The blizzard clawed at the wooden cabin walls, each gust a long, icy scream trying to force its way in. Inside, the air was warmer, but the silence was suffocating. The fisherman sat frozen in place—eyes wide, breath trembling, fingers twitching weakly—as the presence before him, the strange second fish, shimmered with an unnatural, eerie stillness. The ordinary world was collapsing quietly around him, and he didn't even notice it happening.
Akuma—still in the delicate, glistening body of the transformed fish—floated in the wooden bucket, unmoving, studying the trembling human with an intelligence that didn't match his expressionless face. Something cold and invisible pulsed around him, a sharp, vibrating frequency that crackled against the fisherman's mind like frost biting bone.
And then—
Akuma's consciousness deepened, widening, splitting.
Parallel Operation: Level 2 — Initiated.
A second Akuma opened his eyes within the fisherman's head.
A third Akuma spread through the cabin like a quiet whisper.
A fourth reached into the blizzard outside, tasting the frozen air, calculating its lethality with surgical precision.
The fisherman's thoughts began to stutter.
His breathing hitched.
His voice broke.
Fisherman: "W-Why… why does it feel like someone… someone's pressing inside my skull…? What is… this…? Gods—my eyes—why are they burning—?"
His words tumbled into the air in long, desperate strings, quivering with fear he couldn't escape.
Akuma remained silent, mind calm, tone flat even inside the man's spiraling thoughts.
Akuma (inside his mind): "Your perception fluctuates. Your consciousness drifts. It appears your brain is incapable of processing multiple parallel streams without disintegration."
The fisherman clutched his head, dropping to his knees.
Fisherman: "S-Stop—stop—please, I can't— I don't know what you are— I don't… understand—"
Akuma did not answer with emotion.He didn't have any.
He simply adjusted the parameters.
Akuma: "Directive: Exit the cabin."
The fisherman blinked heavily, eyes fogging.
Fisherman: "The… storm? But I'll die out there. I'll freeze— I'll—"
Akuma raised the mental pressure by a fraction of a fraction.
The fisherman's body jerked.
His voice became stretched and hollow, like something speaking through a cracked shell.
Fisherman: "Y-Yes… I must… go outside…"
He stood, slow and stiff, as if resisting invisible strings tugging him toward the door. His eyes were practically lifeless already.
He reached for his coat—
—and stopped.
Akuma deepened the command.
Akuma: "Remove thermal layers. They inhibit cold exposure."
The fisherman shuddered violently.
Fisherman: "R-Remove…? I'll die… if I remove… them…"
A pulse of pressure.
The fisherman's fingers began unbuttoning his heavy jacket.
Then the sweater.
Then the thermal undershirt.
His breath came out in long, broken strands, like he was begging for someone to save him—but the only witness was Akuma, whose fish eyes didn't even blink.
He stepped into the blizzard wearing nothing but thin linen pants.
The wind punched him instantly.He stumbled, fell, rose again, trembling uncontrollably as frost began forming on his hair, eyelashes, lips.
Fisherman: "W-Why… is my body… moving… on its… own…? Why… won't it… stop…?"
He collapsed onto his knees in the snow, the blizzard swallowing his words.
Fisherman: "W-Who… are… you…?"
Inside the cabin, the fish's tail flicked once—barely a motion.
Akuma whispered into the man's fading mind.
Akuma: "I am… an error. A displaced phenomenon. A question without a source."
The fisherman's body finally stilled.
The wind carried the last breath from his chest, stealing it into the storm.
And inside the bucket, Akuma felt something—brief, light, flickering like a spark brushing against a dead wick.
Not an emotion.
Not joy.
Not malice.
Something thinner.More hollow.
A fragment that almost resembled laughter, echoing inside his mind for a fleeting second before disappearing entirely.
He returned to silence.
To calm.
To emptiness.
Only one thought surfaced:
Akuma: "This world responds… strangely to me."
His tail flicked again.
A decision formed.
He would need to leave the cabin soon.There were more variables outside.More structures.More humans.More data.
And possibly—
More pieces of whatever he had once been.