The automatic doors of the convenience store slid shut with a sharp pneumatic hiss, severing the sterile jingle of the entry chime.

  Harukawa stepped out onto the pavement, and the temperature dropped instantly. It wasn't just the night air; it was the specific, biting cold of the city after the fever of rush hour had finally broken. The roar of traffic had thinned to a distant, rhythmic hum, leaving the street feeling hollowed out, like a stage set after the actors had gone home.

  “Good work! Bye, see ya!” Harukawa called over his shoulder.

  “See ya—!” came the chorus from the back room, muffled by the thick glass.

  He peeled off his store uniform as he walked, stuffing the synthetic fabric into his bag. He fished his phone from his pocket, his thumb hovering over the dark screen. It lit up, flickering with an angry strobe of notifications. Missed Call. Missed Call. Missed Call. More than ten. All from the same name. Club activities Manager.

  Harukawa frowned, his pace slowing until his sneakers scraped to a halt against the asphalt. The club manager? At this hour? A knot of unease tightened in his stomach, cold and heavy. It wasn’t the usual "you forgot to lock the clubroom" vibe. This felt urgent. Frantic.…Did something happen? An accident?

  He tapped the call button. The connection tone didn’t even finish its first ring before it clicked over.

  “Harukawa!?” The voice that burst from the speaker was breathless, high-pitched, and tight with anxiety. It sounded less like a greeting and more like a plea for help.

  “Whoa, hey. Good work. What’s wrong? You sound like you ran a marathon.” Harukawa kept his voice steady, trying to counterbalance her panic with casual normalcy.

  “I—I’m sorry, but… I need to ask you something. I need advice.” She continued.

  “Advice? Okay…” Harukawa walked over to a concrete planter box near the curb and sat down. He dropped his plastic convenience store bag between his feet, the can of coffee inside clinking sharply against the pavement.

  “You know how Shiro hasn’t been coming to practice lately?” She asked.

  “Yeah. Skipping club, skipping school. Teachers are saying he might not even have the attendance for exams.” Harukawa sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I told him to get his act together, but…”

  “Harukawa… listen to me.” Her voice dropped an octave. It lost its frantic edge, replaced by something colder. Something brittle. “I think Shiro is… him.”

  “Him?” This time Harukawa asked.

  “I think he’s the ‘Yu’ from the streams. The real one.” The manager whispered.

  “…Hah?” The sound punched out of Harukawa’s chest before he could stop it. It was a laugh, but it felt dry, scratching his throat. “Oh, come on. You too? Did you fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracy or something? It’s a common name.”

  “No. It’s not that.” The manager was confused but refused.

  “Then what?” He urged the rest of her words.

  “My dad,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “You know he’s in the JSDF, right?”

  “Yeah, I remember about.” He answered.

  “We were eating dinner tonight. The news was doing a special on that EWS app again. Everyone’s talking about it.” She continued.

  “Sure. Who isn’t?” Harukawa reached for his coffee, popping the tab. Crack-fizz. The smell of cheap roasted beans drifted up, mixing with the exhaust fumes.

  “So, I made a joke. I said, ‘Hey, we have a ghost member in our club named Yu, too. Imagine if he was the guy fighting monsters. Crazy, right?’” She continued to speak, trying to calm herself down.

  “Okay…” Harukawa took a sip.

  “Standard joke. I’ve made it myself. But… my dad hates those jokes.” She said.

  The line went silent for a second. All Harukawa could hear was the wind whistling past his own phone and her shaky breathing on the other end.

  “Usually, he’d scold me. He’d say, ‘Don’t talk about your classmates like that,’ or ‘Don’t mix reality with internet nonsense.’ He’s strict about that stuff.” She inhaled sharply. “But today… he didn’t say anything.”

  Harukawa the coffee can halfway to his mouth.

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  “My dad just… stopped eating. He put his chopsticks down. Clack. He looked at his bowl, completely silent. For like, a full minute.” She continued.

  “…” Harukawa froze.

  “That has never happened, Harukawa. Never.” She told him in a voice that sounded like she was about to burst into tears.

  A cold breeze brushed Harukawa’s cheek, slipping under his collar like ice water. The silence on the other end of the phone felt heavy, transmitted digitally across the city. It was the weight of a secret that was too big to be kept in a suburban street.

  “That’s why… I think he knows. I think the government knows.” The manager’s voice was barely a whisper now. “And if my dad reacted like that… it means it’s true.”

  “There’s no way,” Harukawa snapped, his voice louder than he intended. It echoed in the empty street. “There's another world! This isn’t a study-abroad program! It’s monsters and magic!”

  He pressed his free hand to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to force the world back into a logical shape.

  “But—” He tried to dismiss it. He wanted to dismiss it. But as he sat there on the cold concrete, fragments of memory began to drift up from the bottom of his mind, fitting together like pieces of glass.

  “Hey, did you hear? They say the satellites are being weaponized.” That day in the classroom. Telling Yu about the urban legend. —Yu’s reaction. And then, another night the news broke. “Satellite Lost.” And the next day… Shiro Yu didn’t come to school. Or the day after. Or the day after that.

  “…” Harukawa’s breath hitched. It was a coincidence. It had to be. But the pieces clicked into place with a terrifying, frictionless perfection.

  “Harukawa!? Hey!! Answer me! Are you there?” Her voice brought him out of his vortex of thoughts. He swallowed hard.

  “…Hey.” His throat felt like sandpaper.

  “What? What is it!?” The manager asked.

  “If this is real…” Harukawa looked up at the night sky. The city lights drowned out the stars, but he felt exposed, as if something was looking down at him from the black void between the buildings. “Are we… getting isekai transported as a whole class next?”

  A long, dead pause.

  “You’re actually stupid.” She said, a flat, exhausted voice came back.

  “Haha. Yeah. Probably.” Harukawa let out a laugh. It was a hollow sound. It didn't reach his eyes.

  Deep in his chest, something cold and heavy had settled, and no amount of joking was going to dislodge it. He hung up. The screen went dark. But the darkness of the street felt different now. It felt deeper.

  ?

  The storm had passed. Or rather, it had been deleted. After TP vanished, a profound silence reclaimed the clinic. It wasn't the peaceful silence of a library; it was the stunned, ringing silence of a battlefield where the artillery had suddenly ceased.

  Shards of glass from the shattered medicine bottles littered the floor, glittering like diamonds in the pale light. Outside the broken window, the last wisps of the black fog were dissolving, torn apart by the evening wind, returning the world to its natural state.

  Rize stood by the bed. She stared at the empty space where the Time Patrol had stood moments ago. She turned her gaze to Yu.

  “Yu… what… what were you doing just now?” Her voice trembled. It wasn't an accusation. it was awe. Fear. The kind of tone you used when you realized the person standing next to you was holding a grenade—or a miracle.

  Yu didn’t answer immediately. He stood in the center of the room, his hands still lowered, his posture relaxed. But his eyes weren't looking at Rize. They weren't looking at Claval. They were unfocused, staring into the empty air, listening to a frequency that didn't exist in the audible spectrum.

  Then It came.

  “Is this… our first time meeting officiallyyy…?” The voice drifted through the room. But it didn't travel through the air. It didn't bounce off the walls. It bloomed directly inside his auditory cortex. Soft. Airy. Like the sound of wind chimes made of water. It was everywhere and nowhere, woven into the drifting dust motes.

  “That voice—” Yu flinched. His head snapped up.

  “Yu? Who are you talking to?” Rize frowned, looking around the empty room.

  “Aah… others can’t hear me, you seeee.” The reply came instantly, overlaying Rize’s confusion. It was sweet, playful, almost teasing.

  Yu froze. The hairs on his arms stood up—not from fear, but from a strange, vibrating resonance in his bones.

  “…Who are you?” he whispered.

  “You did sooo well earlier! Amazing!” The voice chimed, childlike and delighted, ignoring his question. It sounded like a proud parent, or perhaps a pet owner praising a clever dog.

  “Rize,” Yu said urgently, not taking his eyes off the empty space in front of him. “Someone’s voice… it’s right next to me. Can’t you hear it?”

  “Yu… you’re exhausted. You used too much power. Sit down, please.” Rize stepped forward, her face clouded with worry. She reached out, her hand hovering near his arm.

  “She can’t hear me. Only Yu.” The voice giggled—a sound like bubbles popping in a soda. “You can hear me because you [Bind] so well.”

  To Yu’s eyes, the clinic began to change. The air around him shimmered. It wasn't heat haze. It was a faint, blue luminescence, like the world was being rendered in high-definition wireframes for a split second.

  “You’re only the second person who can do this, you knoooow?” The mana in the atmosphere was reacting to him, curling around him like affectionate smoke.

  “Rize… I think this voice is—” A chill shot down Yu’s spine. The second person. There was only one other person who had wielded this kind of power.

  “Hossy always used to call me—” The voice continued.

  “—Mana.” Yu spoke the word before the voice could finish. It wasn't a guess. It was a recognition. The sensation of the voice matched the sensation of the blue light that had flowed through him during [Bind.]

  “Yeeeeep! That’s me! But ‘Hossy’—you know, the Returnee?— He called me Mana-chan!” The invisible presence seemed to sparkle with happiness. The air pressure in the room lightened, turning joyous.

  Voooooom. At that moment, the air in the clinic glowed. It wasn't a magic. A faint, sourceless blue light filled the room, casting long, soft shadows. It was as if someone had lit a candle inside the fabric of reality itself.

  Yu stood in the center of the glow, conversing with the fundamental energy of the world, while Rize and Claval watched, breathless, witnessing a boy stepping further away from humanity and closer to something else.