Fukuju woke up with his face in the ramen pot.
Steam rose around him in gentle curls, the scent of miso and calamity filling his nostrils. He blinked twice, spat out a noodle, and realized he was back in his stall. The chrome jellyfish was gone. The sky, mercifully, had stopped trying to remodel itself. But the air hummed with the lingering wrongness that usually preceded an interdimensional mess.
"Junpei," he said hoarsely, lifting his head. "What year is it?"
"Same one as before," replied Junpei from the walkie-talkie. "You just blacked out for about thirty seconds. HQ says the rift's closed. Also, your livestream went viral. People are calling you 'The Soup Prophet.'"
"Tell them to unsubscribe."
He straightened his apron, trying to remember whether he'd hallucinated the whole thing. But then, the sign above his stall flickered, rearranging its kanji into words that were definitely not Japanese: PRIME CONTACT SITE: REOPENING SOON.
"Ah," Fukuju said. "So it's going to be one of those weeks."
The first scream came from the river.
He turned his head just in time to see a wall of water explode upward like a geyser. Something huge and glittering burst from the surface—wings of feathers that turned to scales at the tips, a beak lined with shark teeth, and a long, sinuous tail that lashed the air like a whip. It let out a cry that was part eagle, part whale, part something that should never have been crossbred in any reasonable universe.
The creature's body shimmered, caught between biology and glitch. Patches of it flickered into static, revealing bones made of light.
Fukuju stared. "Great. A birdfish. Because the sky and ocean clearly weren't confusing enough apart."
Pedestrians screamed and scattered as the thing swooped low over the riverside, slamming into a drone tower and showering the street in sparks. The fortune teller ran past clutching her crystal ball like a baby.
"Junpei," Fukuju said, already grabbing his ladle like a weapon. "We've got a code hybrid on the loose."
"Define 'hybrid.'"
"Flying seafood platter with murder issues."
The walkie-talkie crackled. "Containment teams are en route. Do not engage."
He was already running.
The birdfish was thrashing by the bridge, trapped momentarily in the tram wires, shrieking digital noise. Its scales shimmered between reality layers like a bad signal. Beneath its thrashing body, the water boiled with displaced current and faint electric blue.
Fukuju jumped onto the railing, his sandals slapping the metal. He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out a small, cube-shaped device. It looked like a child's toy but buzzed faintly with dimensional resonance. He twisted it, and it unfolded into a staff of glowing circuitry, humming like a lazy hornet.
"Alright, sushi-bird," he muttered. "Let's not make this personal."
The creature didn't care for negotiations. It snapped its jaws, sending a gust of wind that ripped a nearby billboard in half. Fukuju ducked, rolled, and slammed the staff into the ground. The air around him shimmered—hexagonal patterns rippling outward as an invisible barrier formed.
The monster hit it full force and recoiled, shrieking like static feedback. Its feathers caught fire where they touched the barrier, but the flames burned blue and digital, not red and natural.
That was when Fukuju noticed something odd: the creature was bleeding numbers. Streams of digits poured from its wounds like binary ichor, dripping into the river and turning the water into a mirror of code.
"Junpei," he said into the comm. "It's leaking data again."
"Like the koi incident?"
"Worse. This one's rewriting reality as it bleeds."
Sure enough, the bridge's railings were sprouting coral, and the asphalt beneath his feet rippled like wet sand. He could smell salt and electricity.
A voice echoed in his head—not the jellyfish's calm telepathy, but something frantic and half-coherent: Error—containment—splice anomaly—Fukuju field interference—
"Yeah, yeah, blame me as usual," he grunted, vaulting off the railing.
He landed on the birdfish's back. The creature bucked, trying to shake him off, its feathers slicing through the air like blades. Fukuju jammed the staff between two scales and twisted. The circuitry flared bright, and the world momentarily froze.
A holographic interface appeared before his eyes, showing layers of geometry and code streaming in real time. The creature's identity flickered: Subject 7-Λ: Splice Between Layer 44 Avian Entity and Layer 12 Marine Prototype.
In other words, a cosmic lab experiment that had fallen through the cracks.
He groaned. "You people really need better security protocols."
The creature thrashed, but Fukuju forced the staff deeper, channeling the containment code. The air filled with the smell of ozone and something ancient. For a brief, terrifying moment, he saw not feathers and scales but an endless sea of data beneath the world—a living ocean of reality fragments, restless and hungry.
The staff pulsed once more, then discharged with a thunderclap.
The birdfish dissolved into light, collapsing into the cube's core. The barrier faded, leaving behind a faint aftertaste of salt and neon.
Silence. Then, a lone noodle fell from his sleeve into the river.
He exhaled. "And people say cooking's not a dangerous job."
Junpei's voice crackled in his ear. "HQ confirms containment. Good work, Soup Prophet."
"Don't call me that."
"Too late. It's trending."
Fukuju looked down at the cube in his hand. The creature's essence shimmered faintly inside, still twitching like a dream trying not to end. The Bureau would probably quarantine it, study it, and file a dozen reports he'd never read.
But he couldn't shake the feeling that the sky's earlier glitch and this creature's appearance weren't random. Things didn't just slip through the cosmic cracks by accident—not this often. Something was loosening the seams.
As he turned back toward his ramen stall, he noticed a shadow moving under the river. Long. Coiled. Watching.
He frowned. "Right. So the sequel to this mess is already warming up."
Back at his stall, the vending machine rattled again. It spat out not a pigeon this time, but a small glass sphere. Inside it swirled a miniature storm of static and light, forming faint shapes—wings, gills, eyes.
The label on the machine blinked: 'ONE FREE PREVIEW. SUBJECT: BIRDFISH SEQUENCE—PHASE TWO.'
Fukuju sighed, lit a cigarette, and looked skyward. The clouds were returning to normal, but now they looked like they were pretending too hard.
He took a drag, exhaled smoke that shimmered faintly blue, and muttered, "This isn't a containment issue anymore. It's a leak."
Somewhere high above, the universe adjusted its tie and tried very hard to act like nothing was wrong.
But Fukuju knew better. The cracks were spreading. And the next thing coming through wouldn't fit back into a cube.