𝖀𝖘𝖊𝕷𝖊𝕾𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖗𝕭𝖆𝖌𝕰

 

(𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑬𝑵 𝑻𝑶 𝑲𝑰𝑫 𝑳𝑶𝑪𝑶 - 𝑮𝑶𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑨𝑹𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫 𝑰𝑵 𝑪𝑰𝑹𝑪𝑳𝑬𝑺 𝑾𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑬 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑫 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑷𝑼𝑻 𝑶𝑵 𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑷)∇∇∇

...

The sensation was not unlike being abruptly pulled from a deep, dreamless slumber. But this wasn't the gentle awakening of a typical morning. Instead, **Konishi** felt a jarring, visceral jolt, as if her entire being had been violently reassembled after a long, profound absence.

Her eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus through a haze of pain and disorientation. The world swam into view, a distorted kaleidoscope of muted light and unfamiliar shapes. The first thing she registered was the chill against her skin, the dampness seeping into her clothes.

She was lying on rough, uneven ground. Above her, a concrete bridge arced, casting long, stark shadows. The air was thick with the faint, metallic scent of stagnant water and something else… something faintly acrid, like old concrete and a hint of decay.

This was **Rubicon**, the stretch of Shibuya River that flowed beneath the city's bustling streets. But it was far from the clean, managed waterways she remembered. The banks were choked with debris, discarded items, and a layer of grime that spoke of long neglect.

A dull, throbbing ache resonated through her entire body. Every muscle screamed in protest as she attempted to shift. Her head spun, and a low groan escaped her lips. She felt… profoundly damaged. Her body was a roadmap of bruises, minor lacerations, and a deep, systemic fatigue that weighed her down like lead. It was as if she had been caught in a relentless, unseen maelstrom, battered and broken.

"Nngh..." she murmured, her voice a dry, rasping whisper. The sound itself felt alien, unused.

A disquieting thought began to surface from the murky depths of her consciousness. *How long?* How long had she been here? This sensation of waking, of becoming aware again, felt as if it had been preceded by an epoch. The weariness in her bones, the almost archaeological layer of dust that seemed to cling to her, the way her memories flickered, tantalizingly out of reach…

A cold, undeniable truth began to settle in her fragmented mind, like silt in the murky river beside her. She had slept for ages. And indeed, it had been ages. The Game she knew, the Shibuya she manipulated, the very world she commanded… it felt distant, shrouded in the mists of an impossibly long slumber.

Konishi slowly, painstakingly, pushed herself up, her movements stiff and agonizing. Every joint popped, every strained muscle protested. She was alive. But the world she had re-entered, and the state in which she found herself, were utterly unrecognizable.

The walk from the grim, forgotten banks of Rubicon to the familiar, yet strangely altered, landscape of Shibuya was a blur of aching muscles and disoriented senses for Konishi. Her every step felt heavy, as if she were wading through thick mud, her body a puppet whose strings were frayed and unresponsive. She moved like a phantom, her gaze unfocused, her mind still piecing together the shattered fragments of reality.

She reached the **West Exit Bus Terminal**, the same terminal where the cataclysmic battle had just concluded for Tsugumi and Ao, though for Konishi, that event was shrouded in the unimaginable gulf of years. The terminal bore the scars of that fierce struggle, though to her eyes, it was merely another layer of the city's decay. Cracked pillars, scorched marks on the floor, and lingering dust spoke of a recent, violent upheaval, but to her, it was simply part of the static, lifeless tableau.

Konishi moved through the terminal like a zombie, her gait unsteady, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. She wasn't visible to anyone – the denizens of the UG. She was an anomaly, an unseen entity, a lingering echo from a time long past. But she didn't care. The concept of visibility, of interaction, seemed distant, irrelevant. Her existence was now defined by a gnawing emptiness, a pervasive sense of loss that transcended any physical pain.

Her mind, though sluggish, began its slow, painstaking work of investigation. It wasn't a conscious decision, but an instinct, a core directive of her being that had somehow survived the ages. Her eyes, though dull, began to scan, to absorb, to compare.

The terminal was a wasteland. Rows of empty bus berths stretched out, their usual bustling energy replaced by an eerie stillness. The faint scent of ozone still lingered, a ghostly reminder of recent, intense Psych expenditure. Konishi noted the deep gouges in the concrete, the impact craters, the traces of intense heat. Noise remnants were long gone, but the residual energy signature was faint, almost imperceptible to an untrained eye. She knew these signatures. These were the traces of a large-scale Noise battle, specifically against aerial Noise. Decadraven. Easterraven. The knowledge surfaced, cold and clinical, from a place in her mind that had not decayed.

Her internal chronometer, once precise, was utterly broken. She felt as though she had slept for ages, and the evidence around her slowly confirmed it. The changes weren't dramatic, not in the way a city changes overnight. They were subtle, cumulative. The dust wasn't just battle dust; it was the settled accumulation of time. The wear on certain surfaces, the slight changes in the patina of metal, the faded advertisements that were somehow *older* than she remembered – all spoke of a temporal shift.

She drifted out of the terminal, her movements slow, deliberate, as if she were a ghost observing a forgotten world. Shibuya. Her Shibuya. It was all still here, yet it was not the same.

The Scramble Crossing. She stood at its heart, its famous intersection, normally a vortex of human energy, now eerily quiet. The phantom crowds were still there, the silent, living statues of Shibuya's ordinary populace, moving through their endless loops of non-existence. But something was off. Their clothes were different. Their hairstyles subtly altered. The advertisements on the giant screens flickered with images she didn't recognize, brands she didn't remember. These were not the Shibuya she had known. This was a *later* Shibuya.

She wandered, her path aimless yet driven by an invisible force, a need to understand the extent of this temporal displacement. The Dogenzaka street. The 104 Building. Center Gai. Every district she visited bore the same subtle, unsettling marks of elapsed time. The architecture was fundamentally the same, but the superficial layers—the posters, the graffiti, the small, transient details that define a living city—were alien.

Her senses, once sharp and commanding, were dulled, as if viewed through a thick pane of distorted glass. She could perceive the flow of Psych, the faint echoes of Players' battles, the almost imperceptible aura of Reapers. But it was all distant, muted, as if she were operating on a different frequency. The Game was still running, she could tell. The Reaper's Game. But it felt… different. The intensity was lower. The resonance of the Noise was weaker. The overall 'feel' of the Game was somehow less vibrant, less chaotic than she remembered.

Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months. Konishi moved through Shibuya, an unseen investigator. She saw Players, but they never saw her. She saw Reapers, but they never acknowledged her yet. She was a glitch in the system, a forgotten variable.

She learned to read the subtle changes in the Game. The types of Noise that appeared, the patterns of their emergence. The evolution of the missions, growing more complex, then simpler, then complex again in cyclical patterns. She observed the Players, their desperate struggles, their triumphs, their inevitable erasures. New Players appeared each day, or perhaps, each week, each month. The scale of the Game seemed to wax and wane, but it continued. Unceasingly.

She saw the rise and fall of various Reaper factions, the subtle shifts in their uniforms, their mannerisms. The hierarchy changed, new faces appeared, old ones vanished.

She began to piece together the timeline. Based on the subtle evolution of fashion, the lifespan of certain Shibuya landmarks, the cycles of various viral trends displayed on the city's giant screens, she started to approximate. Months became a year. Then two. Then three.

The physical damage she had sustained began to slowly, imperceptibly, heal. Her body, once screaming in agony, slowly learned to function again, though the profound weariness never fully left her. She became a silent observer, a ghost with a purpose: to understand what had happened to her, and to the Game.

Five years.

Five years. The realization hit her with the quiet force of a distant earthquake. Five years had passed since… since whatever had happened to her. Four years since her last conscious memory, since the last time she had exerted her will upon Shibuya. Five years of the Game unfolding without her.

Her mind, once solely focused on observation, now began to contemplate action. She had gathered data. She understood the temporal shift. She understood the state of the Game. The question remained: what now? Could she influence it? Could she reclaim her place? Could she even interact with it in her current spectral state?

The city hummed around her, a constant, low thrum of Psych energy. The phantom crowds walked their endless paths. The Noise appeared and vanished. Reapers went about their duties, oblivious to her presence. But Konishi was no longer merely observing. She was planning. The long sleep was over. The investigation was complete. And a chilling resolve began to form in the depths of her mind. Five years. She had much to catch up on. And much to reclaim.

The fragmented memories began to coalesce, sharp, stinging shards piercing through the haze of her long slumber. Not of the fall, not of the decay, but of the instant preceding her oblivion.

The last thing Konishi clearly remembered was the brutal, jarring impact. The hard, unyielding slam of **Beat's skate** against her beautiful, carefully maintained face. A comical, absurd indignity, even in the throes of battle. The sheer audacity of it, the unexpected force, the utter disregard for her composure and grace. The memory, despite the pain it evoked, was laced with a strange, almost detached amusement. How fitting, how utterly *them*, to be undone by such a ridiculous, unrefined, yet devastatingly effective blow.

After that, everything was a blur. A maelstrom of sensory overload and psychic feedback. There was the blinding white flash, the deafening roar of collapsing reality, the wrenching sensation of being torn apart. And then, the emptiness.

She strained to recall the emotions that must have accompanied such a cataclysmic defeat. Rage? Yes, that should have been there, a white-hot inferno of fury at being thwarted, at being bested by such… *unfashionable* adversaries. Evilness? Certainly, the insidious joy of manipulation, the cold satisfaction of control, should have flared one last time.

But as she sifted through the phantom echoes of her past self, there was nothing. No scorching rage. No bitter taste of defeat. No lingering tendrils of malice. Just… an emptiness. A profound, unsettling void where those powerful emotions should have been. It was as if they had been scoured clean from her very being, leaving behind only the faint imprint of an identity, but not its core emotional drivers.

And strangely, in this emptiness, there was a peculiar, unsettling calm. A sensation she hadn't known in her life as a Reaper. She felt strangely *good* with herself, detached from the burden of those intense, consuming desires. It was a serene, almost peaceful void. A mind wiped clean of its most destructive programming, leaving behind only the raw processor.

The comical memory of Beat's skate remained. The rage and evilness that should have followed were gone. Konishi, the manipulator, the schemer, the queen of Shibuya's darkest games, found herself devoid of the very passions that had defined her. She was a hollowed-out vessel, an observer of her own past, now charting a new, unknown course through a Shibuya that had continued without her.

A strange, unfamiliar longing settled in Konishi's hollowed core. Not for power, not for control, not for the intricate machinations of the Reaper's Game, but simply... to go home. Eight years. Eight years since she had shed her human form, since she had embraced the cold, calculating existence of a Game Master. Eight years of manipulating Players, orchestrating battles, weaving intricate webs of deceit and despair in the UG of Shibuya. And then, five years in a timeless void, a consequence of a brutal beatdown that should have ended her.

The thought of 'home' was a faded echo, a concept from a life she had long abandoned. But now, in this state of detached emptiness, it resonated with a poignant clarity. A quiet yearning for a place where nothing of the Game, nothing of the UG, nothing of the Reapers, could touch her. A desire for a simplicity that was utterly alien to her very nature.

Nothing really mattered anymore. The Game, its rules, its winners and losers, the grand designs of the higher Reapers – it all seemed distant, trivial. She had no drive for it. No hunger. She was a ghost walking through the remnants of her own past, a forgotten cog in a machine that had continued to churn without her.

She wasn't supposed to be alive. That was the fundamental, undeniable truth. Reapers, when defeated, were erased. Their existence ceased. Yet, here she was, in a body that ached with a strange, unnatural vitality. She remembered the fragmented echoes of her defeat, the blinding flash of power, the sudden surge of a presence she hadn't fully comprehended then. A **Taboo Noise**. That was it. That singular, forbidden entity, somehow, had brought her back. Had stitched her form together from the very fabric of erasure, imbuing her with this strange, liminal existence.

She should have been a mindless Noise. A distorted echo of her former self, driven by instinct and raw, uncontrolled Psych. That was the fate of most erased beings. But she was different. She was in control. Her consciousness was intact, her analytical mind still functioning, albeit stripped of its former emotional intensity.

Yet, despite her intellect, despite her self-awareness, she couldn't shake the unsettling feeling. She was alive, yes, but in a way that defied the natural order of the Game. Her senses were dulled, her presence unseen by others, her very being a paradox. She moved through Shibuya's UG, perceiving its hidden currents, its energies, its Noise, but she resonated with them in a way that was disturbingly familiar.

She felt like a… Noise. A powerful, self-aware Noise, perhaps, but a Noise nonetheless. A being outside the established rules, an anomaly, capable of thought and reason, but fundamentally, fundamentally different from the Reapers and Players who inhabited this realm. It was a chilling realization, stark against the backdrop of her newfound emptiness. The very thing she had once commanded, once manipulated, once erased without a second thought, was now what she *was*.

...

"Odd..."

"Yeah...this is interesting...very interesting..."

                                            To Be Continued....