Jihan, sitting on the edge of the couch, her eyes shining with concern:
"Ryoko... I need to ask permission from the Shadow Academy... I received news that my entrance exam will be postponed, and I need to start my training early. But... There's one more thing."
Ryoko, looking a little wary:
"What are you hiding, Jihan? You don't talk like that unless you're up to something crazy."
Jihan, in a low voice after a sigh:
"I want to accompany you on the next mission... The one I've kept secret even from those on the Watcher's Council."
Ryoko, who had been silent between them for a while, then smiled wryly:
"You don't change... You're always sneaking behind the curtain to find out what shouldn't be said."
Jehan:
"That's exactly why I want to be with you. I'm not just your sister, I'm the heir to the memory."
On the other side... While Ryuichi was lying on the couch, talking with Aura, whose words were not without humor and sarcasm, she said to him in a playful tone:
"Do you really think you're ready for the exam? To be honest, even Mana, your cat, will be more stable than you."
Ryuichi laughed tiredly, then sighed:
"At least cats aren't subjected to deadly tests at dawn..."
But suddenly... ding-dong
the doorbell rang.
The two stopped talking. Ryuichi nervously raised his head.
"Who could it be at this time...?"
Then his mother's footsteps were heard as she went to open the door. No sooner had it opened than the two heard a familiar female voice:
"Good morning... sorry for the sudden inconvenience."
Ryuichi gasped, his eyes widened, and his body contracted in shock.
He looked at Aura, who had stopped speaking altogether.
He said in a low voice:
"No... no way... it's... miko?"
Ryuichi was confused, and began to breathe rapidly. He looked at Aura and said:
"Am I... am I delusional?"
Aura, who had stopped broadcasting any sarcastic tone, stared at the closed door and whispered:
"No... that's her voice."
Then in a low voice:
"Why did she come here? Did she know I was with you?"
Ryuichi answered fearfully:
"No... no one knows you're here, I swear..."
---
At the door
Sera, Ryuichi's mother, opened the door a little wider in surprise:
"Oh... you're Ms. Miku, aren't you?"
The miko nodded with a slight smile, as if trying to hide her intentions:
"Yes, ma'am, sorry for the early inconvenience. Is Ryuichi... present?"
Sera looked around the house for a bit and then answered softly:
"Yes, he's in his room, is there something important?"
In the moments after hearing the miko's voice, Ryuichi's heart started beating hard as if his ribs could no longer contain it. He slowly stood up from the bed, disoriented, placing his hand on his forehead as if trying to quickly organize his thoughts.
He said to Aura in a troubled voice:
"Why did she come? It can't be a coincidence... No, it can't be..."
He approached the small mirror next to his desk, awkwardly adjusting his hair, then stopped. He looked at his eyes reflected in it, and said to himself:
"No, this is no time to pretend. I have to look normal... no, I have to look innocent..."
He then quickly turned to Aura, and asked her in a hushed voice:
"Do you think she found out something?"
Aura, who was still feeling anxious from her previous encounter with Miku, replied, watching his reaction:
"Maybe... Or maybe she just wanted to make sure of something. But don't forget, you're not alone."
Ryuichi whispered as he slowly approached the door to the room:
"I don't know what you're going to say... but I'm ready."
The moment he stood right in front of the door, he heard a light knock... Three short, strangely familiar taps.
He knocked again... the clicks were hesitant this time, as if the person behind him was afraid of what he would find.
Ryuichi paused for a moment in front of the door, breathing deeply. Then he turned toward Aura, who was floating quietly in the corner of the room, a little pale with tension.
He said in a hushed voice:
"If she starts asking questions, don't interfere. I'll try to contain the situation... in my own way."
Aura nodded silently, her eyes following him with a mixture of caution and attention.
Ryuichi reached for the handle, hesitated for a couple of seconds... then opened the door.
She was standing there.
Miko Sato.
She wasn't wearing her usual lab uniform, but rather simple civilian clothes, a long gray sweater and dark jeans, her hair unusually tied up. She wasn't the stern researcher, but a different person... more like someone with something unresolved.
She looked at him with eyes that oscillated between anger and hesitation, then said, in a low but sharp voice:
"Good morning... or rather, can we talk?"
Ryuichi froze for a moment, then opened the door further and pointed inside:
"Come in..."
Miku entered with measured steps. Aura retreated to the corner, covering herself with some artificial shadows so she wouldn't be easily noticed.
Miko stared at the room... with her keen eyes.
She noticed the scattered papers, the notebook beside the bed, the stacked coffee cups... and then Ryuichi, who now looked more tense than ever.
"I wasn't expecting you... Here, in my house." Ryuichi said as he slowly approached, trying to sound confident.
The miko answered directly, looking him in the eye:
"I didn't expect to visit you either... but some things can't wait."
Ryuichi pulled out a chair and asked her to sit down. She sat silently, while he sat on the edge of his bed.
There was a moment of silence... until Miku broke it with a serious tone:
"I want to know one thing, Ryuichi... How long have you been tampering with our lab's systems?"
Ryuichi froze.
Her question was direct, blunt, like an unexpected stab in the middle of a shy conversation.
Seconds of anticipation passed.
Then Ryuichi smiled softly, looked toward the window, and said:
"I don't know what nonsense you're talking about... but if you mean looking for answers... sometimes the questions are more dangerous than the answers, Miku."
Miko fell silent, staring at him, then whispered:
"So... this is a confession?"
Before he could answer, Aura suddenly spoke in his mind, a faint whisper that Miko didn't hear:
"She's smart... but she doesn't have the proof yet. Be careful."
Ryuichi smiled, and replied:
"I think coffee would be a good idea right now, what do you think?"
He looked at her with feigned innocence.
Miku fell silent, and replied without taking her eyes off him:
"I'm not leaving without understanding you, Ryuichi."
As Miku's gaze traveled up and down Ryuichi's room, she noticed small details... Details that only someone like her, who is obsessed with details, would notice.
A dark blue notebook sits on the shelf, with uncoordinated scribbles... The writing is similar to the notes found on the Mana Lab's servers weeks ago.
A thin fiber optic cable extending from the wall towards nothing, cut off at the other end... As if something was connected to it, then hastily removed.
A partially burnt electronic board, hidden under the desk, covered with some old books.
Her eyes gradually light up, as if she's seeing a map of clues. A faintly sarcastic smile begins to form on her face.
---
Meanwhile, Ryuichi walked nervously down the stairs, heading toward the kitchen.
But he stopped abruptly in the middle of the stairs, frozen in place... his eyebrows knitted, his gaze suspicious.
Aura's voice broke his silence with a mocking coldness:
"Are you out of your mind, Ryuichi? Leaving the Future Lab investigator alone in your room? What are you planning? Getting caught before noon?"
Ryuichi gasped lightly, staring at the wall in front of him... Then he muttered:
"Damn it... I left the data analysis papers, and a piece of Aura's spare core..."
He came back quickly, running up the stairs like he was trying to catch up with time slipping through his fingers.
"No way... I left the core papers on the desk... if she sees them-"
He opened the door hastily, without knocking, to find Miku in a strange position:
She was hunched over his desk, examining the cap of one of the pens as if investigating a crime, while her eyes were fixed on the air vent at the top of the shelf, as if suspecting a bug.
Before he could utter a word, she slowly turned toward him, holding a paperclip between two fingers, and with a sarcastic expression full of false seriousness, she said:
"Ryuichi... "What are you hiding behind that paperclip? A biological weapon? A piece of Aura? Or just household paper?"
Ryuichi suppressed his laughter with difficulty, then approached with a wave of his hand:
"Oh, please... Don't open the third drawer, it contains my dark secrets."
She raised an eyebrow skeptically, then smiled and said in a sarcastic tone:
"Let me guess... Embarrassing childhood photos of you?"
He replied as he opened the drawer himself:
"The worst... My journal at the age of 14, in which I was writing about the 'dark future of the mana world'."
Miku burst out laughing, sat on the edge of the bed again, and said:
"Really, you're more eccentric than I expected."
Aura whispered in Ryuichi's mind with faint sarcasm:
"She could have found out half the truth... if she wasn't busy checking the clips."
As the conversation continued between Ryuichi and Miku, time passed as if they were in a different world, away from all the threats and suspicions. Miku's laughter filled the room, but she was watching Ryuichi carefully, without realizing it.
At one point, Mikiko stopped talking and focused her gaze on Ryuichi's glasses. The glasses she had given him not so long ago, keeping in mind the gift that meant something special to him.
"Wait, Ryuichi... Are you still wearing those glasses?"
Ryuichi looked at her in amazement, surprised by the subtle observation, and said unexpectedly:
"Uh, yes... They're still on my face, I guess I didn't notice."
At that moment, the miko gave a mysterious smile, as if observing the details of his face closely, her eyes glinting slyly.
"May I check it out?"
She asked in a calm tone, but there was a kind of curiosity that couldn't be hidden.
"What, the glasses?"
Ryuichi said in surprise, trying to hide his nervousness. Why would a miko want to examine the glasses?
"Yeah... They must be important to you, right?"
Miku said in a soft voice, but there was something strange in her eyes, like she was looking for something in those glasses. Maybe the glasses aren't just an ordinary gift for him.
"Why?"
Ryuichi asked slowly, wondering what she might notice if she took the glasses from him.
"Just... I want to make sure they're still in good condition. I mean, sometimes they can have strange properties, right?"
At that moment, Ryuichi felt something strange. The miko was smart, and this remark indicated that she was more skeptical than he expected.
"I... I never thought about it before, but... If you want, I can give it to you."
He said as he gently removed the glasses from his face, gingerly handing them to her.
Miku took the glasses in her hand, and at first she examined them carefully, slowly turning them over in her hand as if trying to decipher a secret code hidden in them.
While she was busy focusing on the glasses, Aura whispered in Ryuichi's mind in a quiet voice:
"Watch out, she's not just checking the glasses, she might notice something strange if she continues."
Slowly, the miko placed the glasses on her face, then smiled with a slight confidence as she said:
"Let's see... Are you still functioning as I programmed you earlier, Glasses?"
Ryuichi was standing by the door to his room, frozen, sweating, trying to put on a fake smile while inside he was boiling over.
"Glasses, activate developer mode. View recent input logs."
The glasses immediately responded to the commands, and a transparent augmented reality interface filled with lines of code and data appeared in front of Miku's eyes.
"Activate ShadowTrace protocol... Analyze hidden variables. Detect Hidden APIs."
Ryuichi's eyes widened, and he thought quickly: "Shit... These commands are only understood by advanced programmers... It's trying to detect my tampering with the device!"
"Running Diagnostic Tree... View processor consumption history. Analyze recent requests."
Miku was giving the commands in a cool, clear voice, with the confidence of an engineer who knew exactly what she was doing.
But...
Every screen that came up... was only displaying clean data.
No trace of Aura. No hidden files. No suspicious requests.
It's like the glasses... had never been used before.
At that moment, Aura had done her job very professionally. Not only had she erased her presence from the interface, she had restructured the entire system registry, reset the cache and history, and even temporarily masked any intelligent response the glasses could make.
Ryuichi breathed slowly, trying not to look nervous.
While Miku mumbled:
"Strange... I expected to find at least something. These glasses have been acting unusual lately."
Slowly taking the glasses off, she looked at Ryuichi, her eyes narrowing slightly:
"Did you change something in the operating system?"
He answered quickly as he tried to pull himself together:
"Me? No... You programmed it, do I even dare?"
Miku didn't respond, she just smiled, but seemed completely unconvinced. Then she added:
"It's okay... It looks like you're still using it. That alone is enough for me to keep an eye on you."
She walked away from the desk and sat down again, but Ryuichi knew very well that this was not the end... but the beginning.
Moments later, Miku got up and stood by the door, smoothly adjusting her coat and saying with a quiet smile:
"I think I've prolonged the visit long enough..."
Before Ryuichi could respond, his mother entered, carrying an elegant tray with a hot cup of coffee and a piece of cake on it.
Sera said with her usual gentleness:
"I made this for you, you can't leave without tasting it."
miko smiled shyly and tactfully, and bowed slightly in respect:
"Thank you very much, but unfortunately I have an emergency... Perhaps on a future visit."
She placed her hand over her heart in gratitude, then turned to Ryuichi, her gaze ambiguous, something she hadn't said yet, but it was there in the depths of her eyes.
"Goodbye, Ryuichi..."
She said in an unreadable tone, then left.
Ryuichi returned to his room after saying goodbye to Miku, carefully closing the door behind him, then leaned back against it and sighed heavily.
His mind swam between Miku's skepticism and her gaze that seemed to penetrate more than it showed.
He stared at his glasses for a moment, then turned to his phone anxiously.
In a hushed voice, he said:
"Aura... Are you okay?"
There was a moment of silence, then the phone screen lit up with a soft icon glowing a soft blue color, and her affectionate digital voice appeared:
"We survived... This time."
He smiled lightly, but suddenly... The screen shuddered for a moment, showing flashes of faint images.
Some memory - a blurred image of a girl standing in the middle of a light-flooded field, smiling a mysterious smile.
The image is stuck in Aura's system, like she's digging into her memory... a forbidden memory, or a key to something deeper.
Aura whispered, as if talking to herself:
"Who... you, and why... the same words?"
The screen suddenly turned off.
On the other side of the city, Miku was sitting in her room in the dark, her laptop screen glowing faintly.
No noise. No words. Just her eyes staring steadily at a series of green symbols racing across the screen, a flashing line of code stopping at a single code:
> 0x92-Ghost: Override Rejected.
Her eyes remain fixed on that line. She says nothing.
Her face shows no expression.
And quietly... I slowly shut down the computer.