The flyer Leo had tacked to the community board was simple: "Barista Wanted. Must care." He'd expected no one.
So he was surprised when a young woman with wide, earnest eyes appeared in his doorway. She introduced herself as Chloe, her voice a warm, bubbling stream.
"I saw your sign," she said, her gaze drifting around the small space. "It feels... quiet in here. But a good quiet. Like a deep breath."
Leo hired her on the spot. He didn't need an appraisal to see it. She had the look. The one that saw people, not just customers. After she left, a soft, green chime sounded in his mind.
[NEW EMPLOYEE HIRED. ASSET ACQUIRED: EMPATHY.]
A week later, she was humming, wiping down shelves while Kai tinkered. Leo was going over accounts when he heard a sharp gasp. He looked up.
Chloe was standing by a high shelf, an old, leather-bound ledger in her hands. She was frozen, her knuckles white.
"Chloe?"
She flinched, carefully setting the book down on the counter as if it were hot, and rubbed her palms on her apron. "Sorry. It's just... this book... It has a residue. A really cold, angry one. It feels like... an argument that never ended." She gave a shaky little laugh. "It's silly. I'm just sensitive to old things."
Leo walked over. The ledger was just a book. But Chloe's reaction wasn't. He remembered the word burned into his vision: `TERMINATED`. The cold, angry residue of a last argument.
"It's not silly," he said, his voice low. He took the ledger and placed it back on the shelf, out of sight. Chloe offered him a grateful, if still unsettled, smile before returning to her work, her humming a little softer than before.
But the chill of her words stayed with him, settling deep as he locked up that night. The café was dark and silent, the only light was the soft glow of the espresso machine's power indicator. He leaned against the counter, the weight of the unasked question finally too heavy to carry.
He focused inward, on the silent presence of the System. "What really happened to my grandfather?" he asked the quiet air.
The effect was immediate.
A searing, white-hot pain. It lanced through his temples.
The warm parchment UI shattered. Jagged, staticky fragments scrolled nonsense and error codes.
[ERROR. ERROR. DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED IN PRIMARY USER FILE.]
[CAUSE OF USER DEACTIVATION: EXT-- ER-- NAL-- INTERVENTION--]
The voice that usually sounded like dark roast and regret was now a distorted, agonized screech, layered with the sound of fracturing crystal and static. "NO! INTRUSION--!"
For a terrifying second, the glitching UI resolved into a single, stark line of text, edged in crimson and black.
[ARTHUR'S MEMORY: "THE LAST ARGUMENT" - LOCKED.]
Then, just as suddenly, the pain vanished. The UI snapped back to its normal, warm glow, though it seemed fainter, strained. The voice returned, hoarse and exhausted, the taste of ash in Leo's mind.
"Insufficient data," it rasped, the words barely a whisper. "Continue... foundational growth."
Leo stood in the dark, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at the shelf where the ledger sat. The System wasn't just a guide, he realized. It was a wounded guard, protecting a crime scene.
And the ledger? It was the key.