I stared at the ground, unmoving.
Time passed.
Or maybe it didn't. It was hard to tell anymore.
The noise from before—the shouting, the running, the argument—it had all burned out, leaving nothing but a dull, empty quiet in its wake. My thoughts felt slow. Heavy. Like even trying to hold onto one took more effort than it was worth.
A faint yellow glow flickered at the edge of my vision—soft, pulsing against the concrete. Not a streetlight, not a sign. It moved with me—as if glued to my eyelids.
My focus dragged toward it, sluggish, like trying to grab onto something through water—
Then her voice cut in, snapping the moment before I could fully grasp what it was.
{C'mon. Get up. Let's go.}
"Huh… w-where are we going?"
{Well, you wanna find your family, right?}
"Y-you could do that for me?!"
{…Um. No.} She said it plainly, almost bored. {Honestly… you're a fake. A fraud. A sex machine running on borrowed memories—}
"N-They're not fake!" I snapped, cutting straight through her words.
{I don't give a fuck what you think they are.} She shot back instantly. {You want my help or not? I'm not gonna keep dealing with your bullshit.}
"Y-yes." I couldn't afford to say no—not with how dangerous this city was for someone like me who didn't even know much about it.
{Heh…} I could almost feel her wicked smile. {Good. Then shut up and listen. I'll prove it to you. Every bit of it. And while I'm at it, I'll drag you into something a hell of a lot more real than whatever you're clinging to. And when you realize I'm right, you'll stick to the path you're meant to be on.}
"…Deal…" I instantly answered, more certain than ever that I'd make her eat those words.
{Hahaha!} She laughed, sharp and effortless. {You're fuckin' adorable.}
…
The word hung there for a second too long.
I didn't respond right away.
My mouth opened slightly, then closed again.
"H-hey…" I started nervously, glancing to the side as if already thinking about backing out.
{What is it…} her voice cut in immediately, still calm—but now carrying that same amused impatience.
"Who… who are you? And how do you know what I am?" I asked, my voice barely steady.
{God, you're still stuck on that?} She clicked her tongue. {If you don't remember by now, then it's probably not that important.}
I dug through my memories—even ones beyond this world—searching for someone who might know me, someone who could make sense of this. But nothing surfaced, nothing at all.
{Heh-heh…} She giggled, a lilting, mischievous sound, light and playful but with a razor edge. {Wow… you're actually trying. That's kinda cute in a pathetic way.}
My chest tightened, my teeth clenching shut. "Why won't you just—"
{Cut it out, Pondaru.}
Her voice came in immediately—flat, effortless, like she was brushing something off her shoulder.
{You're not gonna find shit. Just stop. Save yourself the headache. Hehehe…}
Her words curled through my skull—teasing, sharp, that same impossible switch in tone as before—like it didn't bother her that I didn't remember, almost as if she preferred it that way.
That wrong sounding laugh…It shouldn't be charming—but if I really tried, I could almost find myself enjoying it.
"…Heh—"
And then it slipped into something lighter.
"Fuhaha—! Heheh!"
A messy, tomboyish giggle—bright, casual, almost playful in a way that didn't match anything she was saying. Like she wasn't even trying to sound intimidating anymore, just entertained by me.
What troubled me the most about her wasn't necessarily her voice or her foul mouth. It was… could I trust her? I didn't even know what she looked like—or who she was. One moment, she sounded like a mischievous trickster, the next like a goddess, then a cruel evil witch. I grabbed my head, searching desperately for an answer.
{You know I can hear all that crap, right…? Like—every bit of it. Every dumb little thing going on in there.} Her voice cut cleanly through my thoughts, stopping them before they could spiral any further.
"Huh? Uh… I didn't—I, um—I—"
And then—
The world snapped.
{PONDARU—RUN!!}
Her voice didn't just speak. It shattered through my head like a siren tearing itself loose, raw and urgent, completely different from her usual tone.
A sudden impact split the air.
Something slammed into the rooftop. The force of it shook the concrete beneath my feet—sharp, violent, like the entire building had been struck.
I didn't even have time to react. The ground jolted, my balance gone instantly, and my body pitched forward before I could catch myself.
"Ghk—!' My chest hit the concrete hard, the impact knocking the breath out of me in a single, brutal burst. Pain flared through my ribs as I skidded slightly across the rough surface, the shock still rippling through the rooftop beneath me.
For a moment, everything blurred together. The sound, the force, the pain—it all hit at once.
I had no idea what had just landed.
"You killed him…" A voice came out warped, mechanical, like something grinding underneath it.
I forced my head up, vision unsteady, trying to focus on the thing that had crashed down in front of me. I opened my mouth, fumbling, "I—I… I didn't mean t—"
It was a man. Not an ordinary man.
Too tall, too wrong. Twisted metal struts replaced his legs, pistons hissed and joints clicked with every slight movement. He moved like a machine, and yet… Somehow, beneath all that he was human...
{Get the fuck up—now!}
"W-what the hell is that thing?!" I stammered, scrambling to my feet.
{Those implants—shit… that's not a regular aug… not even a heavy—That's a rig!}
"R-rig?!" I repeated as I bolted in the opposite direction, my feet skidding against the rooftop.
{How do you not even—no, forget it! The ladder—get to it. Quick!}
The ladder stood just beyond him, positioned in a way that forced me to run within his reach, but as I ran past, he didn't move to follow.
He simply watched, his gaze fixed on me with a quiet, deliberate focus that felt nothing like the usual stares this body drew. There was no hunger in it, no distraction—just a cold, patient attention, like a cat watching something it had already decided to catch, giving it a head start so it wouldn't get bored too quickly.
My skin crawled, but I pushed past him anyway, forcing my legs to keep moving despite the weight of that gaze digging into my back.
When I reached the ladder, I grabbed hold of the rungs and quickly pulled myself onto it. My grip tightened as I began to descend, moving as fast as I could manage while still keeping my footing.
Until —
"Aaaughhh! It hurts!" Pain shot through my scalp when his hands had instantly grabbed my hair, yanking me up off the ladder, dangling as he slowly lifted me.
"Let go!" I screamed, my heart pounding loudly in my ears as I was hoisted upward inch by inch.
His face came into view—too close, far too close. Red lights burned where his eyes should have been, glowing through the gaps in wires and metal plating.
I froze, staring into them, unable to look away.
"You're the one…?" the voice dragged out, broken and uneven, like it was struggling to remember how speech worked. "Such a small… delicious-looking child."
His tongue brushed against my cheek.
It was long, inhuman, and split like a snake's. I felt the slick trail of saliva it left behind, warm and viscous, accompanied by a rancid stench that made my stomach twist in revulsion.
"P-please, don't eat me. I—I didn't—"
A heavy backhand struck my face with brutal force, snapping my head to the side as pain burst across my skull in a blinding flash. The impact sent a sharp ringing through my ears, disorienting me before I could even react.
"Agh—!" The cry tore out of me, raw and uncontrolled.
Before I could draw another breath, his hand clamped over my mouth, fingers digging into my jaw with crushing strength. The pressure forced my lips shut, cutting off any sound except a muffled, helpless gasp.
"Lies," he said, his voice grinding out the word with cold certainty. "Every one of them."
My vision wavered as the sting spread, throbbing through my cheek and up into my temple. I could already feel my lip split open, the metallic taste of blood seeping into my mouth as it trailed down my chin in slow, warm drops.
"You can't run… from what you've done," he continued, his grip unrelenting. "I watched you… the way you moved…"
There was a pause—too long, too still—like something was recalculating behind his eyes.
"…interesting," he muttered, quieter now. "You're—no… not that… natural. Yeah… natural."
His fingers tightened, forcing my head back until I had no choice but to meet his gaze.
"It means… you're not normal," he went on, voice dipping, words slipping slightly out of rhythm. "Not baseline. Not… stable."
Another pause. A twitch in his jaw.
"…Like me."
Something in his eyes set off a raw, childlike fear inside me. My chest tightened, my body froze—not only because of what he could do, but because of him. His presence alone made my fear spike tenfold beyond anything my old body could endure.
{Pondaru—listen to me—let me take control, I can—huh?!}
Her voice cracked mid-sentence, urgency spiking into something sharper, unstable.
For a split second, I felt her reach for control—then it faltered.
My thoughts snagged on something else.
Sakura.
The promise I made. The way she smiled like I was supposed to come back. The idea of her waiting for something I'd never return to.
It hit harder than fear.It jammed everything.
Even her.
{Pondaru—no, stop thinking about—damn it! I can't—!}
Her presence wavered, like she was trying to push through something that wouldn't let her. The urgency in her voice sharpened further, strained now, almost forced.
{Focus—just—you idiot—!} Her control slipped for a fraction, like she'd been forcibly shoved back mid-step. The urgency in her voice stayed, but it fractured now—strained, forced through interference she couldn't fully override.
I was frozen as Sakura's unfinished words lingered in my mind. It wasn't a full memory. Just fragments—her voice, her hesitation, the way she tried to smile through it.
『"Please…D-don't…"』
『"…Don't what…?"』
『"N-never mind. It's nothing. I'm sure you'll be back, so… I'll be waiting for you, okay?"』
Even though she hadn't said it, I knew what she meant—"Please… don't die...dont leave me alone"
Sakura… I won't. I'll find them, and I'll come back. And when I do… I'll show you what it's like to have a family. Not just mine—ours.
The voice faltered, breaking mid-thought with a strained, almost pained sound. {Aghh… why—why are you...At a time like this?}
Desperation snapped through me. My vision darted frantically, my chest tightening as adrenaline surged. My eyes scanned, and I saw it—a patch of bare skin beneath the metal plating, just above his wrist.
"We're—…meant for each other," he said, his voice dipping out of rhythm. "…I can see it."
A pause. A faint, off-beat twitch.
"Won't let it finish."
I grabbed his hand, yanking myself upward off of it as hard as I could, using it like a lever, just before my teeth sank into the warm, unprotected skin.
A violent scream tore out of him. Every muscle in his arm locked up as he jerked back, mechanical limbs clanging and whirring in sharp, frantic bursts.
His grip loosened.
My body tensed, ready to bolt—finally free—
But the momentum betrayed me.
I was yanked downward instead, my stomach lurching as my footing slipped out from under me. The edge of the rooftop rushed up, and before I could catch myself, I was dragged over it—
Helpless against the force pulling me down.
The wind tore at my hair as I fell, my lungs burning while I fought to grab anything—anything at all—to stop it. Concrete and metal blurred together beneath me.
My heart pounded so hard it felt like it would burst through my ribs, while the rushing air stole my breath, forcing every attempt to inhale into nothing but panic and emptiness.
I hit a dumpster with a violent thud. Metal screeched, wood splintered, and pain shot through my shoulders and arms.
I landed on somthing—buried in trash and broken debris—was a body. The one the voice had killed… with my hands. Its weight took part of the impact, absorbing just enough force to keep my bones from snapping outright.
I should've cared. I should've felt something.
But I didn't.
My mind was too loud—too fractured—fear and adrenaline and disbelief all colliding at once, drowning everything else out.
I hauled myself up over the edge of the dumpster and collapsed forward, landing face-first on the ground. Pain flared through my body on impact.
Slowly, I lifted my head. It stung, warm blood smeared across my nose and upper lip.
I tried to stand.
My legs wobbled like they didn't belong to me. My knees buckled immediately, refusing to hold my weight, and I dropped back down before I could even fully rise.
"Voice… where are you? P-please… h-h-help me…" I whispered, each word shaking, barely audible even to myself. My arms scrambled across the rough ground, carrying my small body as best they could.
When i looked backI saw him. The Rig man, on the rooftop, still staring. My stomach dropped. I tried to move faster, but my body refused. It felt like it was made of lead.
He dropped into the dumpster. The crash made the corpse inside tumble, a grotesque noise that made me shiver.
And then he vaulted out, moving toward me with frightening calm.
"Help me!, save me!" I cried, my voice raw, trembling. I tried to reach for her, to let her take control.
But he grabbed me by my hair again. Pain ripped through me as he dragged me close to the wall and straddled me. I felt tiny, trapped, utterly helpless, like a child caught by a monster.
"I… want to help you…" His words came out rough, like his voice wasn't used to forming them anymore. "…you know…"
"H-help?" I rasped, panic tearing through my chest.
"They say… voices happen when the mind… starts to slip," he said slowly, like he was searching for the right words as he spoke them. "When it gets… confused. It makes things. People that aren't really there."
A pause. His grip tightened, but his tone stayed strangely careful.
"Like her… maybe."
His hands closed around my neck, firm and certain.
"And… the best thing," he continued, voice uneven, almost hesitant—like he didn't fully believe his own phrasing, "is just to… help it stop. Before it gets worse…Before you suffer more."
Then he squeezed with relentless force.
The pressure around my throat tightened instantly, cutting off everything at once. My lungs burned as they fought for air that wouldn't come, every attempt to breathe turning into a silent, useless panic. My fingers flew up instinctively, clawing at his arms, scratching at anything I could reach, but his grip didn't change. It didn't even react. It held steady, as if my struggle meant nothing at all.
My vision began to blur at the edges. The world trembled slightly, like it was losing focus, and a sharp ringing started building in my ears, drowning out everything else. Tears spilled down my face without permission, warm and useless, as my strength began to fade in uneven waves.
And then I felt it.
Something in my hand.
I didn't remember reaching for it. I didn't remember it being there at all. One moment my hand was empty, clawing at nothing, and the next there was weight in my grip—cold, solid metal settling into my palm as if it had always belonged there. My fingers were already wrapped around it so tightly that my fingertips ached.
It was the gun from before.
{Kill him… do it now … kill him!}
The voice in my head surged like a storm. It was as if she were the one pressing the weapon into my tiny, trembling hands.
I tried to lift it. I tried to squeeze the trigger, but my fingers refused to obey. They felt weak, unresponsive, like they didn't belong to me anymore. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make them press down. The trigger was too heavy, too stiff, and in that moment I couldn't even understand how she had ever made it work so easily before.
『 I can't do it. 』
The voice in my mind changed, a sound unlike anything I had heard from her before. Her breath hitched sharply.
{Why…?}
I tried to explain, to force reason through the panic tightening my chest. This body wasn't strong enough. There was no way I could do it. It wasn't just hesitation—it was impossible. My hands simply didn't have the strength, not for something like this.
『 I just can't. My hands won't move right. What you're asking me to do… I can't physically do it. 』
{You… can't?} she repeated, her voice breaking, shaking, spiraling with pain. {That's all you can say to me after what you did to me…?}
『 Did to you…? 』
The thought slipped in automatically, but she didn't even acknowledge it. It was like she had already stopped listening to anything except her own memory of me.
{Like when you destroyed everything I had? Like when you bashed my head in while I begged you that I didn't want to die— like when I cried and you took my life without asking.
Her words cut through my mind, each one driving my panic higher. I could feel my vision darkening, the world narrowing to the crushing weight of my fear and helplessness.
{And now you say killing a psychopath is impossible? You're going to let it happen again?}
『 I… I don't even know what you're talking abo—』
{I hate you,} she whispered through the chaos in my head.
『Wh-What…?』 My eyes widened in disbelief, my breath catching as the words failed to make sense.
{I hate everything about you… the way you act so innocent… like you're not a heartless monster… the way you sound… the way I feel in your body…} Her voice shook, tightening with raw disgust and pain, like every word was being dragged out of her against her will.
{You're the devil… don't you get it?}
Her thoughts pressed harder, flooding in without pause, as if holding it back for even a second was unbearable.
{You talk like you don't know what you're doing. Like you're just some confused, harmless idiot trying to survive… But hat's not innocence. That's not confusion. That's something worse. You're empty… you're aware. And you still do it anyway.}
『 I… I… I…』
{You are the one who should have died, not me. Not me!} Her scream shattered what little clarity I had left, tearing through my thoughts like glass.
{Not me!}
『 I-I'm s-sorry…』 I managed to think, the words small and broken in the dark. I still didn't understand what I had done to her, what I had become to her, but it was the only thing I could offer in the middle of everything collapsing.
Her voice softened suddenly, trembling, leaning into me in a way I could feel as much as hear. {If your realy sorry then...Please… do it. Please, kill him. Let me live.}
The world narrowed until nothing else existed. My thoughts blurred at the edges, my body feeling distant, almost unreal, like it was slipping away from me. And Then her voice cut through the haze again, sharp enough to tear everything back into focus.
{I want to also… S-save me, Pondaru… don't let me die again… Let's live… together…}
My eyes opened—and the Rig was right in front of me.
A violent tension ran through my arm. Every muscle tightened at once, straining as my hand clenched around the weapon. My finger pressed harder, harder still, until the pressure finally broke.
The trigger went back.
Bang.
It didn't stop there… it couldn't.
Bang.
Bang.
I fired again and again. My body moved without me, my hands pulling the trigger while my mind drifted somewhere far away—numb, distant, disconnected from what I was doing. I couldn't think, couldn't process, couldn't even recognize myself in the motions. I only understood the sound of each shot, the violent recoil, the sharp echoes of impact.
Eventually, the gun clicked empty.
I let it fall from my hand. It hit the ground with a dull clatter and rolled slightly away, forgotten the moment it left my grip.
I didn't move. I didn't speak.
I just sat there, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts, my fingers still trembling as I stared at the body. Time didn't feel real anymore, like the world itself had gone still around me.
His eyes… were already fading, slipping from life into something empty and unreachable.
Silence followed—heavy, suffocating, absolute. It pressed into my chest, into my lungs, into every thought I tried to form. My breathing felt too loud, too sharp in the absence of everything else. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. My body wouldn't listen. And all I could do was sit there, trapped in the aftermath, unable to look away.
Even the voice was gone, leaving me completely alone in a panic that felt strangely hollow—almost distant—yet shocking at the same time.
I leaned my head back, exhaustion dragging at my body, I blinked twice before wiping the blood from my nose, then forced a shaky breath through it, my eyes squeezing shut for just a second—just to reset, just to feel anything normal again.
That was when it happened.
Something moved.
His body jerked forward into my space in an instant, like it had been waiting for that exact moment. One second there was silence, the next he was there, already mid-lunge, already closing the distance.
"You—little b—"
The words tore out of him, but they never finished. Something slammed into him from the side, cutting the sentence—and the motion—clean in half.
I saw it only in fragments.
Massive and firm, palms gripping both sides of his head like a vice. The pressure was impossible, cruel, unstoppable.
The Rig's hands remained, momentarily frozen in midair, before his head exploded between someone else's.
His head snapped forward—and in the same instant, it simply gave out. The impact ruptured through him with brutal force, and everything that had been human about him collapsed at once.
The force threw fragments outward, a violent burst of bone, blood, and shattered tissue spraying across the ground.
His eyes… his eyes were gone, crushed beyond recognition, white and bulging, then squished, leaving nothing alive behind, except the useless twitch of his hands, still reacting on reflex, before they finally went limp.
The weight on top of me collapsed. I didn't move.
"Tch… what the hell were you thinking?!" a voice said above me, low, familiar—and far too close. "I told you I'd handle it. You should've known how that was going to end."
The body was dragged off me, then tossed aside like it weighed nothing at all.
I stared upward, dazed, unable to process the change. The hand that reached toward me was too large, too steady, too controlled.
Something in me screamed: danger. My body reacted before my mind could catch up. I twisted, kicked, lashed out.
"Come on. Get up. We need to—" he said, hand still extended at me.
Even through the haze of panic, I could make it out clearly—muscles taut beneath the skin, veins standing out under the strain, fingers curling with a quiet, deliberate strength as if nothing in this scene had been difficult at all.
My chest seized.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" I shrieked as my body lunged forward, teeth bared, and bit down hard on his hand, tasting blood and metal.
He jerked back, shaking his hand before bringing it to his mouth, sucking the blood from the wound. A long, low sigh escaped him.
"So… this is it," he muttered, his voice heavy, almost sorrowful.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" My own voice ripped out, raw and jagged, far from human. "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"
My hands flailed blindly, searching for anything—something—my fingers could use. They scraped across rough concrete, over debris, until they finally closed around something solid. Glass.
I didn't think. I didn't hesitate.
Gripping the broken bottle, jagged edges biting into my palm, I drove it toward him with all the force I could muster. When it struck, it only scraped across his arm, leaving a thin line of red that caught the dim light instead of sinking in.
He frowned, just slightly, and added, "Tch… I hope you can recover from this."
That's when I saw who he actually was—just for a heartbeat. The familiar stance, the way he moved, the sharpness in his eyes that I only knew from that house.
It was Usumi.
Before I could react, his leg shifted—just a slight movement at first, almost too fast to register as it snapped upward.
The impact hit like a battering ram. Pain exploded across my face as his knee slammed into me, a blinding, crushing force that swallowed everything else.
My vision flashed white, swallowing the world in an instant.
My head snapped violently to the side, the motion sharp and uncontrollable, like I had been struck by something far heavier than a human body.
A ringing filled my ears, loud and endless, drowning out every other sound. Strength drained from me all at once, and my limbs went slack and unresponsive, until my body finally gave out completely.
Somewhere, barely audible through the haze, his voice slipped through—low, strained, like the words didn't come easily.
"…Not again... I won't let it happen again." It sounded distant. Not meant for me. Like he was speaking to someone who wasn't there anymore.
The final sound that escaped my body was a weak, broken "ughhh," before everything slipped away—vision collapsing into darkness, thought dissolving, the world finally going silent.