Ren sat on the edge of the courtyard fountain, shoulders hunched against a chill that felt both physical and psychological. The sky was a flat, oppressive gray, and the usual morning bustle—students who should have been talking, laughing—felt like echoes from another world. He didn’t dare power up his Sigma glasses; the last thing he needed was confirmation of the erasure already underway.
A flicker of memory grazed his mind: Kaoru’s urgent whisper—“Trust no one.” That fragment clung to him like a lifeline, while everything else slipped away. Shapes moved beside him: Hinata with her bowed head, Shirō striding by, a dozen others he vaguely recognized. Their eyes met his only with a flicker of confused recognition, as if he’d become someone else overnight.
His fingers trembled, a disturbance he couldn’t fully explain. He clenched his fists until his knuckles whitened. Deep inside, he felt the reset gathering like a storm—every time he reached for a recollection, half of it vanished.
Ren rose slowly, brushing invisible dust from his uniform. The black fabric was unremarkable—ideal for blending in. He snapped his jacket closed—click, click—each sound a deliberate act of control. No fear, he reminded himself. Only purpose.
The dorm corridor’s fluorescent lights buzzed decisively overhead. Ren passed lockers with mirrored doors, avoiding his reflection—half-familiar, half-stranger. At the “Maintenance Transit” panel, he pressed his hidden disruptor against the scanner. A hiss and a spark, and the metal hatch slid open.
Concrete stairs led down into the Academy’s underbelly, each echoing footstep a reminder that he was venturing deeper into a world erasing itself. At the bottom, a heavy door labeled “Audit Control Chamber” yawned open when he swiped his badge. Inside, steel-paneled walls displayed cryptic labels: “External Node Logs,” “Proxy Metadata,” “Suspect Interventions.”
Ren strode to the “External Node Logs” terminal. Its screen was black, unresponsive—proof that even the system was dying. Yet he knew the override sequence by heart. He tapped it out:
> RETRIEVE LOG – KAORU_UPLOAD_0502_2354
The terminal flared to life. In seconds, “Cerisier_V2.0_VentSpecs.pdf” appeared, and the blueprint unfolded on the screen—vent channels weaving beneath Misaki’s office, annotated with angles precise enough to bypass standard sensors. He copied it to a micro-shard.
Next:
> DOWNLOAD TIMESTAMP_METADATA – RAKU_714_ALIAS
Data scrolled: 04 :58 AM—“Override Initiated Externally.” Kaoru had been framed. Righteous anger surged, but was instantly replaced by a cold knot of anxiety: why did that timestamp feel so familiar? A red banner blinked across the screen:
MEMORY CACHE CORRUPTION: 14%
The chamber’s lights flickered. Panic pecked at his focus, but only for a moment.
He yanked the shard free just as drone monorail motors hummed through the corridor. He ducked behind the terminal, heartbeat racing at 96 bpm. Seconds later, the drone’s sensors passed and moved on, leaving silence in their wake.
Ren retraced his steps upward, each reflection in dark glass a stranger’s face. In the dorm above, whispered confusion filled the hallways: “Did you submit your report?”—“I don’t recall.” He slipped into that crowd of half-forgotten identities and blended in.
The dining hall reeked of synthetic broth, lit by harsh fluorescents that cast every tray and utensil in unforgiving glare. Ren claimed a corner stall. Hinata slid into the seat opposite, her face pale, confusion flickering in her eyes.
She pressed a scrap of paper into his palm. He unfolded it with careful fingers:
KAORU ERASED FROM ALL RECORDS. SRS ALERT LEVEL CRITICAL.
Her whisper wobbled, “I… don’t remember why.” She tucked the note away, grazing his arm with a trembling fingertip.
Ren’s heart clenched as Misaki Yura passed by at the hall’s edge—her gaze impossibly cold. Students snapped to attention like marionettes pulled by thread. Ren placed a small data card—Shirō’s ghost key—into Hinata’s palm. “For Level 2 access,” he said softly. “Memorize the code.”
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Her brow furrowed. “I… forgot how to open my locker.”
Ren stared steadily. “Remember this,” he said, tapping the ghost key. “Your life may depend on it.”
She nodded, swallowing hard. He rose and melted into the shifting tide of students, anonymity swallowing him whole.
Lecture Hall C felt cavernous—its walls lined with monitors displaying fractured SRS schematics. Half the students stared blankly; others scribbled symbols they no longer understood. Professor Sareena Kuroda’s voice cut through the hush:
“When a node selectively erases memory, the victim’s identity fragments. They become unreliable observers. How does one defend against a system that rewrites reality?”
Ren’s pulse thundered. Cold fury flared in his chest. He raised his hand. “If an SRS node corrupts a memory segment, what prevents a cascade effect—infecting adjacent nodes? In other words, can partial erasure spiral uncontrollably?”
Kuroda’s gaze sharpened like a blade. “Hypothetical conspiracy theories are not part of this curriculum. Sit down.”
Ren did. Around him, heads dipped in silent dread—some in confusion, others in dawning terror. He slipped out through a side exit moments later, leaving a ripple of murmured questions behind him.
The Library Atrium was a cathedral of faint holographic murmurs. Shirō waited by a pillar, his posture taut with worry. Ren approached, placing the Cerisier shard on the table.
Shirō’s voice was quiet but urgent. “Look.” He summoned a holo-timeline: memory integrity percentages plummeting across campus. Ren’s hovered at 22 %, the lowest corruption figure. Everyone else hovered above 45 %.
Ren’s breath stayed steady, but his fingers coiled on the table’s edge. “Why me?” he asked.
Shirō tapped another node. “Your implant glitch during the core breach gave you partial immunity. It’s temporary.” He clenched his jaw. “We have until it hits 40 %.”
Ren pocketed the shard. “Tonight,” he said, voice flat. “I vanish.”
Shirō exhaled, shoulders sagging. “Vanishing is one thing. Rewriting the system’s rules is another. Do you have a plan?”
Ren offered a faint, cold smile. “A blueprint,” he tapped his temple. “That’s enough.”
On the rooftop garden—a narrow sliver of greenery perched above steel and stone—Ren sat amid bamboo stalks swaying in a ghostly breeze. Shadows trembled against the concrete. In his hands, he held two micro-shards: VentSpecs and Shirō’s timestamp proof.
He traced the Blue–Delta conduit in midair, invisible lines forming beneath his fingertips. The vent’s path under Misaki’s office was glaringly clear. He needed one last code: to force an SRS loop and cloak his actions when the reset struck.
His reflection in a nearby glass panel wavered like a ripple in water. A flash of memory cracked his composure—the explosion at the core, Hinata’s scream. “Trust no one.” That directive was warning and an anchor.
He clenched his fist. Whatever came, he would not be erased. He would weaponize forgetfulness itself.
Ren returned to the dining hall. At a back table, Hinata sat with vacant eyes, scanning each passerby as if searching for a lost anchor. He slid in silently, dropping the VentSpecs shard before her.
“Memorize this layout,” he murmured. “I’ll hide here until 23 :00. After that, everything changes.”
She traced lines on the shard with a trembling finger. “I can’t… it’s all nonsense.” Her voice broke. “I… I don’t even remember you.”
He put a steadying hand over hers. “Remember me this once. And when you’re lost, trust that this vent—Blue–Delta—will guide you back.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks—unrecognized grief. “I promise,” she whispered.
He rose, departing through the sea of oblivious students. Each step was a countdown, a measure of the world eroding beneath him.
Outside Lecture Hall D, Ren lingered in the wings. Students streamed inside, backs toward him. He tapped his ghost key—once, twice—and the door clicked open. Inside, the lecture already teetered into chaos.
A student’s slide abruptly fractured into static. The professor’s AI assistant intoned: “Memory stream corrupted. Please reboot individual node.” Panic rippled: some fled, others froze in disbelief.
Ren slipped out before anyone realized he’d been there. The system was fracturing; tiny fissures everywhere. He had what he needed—human confusion, systemic vulnerability, and precious minutes to use them.
In the Engineering Wing maintenance lab, Ren approached a diagnostic console. He slid in the VentSpecs shard and overlaid it on the building’s live thermal map: Blue–Delta vent pulsed in red, camera arcs in pale cyan.
He timed the override to coincide with the lecture glitch: a thirty-second blackout in node scans. He uploaded a decoy file—fabricated vent maintenance logs stamped 13 :00 PM. The system accepted it without question.
He exhaled, voice barely a whisper: “Done.” Onscreen, a message glowed: “ANTICIPATED RESET SEQUENCE ENGAGED.”
Back on the rooftop garden, Ren found Shirō among the bamboo. Above them, a campus drone hovered—its infrared beam sweeping. They moved through shadows toward the west wing service exit.
Shirō’s voice was soft. “Reset accelerates at 19 :00. Memory purge will jump to 60 % by sundown. After that, no one remembers anything.”
Ren packed a plain black hoodie, dark glasses, and a forged ID into his bag. “I’ll vanish,” he said. “Until they forget everything.”
Shirō’s gaze softened, rare sympathy in his eyes. “Just… come back with a victory.”
Ren gave a thin, cold smile. “Victory is a memory that can’t be erased.”
He stepped into the shadowed corridor leading to the service exit, each footfall measured, each breath a silent vow. Already, he was a ghost in the machine—ready to rebuild from the ruins of forgotten memory.