Tang-Ji's pulse thumped as she ran down the worn wooden stairs. The foyer threw her steps back at her; Kazami's words kept striking the same place in her head—'no one can help us… personal tragedies… a game where our lives are on the line.'
At the front door, the girl in white braced it with her shoulder to keep it from closing. Snow lay deep on the veranda, stained red by the crimson sky. Flakes drifted in slow motion around Ukiyo, her small frame tucked into a thick cloak. The mansion loomed behind her; only then did Tang-Ji remember her.
They faced each other—lifeless eyes, curious eyes—blankness held between them.
"Zilynx, what's wrong? Are you alright?" A blank face; the question hung in the cold.
A breath, eyes flicking between Ukiyo and the floor. "Don't worry, it's… nothing major. I… had an argument with Kazami. He said some things, and I… just need fresh air."
Ukiyo rose, shook the snow from her cloak, came carefully to the threshold where Tang-Ji stood with one arm crossed. "Zilynx… I couldn't help but overhear what Kirizkuuk said to you."
"You… heard that? Were you upstairs?"
A small shake of the head. "No. I was here. My abilities pick up sound from far away."
"Ah, I see." Words fading into the air.
Since the start of the death game, there had been only terror. The space between herself and Kazami: empty where speech should be.
'Confide in another girl?' The thought died almost at once—the nearest 'girl' was only a program, a lure built to erase her—so she closed her hand around silence.
She wanted to close her eyes, never open them—yet when she closed them, he arrived; an old friend she no longer knew, his words weighting the air. 'No one can help us.' Disconnection like frost in the lungs.
Curled on the wood, face in her knees, the whisper ran on: "no one can help us… we're disconnected from the actual world."
A quiet hand on her back—steady warmth through stone. "Once, I had an individual who really cared about me." Soft words. "They often yelled, told me what I did was wrong, that following their instructions would benefit me."
"Huh?" Tang-Ji looked up, confusion lifting.
"We argued. They forced directions; meaning well didn't grant the right to live my life for me." A search for the next words. "I followed anyway, because they had a place in my heart. They rescued me, stood by me. The more we fought, the more I shut down. Their care came like a blade."
A pale plume left Ukiyo's mouth and vanished.
"What happened to you and that person now?"
"Our connection ended. We still see each other, but we have no idea of each other's current identity. Parallel lines." A brief study of Tang-Ji's confusion. "We walk the same direction, but we never meet. Only a miracle bends lines to touch."
Stillness fell; even the storm held its breath.
"How did you find strength after it ended? How did you live with the emptiness?"
Her life had been a single note of loneliness; the past tangled round the present; she wanted empathy like heat, wanted a handhold on perspective.
Ukiyo let out a soft sigh. Outside, snow drifted silently, meeting the dust that clung to the worn wooden floor, blending into something neither pure nor tainted—just like everything in this world.
"It wasn't simple." Fingers tracing in the grime. "At first, the loss was unbearable. The world lost its shape."
From the hallway, Tang-Ji watched. Crimson light bled across the floor. Cold curled around her ankles.
"But I learned not to let loss define me. I chose a future. With them, I wasn't myself. I was acting." The gaze slid to the storm. "I explored; I looked for the me that remained. I found solace in art, in nature, in the ties I could still make. People who cared—never a perfect fit for the void, but warm."
However, the conversation was suddenly interrupted by a muffled thud upstairs.
"Kazami?" She raised her voice as she sprang to her feet, expecting him to be behind her. Instead, her gaze fell onto the bag she'd seen earlier, the one belonging to the deceased player.
She slowly bent down, lightly tapping her finger on the small bag, causing a pull-down menu to emerge. The faintly glowing screen displayed the contents of the simple bag.
Reaching out her index finger, she touched the screen gently, allowing her to scroll through the player's inventory using the white projected screen. Then suddenly, something caught her eye. An item, represented by an icon resembling a mailbox, was labelled.
Tang-Ji, intrigued, added the item to her inventory and opened the message's contents. Her eyes widened as she read over the text within.
"A Clicker Husk... it killed him."
Abruptly, the silence was broken by a bloodcurdling scream from one of the upper floors
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning to all players:
If you find this, leave the mansion. Now.
There's a thing here during Dusk Protocol. The Clicker Husk. A hunter that wears you down.
It started as a faint clicking in the air. I blamed exhaustion. The clicks didn't stop. They got inside my head.
It reaches into the depths of you and pulls—your fear, your grief—until you turn on each other. Each click murmurs your worst thought back to you. You stop resisting.
I took this job to protect my family. I'm going to die without keeping that promise. If you live, finish what I couldn't.
Please don't die, whoever you are, and clear this nightmare of a game for me.
I'm sorry, Red Hood, for everything I've done. I know it will be difficult for you to forgive me once you find out the truth, and I'm not asking for that. Too bad I won't be able to see the ending of Quixote's Code with you. Even though I believe the heroine will survive, she always does, no matter how tough things get. After all, the good guys always win at the end of every story.
I just want you to know that all those years we spent working together, our friendship meant everything to me. It was real, never a lie.
Sincerely, Sebastian Wicky.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Who is Red Hood? And a Clicker Husk… it killed him." The words barely left her. "He had a family. What is wrong with this world?"
"If the contents of this letter are true, we need to leave. Now." Ukiyo's voice was sharper this time, carrying a weight that hadn't been there before.
She always spoke with certainty, but this was different. Tang-Ji caught it—the faint tremor beneath her usual composure.
The dim candlelight barely reached the corners of the room, leaving shadows to pool in the cracks of the rotting walls. The human corpsse on the bed laid unnervingly still, its hollow eye sockets staring into nothing. Dust swirled in the cold air, mixing with the scent of decay.
Kazami took a slow step forward, his breath shallow. His fingers twitched at his side, hesitating. The closer he got, the stronger the stench became—thick, putrid, clinging to his throat like something alive.
Ukiyo tightened her grip on the materialised paper. "I know I said there were no mobs here earlier, but... this could be a trap dungeon. Some only trigger after a specific quest or item is touched."
"Wait, are you saying that it will activate if an object is interacted with?" Tang-Ji swiftly turned around to stare directly into Ukiyo's eyes.
"But... the bodies from earlier upstairs."
A long creak drifted down the hall.
And a scream split the house.
Startled, Tang-Ji's attention snapped towards the staircase, where Kazami's anguished cry emanated from. Her heart sank as she saw him tumbling down the steps, his body colliding with each unforgiving edge. The room seemed to freeze in time as he crashed to the floor, surrounded by a swarm of black creatures.
A red tag flickered over the nearest skull; a thin green bar guttered beneath it. Tang-Ji's eyes widened, taking in the mob's long, skeletal frame and the razor-sharp claws that allowed it to cling to the ceiling with eerie ease.
From a distance, the crowd hissed at them, their black, wendigo-like forms exuding a foul stench from their twisted jaws—a smell that unearthed a memory she had tried hard to bury.
She recalled the same half-dead stray cat she once found on her way home, thin and wild-eyed, with matted fur and a deep wound festering along its side.
It had growled at her, baring sharp teeth through a swollen, discoloured mouth, the smell of rot and sickness so overpowering it lingered for days in her mind.
It wasn't just a creature abandoned—it was a beast forged by humanity's carelessness, a living consequence of cruelty and indifference. In the end, it had died, leaving her with a quiet regret for not being able to save it, a wish she'd often carried.
The monster before her now was that same bitterness brought to life but amplified into something grotesque. Its twisted limbs jutted out at unnatural angles, they had been bent and reassembled by hands that didn't understand mercy.
The hollow sockets of its eyes seemed to pierce through her, empty yet accusing, as if humanity itself had created and then betrayed it.
Tang-Ji's mind spiraled into panic, her voice snagging in her throat. She tried to cry out—Kazami's name burning on her lips—a frantic plea for him to resist, to rise, to keep fighting. But the words never reached him.
The swarm descended, shadows with fangs and splintered bones, burying him beneath their sheer weight. His form slowly vanishing beneath the chaos as they tore into him, unstoppable and unrelenting.
Her entire body froze, paralysed under its hollow gaze. The monsters moved with a ghastly fluidity; their movements synchronised in a macabre dance as they feasted upon him.
"Kazami! Please get up!" She cried out, but his life had been drained, his body limp and devoid of any will to survive.
"Come on, please... I need you." Tang-Ji whispered, arms stretched forward, palms open, reaching out for something she wasn't even sure existed.
So far, she has always had someone to help her when she was in trouble. This time, however, she had no one else she could count on. She could only do one of two things: use her Leere or die along with her friend.
"COME ON, PLEASE!" She cried out once again, her voice breaking as the plea tore from her throat.
Tears began to trace desperate paths down her cheeks, splashing onto her outstretched hands.
Covered in shadowy armour, its eyes glowing with malevolence. It fixed its unsettling gaze on Tang-Ji, its intent clear, to feed on her despair.
Her shoulders twitched involuntarily; the tremor continued to run through her as she shuffled her legs back. Each step was hesitant, her body betraying the panic that was unable to fully suppress, her movements stiff, preparing to recoil from the inevitable.
She believed that her death was imminent, a cruel fate awaiting her in the clutches of this abomination.
"This is it—the end. I... I shouldn't have just left Kazami on his own." She mumbled hysterically while biting onto her lips out of fear.
"I shouldn't have joined that club. Shouldn't have logged in. If I had just kept to myself, never made friends, never cared... I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have to watch them die."
Her voice cracked. A cold sweat clung to her skin, but she couldn't tell if it was fear or the damp, suffocating air pressing down on her.
The Clicker Husk was getting closer.
The sound of its jagged limbs scraping against the walls sent tremors through her bones. It moved unnaturally, too fast, too erratic—one moment skittering across the ceiling, the next launching itself sideways, leaving deep gouges in the rotting wood.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, eyes darting to the only exit. "Mum. Dad. I wish—"
A sharp crack rang out. The beast landed just feet away, its eyeless face twisting toward her. The outside weak glow barely outlined its grotesque form—stretched, emaciated, a mouth that never closed.
There was nowhere to run.
Just as the Clicker Husk lunged forward, ready to claim its terrified prey, a blur of movement caught her attention.
"UKIYO??!!"
"You won't touch her." Her calm voice carried throughout the mansion, her hands glowing with an ethereal-like energy.
"Tune Burst," she mumbled, a high-level striking skill that momentarily allows the user to enter an extremely mobile state. With a burst of speed and agility, Ukiyo had avoided the Clicker Husk's initial attack, evading its claws.
She retaliated with a flurry of powerful strikes, her movements fluid and precise. The five hit combos knocked back the monster, sending it plummeting into the wooden staircase besides Kazami.
Amidst the chaos and despair, a sudden presence emerged from the shadows. The girl with blue hair stepped forward without hesitation as she began to unleash a powerful surge of energy, emanating a bright light that momentarily blinded the Clicker Husks.
Startled and disoriented, the mobs released their grip on Kazami, retracting their fangs from his body. In that moment of reprieve, Ukiyo swiftly moved, positioning herself between her world and the horde of menacing creatures.
She cast a fleeting glance at the girl crumpled on the ground—trembling, mirroring her own fragile state—then slowly extended her right hand. A soft pulse of light stirred to life in her palm, growing steadily brighter as it hovered above Tang-Ji's chest.
When her hand made contact, the glow flared—illuminating a glove etched with a heart, the edges coiled in thorns of black and white, mercy and malice locked in a quiet war.
'It felt as though time was completely frozen between reality and dreams,' she thought to herself.
As Ukiyo leaned in closer, her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible over the distant violent creaking of woods.
"You've always feared conflict. Always kept your emotions buried, thinking logic is the only way to keep others close. You believe that if you let them see the real you—your anger, your pain—they'll turn away. That they'll never understand."
Her breath lingered in the cold air, vanishing like a ghost.
"You avoid confrontations, especially with the ones you cherish most. And because of that, you're lost. Drifting. Searching for something you can't name."
Ukiyo tilted her head slightly, studying her expression, the way the dim light cast fleeting shadows across her face.
"It weighs on you, doesn't it? That cruel kindness of yours."
Tang-Ji's eyes welled up with tears, her emotions threatening to overflow. Ukiyo's words strike a chord within her, resonating with the truth she tried to bury deep within herself. She had been fighting against the urge to cry, a lifetime of conditioning telling her it's a weakness.
"How... how did you know?" Tang-Ji questioned her with tears streaming down her face.
"Memories drift, fog over snow, shifting and fading into the void. I can hear the faint chorus of ghosts murmuring, their whispers echoing in the stillness of people's hearts; it pains me with each agonising beat." Ukiyo slowly held up her right hand.
The glow from her hand intensified, revealing a glove on her palm. The design was both striking and enigmatic, featuring a heart at the core, surrounded by thorny vines in contrasting shades of black and white—a symbol of suppressed emotions and fear of emotional vulnerability.
"This is Queen's Soul. My Leere allows me to see the depths of people's hearts and understand their desires."
With a gentle touch, her arm began to slowly phase through Tang-Ji's chest, joining their Leere together. A blinding beam of light illuminated the entire mansion, shattering the illusion that ensnared the two girls.
As the light subsided, a massive jade sheer materialised, its majestic form towering over them.
"So, this is what lies within your heart. A beautiful disaster."