The room was quiet
Too quiet. Only two headsets lay between them, glowing faintly like twin ghosts on a white table.
Mira's trembling hands hovered above the device. Her reflection on the polished screen looked like a stranger's — eyes hollow, lips cracked, hair disheveled. Her son, seated across from her, watched without blinking. The dim light from the ceiling flickered softly, making his silhouette seem both distant and near, like a dream fading into static.
"Are you ready?" he asked, his tone carrying no warmth.
She nodded, forcing a smile that didn't belong to her. "I think I've been ready for a long time."
They both put the headsets on — the world blurred, flickered, and then folded inward.
When the darkness cleared, they stood together in Eien. The digital air shimmered like heatwaves, suspended in perpetual dusk. Yet there were no other players — only them. The silence felt heavy, suffocating, real.
Mira's avatar looked just as it always had — tough, strong, untouched by pain — the opposite of the being in the real world. Her son's expression didn't change; he simply crossed his arms, his gaze sharp.
"So," he said, "you said you'd tell me. The truth. The real one."
Mira hesitated. For a long moment, she stared at her own hands, the light dancing on their surface like liquid glass. "The truth," she whispered. "It's… not pretty."
He stepped forward, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade. "Then stop hiding behind it."
Her head tilted up.
He continued coldly, "You've spent your whole life pretending to be strong. Pretending to be perfect. Pretending to be someone who didn't kill herself inside just to keep that fake smile. You wear that same damn mask here too. But you can't lie to me anymore, Mom."
She flinched. The title — Mom — sounded like a curse.
"…Then what do you want from me?" she asked quietly.
"I want you," he said, his tone low, trembling now, "to show me who you really are. The one you buried. The one who destroyed us."
The words hit her like a bullet. For a long time, she didn't breathe. Then, slowly, her lips parted — and her story began.
Her voice trembled at first, but once the memories started bleeding out, there was no stopping them.
"I was six when my mother left," she said. "She didn't even say goodbye. I remember her smell — memory and smoke — and how it lingered after the door slammed shut. My father said she went to the afterlife, but I saw her weeks later in the alley behind our house dead... I didn't say anything. I just… watched. My face looking like nothing but dissapointment for her own demise. But because I still loved her. My heart continued to ache"
The world around them shifted. Eien responded to her emotion, forming a dim street bathed in rain. The ground gleamed black, and the air smelled faintly of ash.
"I learned that silence keeps you alive," she said bitterly. "Because when I screamed, my father hit me. When I cried, he locked me in the closet. And when I finally stopped feeling, he stopped looking at me."
Her son said nothing — he just listened, his eyes wet with reflected light.
"I joined the army at sixteen," Mira continued. "They promised me food, training, and purpose. What they gave me was blood."
The scene changed again — concrete trenches under a red sky. Gunfire. Smoke. Screams. Mira's avatar now wore a soldier's uniform, her hands stained with virtual blood that wouldn't fade no matter how much she tried to wipe it off. As she was telling the story and rethinking the memories.
"They told us we were protecting Japan," she said. "But no one told us we'd have to kill our own."
Her voice broke.
"They lined up three soldiers. One of them was my friend, Hana. She used to sing to calm us when we couldn't sleep. They said she was a spy. They handed me a gun and told me to pull the trigger. I did."
The sound of the gunshot echoed in the empty digital air. The screen flickered red for a moment, as if Eien itself recoiled from the horror.
"I stopped sleeping after that," she whispered. "Stopped feeling. Stopped being human."
Her son stepped closer but said nothing. The story wasn't done — not even close.
"When I came back home, the world had moved on. I hadn't. My father the only person left and somehow still loved despite how cruel he was. Was dead — burned in a fire started by drunks in the old district. I was… alone again."
Rain began to fall in the simulation, gentle at first, then heavier — as though the world wept for her.
"I thought I could start over," she said. "I met your father. He was kind, once. He taught me to play piano — said my hands were made for it. And for a while, I believed it. Music was… the only time I didn't feel like I was drowning."
Her voice softened, distant — then darkened again.
"Then our daughter died. She was only four. Yeah you had another sibling you didn't know about once again. Sorry we never told you."
Her son's breath caught. But used to Mizuno's tradedy and his family's cruel history he ignored it and continued to listen, with a tear streaking down his left cheek.
"She got sick one winter," Mira said, her voice hollow. "We couldn't afford the medicine. I begged for help — the hospital turned us away. She died in my arms. I remember how hollow her hands were, how her last breath sounded like wind."
Lightning streaked across the sky of Eien, illuminating the two figures. Mira's avatar knelt, trembling, clutching invisible air.
"Your father and I broke after that. We stopped talking. Then we started screaming. Then we started breaking things. He eventually left his old self behind. And I didn't stop him."
She looked up, eyes glassy.
"I drank every night. Until I couldn't tell the difference between my dreams and my nightmares. And when I woke up, I met another person — poor, broken like me. I thought maybe if I pretended to be happy, I could forget. So I became someone else. A person who smiled too wide. Who never cried. Who told everyone she was fine. And thus this person could be my first real friend. But he died like everyone else to."
She laughed — a sound sharp and fragile as glass.
"But masks don't protect you. They rot you from inside."
The landscape around them darkened into a warped mirror of her old home — flickering photographs, broken bottles, a shattered piano. The air hummed like static.
"You grew up watching that mother I was," Mira said to her son, finally looking him in the eyes. "You watched her pretend. You watched her lie. You watched her forget how to love. And I made you live inside that nightmare."
Her son's lips quivered. "Stop," he whispered.
"I can't."
Her voice trembled, rising with the storm in the simulation.
"I loved you, I told myself I'd do better. But every time I looked at you, I saw the faces of everyone I lost. I hated myself for it. I told myself that pretending was better than letting you see the monster I'd become. But all I did was make you hate me instead. Seeing you as an image to make me suffer, due to my bad suffering at that point already."
He clenched his fists. "You didn't make me hate you."
Her eyes softened. "Then why do you like you do?"
He froze. His voice broke. "Because you weren't there anymore. Because I didn't know who you were anymore. You smiled at everyone, but me."
Silence. Only the rain spoke.
After a long moment, Mira rose to her feet.
"When Mizuno died in Eien," she said quietly, "I thought maybe I could undo my sins of sorrow that were getting worser once more. Because of his sorrowful death. I thought if I played long enough, built something good enough, I could erase the real world in my own eyes and soul entirely. I told myself it was for him — for you. But that was a lie. I wasn't saving anyone. I was running from my fears."
She turned toward him. Her avatar's eyes glowed faintly, tears like light tracing her cheeks.
"Eien became my coffin," she said. "A world where I could bury myself alive. Every time I logged in, I could be anyone — except me."
Her son's voice trembled. "So why now? Why tell me this now?"
"Because I can't keep pretending anymore," she said. "Because I'm tired of playing a character, even here. And because… you deserve to know who your mother really is. You showed me that after confronting the truth to me in Eien. Of you figuring out my real identity. And something inside me snapped to do so. Maybe sorrow or feeling sorry for my dear son, but I don't really understand myself at this point. Either way... It's the truth."
The digital storm quieted. The world around them turned pale, weightless — as if holding its breath.
Then, without warning, Mira's avatar began to distort. The mask she wore — that perfect, calm, happy version of herself — cracked like porcelain. Beneath it, the scars of her real face appeared — the hollow eyes, the trembling lips, the pain too old to hide.
Her son gasped.
"This," she whispered, "is me."
Her voice wavered, but she stood tall. "Not the soldier. Not the mother. Not the pianist or the faker. Just… me. The me you see now from all the sorrow."
Her son hesitated, then took a step forward. Another. And then another.
When he finally reached her, he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Then… maybe we can start again," he said softly. "Not in Eien. Not in the past. But now. So don't put on an act anymore."
Mira looked at him — truly looked — and for the first time in years, something inside her broke open. The tears that came were real, heavy, unstoppable. She didn't hide them this time.
As they stood together, the world of Eien shifted once more. The shattered piano in the background reformed itself, note by note, until it stood whole again. Mira sat before it, her son beside her, and began to play.
Each key struck sounded like a memory — some sharp, some soft, all fragile. Her melody trembled with every breath, every scar. Yet beneath it all was something new: peace.
The rain outside faded. The light grew warmer.
Her son closed his eyes and listened. For once, it wasn't the mask that played — it was her. The real her.
And though the song was soaked in sorrow, it carried a quiet promise — that even in the ruins of their pain, something could still grow.
When the last note faded, Mira looked up and whispered, "Thank you."
Her son smiled faintly. "For what?"
"For letting me be human again."
End of Episode 9: "The Being Beneath the Mask."