Date: 2742-08-26
Time: 09:23 JST
Location: Ren's House – Living Room (a.k.a. where chaos lives)
Lirael stood in the doorway. Arms crossed. Blade gone. Expression? Hollow but soft.
"I'm not risking your life anymore."
Ren froze, halfway through buttoning his slightly burnt office shirt. "Wait—what do you mean you're leav—"
She turned around. Didn't look back.
"I've made too many decisions for you already. Find your own answer this time."
SLAM.
Door closed.
Just like that.
Ren stood there, alone.
Well—not entirely alone.
FROST:
"Oooh. Someone's got abandonment trauma now."
BLAZE:
"Not now, Frost. Let the man cry in peace."
CORE (softly, mockingly):
"Should I play you a sad violin through the neural interface, sugarbutt?"
Ren muttered, "I swear to whatever dimension you crawled out of—"
DING-DONG.
The doorbell rang.
He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and opened the door...
…just in time to get fucking tackled by a blur of pink sweater and maternal sobbing.
"MY BAAYYYBEEE!!"
Ren's mom flung her arms around him like a koala with separation anxiety.
"Mom?! I literally texted you I'm fine—!"
Then came the scream.
"WHY the HELL didn't you tell us you were in the HOSPITAL?!"
His younger sister, Mina, stormed in behind their mom with the fury of a thousand teenage dramas. "Do you know how embarrassing it is to find out from MAYA?!"
And yes. Speak of the devil.
"Heyyy, Ren."
Maya, his coworker and chaos goblin, strolled in with a bag of convenience store snacks and zero personal boundaries. "Brought pudding. And your pay stub. But mostly pudding."
Ren looked like a glitching NPC.
"I just… I literally got out of the hospital ten hours ago. How are you all HERE already?!"
FROST:
"Your sister probably hacked a government satellite."
BLAZE:
"Your mom summoned the power of maternal GPS. There's no escape."
CORE:
"The coworker, though? She terrifies me."
Maya plopped onto his couch and kicked her shoes off like she lived there.
"So, who's Lirael?" she asked casually, biting into pudding. "Your girlfriend? Assassin? Both?"
Ren nearly choked. "She's NOT—look, she's gone, okay? She left."
Mina folded her arms. "Good. She gave 'emotionally unavailable anime antagonist' energy."
Their mom sniffled, still clutching Ren's sleeve. "I thought I'd never see you again… so I brought your favorite pork curry. And your emergency baby photos in case you needed to be humbled."
"WHAT—NO—MOM PLEASE."
She pulled out the album anyway. Maya leaned over.
"Oh my god. Is that you in a sailor outfit?"
FROST:
"Aww, little Ren. So much hair. So much...betrayal."
BLAZE:
"How did this scene go from cosmic horror to 'sitcom with a laugh track' in thirty seconds?"
CORE:
"We love to see a man suffer."
Ren sank into the couch as his family took over his house like a sitcom pilot.
His mom was cooking in the kitchen already. Mina was interrogating Maya about Ren's love life. Maya was asking if she could install surveillance cameras to monitor Lirael's return.
And Ren?
Ren stared at the ceiling.
Exhausted. Alive. Confused.
And somehow—happy.
Even in the middle of dimensional collapse, a government conspiracy, and eyeballs with sarcasm settings…
This?
This was home.
Time: 01:42 JST
Date: 2742-08-27
Location: Ren's Room – Back in his own bed, somehow
The house was finally quiet.
No more curry. No more crying. No more pudding thefts.
Just the soft hum of Kyoto at night, the buzz of streetlights bleeding through the curtains, and the sound of Ren lying wide awake—his eyeballs glowing like illegal tech on night mode.
His head still pulsed faintly.
Not from pain.
From weight.
Something pressing behind his eyes.
Inside his chest.
All around him.
FROST:
"Can't sleep?"
"Gee, wonder why," Ren whispered.
BLAZE:
"Maybe it's the growing black hole of responsibility collapsing in your soul."
"Or maybe it's because one of you keeps humming anime openings at 2AM," Ren muttered, flipping onto his side.
CORE (suddenly, softly):
"You're not just tired. You're changing."
Ren blinked.
His eyes flickered—not glowing, but... adjusting. Sensing.
Something unseen hovered just above his consciousness.
CORE:
"You felt it when you touched the second Core. You felt it again when she tried to kill you."
"Reality is folding tighter. The veil's thinning. You're remembering, even if you don't know you are."
Ren whispered, "Remembering what?"
There was silence.
Then—like a gentle breeze on the back of his thoughts:
CORE:
"The Before."
A faint ripple danced across the edge of his vision. Like heatwaves from a memory not yet lived.
He sat up.
There it was again. Not a sound—but a pull.
And then—images. Disjointed. Fragmented.
A crumbling temple. A glass sphere suspended in wires. Screams that weren't his—but felt like his.
And a voice.
Feminine. Distant.
"Don't forget me next time, Ren."
He gasped.
FROST:
"Did you just have a vision or an existential wet dream?"
BLAZE:
"Don't be an idiot. That was a memory thread."
CORE:
"Latent recall. Bound to the Third Core's resonance. You're not just a bearer anymore, Ren. You're the Beacon."
Ren rubbed his face. "What the hell does that even mean…?"
CORE:
"You draw the broken pieces together. Whether you like it or not."
There was a long pause. The kind that presses on your ribs, not your ears.
Then Blaze's voice turned serious—rare for him.
BLAZE:
"Something's waiting. At the next site."
"I don't think it wants you dead."
"I think it wants to remember you."
Ren lay back down, heart pounding.
He stared at the ceiling again—just like earlier—but this time, the silence wasn't comforting.
It was charged.
Like something unseen… was listening too.