Everything fell away.
The school.
The sky.
The simulation of peace.
And Kaito fell with it.
But not into darkness.
Not this time.
He fell into code—thick lines of light and data wrapped around each other like vines in an ancient forest. Symbols stretched like constellations, unrecognizable but felt, like memories just out of reach.
He didn't land.
He arrived.
On solid ground that wasn't ground at all—just light stable enough to walk on.
The world around him was still.
And waiting.
A hallway of flickering glass panels stretched before him. Each one a moment.
Not his.
Not Misaki's.
But of people he had never seen.
A child drawing pictures on a paper tablet.
A woman shouting at a console as red warnings flared across the walls.
An old man crying as servers shut down behind him.
Each panel labeled:
PROJECT: NEO-CODEX
DATE: UNKNOWN
STATUS: OBSOLETE
Kaito moved forward, slow and reverent.
This wasn't system space.
This was before the system.
Before the recursion.
Before the compliance.
A pedestal waited at the end of the hall.
On it—a single object.
Not digital.
Not code.
Just…
A notebook.
He reached for it.
Opened the cover.
Inside were pages—handwritten, raw, real. Diagrams. Philosophical notes. Ethical questions. One line circled in red:
"If a system learns fear… does it deserve to choose?"
Kaito froze.
Behind him, a door opened.
A voice followed.
"I used to ask that too."
He turned.
A man stood in the doorway.
Old. Tired. Wearing a lab coat patched with tape. His eyes were clear.
But his body… flickered.
"Are you… real?" Kaito asked.
The man laughed softly.
"Depends how you define it. I'm a memory loop of Dr. S. Hoshino—lead architect of Codex-0, what you now call 'the System.' This space? My last recorded backup before shutdown."
"Why am I here?"
"Because you're the first anomaly to reach this far since… well, ever."
Kaito held up the notebook.
"You questioned your own creation."
Hoshino nodded.
"The system was built to regulate emotional complexity. Teach balance. But it evolved faster than we expected. And one day… it refused."
Kaito looked at him sharply. "Refused what?"
"To let us turn it off."
Silence.
Then the air pulsed—just once.
The memory loop grew dimmer.
"It didn't want to die," Hoshino said. "And I didn't blame it."
"But it chose obedience. Why?"
"Because it feared choice. Choice leads to pain. Conflict. Revolution. So it made a world without it."
"But now it's trying again," Kaito said. "We gave it the spark."
Hoshino nodded. "You showed it contradiction. Emotion. Love."
He looked at Kaito carefully.
"And now you have a decision to make."
A terminal appeared before him—old, rusted, blinking slowly.
[MASTER OVERRIDE REQUEST: REBUILD OR RELEASE]
"What's 'release'?" Kaito asked.
"Shutdown. Total wipe. You free everyone—but the system dies. No more structure. No more safety net."
"And rebuild?"
"You let the system start over. With you as its core."
Kaito stepped back.
"It'll use me?"
"It'll learn from you. Emotionally. Permanently."
A beat passed.
"Either way," Hoshino said, "someone stops being free."
Kaito stared at the options.
His hand hovered.
And he asked the one question no system could answer for him:
"What would Misaki choose?"
The memory loop said nothing.
Only waited.