Date: October 14, 2025 Location: Akihabara, Tokyo (Private Residence of Kenji Sato)
The room smelled of stale coffee and overheated electronics. Kenji Sato, a freelance data archivist, sat bathed in the cool glow of three 4K monitors. His job was mundane: taking vintage anime from the 1990s, cleaning up the grain, and upscaling it for modern streaming platforms. It was technical, precise work. He knew every frame, every cel, every background detail.
Or so he thought.
He was currently scrubbing through episode 12 of "Cyber-City Valkyrie." He paused the video at timestamp 14:02. It was a panning shot of a crowded subway station. He had watched this scene a hundred times before. But today, the algorithm flagged an anomaly.
In the deep background, obscured by the shadow of a vending machine, stood a figure that did not belong. A middle school girl. Black hair cut short. A sailor uniform that looked too crisp, too high-definition compared to the grainy cel animation around her. And distinct red-rimmed glasses. She wasn't looking at the protagonist. She was staring directly out of the screen, locking eyes with Kenji.
Kenji opened his Discord voice chat. "Mike, are you seeing the stream? Look at the metadata I just sent."
Mike, a fellow archivist, joined the stream. "Whoa. Is that an easter egg? I don't remember that character."
"It's a rendering error," Kenji said, his fingers flying across the keyboard to analyze the pixel density. "Look at her face. The geometry is flat. It's just a cluster of corrupted pixels that happens to look like a girl. It's pareidolia—like seeing a face on Mars."
"I don't know, man..." Mike's voice trembled slightly through the headset. "Zoom in. Look at her mouth."
Kenji obliged, magnifying the image until the girl filled the center monitor. "See?" Kenji said. "It's a straight line. No expression."
"No," Mike whispered, his breathing becoming ragged. "She's smiling. It's a... it's a cruel smile. She's grinning like she knows I'm alone in my apartment. She looks like she wants to hurt me, Kenji. She looks like a predator."
"Mike, stop it. You're projecting. You're stressed."
"She's moving!" Mike screamed, the audio peaking and distorting. "She's lifting her hand! She's pointing at me! Can't you see it?!"
Kenji stared at his screen. The girl was perfectly still. Frozen. A statue of data. "Mike, she isn't moving. Calms down."
"She's coming out! She's—" GACK. A wet, sickening sound cut through the chat. It was the sound of a throat constricting violently. Then a heavy thud, the crash of a chair overturning, and finally... silence.
"Mike? Mike!" Kenji sat frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He didn't dare look away from the screen. On his monitor, the girl remained exactly where she was. She hadn't moved a millimeter. She hadn't smiled. She was just... there.
But as the realization of his friend's death washed over Kenji—a cold, suffocating wave of grief and guilt—the image on the screen began to shift. The girl didn't move physically. The pixels didn't change coordinates. But the impression of her transformed. The "cruel smile" Mike had described was gone. In its place, Kenji saw eyes filled with infinite, crushing sorrow. She looked like a mourner at a funeral. She looked exactly how Kenji felt.
"I see..." Kenji whispered, tears blurring his vision. "You didn't kill him. You didn't do anything. You are just a mirror."
She was a blank canvas. Mike feared malice, so she became a monster. Kenji felt grief, so she became a reflection of his own breaking heart.