It started with a dog.
Not a beast. Not a monster. Just a dog that used to hang around the school gates—some mix of shiba and stray mutt, always begging for food. Haruto called him "Tanaka-senpai" as a joke.
Now, Tanaka-senpai was growling at nothing. At air. At wind. At Yuuya.
Yuuya watched from a bench, fingers on his phone, pretending not to notice. His eyes were sharp. He wasn't pretending anything.
The dog's mouth foamed. Its skin twitched unnaturally, like something underneath wanted out.
> [Field Reading: Unstable Lifeform Detected]
[Species: Domestic – Mutation Rate: 62%]
Mutation?
> [Classification: Awakening Rejection – Classless Anomaly]
"Something's trying to force its way into the world," Yuuya muttered.
He stood.
Tanaka-senpai snapped toward him like he'd heard that. Like the word world offended it.
Its back cracked once.
Then it lunged.
---
Yuuya didn't dodge out of fear. He moved because the air told him to.
The system didn't help. There was no power-up. No buff. No fancy overlay.
Just instinct sharpened by silence.
He sidestepped the leap, gripped the metal trash lid nearby, and swung. It connected with a crunch—not bone. Not flesh. Something… brittle and wrong.
The dog slammed into the wall. Growled. Tried to stand. Its shadow didn't move with it.
Yuuya saw that and knew:
> "That's not the same animal anymore."
He raised the lid again—but the dog froze. Not from fear. From code.
Its body locked. Glitched. Twitched in place.
Then it shattered.
Not into blood. Not into flesh.
Into light.
And the pieces disappeared like someone revoked its rendering permissions.
> [Classless Anomaly Neutralized]
> [Reward Calculating…]
[Error. No Class Assigned. Initiating Manual Override.]
> [You were not supposed to win.]
---
Yuuya sat down slowly.
The lid was still in his hand. His heartbeat was steady. His face was calm. His mind wasn't.
He'd just killed something.
Something that wasn't fully alive anymore.
---
Back in class, Haruto was animated again.
"This world is becoming a full anime arc," he said. "I swear, if I don't get some kind of lightning powers soon, I'm transferring to a magic school."
Makoto rolled his eyes. "This isn't a story, man. People are disappearing. Stuff's mutating. That's not fun. That's extinction in slow motion."
Yuuya said nothing. He stared out the window.
Outside, he could see it now.
Thin lines in the air. Fractures. Like someone had started to redraw the city and stopped halfway.
The world was patching in new rules.
He opened his phone. No signal.
No bars. No Wi-Fi. Just a blinking message:
> [Manual Sync Achieved]
> [Awakening Class: Unclassified]
> [Trait: True Learning – Activated]
---
Yuuya looked at his hand.
No glow. No surge. No drama.
But he could hear everything.
The breathing of everyone in the classroom. The wires in the walls. The heartbeats of students two rooms over.
And above all, he heard… the silence.
Not quiet. Silence.
The kind that fills a space where a god should be.
---
That night, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
And the system whispered:
> [You've entered the story without permission.]
> [Let's see if you can stay.]
And far above Earth, something opened its eyes.