Kazuki stepped off the train two stations early.
The automated doors whispered shut behind him, the smooth voice of the system announcing departures and arrivals with pleasant detachment. The platform was clean. Everything was always clean.
But this was not his stop.
He'd never gotten off here before.
He didn't even know why—only that something had tugged at him. A name. A gap in the routine. A feeling, like a book with a missing page.
Hayato.
Why couldn't he remember exactly where they met yesterday? They always met—at the cafeteria, Level 3, Sector-4 Archives. But it had been empty. Not just empty—absent. As if it had never been filled in the first place.
The station's upper corridor led to residential wings. His boots made no sound against the tile as he moved, pretending he had purpose. Eyes from cameras followed, but he kept his posture smooth. Neutral. He was a scientist on reassignment. That's what he told himself.
But the door to Hayato's registered residence wouldn't open.
Access denied.
Resident does not exist.
That couldn't be right. Kazuki had been there. Drank synthetic barley tea on Hayato's couch. Argued over historical preservation policy. Laughed about the absurdity of archive firewalls.
He tried again.
Resident does not exist.
Kazuki stepped back. Looked around. No one in the corridor. No watchers. No janitorial bots. The silence was heavier than it should have been.
He reached for his portable scanner. It was still logged into system maintenance protocols. He tapped into the neighborhood archive logs.
Search: Hayato Shirakawa – location trace – last 48 hours.
Request denied.
Override: Senior Development Clearance – Maehara, Kazuki.
The file blinked. Then opened.
Dozens of logs appeared—location traces, voice prints, system interactions.
Then—nothing.
Timestamp: 22:07 yesterday. Final entry: Sector-4 East Transit Tunnel.
No exit record.
Kazuki stared at the log. Transit tunnels weren't endpoints. They were routes. There should have been a destination. A check-in. A confirmation.
Instead: blank.
The scanner flickered.
Then the log erased itself.
One by one, entries vanished from the screen.
Kazuki yanked the battery out, cutting power instantly.
Too late.
The system had seen him. He was sure of it.
He walked fast. Not hurried. Not panicked. But fast.
Every second, his heart pounded louder than the regulated pulse of the city. Something was wrong. Something had always been wrong, but the illusion had been perfect. Beautiful. Designed.
Now, cracks showed. Tiny. Fragile.
And beneath the cracks—something else.
He remembered a message. Faint, buried. Hayato's voice. "If anything happens to me… check the tunnels. They don't watch the tunnels."
Kazuki didn't remember when he heard it. Only that he had.
That night, in his flat, he sat in silence. No synthetic tea. No background music. Just the sound of the ventilation system humming like a lullaby.
He accessed the Harmony Interface again.
The mysterious silver disk was still embedded. The system was running smoother than ever. Cleaner code. Better synchronicity.
And not a single log about the change.
It was like it never happened.
Kazuki looked at the disk.
For the first time, he thought: This wasn't meant to help me. It was meant to see if I'd notice.
He stood up.
And this time, he didn't wait until morning to act.