....
"Sorry, I can't," she said, the words falling out too quickly, like a reflex. Like flinching from a hand that might touch too gently.
Shotaro paused mid-step, his sneaker crunching the gravel just beneath the edge of the sidewalk. He didn't press her, even if every instinct in him itched to. He could be nosy when he wanted to be—curious to the point of chaos—but sometimes silence was its own kind of kindness.
"Alright," he said with a shrug, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets. "Then let's head home."
They walked side by side, the late afternoon sun casting soft orange hues across the buildings. There was a quietness to the streets—kids running sprinklers in backyards, the low buzz of cicadas filling in the gaps between car horns and distant laughter. It felt like the world was catching its breath before summer truly began.
"The summer break starts on Monday," he said after a moment, his voice casual, maybe even a little hopeful. "Do you have any plans? International trips? Something luxurious and fancy?"
Fatiba made a face. "No."
He blinked, turning his head. "Seriously? Nothing? You're part of the top one percent of the planet, aren't you?" he said with a teasing grin. "Don't tell me you're just going to rot indoors watching documentaries and reading ancient war philosophy again."
She hesitated, chewing the inside of her cheek, before answering.
"It's just… wherever I go, I get hated," she said, quietly. Almost to herself. But just loud enough.
Shotaro stopped. Not abruptly—just slowed his pace until it became stillness. His ears perked up in that subtle way they did whenever he caught something strange in the air—like a sixth sense fine-tuned for sorrow.
"…What do you mean?" he asked, his voice dipping low. Not confrontational. Just be careful.
Fatiba realized too late what she'd said. She blinked hard and turned her head away, waving a hand as if that could erase it.
"Nothing," she said, sharper now. Defensive, but not angry. It was the kind of "nothing" that meant everything—the kind you said when you weren't ready to share the weight behind the words.
Shotaro didn't say anything right away. He just stared at her, not with pity, but with that unnerving softness of his—like someone seeing a bruise you thought you'd hidden. He nodded once, slowly, the way someone does when they file a truth away for later. The moment passed, but the weight of it didn't.
They resumed walking, their shadows stretched long behind them on the road, thin and tangled like forgotten stories.
"Alright," Shotaro said again, quieter this time, like folding a page for later. "But if you change your mind and want to run away somewhere stupid and low-budget, I know a rooftop in Akasaka that gets the dumbest fireworks view imaginable."
He didn't look at her as he said it and didn't try to dig deeper or make the moment dramatic. He just smiled—soft, crooked, and half-tired. Like a boy carrying the world who had learned to offer gentle things in place of grand ones. It wasn't a grin. It wasn't even charming. It was… safe. Like he meant it.
And Fatiba, without answering, without even thinking, just fell into step beside him again. Her heart was quiet and loud at once, full of a strange ache she hadn't known she'd been waiting for. She didn't need to say anything. She just walked, and that was the answer. And she didn't look at him again, because she knew that if she did—if she caught him smiling like that one more time—something soft inside her might start to crack open.
....
By the time she got home, the sky was dimming, pink leaking across the clouds like someone spilled hibiscus tea all over the edge of the evening.
She stepped through the gated garden, fingers brushing the dying lavender sprigs near the path. Her head still buzzed with leftover laughter and quiet thoughts. Her chest felt heavy in a good way, like something full, something warm.
"Grandpa, I'm—" she began, slipping off her shoes.
But her voice caught short when the maid turned, holding out the laptop like a warning sign.
"Where were you?" came the voice of Rashid Darvish, her father—flat, tinny, and cutting even through the screen.
Fatiba blinked. "Oh, fu—Dad?"
Abbas was standing in the corner of the room, leaning against the old window frame. His palm was on his forehead like he'd been facepalming since she walked in, but his mouth was twitching, and his eyes sparkled with that glint of old-man mischief. He already knew. Balls must've told him everything. Still, he didn't look mad. If anything, he looked proud. A full day out, and Fatiba came home a little brighter, a little more like herself. What was one day of skipping school compared to the lonely months she'd spent silent and shut-in?
The room was far too cold for June.
Not cold in temperature—cold in shape. Cold in voice. Cold in the way the LED light buzzed above her like a judgmental fly. The scent of jasmine incense was still clinging faintly to the air, pumped through an automatic diffuser on the wall, sterilized and serene. The living room looked like a place where humanity had been professionally airbrushed out—marble floors, glass tables, not a book or photo in sight. It was designed to impress, not to live in.
Her mother appeared behind the glowing frame of the laptop like a figure summoned from static. Mariham's sari was traded out for a modern navy-blue blazer today, the lapels sharp enough to cut glass. Her hair was immaculately braided, glossy and tight, a crown of expectation. Beside her, Rashid sat with the stiffness of someone who had mistaken discipline for identity long ago. He didn't look up from the screen; he didn't have to. Even his presence through pixels felt like a reprimand written in binary.
"Your teacher called," Mariham said. Her voice didn't carry the warm gravity of concern or even the sting of scolding—it floated, disembodied, like a notification on a phone screen. "You weren't in school."
Fatiba stood at the threshold, backpack still clinging to her like a shield, shoes still half-untied. A little dirt smudged the corner of her knee from when she'd kicked her shoes off at the park. Her scarf was folded in her bag with a comic inside it. That scarf had touched Shotaro's book. That felt strangely intimate now.
But none of that mattered in this room.
They didn't ask where she was with worry. They didn't even ask if she was safe. They didn't ask if she was happy. They simply asked because a metric on their spreadsheet blinked red.
Her breath hitched slightly.
Rashid adjusted his tie on camera. "Answer us… Fatiba Darvish."
There it was again. Always with the last name. Like a reminder of ownership. Of branding. Of the project name on the file. Not just Fatiba. Never just a daughter.
Just the asset.
"We won't get mad," said Mariham.
The irony stung harder than any slap could. Robots don't get mad. That would imply emotion. And she wasn't sure they had it in them.
Fatiba stared at their expressions—unmoving, unreadable. The kind of faces that could watch the world burn and simply file a report about smoke damage.
And somewhere inside her, the echo of Shotaro's laughter flickered like a match. His crooked grin. His dumb little fireworks plan. That rooftop.
That rooftop.
For a second, it felt like another world. One where she could breathe. Where being human wasn't a crime. Where someone could hand her a spoonful of strawberry ice cream and expect nothing back. Where she wasn't a blueprint. Wasn't an heir. Wasn't a Darvish at all.
Just a girl, laughing.
Just a girl, free.
She clenched her fingers and stared at the laptop. The screen was too bright. Her parents' silhouettes glowed at the edges, like two ghosts sketched in neon.
"I was with a friend," she said finally. "We skipped."
Her mother blinked.
"You skipped," she repeated, not as a question—just a timestamp for future analysis.
Fatiba waited for a consequence that never came. A punishment. A shout. A look. Anything.
Instead, Rashid typed something. Probably a note in her record.
Mariham nodded faintly. "Next time, let the school know in advance. That's all."
That's all.
The meeting was over. The business concluded.
And her stomach twisted, not in fear, but in emptiness.
They didn't even care enough to be disappointed in her as a person. Just as a system malfunction. Something that needed patching.
And it was in that moment that she realized something quiet and terrible and true:
They would never really see her.
They would never love her.
Not like Abbas did. Not like a grandfather should—but like a human should. Like someone who saw a soul, not a resume.
Fatiba turned without another word and walked away from the laptop screen. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She just walked with all the numb calm of someone who had decided, deep down, not to be a machine.
Somewhere in the folds of her scarf, that comic waited—tucked against her chest like a secret.
She went to her room and pulled the curtain aside, letting in the gold light of a sun that still hadn't learned to stop shining just because it was lonely.
And deep inside her, under the shame and the silence and the sterile judgment, something bloomed—
God, I want to go back.
....
The silence after the call ended was louder than any reprimand could've been. Her room, dimmed by the late summer sun filtering through half-closed curtains, felt like it was holding its breath. For a moment, she just stood there, her fists balled at her sides, her chest rising and falling with sharp, trembling breaths. The hum of the laptop was the only sound left behind by her parents—clinical, distant, mechanical. A drone. A ghost.
And then it broke.
"They can't even bother to yell at me—let alone come here physically!" she shouted, her voice cracking like glass under strain. Her nails dug into her palms before she reeled her arm back and slammed it into the wall.
The plaster gave a soft, sickening thud beneath her knuckles. Pain sparked instantly—but she didn't stop.
"AHHHHHH!!" Her voice ripped through the quiet like thunder splitting a dead tree. The scream was raw and human, jagged and animalistic. It was the sound of a heart that had been told over and over it wasn't allowed to break because it was supposed to be a tool, not a soul.
With a furious swipe, she yanked the scarf from her head, flinging it onto the floor like it had caught fire. Her hair spilled out in loose, dark waves, a contrast to the tight, perfect image she'd been taught to keep. Her breathing was erratic now, not from exertion but from all the years of silence collapsing in on themselves.
She turned and kicked her chair—hard. It clattered backward, legs tangling in the cords by the wall. Her bookshelf rattled when she slammed her hand into the side of it. A cheap snow globe—one she never liked—cracked open on the floor. Water and fake glitter pooled over her carpet like spilled magic gone bitter.
Then the desk.
She swept it. Not angrily. Not thoughtlessly. Just with the slow, crushing motion of someone who needed to erase everything that was expected of her.
Papers flew. A framed picture—her, as a kid, in some dumb award ceremony dress—fell face-down. The glass didn't break. She hated that.
Tears came—but not in the way people thought they would. Not sobs. Not whimpers. Just wet lines crawling silently down her face as she stood, hands shaking, breath ragged.
Because it wasn't just this moment.
It was all of them.
All the mornings where they handed her a schedule instead of a smile.
All the evenings where her achievements were reviewed like quarterly earnings.
All the fucking meetings where her emotions were background noise to investor calls.
She wasn't their daughter.
She was their product.
Their asset.
Their prototype.
And now—now—after the first real day she had in years, after smiling so wide her cheeks still ached, after laughing—they didn't even care enough to be angry.
They didn't even ask why.
They didn't notice that something in her had changed.
That something in her was trying to live.
Her knees buckled, and she sank down to the floor in the middle of the mess. Her scarf lay near her foot, and she stared at it like it was a stranger's.
Her hair fell into her face. Her breath slowed.
And beneath all that noise—the rage, the mess, the ache—there was a name.
Shotaro.
Not because he saved her.
Not because he fixed her.
But because when she was beside him, when they sat with books and ice cream and rooftop dreams—she didn't feel like she was broken.
She felt real.
And right now, that was the only thing that kept her from screaming again.
She wanted to talk with Shotaro.
....
Somewhere in the neon haze of Musashi no Yamato City, where skyscrapers bloom like glass orchids under an artificial sky, the city pulsed to life. It was evening now, but night in Musashi no Yamato did not begin with the setting sun—it began with light. Not starlight or moonlight, but the soft, relentless burn of neon across skin, steel, and concrete.
Lanes buzzed beneath vermillion street lamps, signs in half-a-dozen languages flickered and hummed in rhythm with the low murmur of pedestrian chatter. It was a city that never entirely stopped breathing, not even in its sleep. Some parts of it still belonged to the past—wooden shrines tucked between sushi bars and underground jazz dens; stone bridges arcing over artificial rivers that mirrored real stars when the sky was clean enough to reflect. But in this moment, it was the middle of the city—its heart, its humming circuit board—that shone.
Musashi no Yamato was an island, and not just metaphorically. For centuries, it was a world unto itself, detached by sea and distance. A true isle, carved from the earth and isolated by saltwater and time. Before the engineers stitched that steel artery of a bridge in 1962—fifty-six kilometers of gritted marvel—one had to take to the skies or ride the tides to get here. Even older than that, in times half-shrouded by soot and myth, pilgrims came in boats no larger than coffins, rowing across the same waters that had swallowed armies whole.
And still, the land endured.
Beneath the shimmer of its skyline lay a foundation laced with mystery. The island was geographically impossible—so the professors said. A landmass so mineral-rich it felt divine or cursed, depending on who you asked. Magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, and silver glimmered beneath its crust like buried stars. Gold veins threaded through the old hills. Somewhere, deep and mostly forbidden, uranium slept.
The central river was another puzzle. Not supposed to exist on such a small island, yet there it was, winding like a myth down the belly of the city. At first, it had been too toxic to drink—too much magnesium, not enough mercy. Then, centuries later, a dam was built. Not just a filter but a redefinition, a human reclamation of something untameable. The river became a machine, and in doing so, the island became its own alchemy. Natural and unnatural. God-made and man-made, fused like scar tissue.
They said Musashi Miyamoto had once walked this land—before it was even named such. Before neon and filtered water and silver-laced soil. When it was still dense with oni and legend, and the boundaries between folklore and the physical world blurred like watercolor. The myth went that he slew an Oni King here, not with a sword alone but with a companion—Yamato, the silent right hand of a forgotten shogunate. In their honor, the island was renamed. Musashi no Yamato.
It was a place that knew how to wear history and innovation like twin blades.
Now, in 2022, Musashi no Yamato was an urban labyrinth. At day, it still dressed itself in tradition—crimson torii gates, school uniforms, incense-scented alleyways. But at night?
At night, it became something else.
The veins of the city lit up with purples and teals, giant digital koi swam across projection screens on high-rise buildings, and vending machines sold everything from matcha-flavored cigarettes to tarot readings. It was Tokyo's cousin who took more drugs, believed more ghosts, and kept its ancient blood wrapped under cyberpunk skin.
....
The sky fractured like old glass.
It didn't crack with thunder or flame, but with colors too loud to be real—impossible neon hues, rippling in jagged pulses across the rooftops of Musashi no Yamato. One moment, the skyline was its usual chaotic blend of signage, cable wires, and hazy stars. The next, it was bleeding light. Not fire. Not magic. Something far older.
And then came the Draceel Drake.
It wasn't a dragon, not really. It had the shape of one—long like a serpent, wings folded close like ancient manuscripts—but it wasn't of this world. Its skin shimmered with shifting geometry, like someone had wrapped the skeleton of a beast in failed computer code and a fever dream. It wove between towers, swallowing up narrative logic. Cars stalled in the streets below. Digital screens blanked out. People stood mid-step on sidewalks, blinking slowly, as though waking into a story they hadn't signed up for.
That's what domains did. They rewrote you.
Some domains played like games. Others like horror films. A few were romantic, at least until the teeth came out. But all of them—every single one—had a logic of their own. Step inside one by accident and you might forget who you were. What you wanted. You'd play your part until the domain decided your arc was over.
Tonight's domain was predation.
And then—right as the Drake loomed above the elevated metro tracks, ready to descend—someone answered.
"Don't worry," said the sky. Cheerful. Stupidly cheerful. Like a school bell ringing at the end of the world.
A red star streaked down. Then blue. Then yellow, green, pink, a second green, black, and finally white. Eight lights, eight different heartbeats, all hitting the earth in a choreographed storm.
They didn't land. They arrived.
On the rooftop of the Mitsumaru Department Store, above the flashing billboard of a cat in sunglasses, eight figures stood. Wind curled around them, catching hair and ribbons and coats with theatrical timing. The tiles beneath their boots cracked gently, like a salute. The city seemed to pause—half in fear, half in awe.
They were PRISM HEXAGRAM.
One of the gang of heroes who willingly enter a domain when it appears in our floor of reality.
Carmine Aetheria.
She stood front and center, red hair whipping like flame. Her skirt was jagged and one sleeve torn—part rebel, part warrior. She held a sword that looked stolen from an apocalypse, jagged and leaking soft trails of scripture that evaporated mid-air.
"Drake-level threat," she muttered with a tired sigh. "I just unpacked."
She shouldered her sword like it was a coworker she hated but still needed.
Cerulea Prismheart.
Bright blue twin-tails bounced as she floated slightly above the rooftop, legs tucked into a cute sitting posture atop a levitating porcelain teacup. Glitter sparkled under her eyes, which were too big for her face in a way that made her look younger and more dangerous than she was.
"Maybe we can hug it before we nuke it~?" she giggled, aiming two bubbleguns shaped like stuffed animals.
Lumine Buttergold.
Her golden curls were flawless. Her crown was tilted like she'd won it in a chess game against fate. She sat—no, hovered—on a floating, filigreed throne made of gold and bedtime stories. Her voice carried authority that bent the rules around her.
"I declare this domain void," she said coolly, "by order of the Fifth Sun."
Viridia Hex.
The most terrifying one didn't look magical at all. She looked like a brawler from an eco-punk gang—green buzzcut, eyes like broken jade, and tattoos of carnivorous plants wrapping up her arms. She revved a chainsaw sculpted from twisted petals and bone.
"Let's prune this narrative," she growled, already pacing like a dog let off leash.
Rosalia Popcrash.
She wore an oversized pink hoodie with a skull-shaped lollipop logo and had a bazooka slung over her back. Her eyes were literal stars, and her grin was way too wide.
"Ohmygod ew, it looks like a fetish monster! Who writes these domains?!?" she yelled, loading a heart-shaped grenade with glitter.
Umbra Nullveil.
She didn't speak. She barely existed. A veil of moving black ink covered half her face, and her robes billowed with a breeze no one else felt. Her staff was shaped like a shattered mirror, refracting only void. Even the other girls stood a little farther from her.
Alba Lumenhertz.
All in white. Robes like melted candlelight. Her halo was cracked and hovering just above her temple. She floated silently, hands together in a prayer that glowed faintly.
"This world is not yours, Draceel," she whispered. "Return to unbeing."
As one, they moved.
The Draceel Drake wasn't just flailing wings and burning air. It was fighting with conceptual mantra—its domain was "Contamination of Memory".
Everything it touched shimmered, stuttered, changed. A man running from the scene suddenly stopped and blinked at his own hands, whispering, "Where's my wife?"—and then "Wait...did I have one?"
A woman screamed at the sight of her own daughter—then screamed louder when her daughter didn't recognize her.
The Drake didn't just corrupt the city's body. It was eating context. Warping identity. Its mantra bent the concept of memory into a fluid, shifting contagion, and by the time Prism Hexagram realized it, the battle had moved from buildings to meaning.
Carmine's blade slowed, struggling to cut illusions that knew her better than she did.
Cerulea was whispering affirmations to herself between volleys: "You're real, you're good, you're not a fake."
Alba's halo flickered as she mumbled half-forgotten hymns, praying not to forget the shape of her own thoughts.
That's when someone dialed the number.
A burner phone, thrown into an alley.
The moment the call went through, someone ran. Fast. Like they knew what was coming. Like they'd just pulled the pin on a divine grenade.
Umbra turned sharply, veil fluttering.
"Damn it," she hissed. Her voice, usually calm as ink, cracked. "He's here."
There was no thunder. No epic entrance. Just that sound—an insane whoop echoing through metal and sky, bouncing between the bones of the city like a war cry from someone who had never feared death because death, to him, was just another dance partner.
"WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!"
That voice was a brand.
Carmine's shoulders sank with exhaustion. "Goddamn it."
"Every time," said Rosalia, sliding another glitter-grenade into her launcher with a huff. "Like a golden retriever with god issues."
"Why does he like fighting Domain Kings so much?" Cerulea asked, blowing a nervous bubble that popped into a heart.
Lumine, who rarely commented, adjusted her gloves and muttered, "Because Domain Kings are the only things he can beat without guilt. They're simulations. Frameworks. Puppets."
"He doesn't kill people," said Viridia. "Not unless he has no choice. But this?" She gestured toward the writhing Drake, its head now vomiting streams of rewritten memory into the sky. "This he can break. No regrets. So yeah... this is probably emotional masturbation."
"Violent therapy," Carmine added. "Or foreplay, if you're his sword."
And then he landed.
Not like a hero.
Like a weapon dropped by a bored god.
He came skidding down the side of a glass tower, feet first, body horizontal—an absurd silver-haired blur. When he hit the ground, the street cracked. Glass rippled. A tremor jolted outward through the concrete as if the world was startled by his presence.
Dust plumed.
Streetlights blinked once.
The shockwave echoed off the buildings like a round of polite applause from the city itself.
And there he stood—eight feet tall, wind brushing back his long silver hair. Crimson eyes bright with childish thrill. Shirt half-tucked like he dressed while running. No visible weapon yet, but his aura throbbed like the prelude to a storm.
Shotaro Mugyiwara.
The idiot. The anomaly. The Dragonfly.
"DID I MISS Something Important?!" he yelled like a kid crashing into recess.
Umbra rubbed her temples. "Close and far at once…"
Viridia pinched the bridge of her nose. "I swear to God, if he starts quoting scripture again, I'm turning into a vine and strangling him."
But none of them moved to stop him.
Because they knew something no one else in Musashi no Yamato did.
In this city of split timelines, corrupting rivers, mythic metals, and domains that fed on minds—sometimes, just sometimes—the only antidote to madness wasn't control.
It was a boy too wild to break.
And as Shotaro cracked his knuckles and grinned up at the Draceel Drake like it was his favorite kaiju, they all felt it.
The balance of the domain shifted.
Because the Drake was a concept.
But so was he.
And it had just met the one concept it couldn't overwrite:the will to keep walking, no matter what you forget.