In a dark corner, somewhere far away, a man sat quietly with one hand resting against the head of a white wolf.
His fingers moved slowly through her fur, scratching beneath her chin in the way that made her lean instinctively into his touch. A quiet, content sound rumbled from her throat.
"So..." he murmured. "It begins for this group too."
The faint light filtering into the room came from somewhere beyond its walls, pale and distant. What little of it reached him caught against his hair, revealing strands of silver that almost seemed to shimmer despite the darkness surrounding him.
He tilted his head, looking down at the wolf.
"How long do you think until this lot gives up... or gives in, Priye?"
The wolf blinked. Her ears twitched once before she tilted her head to the side, watching him with an expression that seemed almost thoughtful.
The man stared at her for a moment. Then he nodded.
"Ah."
His hand returned to her fur.
"So you don't think they'll last very long either." He paused. "They're already fighting."
For a few seconds, neither of them moved. Then the man's expression changed.
His hand stopped. He slowly straightened, his gaze shifting away from the wolf and toward something beyond the room.
"...It seems we're being watched."
Priya lifted her head. The man turned. His eyes met yours.
For one strange moment, the distance between wherever he was and wherever you were seemed to collapse. His iridescent eyes looked directly through the screen, as though the glass had never been there to begin with.
He blinked and then smiled slowly.
"Yo, reader."
There was a faint amusement in his voice.
"You're a bit early. It's not time for us to meet yet."
He lifted one hand and gave you a small, almost apologetic wave.
"Sorry about that."
His smile softened.
"Don't worry. There will come a time for us to meet, too."
He glanced briefly towards the wolf. "Until then..." The wolf's ears perked.
"Priye, lead our guest out." Priya looked toward you. For one heartbeat, she simply stared. Then she sprang forward.
White fur rushed toward the screen, filling your vision in a blur. The last thing you saw was the faint glimmer of her eyes before everything dissolved into darkness.
...
The darkness lingered for several heartbeats.
There was no sense of falling anymore. No sensation of being struck. No sound except the distant echo of something that might have been their own breathing.
Then Mimi woke with a scream.
She jerked upright so violently that her palms slipped against the floor beneath her. Her chest heaved as she instinctively reached for her throat, eyes wide with panic.
"My throat..."
The words came out perfectly. Mimi froze. She swallowed, then breathed in.
Nothing hurt. No burning. No choking. No pressure in her chest. Her lungs worked perfectly, as though she had never inhaled a single breath of those spores.
Around her, every head had turned.
Ragna was already sitting upright nearby, one hand braced against the floor. Her face was pale, and she looked just as shaken as Mimi felt. Across the room, Nozomi was already kneeling beside Gumi. The lavender haired girl stared blankly up at the ceiling, eyes wide and unblinking, as though she were still trying to understand where she was.
Neera was somehow already standing.
She had both hands wrapped tightly around a rubber duck. Nobody seemed to know when she had retrieved it.
Rai sat a short distance away with her knees pulled against her chest, staring into space. Her usual composure had vanished entirely, leaving behind an expression of quiet bewilderment.
Nozomi moved toward them before either could say anything.
"Are you both alright?"
She crouched beside Ragna first, checking her arms and shoulders before moving to Mimi. Her fingers gently examined Mimi's wrists, then her neck, then her face.
"Does anything hurt?"
Mimi shook her head.
"No."
Midori had remained standing several steps away from them throughout the entire exchange. She hadn't spoken. Her eyes moved slowly from Mimi to Ragna. Her expression had tightened. Her gaze lingered on them for another moment before narrowing slightly.
Ragna stiffened almost immediately. Her eyes narrowed as she caught Midori watching her from across the room.
"Why are you looking at me like that?!"
Midori blinked, apparently realizing that her expression had betrayed her. She quickly schooled her features, then offered an awkward little smile and stuck her tongue out.
"Sorry. I had a nightmare."
Ragna's brow furrowed. "What kind of nightmare?"
Midori hesitated, "...We had a fight." That answer seemed to make the room even quieter.
Gumi finally turned her head toward Midori. Her expression remained neutral, but something about her eyes suggested recognition.
"Gumi... same... dream."
Mimi snorted softly, "Okay, apparently we're all sharing nightmares now." She rubbed the back of her neck, thinking.
"I dreamed about spicy air. And those ruins. And dying. And accidentally shooting Ragna."
Ragna turned toward her. "...I had a nightmare about the same things."
Mimi blinked. "You did?"
"Yes."
Ragna's expression flattened, "Except in mine, you shot me."
Mimi winced. "...That tracks."
Neera's eyes moved between them rapidly, her thoughts already assembling themselves into something resembling a hypothesis. She looked from Mimi to Ragna, then to Midori and Gumi before finally speaking.
"So, to summarize," she said slowly, "we all dreamed about entering an orange forest, having a fight, separating from one another, and then dying in some way or another..."
"Not us."
Midori raised a hand slightly. Neera paused. Midori glanced toward Nozomi before continuing. "Nozomi and I didn't die."
Ragna frowned, "What happened to you two?"
"We found the river", Midori's expression softened slightly as she remembered it, "We were just playing around by the water for a while. Then everything went dark for a few seconds. When we could see again, we were back in the main hall of the Repository with everyone else."
Nozomi nodded. "That's what happened."
Neera's frown deepened.
"So the sequence wasn't identical."
She folded her arms, thinking aloud.
"Still, the probability of multiple people independently experiencing the same environment, the same events, and the same individuals within their dreams is extraordinarily low."
Her gaze sharpened. "Unless... We entered the collective unconscious."
Mimi stared at her, "...What?"
Neera looked increasingly pleased with herself.
"Think about it. Shared imagery, overlapping memories, identical experiences despite differing perspectives..."
"No," came a small voice. Everyone turned.
Rai was still sitting on the floor with her knees pulled close to her chest. She hadn't moved throughout the conversation. Her gaze remained lowered, her voice quiet enough that they almost missed it.
"No," she repeated softly.
Rai finally looked up. "That was real."
Her expression was strangely gentle.
"We actually died back there."
The room exploded with questions aimed at Rai, overlapping and being shot too fast. Rai flinched as everyone surged toward her at once.
Then Mimi stopped. Her eyes shifted toward the doorway. A blur of peach-colored hair had just passed beyond it.
Everyone slowly turned. Through the open doorway, they caught a glimpse of Stella hurrying down the corridor. She carried a basket filled with oranges from the greenhouse, one arm tucked beneath it as she continued toward the deeper sections of the Repository.
The room went quiet again. The girls exchanged looks. One glance was enough. Neera slowly turned away from Rai.
"...Stella."
Ragna nodded.
"Stella."
Mimi was already getting to her feet.
"Stella."
Midori hesitated for half a second before following them. Nozomi rose quietly behind her. Gumi simply stood.
Rai watched them go with an expression that suggested she knew exactly how this was going to end.
As the group filed out of the room, Midori's gaze lingered on Mimi and Ragna. She watched them from the corner of her eye. Ragna noticed. She glared back.
Midori immediately looked away. Neither said anything. For now, they followed the peach haired figure disappearing down the corridor.
Stella had already retreated to her room.
By the time the girls caught up, the polished door was firmly shut. Nozomi stopped in front of it and exchanged a glance with the others. After everything that had happened, they were almost expecting Stella to open the door with that same distant, ethereal composure and offer them some cryptic statement about fate, cycles, or the nature of existence.
Nozomi raised her hand and knocked. The door opened.
An orange immediately flew through the gap. It smacked Neera squarely in the face and dropped to the floor. For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Stella stepped fully into view, holding the basket of oranges in one hand and another orange in the other, which she was squeezing so tightly that her fingers had begun to sink into the peel.
"I SAID THERE ARE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE LEAVING!"
Her voice echoed down the corridor. Everyone flinched. Stella hurled the orange in her hand. It bounced harmlessly off Midori's curls.
"YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHAT YOUR ELEMENTS ARE! YOU DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO USE YOUR WEAPONS! YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IF THEY WERE COMPATIBLE WITH YOUR ELEMENTS!"
Another orange came flying. Gumi caught it in her mouth.
She stood there with the fruit hanging between her teeth, staring at Stella with the same neutral expression she had worn throughout most of her existence.
Neera opened her mouth. Stella immediately grabbed another orange.
"DON'T EVEN START. YOU STOLE AND USED A RUBBER DUCK INSTEAD OF A PROPER WEAPON!"
The orange struck Neera in the face again. She stumbled backward, blinking.
Mimi covered her mouth. It was becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether she was trying to suppress laughter or a scream.
Another orange sailed toward Rai. Rai ducked. It exploded against the wall behind her. She slowly looked at the splattered remains, then at Stella.
Stella pointed at her with the basket.
"AND YOU, RAI! I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE SENSIBLE ONE! YOU COULDN'T SOLVE A DISPUTE?!"
Rai stared at her, "...In my defense, there were several things I wasn't accounting for."
"YOU WERE ACCOUNTING FOR THINGS?!"
"Yes."
"YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACCOUNTING FOR YOUR TEAM!"
Rai's mouth opened. Then closed. "...Sorry."
Stella's shoulders rose and fell as she took several deep breaths. She squeezed another orange in her hand while muttering under her breath, the words gradually becoming less comprehensible to everyone except Neera.
"Improper synchronization... failed superimposition... metaphysical continuity... reset boundaries... causal displacement... the original state should have been preserved... I told them..."
Neera's expression slowly changed. Her eyes widened. She stopped looking at the oranges. She was listening.
"...Temporal superposition?"
Stella continued muttering.
"External state retention... informational continuity... fresh instantiation..."
Neera's face went pale. Stella finally seemed to realize that someone had understood her. She looked at Neera. Then she sighed, squeezed the orange one final time, and stepped backward.
"You should have asked before leaving."
The door slammed shut. The girls stared at it. The corridor fell silent.
Gumi was still holding the orange in her mouth. Mimi slowly looked at Neera.
"So..."
Neera didn't answer. Ragna frowned.
"Neera?"
She finally looked at them. "...I think I understand what happened."
Everyone turned toward her. Neera took a breath.
"Think of it like a video game."
Mimi immediately nodded.
"There's a save file," Neera continued. "You reach a certain point, and the game automatically saves your progress. If your character dies afterward, or you reach an ending you aren't supposed to reach, the game can reload that earlier save."
Ragna's expression slowly shifted, "So we died."
"Yes."
"And then...?"
"The world loaded an earlier state."
Mimi nodded slowly. "Okay. That makes sense."
Nozomi didn't look convinced.
"But we remember dying."
"That's the strange part."
Midori raised her hand slightly.
"So... are we ghosts?"
"No."
"Copies?"
Neera hesitated, "...Closer."
Ragna stared at her.
Gumi quietly removed the orange from her mouth. "...Same."
Mimi snorted. Neera rubbed her temples.
"There's another problem. If this were an ordinary save system, everything should have reverted. Including us. But we didn't."
She looked toward the corridor where Stella had disappeared.
"Which means whatever this place did wasn't exactly a reload."
Rai finally stepped forward. She had been unusually quiet since Stella's outburst. Now she sighed and reached into her clothing, pulling out a small notebook.
"I think I can explain it better."
She opened it and flipped to a blank page. "Imagine this isn't a game," She drew a simple outline.
"Imagine it's a sketch."
The others gathered around. Rai drew a landscape, then a few small figures inside it.
"This is the world. The people, the cities, the forests, everything you've ever known. All of it exists inside the drawing."
She tapped the page.
"Now imagine someone takes the entire sketch and makes a new copy."
She turned the page.
The second drawing looked almost identical.
"The new copy is based on the original. Same lines. Same shapes. Same world. But it's a separate piece of paper."
Nozomi's eyes followed the drawings carefully.
"So... the world wasn't turned backward."
Rai nodded. She pointed to the first page. "It wasn't rewound." Then to the second. "It was replaced."
Mimi's expression slowly changed. "So when we died..."
"You remained outside the sketch."
Rai's finger rested beside the little figures she had drawn.
"The world was replaced with a fresh copy. The new version doesn't remember what happened. It doesn't remember you dying. It doesn't remember the events that led there."
She looked at the girls. "But you do."
The room was quiet. Rai continued, her voice gentle.
"That's why your memories remain. You weren't restored from inside the world. You were carried outside of it, and when the world was instantiated again, you were placed back into the new copy."
Neera stared at the two drawings. Her expression had gone distant.
"So the save file analogy isn't quite right."
"No," Rai said. "It's just easier to understand."
She closed the notebook halfway.
"The world is the sketch. The resets create a fresh copy. The copy doesn't inherit the memories of the old one."
Her gaze moved across the group.
"But you do."
Mimi looked at the drawings for another moment.
"...That's actually way scarier than a save file."
Ragna folded her arms. "I was going to say confusing."
Nozomi quietly nodded. Midori looked between the two pages.
"...Then what happened to the original?"
No one spoke after that. The orange sitting on the floor between them suddenly seemed very small.
The corridor gradually emptied.
Gumi was the first to leave. She slipped quietly away toward the deeper sections of the Repository, the basket of oranges still sitting abandoned outside Stella's room. Nozomi watched her disappear around the corner before exchanging a glance with Midori.
"Come on," Nozomi said softly.
Midori nodded and followed. Neither of them said where they were going. They simply went after Gumi, leaving the others to recover from everything they had just learned.
Mimi, meanwhile, had apparently reached the end of her emotional processing abilities. She marched into the kitchen.
"I'm having a drink."
Ragna followed at a much slower pace, then promptly lowered herself onto the floor beside the dining table.
"I'm having a sleep."
She stretched out without another word, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Mimi ignored her. She marched over to the food synthesizer and began tapping through the interface. Rai wandered in behind her, watching with mild curiosity.
"What are you making?"
"Vodka."
Rai stopped, "...Vodka?"
"Yes."
Mimi selected the strongest option she could find.
"I need a drink. Something stronger than water."
The synthesizer hummed. A moment later, a bottle appeared. Mimi grabbed it immediately. Neera entered the room just as Mimi twisted the cap open. She looked exhausted. She pressed both hands against her temples and rubbed slowly.
"I need a strategy."
Rai looked at her. Then at Mimi. Then at the bottle. She seemed to consider this for a moment.
"Why not both?"
Mimi looked over.
"...You drink?"
"I've never actually tried it. You know, with the whole being an AI trapped inside a screen thing, I could never physically drink anything before."
That earned Rai a curious look. She took the bottle from Mimi, found a small shot glass nearby, and poured herself a measure.
Mimi leaned against the counter, watching with growing amusement. Rai lifted the glass.
"To... whatever just happened."
She took the shot. Her face immediately twisted.
"...Why do you humans even drink this?!"
Mimi burst out laughing. Rai stared accusingly at the glass as though it had personally betrayed her.
"I genuinely don't understand."
She looked at the bottle. Then at the glass. Then back at the bottle. After a moment, curiosity won. She refilled the shot glass. Neera watched her.
"...You're trying it again?"
"I need more data."
"You just hated it."
"That's precisely why I need more data."
Rai took another experimental sip. Her face scrunched up again.
"...Nope."
Mimi was openly grinning now.
"You look like you're trying to solve a murder."
"I might have more respect for murder."
From the floor came a miserable groan. Ragna rolled over onto her stomach, burying her face against the floor.
"Can everyone please stop talking?"
Nobody listened. Rai poured herself another shot. Neera stared at the two of them for several seconds. Then she sighed.
"...Fine."
She pulled out a chair and sat down.
"If we're going to deal with this, we need to figure out exactly what Stella meant by a reset, why we're retaining memories, and what happened to the original world."
Rai raised her glass, "Excellent."
Mimi raised the bottle, "Strategy meeting."
Ragna, still face-down on the floor, lifted one hand weakly, "I hate all of you."
Mimi grinned, "Love you too."
Neera closed her eyes. This was going to be a very long night.