Chapter Text
Architect and Instrument’s Presentation
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025. Place: Gamma Shelter (Zona Rosa’s Hotel, Floor 10), Mexico City. Hour: 5:45 PM. Status: T minus 45 minutes before the Insertion.
The air inside room 1001 wasn’t simply cold, it was dead. The digital thermostat on the wall showed read clinical 19 degrees Celsius, a calculated temperature for maximizing hardware efficiency and minimizing human perspiration. There were no open suitcases, no clothes lying around, no food scraps. If a chambermaid had walked in at that moment, she would’ve thought the room was unoccupied, if it weren’t for the faint electrical hum of the portable servers and the motionless silhouette by the window.
Through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass, Mexico City sprawled like a luminescent, cancerous stain. It was Friday afternoon, and below, on Paseo de la Reforma, reality was a clotted artery. Thousands of red brake lights and white headlights formed a barely flowing river of metal. Even the stories up, the vibration of the chaos —the honking horns, the distant sirens, the roar of engines— seemed to press against the glass, trying to break through.
Hanako stood facing that abyss, with his back to the room. His posture was perfect: straight spine, relaxed shoulders, his white-gloved hands crossed behind his back in a military at-ease pose. His reflection in the glass was a pale specter of unblinking amber eyes. He wasn’t looking at the scenery; he was auditing it.
“Do you hear it, Mitsuba?” His voice cut the artificial silence of the room. It wasn’t a shout, it was a low, monotonous tone, devoid of any unnecessary human inflection.
A few feet away, sitting on the edge of the perfectly made bed, Mitsuba looked up. In his hands, he held his black Fujifilm X-T5. With a microfiber cloth, he cleaned the 35mm lens in obsessive, rhythmic, circular motions: rub, rotate, check. An invisible speck of dust was an unacceptable mistake.
“What” He asked, his voice soft, dragging out the vowels with practiced boredom. “The traffic? It’s… annoying. Visually overwhelming.
Hanako shook his head slowly, his gaze fixed on the glass. “No, the noise, the systemic inefficiency.” Hanako raised a gloved hand and pointed toward the avenue, tracing an imaginary line across the stopped cars.
“Look at this. Millions of biological ‘variables’ run aimlessly, consuming resources, burning fuel, generating entropy. They think they’re moving, they think they’re free because they choose the left or right lane, but they’re trapped in a loop of routine: work, consumption, sleep, repeat.” He turned, the bluish light of the afternoon cast shadows around his eyes, giving him a dark and unsettling appearance. “The system is sick, Instrument. It’s saturated with junk data, no one stops, no one thinks. They just… react to the immediate stimulus, they’re cattle waiting for a signal that never comes.”
Mitsuba stopped cleaning the lens. He held the camera up to his eye, focusing on Hanako through the viewfinder, framing him like the subject of a dark portrait.
"And we're the cure?" he asked, lowering the camera. A cynical smile, barely a curve at the corner of his lips, appeared on his pale face.
Hanako smiled. It wasn't a smile of joy. It was a sharp, cold smile, the smile of a surgeon who had just found the perfect tumor. "No, the cure involves saving the patient," he said as he walked slowly to the center of the room. "We're not here to save them. We are a Fatal Error, the critical glitch that forces the system to reboot." He stopped in front of the bed, where two objects lay that seemed out of place in that sterile environment. They were two hoodies: one red and one purple. They were folded with geometric precision, the hoods aligned, the cat-like ears of smooth, soft fabric pointing toward the ceiling.
Hanako stroked the fabric of the red hoodie with the tips of his gloved fingers. "Today, we're going to take away your security," he murmured, almost to himself. "We're going to take away their voice. We're going to inject silence into their veins." And when darkness falls there…” his gaze shifted to the ground, piercing the concrete, as if he could see the subway tunnels, which ran like dirty veins beneath the city. “…for the first time in their miserable lives, they will have to listen to their own fear.”
He grabbed the purple hoodie and tossed it to Mitsuba. The movement was abrupt, functional.
“Put on the skin, Mitsuba. It’s time to descend into the abyss.”
Mitsuba caught the garment midair. The fabric felt heavy, charged with intention. He stood up, he took off his light jacket and slipped into the hoodie. He pulled the hood over his head, concealing some of his natural pink hair. The cat ears perked up, casting a grotesque and playful shadow on the wall. He was no longer a vain boy, no longer a photographer; he was the "Instrument M". He adjusted his camera strap around his neck, feeling the familiar weight of the equipment. “The lens is ready,” he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. “The ‘canvas’ awaits.”
Hanako put on his own red hoodie, adjusted his white gloves, and glanced at the watch on his wrist. 6:00 PM
“So…” Hanako walked to the door, opening it onto the dark hotel hallway to let Mitsuba out, “…we’re going to compose.”
📂 The Codex of Chaos / Sheet 01: The Voice of the Abyss
Act I: Immersion in the Flow
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025. Location: Insurgentes Station, Metro Line 1 (Underground Section), Mexico City. Time: 6:30 PM
The air on the Insurgentes station platform wasn't breathable; it was chewable. It was a thick soup of carbon dioxide, ozone burned by the friction of the brakes, and the acrid smell of a thousand bodies sweating underground. Rush hour wasn't an event; it was a state of siege.
An NM-16 train pulled up, pushing a wall of hot air in front of it. The screech of the wheels against the rail was deafening, but no one flinched; they were cattle accustomed to the acoustic slaughterhouse.
Amid the tide of gray suits, school bags, and clothes of all colors and sizes, one figure stood out for his static coolness. Sousuke Mitsuba stood near the yellow edge of the platform heading towards Pantitlán station, his purple hoodie with cat ears pulled up, casting a shadow over his violet-pinkish eyes. On the surface, that hoodie would've been "weird" or "frivolous," but down here, in the chaos, it served as perfect camouflage: he was just another urban eccentric, another pixel of "noise" that people ignored to protect their own bubble.
The train doors opened, the wave of people left, the wave of people entered. Mitsuba didn't fight back, he let himself be carried away by the hydraulic pressure of the crowd, sliding his slender body between the gaps with unnatural fluidity, instinctively protecting the small Insta360 camera discreetly hooked on his backpack strap and the Fujifilm X-T5 hidden under his clothes.
The Architect's Perspective (The Digital Eye)
Location: Gamma Shelter (Hotel in the Zona Rosa, approximately 660 meters above ground)
The room was dimly lit, hermetically sealed against street noise. Hanako sat in front of his portable setup: two auxiliary monitors and his central ThinkPad 16. On the left screen, the malware injection code ran. On the right screen, Mitsuba's live camera feed. Hanako saw what Mitsuba saw: necks, backs, tired faces, all distorted by the wide-angle lens. He didn't see human beings; he saw particles of data in a system on the verge of thermal collapse.
"You're in, traincar M-0681, saturation level is 110%. Excellent," he said through the small intercom in Mitsuba's right earpiece.
Hanako leaned back in his seat, his white gloves intertwined. He observed the behavior of the particles: no one was looking at each other; everyone was looking down (at their cell phones) or up (at the maps posted on the side walls of the train car). And then, the system's voice crackled over the train's loudspeakers: "Next station: Balderas, transfer to Line 3."
A wicked, clinical smile spread across Hanako's face. "It's fascinating, they obey a ghost, a digital recording that tells them when to move, when to get off, when to live. No one questions the voice coming from the ceiling.” He whispered, his eyes gleaming amber in the darkness. “It's the backbone of the system, and today... we're going to break it."
The Perspective of the Instrument (The Aesthetic Eye)
The train started moving forward, jolting kind of violently. Mitsuba was pressed against the articulation gum between cars, feeling the body heat of a man to his left and the breath of a woman to his right. His aesthetic haphephobia screamed in his mind: "Filthy, polluted, inefficient."
But the "Dark Aesthete" silenced his disgust and opened his eyes. He looked around, saw a face pressed against the glass door, a distorted nose, eyes devoid of hope. He saw the strobe and fluorescent lights of the black tunnel flashing past, slicing through the passengers' shadows like knives.
"It's... grotesque. It's a Goya painting in motion," he thought, his right hand caressing the camera beneath his clothing. "They're tense, resigned, trusting that the train will arrive. Trusting that the voice will tell them the truth."
"The cattle are calm, Hanako. They trust that voice more than the person next to them. Their dependence on the system is total."
"Perfect. Prepare for the dissonance. Entering the long tunnel. Injection in 3... 2..."
The train plunged into the darkness between stations. The stage was set.
Act II: The System's Infection
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025. Location: Inside moving traincar M-0681 → Pino Suárez Station (Metro Line 1), Mexico City. Time: 6:38 PM
Train NM-16 lurched violently as it rounded a curve before reaching Balderas station. Bodies collided, the heat suffocating. For Mitsuba, this was the moment, the physical "noise" of the movement was his cover. He looked down at her black boots, beneath a reserved seat where a woman dozed. There was a metal ventilation grate, covered in a layer of years-old gray dust. "Dirty, greasy, a breeding ground for a thousand kinds of bacteria. Inefficient... but necessary," he thought.
He pretended to lose his balance as the train lurched toward Isabel la Católica station, dropping to one knee as if he'd dropped something or was tying his shoelace. His right hand, encased in black gloves, reached down into the grime. Hidden in his palm was the "Parasite." It wasn't a commercial USB drive; it was a custom microcontroller, encased in a matte black 3D-printed housing, with a powerful neodymium magnet and a packet-injection chip.
The Insertion
With the speed of an illusionist, Mitsuba slid his hand under the seat. Click. The magnet adhered to the metal of the train car's ventilation grille, the device hidden in the shadows, camouflaged by the grime. Mitsuba stood up, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from his knee, his breathing steadily. "The tumor is implanted. Waiting for metastasis," he whispered, giving Hanako the order through the intercom to begin the transfer of the data and the main virus.
The train braked, pulling into Pino Suárez station. On Hanako's monitor, a red light blinked on the network map. The "Parasite" had detected the station's maintenance Wi-Fi signal and opened the channel. "Link confirmed. 12ms latency. Acceptable," he said.
Her fingers danced across the keyboard. There was no emotion in his eyes, only the precision of a surgeon severing an artery. He wasn't "hacking" in the vulgar sense of the word; he was rewriting the reality of the train.
The Attack
Mitsuba's device created a backdoor between the train's isolated network (the public address system and screens) and Hanako's laptop.
The Upload
Hanako pressed a key, the progress bar filling in seconds. He didn't upload an .mp3 audio file —that would be amateurish— but rather a generative AI software, a compact neural model he had trained himself for over several months. This AI didn't "reproduce" a voice; it synthesized it in real time. It had learned the cadence, the tone, and the coldness of the Metro's official voice ("Tu-roo-roo... Next station..."), but this voice was programmed to speak the Architect's words.
"It's no longer a recording. Now... the train thinks with my voice." He murmured as an icy, somewhat malicious smile spread across his lips.
The Final Synchronization
The train doors opened at Pino Suárez station. People got on and off, oblivious to the fact that beneath a seat, a small black cube was wirelessly and silently hijacking the train car's brain.
Mitsuba remained in place, watching. He felt a vibration in his ear; it was Hanako issuing the following commands to her Instrument: "The system is infected. The AI is online and dormant, just waiting for the train to enter the long tunnel toward Merced station. There... we will sever the umbilical cord of sanity."
The doors closed with the characteristic closing bell of the NM-16 trains. The train moved into the darkness. The infection was complete; chaos was about to speak.
Act III: Cognitive Dissonance
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025. Location: Inside traincar M-0681, moving between stations on Mexico City Metro Line 1. Time: 6:45 PM
The train roared through the darkness between the San Lázaro and Moctezuma stations. The LED lights inside the car flickered once, twice; then they stabilized, but with a slightly colder, bluer, more clinical tone. Hanako had just taken control of the electrical system. "Phase 3: Psychological Injection. “Initiating," he said in Mitsuba's intercom, as a status update.
The train's speakers crackled. The familiar "Tu-roo-roo" sound rang out, but distorted, as if coming from underwater.
"Next station: Moctezuma. Correspondence with... paranoia." Voice Zero echoed through the loudspeakers of the nine cars of the NM-16 train. The voice was soft, institutional, but the words were wrong. “Please watch your belongings. And watch your thoughts. Someone... might be watching.” Hanako said using the AI voice synthesizer, speaking in an unnaturally cold and somewhat malevolent tone.
A deathly silence fell over the car. The passengers looked up from their phones, glancing at each other. Had they heard correctly? Was this a joke by the conductor?
“Doubt, the first symptom. It's beautiful.” Mitsuba thought, as a slight, wicked smile played on his thin lips.”
The train didn't stop; it continued moving toward the next station, but more slowly, making the tunnel feel like an endless gorge.
“Moctezuma Station. Attention to the passenger in the blue shirt and white headphones... Are you sure no one saw what you put in your right pocket?” The Voice Zero blared again from the loudspeakers throughout the train. In the middle of the car, a young man with white headphones froze. His hand instinctively went to his pocket, his face draining of color. It didn't matter if he had anything illegal or not; what mattered was that the Voice saw him. The people around him moved away as if he were radioactive; the anonymity of the crowd shattered, and now, every individual was a target.
The Social Collapse
The train entered the long tunnel leading from Balbuena Station —where, incidentally, none of the passengers in that car disembarked— toward Boulevard Puerto Aéreo station. The darkness outside pressed against the windows.
"Look to your left, look to your right. Do you trust the person next to you? His/her heart is beating very fast. Is he/she in a hurry... or is he/she afraid? Or is he/she... the culprit?" Voice Zero once again made its perverse and despicable appearance, now whispering as the volume rose and fell abruptly.
The atmosphere became toxic: a man in a suit eyed a construction worker suspiciously, a mother hugged her son, shielding him from a student's gaze. The "shared misery" of public transportation became a cage of predators. The air in that traincar became unbreathable.
As collective hysteria grew exponentially inside traincar M-0681, Mitsuba, invisible beneath his cat-eared hoodie, raised the Fujifilm X-T5 to chest height and began shooting with the shutter in silent mode. He captured the sweat on the forehead of the boy in blue, the wild eyes of a woman praying silently, the exact moment society fractured.
The Final Blow
The train began to slow down, but it didn't arrive at any station. It stopped in the middle of nowhere, in total darkness. The lights went out completely, leaving only the emergency lights, very dim, pale white lights. The train's driver didn't know what was happening either. He tried to call for help over the train's radio to Central Control Center, but there was silence. A deathly silence filled the transmitter.
"Attention! Critical failure in containment system. The doors will not open." I repeat: The doors will not open. Air is finite. Count your breaths.” Voice Zero now screamed in a broken, digital tone.
It wasn't a unified scream; it was just a fractured chaos. Someone pounded on the glass. “Open up the doors! I can't breathe!” Someone began to sob hysterically, there was a violent shove, bodies colliding in the white darkness. Mitsuba was pushed against the door, but his firm, cold hand kept shooting. “27 canvases. Collective hysteria is... a masterpiece of entropy”, he thought.
The Liberation and the Epilogue
At the hotel, Hanako saw the panic levels on Mitsuba's camera feed. "That's enough, the point has been made." He pressed Enter on his laptop, and the white-yellow lights suddenly returned to the entire train. The real train driver's voice, confused, frightened, and quite fearful, came through the loudspeakers. "We're proceeding... we're proceeding to Boulevard Puerto Aéreo. Remain calm, we'll investigate how this happened." The train started moving again and arrived at Boulevard Puerto Aéreo station. The doors opened with a mechanical, banal whistle.
The crowd spilled onto the platform, coughing, crying, running for the exit as if the train car was on fire. In seconds, the train car was empty, a rolling tomb of metal and plastic. Only one person remained inside: Mitsuba, sitting calmly in the corner, reviewing the photos on his camera screen.
Reviewing all the photos he'd taken, he paused at one: the reflection of an anonymous face in the black window, distorted by terror and the dim white light. "The ghost in the engine," he said.
He felt the vibration of Hanako's voice in his ear. "It was never the train, Mitsuba. It was never the confinement." He paused, letting the lesson sink in. "The system was always about trust. And it's so easy to break."
Mitsuba smiled, it was a small, almost imperceptible smile. "You're right, Hanako. Trust can never be viewed the same way on the entire Pink Line (Mexico City Metro Line 1)." He said as he stood up from his seat, but he wouldn't get off at the Boulevard Puerto Aéreo station.
The doors of the train's nine cars closed again, and he traveled almost completely alone to the Zaragoza station. Very few passengers would board at the Gómez Farías station, as they were close to the Pantitlán terminal. At Zaragoza station, he changed platforms and headed west towards Observatorio, heading for Sevilla station, one station past Insurgentes —which would leave him in front of the Zona Rosa—, carrying with him the proof that reality is just a story that the two of them can rewrite whenever they want.
Act IV: The First Friction
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025. Location: Zaragoza Station (Metro Line 1), Mexico City. Time: 6:58 PM
The ghost train had been left behind in the darkness, heading towards the Pantitlán terminal. Mitsuba walked along the transfer platform at Zaragoza Station, his heart pounding, not from fear, but from the lingering adrenaline of witnessing the social collapse firsthand.
"The Line 1 system is reporting a chain of failures. Traffic has stopped at Balderas. Impact efficiency: High. Proceed with exfiltration. Exit the network now." Hanako warned Mitsuba of potential threats; it was time to escape.
Mitsuba climbed the stairs to the exit turnstiles, aborting his return trip to Sevilla Station. He adjusted the hood of his hoodie, about to cross the barrier when a heavy, somewhat sharp voice rang out: "Hey! You! The one in the weird hoodie! Come here!" shouted one of the guards at Zaragoza station, intercepting Mitsuba mid-escape.
Mitsuba froze, not from visible panic, but from internal calculation.
"Unauthorized contact. Flee, jump the turnstile, run. Don't interact." Hanako spoke to Mitsuba through the intercom, his voice tense and immediate.
But Mitsuba analyzed his surroundings in milliseconds.
Option A (Escape): Running confirms his guilt or that he's a potential suspect; the cameras will track him. Physical pursuit. High risk.
Option B (Acting): Confront him and use the mask.
"Negative. I'll handle it," Mitsuba whispered into the intercom.
Mitsuba turned slowly, his face showing not fear, but a tired and bored confusion, the perfect mask of a civilian.
"Yes, officer?"
The guard, an older man in a worn uniform, looked at him suspiciously. "What are you carrying there? Why is your hippie hoodie hood pulled down so low? You're taking pictures, aren't you? I saw you with the camera on the platform a moment ago."
"It's a risk factor. If he checks your camera, he'll see the panicked photos. You're compromised, Mitsuba. Neutralize him or leave, now." Hanako spoke again, his voice now somewhat aggressive and authoritarian.
Mitsuba ignored Hanako's order. He knew that violence or running away were rookie mistakes; instead, "Sousuke, the artist" lent his voice to "Instrument M." "I'm an architecture student, sir. I'm doing a project on... 'Urban Brutalism,'" he said, staring at the dirty ceiling of the entrance hall to the platforms. "Old structures. An UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) assignment." He adopted a pose of teenage annoyance. "Want to see? They're photos of walls and ceilings, totally boring. You can delete them if you want, but my professor will fail me if I don't bring them by Monday."
The guard blinked. The mention of "homework" and "UNAM" deactivated his predatory instincts. He'd expected a nervous criminal, not a boring student. He looked at Mitsuba: thin, pale, harmless, with a strange hoodie with cat ears covering his head and his pink hair.
"Ah, architecture, huh?" He made a face of disdain. "Well, you can't take professional photos here without permission, boy. You should know that."
"I didn't know, sir, I apologize. I was just leaving anyway. The air down here is... heavy, and it's getting to me."
"Yeah, well, move along, let's go. And put that away, okay?" the guard said, losing interest in Mitsuba.
"Thanks."
Mitsuba turned around and walked toward the exit, his steps calm. Only when he stepped through the glass doors and the cold air hit him did he let out breath.
"…Risky. You disobeyed an evasion directive, Mitsuba," Hanako said through the intercom after a ten-second silence.
Mitsuba walked towards Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza, looking for a taxi to take him back to the Zona Rosa. "Negative, Hanako. I avoided a chase. Fleeing would have been 'noise' and alerted the authorities. The lie was... effective," he said in a calm, cold voice.
"Acceptable. Return now to Gamma Shelter now. We have data to process," he said, his tone a mixture of irritation and a newfound respect for his Instrument.
This was the first time Mitsuba had proven that his "soft skill"—social manipulation—was as valuable as Hanako's code. He had survived the friction.
Bridge: The Autopsy of Fear
Direct continuation of the end of Act IV of "The Voice of the Abyss"
“Acceptable. Return to Gamma Shelter, now. We have data to process.”
The connection was cut off with a digital click in my right ear. Silence returned, but it wasn't empty; it was filled with the residual buzz of adrenaline. I walked two more blocks, getting away from the "noise" of the sirens that were beginning to wail toward the Zaragoza station. My black boots echoed on the uneven pavement with a steady rhythm: one, two; one, two. The rhythm of a machine that’s functioning properly, or so I wanted to believe.
I stopped under the sickly yellow light of a flickering streetlamp on a deserted street. The air of Mexico City smelled of car exhaust and burnt fried food from stands near the station entrance, but beneath that, I could still smell the metallic fear of the train car. I needed to verify the footage; it wasn't just protocol, it was a visceral need to confirm that what I had just done was real, that I was real.
I pulled my Fujifilm X-T5 out from under my hoodie. The camera's magnesium body was cold, heavy in my hands, my fingers, covered by black tactical gloves, trembled slightly. I told myself it was the cold air; I told myself it was a normal post-operative physiological reaction. I lied to myself.
I turned on the LCD screen, the brightness illuminating my face in the darkness. I began scrolling through the photos, one by one. Click, a man in a suit shouting, his tie undone. Click, a hand pounding on glass, the knuckles white because of the pressure. Click, a mother covering her child's eyes.
They were perfect compositions, the human "noise" captured in high definition and without loss. It was art, chaos, and efficiency. But then my finger stopped when it reached image number 027: it was a close-up, shot from the hip, with an ISO of 6400 that filled the image with thick digital grain, giving it a dirty, almost documentary look. In the photo, a young boy, not older than 16, was cornered against the traincar door. The pale, dim white emergency lightning bathed his face, but couldn't hide the truth of his features.
I stared at those eyes. They were wide, wet, glistening with tears that refused to fall, paralyzed by fear. They weren't looking at the camera; they were staring right through it, into nothingness, waiting for the final blow that his mind told him was inevitable. His posture... I knew it: shoulders hunched inward, trying to take up less space in the world; hands pressed against his chest, protecting a heart that was beating too fast.
A shiver ran down my spine, violent and electric. It had nothing to do with the October wind in chaotic Mexico City; it was an echo. I lowered the camera slowly, feeling a sudden nausea in the pit of my stomach. The “Instrument M" tried to categorize the sensation as "gastric inefficiency," but "Sousuke" knew what it was: recognition.
I touched my own face with my gloved hand, feeling the cold fabric of the glove. Nine years ago, I didn't have gloves, I didn't have a camera, I didn't have an Architect whispering safety instructions in my ear. Nine years ago, I was that boy, I was the prey cornered against the wall. I was the one praying for the world to stop being so noisy and cruel.
"I was you," I whispered to the black screen, my thin voice breaking in the silence of the street.
And in that instant, reality just dissolved. The drone of traffic on Calzada Zaragoza distorted, becoming the hostile murmur of a school hallway filled with students. The smell of smog transformed into the scent of notebooks, books, whiteboard marker, floor polish, and cheap disinfectant. The darkness of night became the grayish light of a winter afternoon in Puebla.
I closed my eyes, unable to stop the fall. The "Instrument" disconnected, the power dissipated. Suddenly, I was 15 again. My hands weren't holding a camera; they were empty and trembling. My pink hair wasn't hidden under the purple cat-eared hoodie; it was exposed, the target of ridicule from many of my former classmates.
I wasn't in Mexico City; I was behind the main high school building. And I was about to meet the devil who, instead of killing me, would offer me to silence the world for me.
📂 File A: The Amane Protocol
Date: Tuesday, December 6, 2016. Location: Back courtyard of BHS High School, Puebla. Time: Mid-morning break (around 11:10 AM).
The air was frigid, that dry, bone-chilling cold typical of winter in Puebla. Most of the students were huddled in the cafeteria or the interior hallways. The backyard was almost deserted, a landscape of gray concrete and bare trees, except for a small group of students.
Sousuke Mitsuba was cornered against the brick wall of the high school gym. His everyday uniform —the navy-blue sweater, white shirt, and dark gray pants— was, as always, impeccably clean and pressed. But it was his accessories that had attracted attention.
To combat the cold, Mitsuba wore a long, soft lilac wool scarf with pastel yellow accents, and on his hands, white knitted gloves. His red and white fabric belt was a bright line of color against the gray of his pants. His hair, the now infamous "flamingo pink," made him unmistakable.
Three third-year boys, led by a bully known as Martin, surrounded him. It wasn't outright violence, but a slow, poisonous harassment.
"What's wrong, 'Pink Princess'? Did your sister's scarf run in the wash?" Martin said with a mocking laugh.
"No, dude, look at his gloves. He's probably going to a tea party after school," another of the boys with Martin chimed in, laughing.
"And these? Can't you afford a leather one, a man's belt? Oh, wait. It would look strange on you, with that doll-like skin and that hair." Martín reaches out and tugs on Mitsuba's cloth belt. "And look at your lovely hair, it would be a shame if, you know, dirt fell on it or a gum got stuck in it." He says this while giving him small ponytail a light tug, hurting him slightly on that part of his head.
Mitsuba remained silent, his body as tense as a violin string. His gaze was fixed on a nonexistent point above Martin's shoulder, staring into nothingness as he waited for the torment to end so he could discreetly go cry in one of the bathrooms. Mitsuba hated this, hated stupidity, the ugliness of the insults from that trio of boys, the way their dirty, wrinkled uniforms offended her sense of aesthetics, almost as if it were sacrilege. But above all, he hated powerlessness.
"Hey, can't you hear me? I'm talking to you, weirdos." The voice that cut through the air wasn't Mitsuba's; this voice was new, cold, analytical.
The three bullies turned around. Amane Yugi —Hanako— was standing about five meters away, watching them. His black sports uniform with yellow and white details seemed to absorb what little daylight remained in those days of December. He was alone, his hands in his jacket pockets, his posture relaxed, but his gaze was a killer one, the gaze of an entomologist observing particularly boring insects.
"And what about you, Yugi? What are you doing here? Go away. This isn't your business. Come on, get out of here if you don't want trouble with me and my friends," Martin said to Amane, adopting a defensive stance.
Amane tilted his head, a barely perceptible, humorless smile playing on his lips.
"I was analyzing your behavior. It's... fascinating, in its predictability," he said, taking a step forward, beginning his intimidation. "Three alpha units... or pretending to be, attacking a single non-hostile target. The classic pack protocol, where they seek to reinforce their own insecure hierarchy by attacking the most obvious anomaly. It's... inefficient, and very noisy."
"What the fucking hell are you talking about? 'Units'? 'Protocol'? You're a fucking lunatic! I'm going to kick your ass!" Martin threatened Amane.
"He bothers you." He gestured vaguely with his chin toward Mitsuba. “You're bothered by his immaculate uniform... because yours is dirty. You're bothered by his gloves... because you don't understand the choice. You're bothered by his hair... because it's a variable your simple, stupid, binary system can't process.” Amane took another step, now closer. “Your aggression isn't power, it's simple fear. Oh, yes, fear of what's different, fear of what you can't categorize. It's... pathetic and absurd.”
Martin, in a fit of blind fury at having been so methodically dismantled, shoved Amane. “I told you to shut up, you dude!”
Amane didn't even blink. He looked at Martin's hand on his chest with utter disdain. Slowly, he raised his own hand and, with two fingers, brushed the bully's hand away as if he was removing a dead insect from his clothes. “Well, well. Physical violence, the last resort of a mind that has failed and cannot resolve things logically and peacefully. You're... boring.” He spoke to him in a moderately cold and indifferent tone.
He turned away, his back to Martín, an insult of supreme arrogance. Martín's two friends, seeing their leader completely neutralized and humiliated without a single blow, nervously backed away. Martín, flushed because of fury but unsure how to react to someone who didn't follow the rules of intimidation, could only let out a stifled growl.
"You'll pay for this, Yugi. I swear you'll regret challenging me like that. You don't know who you're messing with, you idiot. Let's go, guys. We'll be back later to kick his fucking ass." He grumbled as he walked toward the main courtyard of the high school.
Amane stopped in front of Mitsuba, who was still pressed against the wall, stunned. His amber eyes scanned Mitsuba from head to toe. He analyzed the lilac scarf, the white gloves, the red belt, and the pink hair. He saw the fear in Mitsuba's eyes, but he also saw something else: the silent challenge of his aesthetic. He saw the only other "freak" in the back courtyard. Mitsuba held his breath, awaiting judgment. "Your... camouflage, it's loud, somewhat contradictory," he said in an analytical voice, almost a whisper.
"Camouflage?"
"You make yourself visible. The colors, the neatness. You make them see the anomaly... so they don't see the person. It's... an interesting tactic."
Mitsuba froze. No one... no one had ever seen him like this. They had seen him as a "weirdo," "feminine," "eccentric." Amane saw him as someone tactical.
Amane turned to head back to the main courtyard. He paused in the doorway of the back courtyard. “Those who bullied you are just plain idiots, predictable, pure white noise. “You…” he paused “…at least you’re… interesting.”
And with that, he vanished, leaving Mitsuba alone in the cold back courtyard, but he no longer felt alone. For the first time in his life, someone hadn’t just seen him as a “different object”; someone just had deciphered him. The Architect had just found his artist. And the symbiosis, in that act of cold, analytical defense, had just been born.
For the rest of the recess, Mitsuba sat on a small bench, shivering slightly from two things: the December chill and the unnerving feeling of seeing another boy defend him against older ones. It had been a rather unusual encounter, as he always has been overlooked, even by some of his teachers, during his middle school season. The bell rang; recess was over. Mitsuba would return to his classroom in silence, with a slightly confused expression, mixed with a little sadness but with a relief he hadn't experienced in years.
📂 Sheet 01 (Continuation): The Autopsy of Data
After the trip and after reliving moments from my tortuous and sad past, a sound brought me back to reality. It was a click, but not the sound of a cracking finger; it was the sound of Hanako closing the lid of his laptop with a sharp thud on the glass desk. The hotel's cool air replaced the breeze from the schoolyard, the smell of floor wax disappeared, masked by the sterile aroma of the air conditioner. I stood in the doorway of room 1001, motionless, my hand on the doorknob, lost in the echo of nine years ago. I closed the door with a metallic click of the lock behind me, and I saw him. I saw Hanako sitting in his chair, turned towards me. He was wearing his white gloves, his expression identical to that day at school: impassive, analytical, vaguely disappointed by the delay.
“You’re late, Instrument,” he said, his flat voice cutting through the fog of my memory. “The ‘noise’ on social media is reaching its peak. I need the footage, now.” He told me, with his authoritative and cold voice. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, pulled down the hood of my hoodie, feeling the “ghost” of high school fade away, giving way to the operation.
“There was… friction,” I replied, walking toward him and taking the SD card out of the camera. “A guard at Zaragoza station. I had to improvise.” Hanako extended his gloved right hand. He didn’t ask if I was okay, didn’t ask if I was scared. He only cared about the data.
“Improvisation is risky…” he said, taking the card. “…but if you’re here, the result was acceptable. Let’s see the artwork.” He inserted the card into the reader. The photos of the panic in the train car filled the monitors. Hanako smiled, and in that smile, I saw the same boy who had chased a group of bullies away from me, but now, instead of protecting me from monsters, he was teaching me how to be one.
[END OF FILE 01: ECHOES OF THE ABYSS]