Work Text:
Shibuya no longer slept.
Now it glowed like a neon heartbeat pulsing through the veins of 2075. High-speed maglev trains, cars and motorcycles gliding between towers glowing with magnified light and alleys drenched in digital colors.
Billboards covered every free surface. Some were simple screens and others responded to movement with soft voices selling impossible promises. In every third building, holographic celebrities danced and sang behind glass, over and over like ghosts on repeat.
But one stood out from the rest. At the top of a forty-story tower, just across from the central station, a figure glowed over the city. It was a boy with a perfect smile, suspended in a triumphant pose, arms outstretched as if embracing the whole world.
On the screen, his image remained frozen for an instant, as if even the pixels needed a breath to process it. Tsukasa Tenma, the idol that defied death, smiled with the inhuman perfection of someone who no longer quite belongs to this world.
The bustle of the crowd continued under a sky full of artificial stars, unaware that the brightest one was once again sleeping in solitude. At the center of it all, he towered over the city from a luxury suite on the sixtieth floor of the Aeon Prism Hotel. A picture window separated him from the outside, his face bathed in the changing lights of moving advertisements and shimmering air traffic.
He had just finished a performance.
The applause echoed deep within his programming, and the statistics kept appearing in the corner of his field of vision like a faint overlay:
Emotional engagement: 97.45%.
Applause sentiment: 98%.
Spontaneous crying detected in row D, sector 3.
He ran a hand through his hair, pristine, blonde and unnaturally symmetrical. His reflection did the same, flawless down to the way the light caressed his skin, synthetic, smooth, wrinkle-free.
Tsukasa smiled. Not out of joy. The movement had simply become routine.
“Successful show" said the voice of his neural intercom, the artificial intelligence assistant his agency had installed in his head after his rebirth. "All performance indexes have been met. Would you like to rehearse tomorrow's setlist?”
“No," he replied, his voice soft and polite, still tinged with the warmth that once made stages illuminate. It was the only thing the engineers hadn’t been able to erase, his tone, musical and steady, like the opening of a curtain.
He didn't feel tired, of course. The android bodies couldn’t get exhausted. They simply shut down. But something inside him, a residual echo in the coded silence, told him he wanted to be alone.
Behind him, a huge screen displayed glowing photos of that night's show. Tsukasa, flawless in the center of the stage, singing at the top of his lungs. The crowd was just a blur of lights and tears, overflowing with an emotion he could no longer understand. He looked at each photograph in the reflection of his window. He didn't recognize himself in any of them.
—
He remembered the first time he opened his eyes again. He didn't know why his chest didn't rise as he breathed. Why his limbs didn't ache. Why his heart didn't make a sound.
The ceiling above him wasn't covered with pastel clouds like the one in his childhood room, no posters, no banners, no glow in the dark stars. Just a cold, sterile ceiling light that didn't flicker or move, as if he were trapped under a spotlight without script.
He blinked. Someone gasped.
There was a woman crying softly beside him, his mother. A man holding his hand, his father. And then Saki, his sister, was whispering something through her trembling lips.
“Tsukasa... you're okay... you're alive.”
He recognized them, it was his family after all. It was part of the protocol of the operation, to ensure that the essentials remained intact. That he didn't wake up all alone.
But it wasn't just them in the room, there were three other figures by the bed.
One of them stepped forward. Her hands trembled as she spoke, her voice cracking between anguish and relief
“T-Tsukasa? It's us…”
Another, right beside her, stared at him in complete silence. Her wide eyes said more than any words could. She seemed to hold her breath, as if exhaling would be enough to break what was left of him.
And behind them, a tall boy with a tense face. His lips opened and closed as if he were trying to say something, but nothing came out.
The other two just watched him, expectantly, as if waiting for a spark, a minimal reaction that would confirm that he was still there, somewhere.
But the boy, there was something different about him. Something deeper. His gaze wasn't just waiting, it was pleading. He wasn't saying “remember me,” he was silently shouting it. There was tension in his eyes, in the way he watched him, as if everything in him was contained on the verge of breaking.
Tsukasa didn't know what it was, couldn't quite place it. It was almost as if that boy had been important. As if, before everything, he had meant something.
But he didn't remember it. As much as he wanted to.
So he just looked back at them, with the same perfect calm that the doctors and engineers celebrated in their reports.
“I'm sorry. Have we met before?”
That was the last time he'd seen them that close.
—
Now, five years later, Tsukasa still lived. Technically.
He was no longer allowed to live at home full-time. His agency insisted that the image of Tokyo's number one idol had to remain perfect, unattainable and carefully contained. To see him traveling as an ordinary citizen, taking the train or walking down the street, would shatter the illusion.
So every day he performed, smiled and filled stadiums with words he didn’t feel and songs that didn’t belong to him.
And at the end of each live, without fail, he was taken straight to another hotel suite with a fruit basket he couldn't eat and a bed that never quite got messed up.
That night was no different. Until the faint buzz of his phone broke the stillness, and a hologram unfolded in the air, casting its soft light into the corner of his vision.
“Anonymous street artist strikes again: stunning graffiti of idol Tsukasa Tenma found near Shibuya rail junction.”
A photo accompanied the headline. His artificial eyes automatically adjusted to the contrast, bringing the colors into focus.
The wall was cracked, damp from recent rain, but vibrant with color. Chaotic but meticulous, traced in a style that seemed to move even still. And there, in the middle of the fluorescent mess, was him, smiling with his microphone in hand.
Underneath, written in white:
// CYBERPUNK DEAD BOY //
He felt something. Or as close to feeling as he could get. A subtle, almost imperceptible tug, just below his chest, where there used to be a heart. A twinge without pain, a memory without content.
Still, his expression did not change. The room remained silent, sterile and perfect just like him. He turned off the phone with a slight gesture. The hologram disappeared without resistance.
It wasn't the first time he had seen that name. And for some reason he could never get himself to ignore it.
—
Across town, at the narrow mouth of an alleyway shrouded in industrial fog, Rui Kamishiro wiped a drop of paint with the sleeve of his jacket, unmoved by the stain it left behind. He was still wearing his mask, which hid most of his expression, but his eyes glowed in the black light of the streetlights with insomnia and determination.
He stared at his new work. Tsukasa was mid-song in this one, mouth open and eyes closed, as he used to be on that little stage with them.
“It's still the same smile" he whispered. But he knew it wasn't. The boy he loved had died and what now walked across the stage was a perfect, glowing, empty vessel.
Rui reached down and gently tapped the wall. His spray paint, designed by him to fuse with the concrete on a molecular level, emitted a faint blue flash. Indelible by ordinary means. His signature flickered beneath the image, alive for a second before integrating into the wall.
“It's not enough" he laughed softly, the tremor in his tone filtered through the mask. “You're still not looking…”
He slowly straightened up, watching the idol's face in his work, his perfect features illuminated by the distorted colors of distant neon. He had seen him so many times on screens, concerts, advertisements... but he had never felt him as distant as he did now.
He glanced at it once more, feeling the pain sharpen.
It was hell. Yet he kept fighting, creating these images and messages in secret, because he believed that, one day, Tsukasa would be able to see beyond the layers of code that bound him. Perhaps he would even recognize him behind the mask.
That hope kept him in this vigil, marking walls with what society called “vandalism”, bearing silent witness to his love and pain.
Rui stored the spray can in his backpack and put on his hood. The movement was mechanical. There was no hurry, no hesitation. Just the same gesture repeated so many times that he no longer needed to think about it.
The name still glowed on the wall:
// CYBERPUNK DEAD BOY //
He didn't know who had baptized him that way. Maybe some overdramatic journalist. Maybe someone who had also lost something along the way.
He continued on to the exit of the alley. In the distance, a huge screen projected a hologram of Tsukasa, another, sharper version. More synthetical. A flawless smile, held just the right amount of time. A head turn rehearsed to the millimeter. Every gesture fine-tuned, every shadow cared for. Nothing out of place.
Rui lowered his gaze. He knew that this image wasn’t meant for the eyes of an outcast like him. And that, even if the whole world saw him, Tsukasa could no longer look back.
—
In a small, modest apartment fifteen blocks from downtown Shibuya, silence filled the air like a thick blanket. Emu Otori stared at a plate of cold pizza she hadn't touched. She was wearing faded colored pajamas and her hair was tousled like a cotton cloud. Her eyes were slightly open, but she didn't seem really awake.
The television was still on, but it's glow was more like companionship rather than entertainment. The program on the screen progressed without her following. The recorded laughter sounded out of time, unreal.
From the small kitchen came the smell of instant miso soup.
Leaning against the doorframe, Nene Kusanagi watched her silently. Her work jacket was still on. She had been standing for almost twelve hours, a shift at the convenience store in the morning and a live music performance in the afternoon, but she didn't say anything about it. She just looked at her, then spoke, as if her exhaustion didn't matter.
Emu blinked, slowly. Then she turned her head gently. Her cheeks were still flushed from a restless nap, and her eyes were puffy, moist around the edges.
“Yes. Just a little tired" she replied with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
It was a smile that had once lit up entire theaters. Bright. Unstoppable. But now it wavered like a broken neon sign, flickering in a forgotten corner of the city.
Nene said nothing and didn't ask any more questions. She simply went to the kitchen and returned with two steaming bowls.
“You didn't eat lunch," she told her. “You better have dinner.”
“I'm not really hungry, but I'll eat half of it if you sing me a song~”
Nene rolled her eyes, but couldn't help a small smile. One that was born not of amusement, but of affection.
“A hum and that's it. Nothing more.”
She sat down next to her, and for a second there was only the faint sound of them eating, the murmur of the television, and the slow rhythm of their shared breaths.
Then, without warning, the channel changed. The image became clearer, brighter. A full stadium. Voices shouting. Tsukasa's frozen smile projected onto a curved screen.
“Latest performance of No. 1 idol Tsukasa Ten–”
Nene grabbed the control without hesitation and immediately muted it. The image was still there, but without sound it was just another distant figure among so many in the city. Emu didn't flinch, it was several seconds before she spoke.
“I thought he seemed happy this time" Emu whispered after a pause.
Nene kept her thoughts to herself. She just looked down at the bowl Emu had barely touched.
“I wish I had said more... you know, that day.”
“You tried.“ Nene's response was quiet, unreproachful. Like a fact. Something that needed no embellishment. “We all did.”
“I wasn't ready. We were going to do so many things. And then he…”
She stopped. Didn't finish the sentence, didn't have to.
Nene carefully slid one hand down the back of the couch and let it fall, barely brushing Emu's fingers. A small gesture. Almost imperceptible but enough.
Because even though the stage lights had been turned off and the audience was long gone, they were still here. Emu lowered her gaze, slowly intertwined her fingers with Nene's. They said nothing, just let the silence do it's part, wrapping around them like a warm blanket.
—
Later that night, the city was still awake and so was Tsukasa, standing in front of the same window. From that height the streets looked like circuits, luminous maps leading nowhere familiar.
His reflection in the glass was barely visible. Just enough to remind him that he existed. He wasn’t thinking about anything. Or not consciously. But something wasn't right. He raised a hand, and without knowing why, rested it against the glass.
His eyes scanned the horizon, looking for nothing in particular. But on the third blink, something moved. Three buildings over, a shadow crossed a rooftop, Tsukasa stopped.
A jump. Light. Precise. The intruder's body was camouflaged by the shadows, but there was something in the way he moved, in the hooded silhouette, that made him lean slightly forward.
The figure climbed a side staircase. There was no sound. Not even metal creaked. Only movement. Then, he stopped on his balcony, and with an outstretched arm, sprayed paint directly onto the surface of the window. On the outside.
Tsukasa didn’t move. He knew, by design, that the glass acted as a one-way screen. No one could see from the outside what was going on inside, no one could know he was there, not even his most hardcore fans. It was a simple coincidence.
The lines were familiar. Vivid. There was emotion. Imperfection. Something that couldn’t be simulated, unlike everything else in that city.
And there he was again: himself.
But different, not like on the posters, not like on the screens, not as an idol. He was an inaccurate portrait. He was human. With messy hair, a mouth open in genuine laughter and eyes crinkled with a joy impossible to program.
Under the drawing, a brief signature:
// CYBERPUNK DEAD BOY //
Tsukasa didn't know how much time passed before he moved. He touched the glass, on his painted image. The surface vibrated slightly with the contact, by something that had no name, a sensation.
Inside, something stirred. It wasn't an alarm. It wasn't a system error. It was something else. Then he said it. Almost without thinking. Not as a word. More like his breath carried it with it.
“Rui…”
The name pierced him. And it's owner fled. The figure hadn’t turned it's head, but Tsukasa knew. He knew it in a place that should no longer exist in him. He had no way to explain what he felt, but he didn't want to stop it.
Not this time.
—
That night, Tsukasa dreamed. Or at least he thought he did. Androids don't dream.
And yet, there he was. On that small stage again. The air smelled of popcorn and cotton candy. A spotlight warmed his skin and, for a moment, it didn't feel artificial.
There was laughter in the background. Soft voices. Hands clasped.
To his left, someone with tousled hair and a cat-like smile; to his right, two more figures: one trembling with enthusiasm as if her body wasn’t enough for so much energy, the other, serene, with a soft smile, small enough to look like a shared secret.
The three of them radiated something he didn't understand, but felt familiar to him. They were all standing together, holding hands in front of a faceless crowd that cheered loudly.
It was then that he looked at him. At the boy with the smile and eyes that seemed to know him better than anyone else. And he smiled too, without measure, without control. As if something had been unleashed. As if he had always been waiting for it.
He felt his heart beating.
He knew it was beating.
He woke up suddenly, his breath catching in his throat. Of course, there was no breathing. Just a simulation of lungs inflating. Tsukasa sat on the edge of his bed, motionless. He looked down at his hands, a slight tremor running through his fingers, like a current trapped beneath the surface.
First it was his sight. A faint flicker. A line of light running across his field of vision. Then the sound. A dull hum in the background of his consciousness, like static rising very slowly in volume.
He had learned to recognize it. The reboot protocol.
The system cleared emotional residue, reset responses, filed anomalies and closed the doors.
However, something wasn’t completely erased. In the middle of the protocol, a fragment remained suspended: a silhouette perched on a distant rooftop, surrounded by shadows. An arm raised, an aerosol can in hand, paint spreading across the glass and those eyes, fixed on his art from behind a mask. Not aggressive. Not sad. Just true. As if they were seeing something he himself had forgotten.
And just before it all disappeared, Tsukasa whispered, as if by doing so he could seal him in his memory, if only for one more night.
“Rui.”
The name floated in the darkness of his mind, clinging to what little was still his.
This time, he didn’t let go.