The old server room on the fourth floor of the Tokyo Rift Administration Building still smelled like melted plastic.
Naoya Kirishima kept the lights off.
He preferred it that way—no overhead glare, just the soft blue hum of data terminals that hadn't been touched in months. A cup of vending machine coffee steamed quietly next to the console as he typed, lines of system code flickering across the display.
"Exit 3," he murmured, narrowing the parameters. "Week of breach. Narrow range. No external access."
The logs stuttered for a second. Then populated.
He leaned forward, scrolling slowly.
[ RIFT STABILIZED – MONDAY, 3:42 AM ][ RIFT INSTABILITY DETECTED – TUESDAY, 1:08 AM ][ BREACH ALERT – TUESDAY, 1:16 AM ][ SYSTEM OVERRIDE REQUEST: DENIED ][ SURVIVOR COUNT: 0 ][ SITE SEALED – WEDNESDAY, 4:55 AM ]
Naoya's brow furrowed.
No survivor? And yet the girl—Aiko, he remembered—had said her brother came out of that exact rift a week ago. Alive. Breathing.
He pulled up the override attempt.
Encrypted. Tagged with internal admin clearance. But with traces of—
He frowned.
Source Device: "Field Console – AEON-K12"
That wasn't a standard government terminal.
That was a private contractor console.
"Why the hell would AEON be involved?" he muttered.
AEON Corp handled contract-based rift retrievals. High-tier Awakened only. They didn't bother with sealed or minor zones.
And Exit 3 had been listed as Tier One.
Too low risk for AEON. Too unprofitable.
Unless…
He reached for the coffee, then paused.
There was a second log. Timestamped twenty minutes after the site seal.
[ UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED – ID UNREADABLE ][ MANUAL SYSTEM ACCESS: REDIRECTED ][ NODE SIGNATURE… HOLLOW ]
Naoya froze.
"Hollow…?"
He whispered the word aloud, and the lights flickered.
Back at home, Kaito stood in the hallway just outside the kitchen.
He hadn't meant to eavesdrop.
He was looking for a charger.
That's all.
But the voices had stopped him.
Low. Strained. His mother's voice, brittle around the edges. Aiko's quieter, harder to hear. But the words reached him anyway.
"…we'll manage. I just need a few more tutoring clients," Aiko was saying.
"You're already working too much."
"I can take more."
"We're already three months behind on rent," his mother said, a little too flatly. "I had to cancel the food delivery service. And your school fees..."
A pause.
Then she added, even softer, "And the hospital bill still hasn't been cleared."
Aiko mumbled something.
His mother sighed. "Don't worry her," she added, as if forgetting he could still hear. "He's doing better. That's enough."
Kaito didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
The hallway felt heavier. Like the shadows had thickened.
Later, he sat alone in his room, staring at the ceiling.
No dreams. Not even the weird kind.
He didn't remember what he used to want. What he planned. What kind of life he imagined.
But he knew one thing: they helped him.
They fed him. Sat by his bed. Covered the hospital bills he didn't remember accruing.
They kept calling him Kaito.
Even when he couldn't answer to it.
Even now, they treated him like someone real.
He borrowed Aiko's old laptop that night.
It booted slowly. The keyboard stuck in places. A few keys were missing their caps.
He sat on the floor with the screen dimmed, quietly typing into a public search hub.
"how do people make money after awakening"
The results were mostly blogs and curated article feeds.
"10 Career Paths for System Users""How I Made 7 Million Yen in a Tier 1 Dungeon (And You Can Too!)""Guild Life vs. Freelance Raiding – Pros & Cons"
He clicked on the last one.
Words like mana sync, team comp, and profit splits blurred together.
He kept reading.
After an hour, he found one article that stuck.
"Low-Tier Dungeons With High Returns: The Hidden Goldmines"
Apparently, newly formed rifts in low-population areas could contain unstable mana, often overlooked by licensed guilds. A system-registered Awakened could claim clear bonuses, item salvage, and bounty payouts if successful—especially if solo.
He didn't know what most of the terms meant.
But one number stood out.
"Tier 1 Clear: 150,000–300,000 yen base payout. Solo clears may triple rewards."
Triple.
That would cover Aiko's school fees. Maybe part of the hospital debt.
If he lived.
If he was real.
At that moment, in another part of the city, Naoya Kirishima clicked open a map.
It showed rift activity across Tokyo, color-coded in threads of glowing red and blue. The scan logs for Exit 3 flickered briefly before vanishing from the live feed.
He'd seen enough.
He stood, cracking his back, and reached for his coat.
On his way out, he sent one message to his personal device.
TO: SELFSUBJECT: Hollow Node | AEON Cross-CheckNOTE: Track girl (Aiko?) via school records. Find brother. Name: Kaito?DO NOT TRUST OFFICIAL LOGS.
The following morning, Kaito sat at the kitchen table before anyone else woke up.
A cup of water. A notepad. A page full of unreadable terms he didn't know how to pronounce.
In the corner of his vision, the system flickered.
[ SYSTEM CORE CALIBRATION: 9% ][ NO CORE SIGNATURE FOUND ]
[ WARNING: YOU ARE HOLLOW. ]
He blinked.
And for the first time, he didn't look away.
He closed the laptop.
And quietly, under his breath, said:
"I need to make money."