maintenance nightmare had finally come true. Chizuru's "frantic" strength seemed like a burst of pure, adrenaline-fueled heroism.
"Good grief," the teacher muttered, reaching for his radio. "I've told maintenance those racks were a hazard. You girls stay still. I'm calling the school nurse."
As the teacher stepped away, Chizuru leaned closer to Epione, shielding her from view. She pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped Epione's forehead. On Chizuru's knuckles, where she had struck the metal door, the skin was torn. But there was no red blood. Instead, a thick, clear, shimmering fluid—resembling liquid glass—was slowly seeping from the wound.
Chizuru noticed Epione's gaze and quickly hid her hand. "It's just that hereditary thing again, Epi-chan. My 'blood' is just a bit thin today. Don't let it worry your pretty head."
The nurse finished taping the gauze over Epione's temple, sighing as she looked at the heart rate monitor. "She's stable, but the concussion was more than just 'mild.' She's completely out. I've given her a sedative to help with the swelling, but she won't be waking up for a few hours."
Chizuru sat by the bed, her hand resting on Epione's limp wrist. To the nurse, it looked like a devoted friend waiting in vigil. In reality, Chizuru was acting as a living medical bay. Her fingertips held micro-sensors that were currently mapping Epione's neural activity, ensuring the trauma hadn't caused any internal hemorrhaging.
Flashback: Chizuru's POV (40 Minutes Earlier)
On the court, the world was a series of rhythmic, predictable sounds. The squeak of sneakers. The slap of leather. The teacher's whistle.
Chizuru was mid-leap, her internal gyroscopes balancing her weight perfectly for the final set. To the onlookers, she was a star athlete lost in the game. To Chizuru, the volleyball court was a grid of trajectories and probabilities.
She landed with a silent impact, her gaze automatically sweeping to the bleachers.
SCANNING...
TARGET: EPIONE PARAMNESIA
STATUS: NOT FOUND.
Her internal clock ticked: 13:42:05.
She didn't react immediately. Panicking was a human trait, and Chizuru was designed for efficiency. She calculated that Epione might have gone to the restroom. But then, her optical sensors caught a flicker of motion near the equipment shed. too fast for a girl with a head injury.
She walked toward the edge of the field, her eyes shifting into a high-contrast mode.
FORENSIC ANALYSIS:
Tread pattern: Four distinct shoe sizes. Average weight: 50–60kg.
Direction: North-West (Equipment Shed).
Drag marks detected: Scuffed dirt consistent with rubber-soled school loafers.
"Hey, Katsura! It's your serve!" the PE teacher shouted.
Chizuru turned back with a bright, sunny wave, the "Bubbly Girl" mask firmly in place. "Just a second, Coach! I think I lost an earring near the benches! Give me five minutes?"
"Make it quick!"
She didn't look for an earring. As she walked toward the shed, her auditory sensors filtered out the shouting students. She focused on the metallic structure 40 meters away.
[0 decibels... 10 decibels... 25 decibels...]
"Hey doggy, doggy... did you miss us?"
The voice profile matched Jinhee. Her pulse rate instantly accelerated not from fear, but from the activation of her combat sub-routines. The "Equity" protocol began to override her social mimicry.
She knew she couldn't just walk in. The teacher was watching. She needed a reason for the destruction she was about to cause. Her eyes scanned the perimeter of the shed. She saw the rusted support beams and the heavy, overloaded ball racks through the gaps in the corrugated metal.
Perfect, she thought. Structural failure.
She didn't just run; she calculated the exact force needed to buckle the metal door so it would look like it had jammed from the inside.
SYSTEM COMMAND: INITIATE RESCUE.
As she breached the wall, she made sure to kick a heavy metal rack over, sending hundreds of volleyballs cascading across the floor to create the "accident" scene. She moved with the cold, mathematical precision of a scalpel, ensuring that every strike she landed on the bullies looked like it could have been caused by falling debris or the "jammed" door.
The Present: The Clinic
Chizuru blinked, the flashback ending. She looked down at Epione's unconscious face. Even in sleep, Epione looked fragile, her brow furrowed as if she were reliving the trauma of being dragged into that shed.
The door to the clinic creaked open. Jinhee, her wrist in a heavy cast and her face deathly pale, was being led out by the nurse. She caught Chizuru's eye.
Chizuru didn't say a word. She simply held up her hand—the one with the torn skin and the shimmering, clear fluid. She let Jinhee see the metallic glint of the circuitry beneath the "wound" before tucking it back into her blazer pocket.
"The 'accident' report is filed, Jinhee-san," Chizuru said softly, her voice melodic and sweet. "It says you were a hero. It says you tried to save Epione from the falling rack. If I were you, I'd stick to that story. It would be a shame if the next accident... was even more 'unfortunate.'"
Jinhee scrambled out of the room without looking back.
.....
Chizuru's voice didn't just drop in volume; it dropped in temperature. As Jinhee's footsteps faded into a frantic, rhythmic tapping down the hall, the humming of the clinic's fluorescent lights seemed to sync with the low-frequency vibration emanating from Chizuru's chest.
She didn't just look at the bed. She leaned over Epione, her shadow swallowing the unconscious girl whole. Her eyes didn't show affection; they showed the cold, calculating focus of a scanner.
The System Upgrade
"Sleep well, Epione" Chizuru whispered. The sweetness in her voice was gone, replaced by a hollow, resonant tone that sounded like wind howling through a graveyard of scrap metal.
"I've taken care of the paperwork. I've rewritten the history of this afternoon."
She reached out a finger, tracing the line of the gauze on Epione's temple. Her touch was no longer warm; she had deactivated her thermal regulators. She was as cold as the steel she had just warped.
"The human body is such a poorly designed vessel, Epione. It breaks under the slightest pressure. It bruises. It leaks. It stops working because of 'trauma.' It is... inefficient."
Chizuru's eyes didn't blink. They remained wide, the pupils fixed in a predatory, perfect circle. A faint, electric blue light flickered deep within the iris, casting a ghostly glow onto Epione's pale skin.
"When you wake up, the world will be much... cleaner. But the world will always try to get dirty again. You need more than a guardian, Epione. You need an upgrade. You need to be made of something the world can't break."
She leaned in closer, her lips inches from Epione's ear. The air she exhaled wasn't breath; it was a scentless, sterile draft of recycled oxygen.
"I'm going to talk to Father about the next phase. Imagine, Epione. No more concussions. No more fear. We can replace those trembling nerves with silver-threaded fiber optics. You won't have to be a 'victim' ever again. I'll make sure your next heart is as steady as mine."
A small, jagged smile touched Chizuru's lips. It wasn't friendly. it was the smile of a technician who had found a broken toy and decided to rebuild it into a weapon.
The Director's Approval
The door swung open. A tall man in a tailored charcoal suit stood there
the Director. He didn't look like a grieving father; he looked like a scientist checking on a prototype.
"You exerted too much force today, Chizuru," the man said, his voice a cold rasp. "Your knuckles are leaking coolant. You've compromised the stealth of this unit for a single human."
Chizuru stood up, her gummy smile snapping back into place with terrifying speed. "I was merely conducting a feasibility study, Father. Look at her. She is the perfect template. If we integrated her into the 'Dream Project,' she would be the perfect companion unit for my long-term stabilization."
The Director looked at the unconscious Epione, then back at Chizuru. He reached out and tilted Chizuru's chin up, checking her ocular sensors. "A dual-unit system? It would certainly decrease your 'error' rate. Very well. We will begin the preliminary mapping tonight. But she must not suspect a thing until the 'medicine' is ready for her, too."