The girl didn't vanish.
Even after the streetlights flickered back to life, even after the world "resettled" into normalcy, Yuna Shinohara still stood at the center of the street. Her eyes—white as bone and empty as space—tracked Hiragi with unnatural precision.
"She's stuck," Hiragi said.
"Or she's anchored," Ishigami corrected. "Something's keeping her here. Either a memory... or a purpose."
He knelt, placed two fingers against the pavement. A faint ripple danced across the concrete—like the surface of still water when disturbed. A residual dream-layer, semi-stable.
"This area is overlapping realities," he continued. "It's a bleed zone."
"She looked at me," Hiragi said quietly. "She knew me."
"That's impossible," Ishigami replied. "Yuna never met you in Eden. You only saw the server logs, not her simulation stream."
"No." Hiragi's jaw tightened. "I remember that voice."
He looked back at the girl.
"You died," he muttered. "You shouldn't even be…"
The girl blinked.
The world screamed.
They were no longer in Yumeshiro.
The moment Yuna blinked, the world inverted. Streets twisted. Skyscrapers bent downward like wilted flowers. The sun turned black.
Hiragi found himself standing in an endless hallway of mirrors—each one reflecting a different death.
His death.
In one, he was bleeding out on the school rooftop. In another, he was shot point-blank by a woman in red. In the third, he was eaten by a swarm of faceless children.
And in every mirror, behind him… was Yuna.
She walked slowly. Hands dripping with ink.
"You watched me die," she whispered, "every time."
"I wasn't there," Hiragi snapped. "I didn't see your simulation. I didn't even know your name—"
"But I saw you."
Yuna raised her hand.
The mirrors shattered. The hallway screamed.
Ishigami barely pulled Hiragi back to consciousness.
"You stopped breathing," he said coldly. "For twenty-three seconds."
Hiragi gasped, hand gripping his chest. "She showed me something—no, someone. A version of me. One that... watched her die over and over."
"A variant? Or a corrupted data echo?" Ishigami narrowed his eyes. "There were other user-side accounts inside Eden. Not all were official."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying... she might've been programmed to remember."
Ishigami stood. "And worse—she might not be the only one."
They returned to the office that night.
Airi was already there, her arms crossed. She'd been following the news: mass hallucinations, people sleepwalking into traffic, parents claiming their children were 'talking backwards' in dreams.
"You opened something," she said without greeting. "And now the city's bleeding dreams like a slit throat."
Ishigami set down a file. Inside were fourteen confirmed reports of sightings like Yuna's. Most victims had one thing in common—they had all been inside Eden.exe, even if only briefly.
"What do we do?" Hiragi asked.
Airi tapped the edge of the table. "We find out who turned Eden into a weapon."
Ishigami nodded slowly. "And then we find out who gave that weapon a soul."
That night, Hiragi couldn't sleep.
Not because of the usual nightmares. Not because of what he'd seen.
But because someone was standing at the edge of his bed.
He turned.
Yuna was there.
But she wasn't staring at him this time.
She was crying.
"I remember everything," she whispered.
And vanished.
[End of Chapter 72]