Tang-Ji went breathless the moment she stepped inside. A cold thrill ran up her spine; she spun back—only to find the door gone, a scatter of glass winking where it had been.
It struck her as odd that her mind reached for warmth just then: the kind of room you step into after snow, air fogged with breath and safe noise. The thought vanished like vapor.
"Hey, open up! Is there anyone there? Kazami?" She called out, her voice echoing off the surface of the water beneath her feet.
As she turned back around, she noticed that there were multiple, shadowy figures in the distance.
As she inched closer cautiously, her eyes widened, and she caught her breath in her throat. At that moment, she was staring at one of her greatest fears: what lay before her was a group of grossly contorted mannequins.
"This... this can't be real." She whispered, her words trembling beneath the darkness. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, searching for something—anything—to anchor her to reality.
She also noticed her surroundings were different; it was dark, but not the dark of a room with corners and a door. It was a lightless void. The locked room came back to her—breath held, eyes on the thin seam under the door—but here there was no seam, no edge, only a boundless black that defied understanding.
Tang-Ji's next step answered with a soft splash. The floorboards were gone; in their place a shallow wash slipped around her ankles as she moved. Other times, water had meant relief—blue tiles, the hum of a fan, a damp towel cooling the back of her neck. Here it was drinking the remaining heat from her skin and gave nothing back.
She looked back for movement; the mannequins held their breath—or pretended to. Up close they were hideous caricatures of the human form, limbs overlong, joints splayed at wrong angles. Faces almost featureless: no eyes, no noses, only empty sockets and blank planes. Only the mouths remained—colourless lips locked in a silent, endless laugh.
The clicking returned, louder, insistent, each tick a small taunt to reason. Her gaze skittered, hunting an exit, and stopped on a face. Her heart dropped.
They wore her people like masks: classmates, parents, even a version of her. Affection turned cardboard, then cruel; every one in the same three-piece suit. Kazami, Ukiyo—why are you here? She faced the one that suggested her mother.
"Mum… is that you?" She shook the shoulders; nothing answered.
The suit rasped beneath her fingertips—cloth, not skin. Cold bled through the weave and ran up her arm.
"Dad, why are you all here?"
Her own face stared back from another body; dread clawed at her chest.
'No. They are not real. Keep moving. I need to find a way out.'
Movement flickered at the edge of vision. "Who's there?" No one—only the field of figures.
She held her breath and stepped in. Cold pressed her left shoulder.
Ukiyo's shape. She shrieked, slapped the hand away. The thing cradled its struck wrist, a pantomime of hurt, then let its features settle to blank.
She backed away, confused, sick with it. Fear gathered low, a knot tightening on the hinge of a cursed wish. 'Go or be dragged under.' The room closed in—caged, narrowing.
Without warning, the others woke. Limbs jerked at crooked angles, motions stuttered and wrong. Creaks and groans rose in chorus—wooden joints straining. She ran. Footfalls beat a frantic pattern over the cold, shallow water.
Breath tore in rags. 'Don't look. Don't think. Kazami, where are you?'
Legs failing. Then—there: a glimmer ahead.
She threw a movement skill around herself; gold rose and held, a brief aurora, and she burst from the dark.
The door shattered—old timber into splinters. She hit the floor, grunted, pushed to her feet, and looked up.
Another room.
The walls throbbed with sick brightness, pulsing, then dimmed, and the lines of a bedroom drew themselves out of the dark.
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The large, ornate bed in the room's centre caught her eye as she adjusted to the dim light. The creaking of the boards under her feet only added to the unsettling ambience. Only her faint breathing broke the eerie stillness of the room.
Every rustle of the curtains and each faint squeak of the floorboards seemed to taunt her, fuelling her imagination with another nightmarish possibility.
Tang-Ji approached the bed warily, and her heart plummeted as she saw the two corpses lying motionless on top. Her palm sprang up to cover her mouth as a cry of shock escaped her lips.
A man and a woman were locked in a perpetual embrace of death, they had never been apart. Their empty, lifeless eyes mirrored the terror carved into their faces.
Despite the fact that she understood rationally that these individuals were only computer-generated, her eyes refused to accept it because of how real they looked, almost indistinguishable from real humans. She began to feel uneasy as the shadows slid menacingly over the walls. She felt a hand close in on her heart as it slowly crushed her inside.
The air grew stale, and the smell of decay was now creeping in, making her want to retch. The smell had her mind wandering back to the time when she found a dead cat in the alleyway and tried to help it—how the stench had lingered on her clothes for days, but this time, it was worse, sharper, suffocating.
Dusk Protocol can manipulate all five senses, making the stench of rotting flesh feel disturbingly real. It's a big selling point for hardcore players, the kind who crave full immersion.
Not me, though. I still prefer old-school arcade games—flashing lights, clunky buttons, and sticky floors—the simple magic modern games just don't have.
Tang-Ji, shaking, backed away from the nauseating scene on the bed as she staggered towards the shattered door. Kazami—she needed to find him. Desperation clawed at her throat as she shouted his name.
Kazami crashed through the door, his eyes wide. The moment he saw the bed, his body seemed to drain of strength. His knees buckled, sinking to the floor, his face pale, and his mouth parted in silent horror. He was unable to tear his gaze from the grotesque scene before him.
His voice was reduced to a whisper, trembling with a vulnerability she had never heard before.
"We... we're not the heroes of this story. We can't save everyone. Tang-Ji... you... just look at them?"
The weight of his words hit her, and her stomach twisted. The despair in his tone and the starkness of their situation crushed the air from her lungs. She wanted to speak—to reassure him, to say something, anything—but the words tangled in her throat, refusing to come out.
"Is it possible that we could become like... like them?" Kazami's voice broke, raw and exposed.
The once-unshakeable strength she'd always seen in him was unravelling, slipping away under the suffocating pressure of fear and doubt. For the first time, she saw the cracks in the iron resolve she'd thought could never break.
Kazami could not stomach the sight of another lifeless body, even though he knew deep down they weren't real. They looked real, and that was enough to make his chest tighten.
Tang-Ji blinked back the tears threatening to spill; her throat tightened as she felt the weight of his despair.
"Kazami," her voice wavered, but she forced a steadiness into it.
"We can't lose hope. We must go on. It doesn't matter if we're not the heroes that can save everyone; our efforts will have an impact on those around us. If we keep advancing and levelling up our stats, we'll eventually be strong enough to beat this game."
Pain flickered in his eyes as he glared at her.
"Why did you become heroic all of a sudden? Where was that when we needed it the most? You never show any emotions."
"You're so robotic in your behaviour; you never explain your actions. When you keep everything to yourself, how can I put my trust in you?"
His words hit Tang-Ji like a cold gust, shattering the walls that she had constructed around herself.
She thought that if she buried her feelings, she would be able to keep her strength and competence. But now she saw how it had cut her off from others and alienated her from her only friend.
Even in the real world, she had kept her distance from others, fearing arguments and the burden of being someone's problem. She hid behind a calm, rational facade, believing that avoiding conflict meant keeping a wall between herself and everyone else.
Here, the truth was plain: it wasn't caution; it was insecurity. Losing her memory left her unfinished, afraid she could never live up to the girl she'd been. Without that map, she doubted her ability to understand and to connect.
The fear gnawed at her.
'What if I could never be as strong or capable as 'she' had been before?'
Her composure was only a mask for that doubt. With the weight of her missing past pressing in, she couldn't pretend otherwise. The danger around her was real, but so was the quieter one inside—the fear of not being enough, of never becoming who she needed to be.
It wasn't like this before she lost everything that night. If only we could meet in person, I would have told you how stupid and naive you were back then, but then again, that would probably result in me disappearing if we ever saw eye to eye.
At least you're finally somewhat mature now; too bad you find the worst place to act indifferent. Not only that, but the person that you're acting this way towards is Kazami, no less. Unbelievable.
'I'll protect the one thing I want to protect until the very end.' You said that yourself, yet you are willing to throw all of it away. Despite getting all of his attention, you still haven't been able to change anything. This feeling... It's definitely envy.
"I'm sorry, Kazami."
His eyes shot wide, the anger in them searing through the dim room.
"NO!"
The word cracked, dry wood splintering.
He staggered back a step, hands trembling at his sides.
"I've had enough of your apologies! Do you not see? We're completely cut off from the world. No one's coming to save us!"
Kazami crumpled to the floor, his body sinking, a puppet whose strings had been severed. The dusty room seemed to close in on him. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath.
"I'm not strong, and I'm not... emotionless like you."
His gaze dropped to the bed, the corpse lying there cold and unmoving, its presence an eerie reminder of how much had already been lost.
He gripped the floor, eyes narrowing as his voice dropped to a bitter growl. "All you do is wear that mask. A cold, stone wall. Nothing gets through to you. It's your choice to hide behind that. But I... I can't—"
He paused, the weight of his words sinking in. But the fire in his chest refused to be extinguished.
The anger had always been there, simmering just beneath the surface, and now it was spilling out uncontrollably. He couldn't stop it. Didn't care about the fallout. It was like that night—like every night before it—when the fury cut through, tearing at the ones he cared for, leaving wounds that would never fully heal.
He swallowed hard. "Don't bring your personal tragedies into a game where our lives are on the line."
His words hung heavy in the room, swallowed by the suffocating silence.
Tang-Ji bit down on her lip as the light in her once jewel-like eyes faded. She trembled before clenching her fists tightly.
"I'm sorry, Senpai; I just wanted to help."
She swiftly exited the room, leaving Kazami alone, slumped on the floor.