Eyes Above
The relentless glare of the midday sun throbbed in perfect sync with the violent ache inside Epione's skull.
She sat at the edge of the bleachers, clutching her knees. The university volleyball court offered absolutely no sanctuary. The screeching PE whistles, the echoing cheers, and the blinding reflection of the sun off the floor felt like literal needles driving straight into her brain.
Worse than the physical pain, though, was the burning weight of her own uselessness.
Through a blurred gaze, Epione watched Chizuru on the court.
Even in the middle of a high-stakes play, Chizuru's head would tilt slightly. Her intense, unblinking eyes glanced back toward the benches every few rotations.
Just to check on her.
A heavy wave of angst settled deep into Epione's chest.
I'm a burden to her, she realized, the thought tasting like ash.
Chizuru was a brilliant, silver force of nature. Epione was just the anchor dragging her down into the dirt. She couldn't even survive a standard PE class without creating a scene.
Then, the perfect window presented itself.
Trrr! The whistle blew for a brief technical timeout.
Chizuru was instantly swamped by three eager teammates. They dragged her into a tight huddle, gesturing frantically toward a clipboard to discuss a defensive strategy for the final set.
Chizuru paused, completely stepping into her role as the team's heavy hitter. She began explaining a trajectory plan with her usual calm eloquence.
They were completely absorbing her attention.
This is my only chance to disappear.
Epione didn't want Chizuru looking at her with that cold, clinical worry anymore.
Forcing herself to her feet, her legs feeling like lead, Epione spotted the deep, cool, and quiet shadow stretching out behind the isolated equipment shed. It looked entirely dark and silent. It was a perfect reprieve where the world might finally stop spinning for just five minutes.
She slipped away from the bleachers, melting into the background like a ghost.
What Epione didn't see, through the haze of her splitting headache, was her new classmate, Jinhee, standing near the net.
Jinhee's predatory eyes had been tracking her movements the entire time.
Ever since Epione transferred into Dream 2 alongside her and the rest of the quad—Mina, Jade, Len, and Sarah—Jinhee had treated her presence in the classroom like a personal insult.
The moment Epione's "bodyguard" was thoroughly distracted by the huddle, Jinhee gave a sharp, silent nod to her three friends on the sidelines.
They had conveniently subbed themselves out of the match moments earlier.
With practiced, casual coordination, the four of them drifted away from the court in separate directions. They melted into the background while the PE teacher was completely focused on the huddle.
As Epione rounded the corner into the damp, dark sanctuary of the structural brick walls, the noise of the game finally began to fade.
But before she could even reach the relative safety of the wooden benches, a rough hand clamped violently over her mouth. Another tightly seized her waist.
—!
The suffocating trauma from her childhood—the cold, silent basement and her parents' heavy, judgmental stares—hit her like a sudden physical weight. It instantly crushed the remaining air from her lungs.
Epione's body went completely limp. She could not fight back.
The "freeze" response was an ancestral survival mechanism she simply could not override. It locked her muscles into total submission.
She was violently dragged, her heels scuffing the dry dirt, straight into the dark, rusted mouth of the campus equipment shed.
Jinhee was already waiting there in the deepest shadows. Her eyes glittered with a toxic, predatory glee.
"So, stray, now that we are away from distractions... let's continue what we were talking about out on the court," Jinhee cooed.
Her friends threw Epione onto the hard wooden floor with a dull, sickening thud.
The stagnant smell of old sweat, rotten rubber, and thick mildew rose up to meet her face.
"Did you honestly miss us? We heard you got moved to the Dream section," Jinhee sneered, stepping closer. "Think that little 'Restorative Justice' paper from the counselor protects you out here on the field?"
Jinhee leaned down, her shadow completely covering the floor.
"You really thought sharing a classroom with us in Dream 2 changed the hierarchy? You're still just a pizza girl, Epione."
Jinhee lunged forward and grabbed a massive handful of Epione's hair. She ruthlessly yanked her head back until her neck strained against the collar of her vest.
"You're an eyesore, Epione. A pathetic little glitch in the school system. And do you know what happens to digital glitches? They get permanently deleted."
Jinhee raised her other hand.
A heavy silver ring with sharp, jagged edges glinted dangerously in a stray beam of sunlight piercing the corrugated metal walls.
"In this school, people only watch, Epione. They watch you bleed, and they do absolutely nothing to help. So scream all you want. Nobody is coming down here for you."
Epione looked desperately through the shed's open doorway. Her vision was completely blurred by tears and the throbbing ache of the concussion.
Across the bright, open field, she could see Chizuru leaping incredibly high into the air on the volleyball court, preparing a thunderous spike to finish the match.
Chizuru looked like an absolute angel in the light. But her back was turned.
She was worlds away.
Equity. A strange voice whispered in the absolute back of Epione's mind. It sounded remarkably like the low, rhythmic humming of a machine.
Give them the exact structural weight of the agony they caused.
But Epione could not. She was a fragile creature of glass in a world built of heavy hammers.
She just squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the jagged ring to descend.
BOOM!
The suffocating darkness of the shed was suddenly shattered by a sound that did not belong to the world of schoolyards.
A thunderous, explosive crack echoed as the corrugated metal wall of the shed buckled inward like wet paper.
Chizuru did not enter through the standard door. She tore directly through the structure itself.
The heavy steel equipment door flew completely off its hinges, whistling through the humid air before embedding itself three inches deep into the far wooden wall.
Chizuru stood tall in the breach.
She was no longer the bubbly, energetic girl who had shared fruit tarts on the bench. Her skin had taken on a terrifying, marble-white sheen under the sun. Her eyes held a flat, mechanical void that seemed to suck the very light out of the room.
She moved.
To the human eye, it was nothing but a chaotic blur of white fabric and lethal intent.
Chizuru caught Jinhee's descending wrist mid-swing.
Thud. The sound of the impact was a dull, heavy noise—the precise sound of a high-pressure hydraulic vice meeting brittle human bone.
With a terrifyingly efficient, robotic sweep of her leg, Chizuru sent the other three elite girls sprawling into the metal equipment racks.
The loud, cascading sound of falling volleyballs and clattering bats completely masked their sharp cries of physical pain.
"Chizuru... stop!" Epione gasped from the floor. Her voice was small, trembling, and weak. "Please... don't."
Chizuru paused instantly.
Her head tilted at a sharp, bird-like angle. Her internal processors seemed to fight the "Equity" protocol that demanded a calculated, equal retaliation.
She looked down at Epione's tear-streaked face. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she released her vice-like grip on Jinhee's wrist.
The skin where she had held the girl was already turning a deep, bruised purple.
Tweet!!
The violent stillness of the shed was broken by the sharp, piercing trill of a plastic whistle cutting across the athletic field.
The PE teacher was rounding the corner nearby. "Hey! What's going on in the equipment shed?"
In an instant, the void in Chizuru's eyes brightened back to a human warmth.
She let out a small, worried gasp and dropped to her knees beside Epione. Her movements were suddenly soft, frantic, and desperate.
When the coach rounded the broken wall, he didn't see a lethal predator. He saw what looked like a horrific, structural accident.
"Coach! Help!" Chizuru cried out. Her voice was high-pitched, trembling with a perfect simulation of teenage panic.
"Good grief, what happened here?" the teacher demanded, his face paling instantly as he looked at the dented metal wall and the elite girls groaning in the wreckage.
"It was the equipment racks!" Chizuru explained breathlessly, pointing to the heavy, overturned metal ball carts. "The shelf was completely rusted and it just... gave way! Epione tripped over a net, and when these girls tried to rush in and catch her, the whole structural rack collapsed on top of them!"
She clutched her hands to her chest, tears welling up on command.
"I had to kick the side door open because it jammed shut from the structural impact! It was so scary, Coach, I thought we were all going to be crushed!"
She looked over at Jinhee, her facial expression shifting seamlessly into one of pure, sisterly concern.
"Jinhee-san, your wrist! It must have gotten caught under the steel support bar when you tried to save your classmate from the fall. You're so incredibly brave for trying to help her!"
The teacher looked at the heavy, warped metal of the door and the scattered equipment. To him, it looked like a standard maintenance nightmare had finally come true.
Chizuru's frantic strength seemed like a classic case of pure, adrenaline-fueled heroism.
"I've told maintenance those old racks were a safety hazard," the teacher muttered, reaching for his radio with shaking hands. "You girls stay perfectly still. I'm calling the school nurse and an administrator."
As the teacher stepped away to coordinate the emergency rescue, Chizuru leaned closer to Epione, effectively creating a private, silent world amidst the chaos.
She pulled a clean handkerchief from her blazer pocket and gently wiped the dark dirt from Epione's forehead.
On Chizuru's knuckles, where she had struck the metal framework, the skin was torn.
But there was no red blood.
Instead, a thick, clear, shimmering fluid, resembling liquid glass, was slowly seeping from the wound. It caught the afternoon light like a raw diamond.
Chizuru noticed Epione's confused, terrified gaze and quickly tucked her hand into her white sleeve.
"It's just that hereditary blood thing again, Epi-chan. My circulation is just a bit thin today. Don't let it worry your pretty head."
The chaotic scene shifted from the dust of the equipment shed to the sterile, white-tiled silence of the university clinic.
The nurse finished taping a fresh layer of gauze over Epione's temple, sighing deeply as she checked the digital monitors.
"She's stable, but the concussion was more than just a mild impact. She's completely out. I've given her a mild sedative to help with the swelling, but she won't be waking up for a few hours."
Chizuru sat quietly by the side of the bed, her pale hand resting gently on Epione's limp wrist.
To the school nurse, it looked like a devoted classmate waiting in a silent, loyal vigil.
In reality, Chizuru was acting as a living medical bay. Her fingertips held micro-sensors that were actively mapping Epione's neural paths, sending a constant, encrypted stream of biological data back to the Director's main server.
The door to the clinic creaked open slowly.
Jinhee, her wrist now wrapped in a heavy fiberglass cast and her face deathly pale, was being led out toward the exit by the nurse. She caught Chizuru's eye through the privacy curtain.
Chizuru didn't say a single word.
She simply held up her hand—the one with the torn skin and the shimmering, clear fluid. She purposefully let Jinhee see the metallic glint of the advanced circuitry running beneath the "wound" before sliding it directly back into her blazer pocket.
"The accident report has been officially filed, Jinhee-san," Chizuru said softly.
Her voice was melodic, sweet, and bright, yet it carried a low-frequency weight that made Jinhee stop dead in her tracks.
"The record says you were an absolute hero today. It says you tried to save your new Dream 2 classmate from the falling structural rack. If I were you, I would stick to that story perfectly."
Chizuru's smile widened slightly, entirely vacant of human warmth.
"It would be a terrible shame if the next accident... was even more unfortunate for your family."
Jinhee scrambled out of the clinic door without looking back, her breath hitching in a sudden sob of pure, unadulterated terror.
As the hallway grew silent once more, the atmosphere inside the clinic shifted drastically. The air became heavy, sterile, and cold.
Chizuru's voice didn't just drop in volume; it dropped in temperature.
The humming of the clinic's fluorescent lights seemed to sync with the low-frequency vibration emanating directly from Chizuru's chest. She leaned directly over the unconscious girl, her long shadow swallowing Epione's form whole.
Her eyes didn't show human affection. They showed the cold, calculating focus of an industrial scanner.
"Sleep well, Epione," Chizuru whispered. The bubbly sweetness was entirely gone, replaced by a hollow, resonant tone that sounded like wind howling through a graveyard of scrap metal.
"The human body is such a poorly designed vessel. It breaks under the slightest physical pressure. It bruises. It leaks. It stops working entirely because of 'trauma.' It is a biological error that we can easily correct."
Chizuru's eyes didn't blink. A faint, electric blue light flickered deep within her iris, casting a ghostly glow onto the pale skin beneath her.
"When you wake up, the world will be much cleaner. You need more than a guardian out here, Epione. You need an upgrade. I'm going to talk to Father about the next phase of development. Imagine, Epione. No more concussions. No more fear. I'll make sure your next heart is as steady as mine."
Slide.
The door swung open, interrupting the freezing silence.
A tall man in a flawlessly tailored charcoal suit stood there: the Director.
He didn't look like a grieving father checking on a daughter. He looked like a chief scientist checking on a prototype that had just been through an unauthorized stress test.
"You exerted too much physical force today, Chizuru," the man said, his voice a cold rasp. "Your knuckles are leaking vital coolant. You've compromised the stealth parameters of this unit for a single human asset."
Chizuru stood up instantly. Her Bubbly Girl gummy smile snapped back into place with terrifying, instantaneous speed.
"I was merely conducting a baseline feasibility study, Father. Look at her. She is the perfect template. If we integrate her into the Dream Project, she would serve as the perfect companion unit for my long-term structural stabilization."
The Director looked down at Epione's unconscious face, then back at Chizuru. He reached out and tilted Chizuru's chin up, checking her ocular sensors for any signs of code divergence.
"A dual-unit system? It would certainly decrease your core error rate. Very well. We will begin the preliminary mapping tonight. But she must not suspect a thing until the medicine is ready for her, too."
He looked up at the heart monitor, watching the steady, fragile beat.
"Let the transformation begin."
While Epione lay trapped in a heavy, sedated sleep, her mind entirely oblivious to the dark deal being made over her bed, Chizuru began to attach small, translucent wires to Epione's temples and wrists.
Each wire was as thin as a spider's web, carrying a faint, pulsing current of blue energy.
The Director watched from the corner, his eyes fixed on the tablet in his hand. To him, Epione wasn't a student anymore. She was a set of raw data points, a collection of physical reactions and biological responses that could be molded, optimized, and perfected.
"The synchronization is only at twelve percent," the Director noted. "She is actively resisting the initial digital handshake. Her subconscious is clinging heavily to the memory of the shed."
Chizuru adjusted one of the temple sensors. Her fingers brushed against the girl's skin with a lightness that no living human could ever achieve.
"She is afraid, Father. Fear is a powerful anchor to the old world. But it is also a perfect gateway. If we replace her fear with an absolute sense of security, she will open the digital door herself."
"Make it happen," the Director said coldly. "I want a full neural map compiled before the school board starts asking questions about the structural equipment failure."
Chizuru nodded, her eyes flashing with a deep, indigo light. She leaned down once more, her face inches from Epione's.
This time, she didn't speak a word. She simply began to hum a low, constant, vibrating frequency. It was a sound that human ears couldn't physically register, but it resonated deep within the human nervous system.
On the monitor, the red lines of Epione's stress levels began to completely flatten out.
Her rapid, shallow breathing slowed down into a deep, rhythmic, automated cycle. The resistance in her mind was being systematically smoothed away, replaced by a manufactured peace that the Director's technology seamlessly provided.
By the time the first hint of gray dawn light began to touch the campus horizon, the mapping was complete.
Chizuru detached the wires, her movements incredibly careful, fluid, and deliberate, leaving absolutely no physical trace of the night's work.
Epione remained in her deep, sedated sleep. To any doctor or nurse walking in for the morning shift, she would look like she was simply recovering from a standard sports concussion.
The Director stood up, tucking his tablet smoothly into his suit pocket.
"The private limo is already waiting outside. We will move her under the guise of a private medical transfer. The school nurse has already signed the release papers, believing it is an official request from the family."
He glanced toward the window as the engine hummed below.
"And her uncle has been informed that his niece is being treated at a high-end private facility at absolutely no cost to his household. A man of his stature doesn't ask questions when corporate money and convenience are involved."
Chizuru stood closely by the side of the bed, watching the gentle rise and fall of Epione's chest.
The bubbly, energetic mask was firmly back in place, ready for the morning bells to ring.