As evening descended, the dying embers of the sun bled across the horizon, casting a molten glow over the shoreline. The sea shimmered like a sheet of liquid gold, reflecting the fading light.
Yamauchi Sakura was a whirlwind of motion against the sand, her laughter echoing over the rhythmic pulse of the tide. She ran barefoot, her small, pale feet leaving a trail of shallow prints in the damp earth—a fleeting map of a girl who lived as if every second were her last.
Rin Kuga sat on a weathered stone bench at the edge of the dunes, his chin resting on the back of his hand. He watched her in silence, his expression unreadable. If she could maintain this fierce, radiant optimism forever, her soul might have been enough to suppress the rot within her. But a King does not leave the safety of his subjects to chance. The Bugster virus was a ticking digital parasite that didn't belong in this timeline. It had to be purged.
Eventually, the exertion caught up with her. Breathless and glowing with a light sweat, Sakura trudged back toward him. She sank onto the bench at his side, the cool sand still clinging to her toes.
"Whew! Today was… honestly, it was the most fun I've had in forever," she exhaled, a genuine warmth coloring her voice. She raised a hand to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear—a simple, delicate gesture that, for a fleeting moment, stripped away her hyperactive persona to reveal a quiet, ethereal grace.
She shifted closer, her shoulder nearly brushing his. "You know, Rin-kun… the way you handled those thugs this afternoon? It was incredible. You looked so cool."
She punctuated the praise by throwing a series of playful, miniature punches into the air, her eyes sparkling with a mix of mischief and newfound admiration.
"It was nothing," Rin replied flatly. To her, it was a pivotal moment of salvation; to him, it was merely clearing away debris from his path.
His cold detachment caused the conversation to falter. A heavy silence settled between them, broken only by the distant cry of a gull. Sakura stared at her lap, her fingers twisting together as she bit her lip. She seemed to be weighing the world in her mind. Finally, she took a shaky breath and turned to him.
"Alright," she whispered, her voice trembling with a resolve she hadn't shown before. "I'll do it. I'm ready for your… 'treatment,' Rin-kun."
She turned her face toward him, tilting her head back slightly. Her long lashes fluttered shut as she braced herself, her lips parted in an unmistakable invitation.
Rin's brow furrowed. The girl has a truly troublesome imagination. She had clearly misinterpreted the "Attending Physician" role as something far more romantic and mundane. Rin didn't move to close the distance. Instead, while her eyes were closed, he reached out and firmly grasped her right wrist.
He closed his eyes. Beneath the surface of his skin, the Ohma Zi-O power stirred—a dark, primordial force that commanded the causality of the universe itself. He didn't need a Gashat or a Gamer Driver; he simply willed the virus to manifest.
Inside Sakura's chest, a sudden, violent pressure erupted. Her eyes snapped open, her pupils dilating as she felt a jagged, alien presence being dragged out of her very marrow.
"Ngh—!"
She gasped, her hand clutching at her heart while the other gripped Rin's shoulder for dear life. From her skin, countless motes of glowing green data began to leak into the air. They swirled and coalesced, pixelating the atmosphere with a sickening, neon light. The particles spiraled upward, knitting together into a hulking, semi-humanoid mass of digital sludge.
Sakura watched, her breath coming in ragged hitches, as the glowing entity solidified into a physical nightmare.
"What… what is that thing?" she managed to choke out, her voice laced with a cold shiver of terror.
Rin stood up, his gaze fixed on the fully manifested Bugster. By using the King's power, he had forcibly accelerated the virus's growth, skipping the incubation period to drag the infection into the light where it could be executed.
"That," Rin said, his voice dropping into the icy, terrifying register of a Sovereign. "Is the illness."
Sakura stared, her mind reeling. She realized now that her idea of "treatment had been embarrassingly naive. Faced with the supernatural horror towering over them, her face burned with a brief flash of shame, but it was quickly eclipsed by the sheer impossibility of what she was witnessing.
The sand beneath Rin's feet began to crack, the air vibrating with the hum of a golden engine.