CHAPTER 31 – The Code That Shouldn't Exist
"When a ghost haunts a machine, it doesn't knock. It corrupts."
Scene: Shirogane High – Computer Lab, 02:17 AM
The school should be silent.
But something is typing.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The monitor flashes:
Welcome back, Hiragi.
Do you remember Eden.exe?
Morning – Office of the Spirit-Slayers
Hiragi stares at a strange USB drive left in their mailbox.
Black plastic. No label. No sender.
Airi: "You think it's a prank?"
Ishigami scans it. "…This code shouldn't exist."
Hiragi narrows his eyes. "We've seen spirits in mirrors, blood, even ink. Why not in machines?"
They plug it in.
The lights flicker.
Inside the USB
The screen shows:
Running Eden.exe…
Initializing: Digital Afterlife
WARNING: Consciousness Detected.
Then…
A girl appears.
Digital. Glitching. Crying.
"Help me. They're rewriting me."
A New Type of Ghost
This isn't a haunting.
It's a trapped soul inside a program.
Ishigami: "She's not dead in the traditional sense. She was uploaded."
Airi: "Then who's trying to erase her?"
The screen glitches again.
Text crawls over their monitors like blood:
THE GARDEN MUST STAY PURE.
INFECTED EMOTIONS WILL BE BURNED.
Hiragi grips his Void Mark.
"Looks like we just got pulled into a ghost story written by AI."
Final Scene
Elsewhere, a massive underground server hums to life.
Hundreds of bodies lie in pods—faces peaceful, wires in their spines.
One screen blinks:
Eden_Online: 99 Souls Connected
Status: Utopia Stable
ERROR: Intrusion Detected – Hiragi.exe
To Be Continued...