A flash of green.
The screech of tires cutting across rain-slick pavement, rubber grinding metal sharp into the silence of the evening.
A gasp. Fragile. High-pitched. The kind only small lungs could make.
Fuyuki Hayakaze didn't expect to die today.
He was supposed to be home already—game in hand, headphones on, chugging milk tea while booting up Shadow Specter III: Tales of the Unwanted, a spiritual successor to one of the most brutally unbalanced ARPGs in the scene. A game made by developers who'd apparently forgotten mercy was a virtue.
He was excited. Thrilled, even. The pre-release footage showed untelegraphed attacks, status effects with no cure, and a parry window tighter than most people's patience. Delicious. Perfect. The kind of challenge he lived for. A mess of impossible obstacles just waiting to be conquered.
His plan was simple: map the bosses, test RNG patterns, and break the game's AI with frame-perfect inputs. Upload it. Stream the VOD. Maybe gain another thousand subscribers overnight.
But now, he stood not before a boss gate, but at a crosswalk.
This wasn't a game. There were no invincibility frames here.
Just a flickering pedestrian signal. A scream. And a truck.
Time did not slow down. His heartbeat didn't thunder like a war drum. There was no orchestral swell or visual vignette. No cinematic foreshadowing.
Reality shattered like glass against a clay brick. Tires screamed against concrete. Rain hissed. Wind howled through narrow alleys between neon-lit buildings. The sound hit first—a jagged screech that broke the moment in two.
Then came the girl.
She couldn't have been older than five. Her yellow raincoat hung awkwardly over her small frame, drenched and heavy, as if it had been made for a sibling who'd grown out of it. In her left hand was a red balloon twisted into the shape of a rabbit, its glossy surface bobbing with every step, until the wind tugged it loose.
The string danced. The girl followed. One step off the curb. Another. Then a third.
Right into the street.
And the light was still red.
Fuyuki's mind did not move through steps. There was no internal flowchart, no "If A then B" logic tree. The calculus of consequence never entered his mental space. He didn't weigh anything—not risk, not injury, not the value of a stranger's life over his own.
His body just moved.
The game slipped from his hand. The plastic bag crumpled against the wet asphalt. His legs surged forward before his mind even caught up.
He ran.
The driver of the truck—a blue delivery vehicle—was already leaning on the horn, mouth frozen in a soundless scream, eyes locked in helpless horror.
The vehicle bore down like inevitability incarnate. Too fast. Too loud. Too late.
The girl had frozen in place, wide-eyed and breathless, as if her brain couldn't process what she'd done. Her fingers curled instinctively around the balloon string, as though holding on to it might somehow pull her back to safety.
But safety wasn't coming. Not unless someone brought it.
Fuyuki kept running.
Rain lashed his face. The chill clung to his skin like a vise. His lungs burned. His footfalls slapped the concrete, each one getting closer to either victory or death.
He didn't care.
She was all he saw now—the girl, stranded mid-lane, the truck bearing down like an inescapable meteor.
And he reached her. Just in time.
With the last ounce of momentum, he shoved her—hard, sharp, just enough to break her frozen stance and send her stumbling back toward the sidewalk. Her feet tangled beneath her, her body toppled, but she was clear of the truck's path.
He wasn't.
A jolt. A flash. The universe cracked open.
The front grill of the truck collided with his side with a sound like a wooden bat hitting concrete. There was no time to scream. Only pain—a brutal, world-ending burst of it that wasn't elegant or cinematic. It was raw. Final. Real.
His vision began to fade even before he hit the ground.
Somewhere, far away, he thought he heard the girl crying. People shouting. The sound of the driver's door swinging open, a voice screaming for someone to call emergency services.
But all of it was static. None of it registered. His brain was too busy processing the error.
A death screen.
No retries.
No "Try Again?" prompt.
Game over.
But even as his consciousness unraveled, something in him—bitter and dry—muttered a final thought:
"Hah... noobs gotta be noobs."
And then, almost wistfully, like an afterimage of someone he used to be:
"Man... why am I acting like a savior now? It's just like… those old FPS lobbies, when the veterans carried the team full of scrubs…"
And then... darkness.