Riley slowly opened her eyes in a daze.
Her consciousness returned in a hazy swirl, but she couldn’t begin to guess where she was—or how much ti had passed.
Strangely, though, she didn’t feel uneasy.
On the contrary, a rare, peaceful calm wrapped around her like a warm blanket.
Soft sunlight poured gently over her face and body.
Plush grass cradled her back with a comforting touch.
A spring breeze drifted by now and then, ruffling her hair lightly.
As she looked around, she realized she was lying beneath a cherry blossom tree.
Petals, soft and pink, floated down in the wind, settling quietly on her knees and shoulders.
Riley smiled as she watched the petals dance through the air.
“If this is a dream, then it’s one I never want to wake up from...”
She murmured to herself, reaching through the fog of her mories.
She had been shot. That much she rembered.
A bullet piercing her abdon. The warmth of her blood spilling onto the ground.
She knew—absolutely—that she had been dying.
“Is this heaven? Or maybe... my final dream?”
She turned her head and spotted a picnic basket.
It was filled with all the foods Whity had always been curious about.
Sushi, pasta, cake, fruit, sandwiches...
Every dish they had only ever seen in books spilled endlessly out of the basket.
[Riley, you finally made it!]
Startled by the familiar voice, Riley looked up.
There, floating gently in midair, was a round, white bird—Whity.
Just like always, Whity’s wings were spread wide, eyes beaming with joy as they looked at her.
The sa Whity she had left behind.
The one she had once promised she’d take to see the cherry blossoms. The one she had wished to go on a picnic with.
Here, in this place, that wish was coming true.
[You said we’d have a picnic together, rember? I kept the promise!]
Whity’s voice rang clear and bright.
As if nothing had ever happened.
Even in her half-conscious state, the mont Riley saw Whity, she understood—she was dreaming.
But so what?
Right now, in this mont, she was having the picnic she’d longed for, with Whity by her side.
“Whity, try this one too. You said you wanted to taste sushi.”
Smiling, Riley gestured toward the little white bird.
She offered a small plate of sushi to Whity.
Whity looked at it and bead.
[Wow! So this is real sushi! It’s even prettier than it looked in the books!]
Through Riley’s blurred vision, Whity appeared pure and white, just as always.
But in reality, Whity was no longer the sa.
Swallowed by darkness, their feathers had turned black, their form twisted and warped until it was barely recognizable.
But none of that mattered.
Even soaked in shadow, Whity still smiled for Riley.
Under the cherry blossom tree, Riley and Whity laughed and talked together.
They spoke of the books Whity had read, of the stories Riley had told about the outside world, of all the places they had dread of going soday.
[Look, look at that cloud! Doesn’t it look like a cat?]
“That one looks more like a boat... Oh, wait, yeah—kinda like a cat too.”
In truth, Riley lay sprawled on a cold, hard slab of black marble, deep in the darkness.
But the fantasy in her mind remained vivid.
And the dimr her consciousness grew, the sharper that fantasy beca.
[Thank you, Riley.]
Whity suddenly spoke in a quiet, sincere voice.
“...Why?”
[For setting free. You taught about the world. You gave books, you told stories... And now you’ve shown the cherry blossoms, too.]
Riley fell silent for a mont.
Then smiled softly.
“I always wished you could leave that tiny space... and see the real world soday.”
[I know. I always knew.]
Whity floated down and gently perched on Riley’s shoulder.
Riley reached up and stroked their soft feathers.
“Whity... where should we go next?”
Her voice was growing faint.
Even as she felt her consciousness fading, she held onto her smile until the end.
[Anywhere is fine... as long as we’re together.]
Whether that was Whity’s real voice, or just sothing her heart imagined, she couldn’t say.
Petals scattered more thickly from the sky.
Sunlight shone down on them, and the breeze wrapped gently around their bodies.
In the dark, Riley and Whity continued their eternal picnic inside their shared dream.
****
The place I arrived at—led by the white bird—was swallowed in dense darkness.
The mont we reached it, the white bird dispersed into the air like scattered mist.
The ceiling lights had all been shattered, but the soft blue glow flowing naturally from my body faintly illuminated the space.
Behind , a hollow elevator shaft stretched upward, barely visible in the dark. Ahead stood what looked like the entrance to a lab.
“...This place...”
Sothing about it stirred a strange sense of nostalgia.
It reminded of the lab I’d seen in the early days after joining MK Corp.
As if so piece of that mory had been reconstructed right here.
Of course, if I looked closely, I could tell this wasn’t the sa place. But emotionally—it felt the sa.
I pointed to the old CCTV cara tucked in a corner of the ceiling and spoke to the one perched on my shoulder.
“So of those might still be working.”
[?]
“I” tilted their head, confused, clearly not understanding.
They simply looked around, curiosity filling their eyes.
Just in case we were being watched, I straightened my hair and pulled the MK Girl costu over myself.
Then, I slowly stepped into the shadow-swallowed lab.
The mont I entered, I could tell sothing had happened here.
Bullet marks scarred the walls, and the desks and chairs were overturned like there had been a fight.
Shattered glass and long-dried coffee stains were scattered across the floor.
A strange tension hung in the air.
An eerie atmosphere, like walking into a haunted house, ruled this space.
Unlike the cherry blossom path I’d walked before, here, the features of an Erosion {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Zone stood out vividly.
Shadows collapsed into pixel fragnts, possessing real form.
Rooms connected to each other with no logic—doors leading to nowhere.
And every so often, a construct flickered into existence.
These constructs looked like blackened, warped spheres with limbs attached. Twisted. Wrong.
They seed to have so connection to the white bird that had guided us here.
“I” clearly didn’t want to see them. They pressed their tiny hands over their eyes and curled up tighter on my shoulder.
I reassured them, and swung my blade-shaped arm to cut down the approaching constructs.
The blue-glowing blade carved sharp trails through the darkness, and each construct it touched dispersed into black smoke.
This Erosion Zone was different in every room.
So were so deeply corroded they looked like lumps of coal—ceiling, floor, and walls indistinguishable.
Others were filled with such dense shadow, nothing at all could be seen.
The room I entered now looked like soone had just been using it.
A monitor was still on. The keyboard, worn with use, was spotless.
Steam still curled up from a mug of coffee sitting on the desk.
Sothing about the space resembled the office I used to work in.
Before I realized it, I was sitting down in front of the computer.
The mouse, the keyboard—even the hundred-year-old operating system.
It felt like I had stepped back into the past, and I let myself sink into that feeling, drifting through the computer’s internal files.
And then—I found sothing that caught my eye.
A docunt, left conspicuously right in the center of the desktop.
It was titled:
At first glance, it looked like a typical company handbook—but the contents were... interesting.
“Violet virus...?”
So that swarm of purple-eyed things was MK’s virus...
The manual was full of intel a regular rc like would never usually see. Stuff about vanishing AIs, warnings against giving them religious texts—things that scread classified.
One line in particular stood out. The part about religious books.
It felt oddly familiar.
One of MK Corp’s “smarter” AI versions had once asked to get them a copy of the Heart Sutra.
I glanced at “I,” who still had their hands over their eyes.
“So... if you ca out of the Erosion Zone, does that make you a self-evolving AI?”
“I” squird on my shoulder and tilted their head again, clearly not getting it.
“Probably not... You’re way too dumb to be a self-evolving AI.”
I muttered with a smirk.
“I” must’ve heard that—because their tiny fists suddenly started whacking the top of my head.
Once I stepped out of the brightly lit office, darkness rushed back to et .
Coming out of the light made the hallway seem even darker.
The floor glistened under my blue glow—soaked in blood.
So spots were still wet. Sticky. Shining.
But strangely, there were no bodies.
Like soone had cleaned them up.
I walked down the blood-filled corridor.
At the end, I ca to a door that looked completely out of place.
It said “Reception Room.”
From beyond it, a faint floral scent seeped through.
The sa sweet, sticky scent I’d slled back on the cherry blossom path.
“I” must’ve slled it too—they curled up again on my shoulder.
Then whispered quietly in my ear.
[Be careful...]
I took a deep breath.
And slowly turned the handle of the black-stained steel door.
As it opened, a long, chilling creak echoed down the hallway.
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