The train accepted Ayaan without ceremony.
Its doors parted soundlessly, as if space itself had decided to make room for him. Pale arrows shimmered across the platform floor, guiding passengers with gentle authority. He followed them inside, one body among many, and took hold of a strap suspended from the ceiling.
A female voice—announced the next station in Japanese. Above, lenses embedded in the carriage ceiling adjusted their focus as more people boarded. A narrow display flickered to life:
ROUTE ADJUSTED — DELAY PREVENTED
Ayaan barely glanced at it.
Through the window, Tokyo streamed past like a diagram drawn by a god obsessed with efficiency. Signals shifted before traffic arrived and vehicles glided through intersections with uncanny foresight. Drones threaded the gaps between buildings, precise as surgical instruments.
On an elevated walkway, a man gestured angrily into his phone. A second later, his voice dropped, smoothed into something polite. A soft glow on his wrist faded—civility protocol satisfied.
Ayaan watched, unmoving.
Where he came from, electricity flickered without warning. Silence there meant waiting, not perfection. Here, even inconvenience had been engineered out of existence.
The train surged forward. Not fast—cleanly. There was no lurch, no protest of metal on rail. Just acceleration governed by systems that no human could fully explain anymore.
His phone vibrated.
Markets Hold Steady New Global AI, Education Fund Approved, Attack on Titan: Final Retrospective — Worldwide Trend
His thumb hovered, then locked the screen.
He didn't need to revisit it.
He had finished the series weeks ago, long before the rest of the world decided to mourn it again. Watched it alone, lights off, headphones sealing him into the dark. Since then, it had refused to leave him—haunting lectures, drifting through half-understood conversations, intruding into sleep.
Not because of the monsters.
Because of the weight.
Walls disguised as safety and Freedom sold as sacrifice. The quiet way people were taught to accept it.
Ayaan rested his forehead against the glass.
If this world ever broke, he thought, it wouldn't announce itself.
The classroom smelled of disinfectant and warmed circuitry. Sunlight spilled through tall windows, catching motes of dust that hung motionless, as if unsure whether time was still moving.
Ayaan slid into his seat near the window and loosened his tie. His reflection stared back faintly—eyes shadowed, expression older than it should have been.
Behind him, a pen tapped an idle rhythm.
"They're bringing it back," Mika said, voice light. "The ending. Big screens this time."
He didn't turn. "Again?"
She shrugged. "People like pain—especially when it's meaningful."
Haruto laughed from the front row. "They like being told it was."
The professor began speaking, words flowing into a discussion of deterrence and balance and invisible threats that kept the world orderly. Ayaan listened just enough to appear present.
Outside, cherry blossoms swayed. Birds crowded the power lines.
Everything looked arranged. Too precise. Like a model city waiting for someone to knock it over.
His fingers tightened against the desk.
The birds stopped first.
Not gradually. Not one by one.
Every sound cut off at once, so sudden it felt as though the world had been muted. Ayaan lifted his head, frowning.
Then came the vibration.
Not an impact—something deeper. A low frequency that passed through the floor and into his bones. Desks shuddered. A water bottle toppled and sloshed, its ripples trembling unnaturally, as if disturbed by something unseen.
The lights dimmed.
They didn't fail. They hesitated.
Phones buzzed across the room in perfect unison. Too perfect.
A sharp, acrid scent flooded the air, burning his throat. Outside, thick white steam poured from fissures in the street below, rising with disturbing purpose.
"Gas leak?" someone whispered.
The sound answered them.
A tearing roar—wet, strained, unmistakably alive.
The street split open.
Concrete didn't explode. It bent. Peeled back as though unfastened from below.
Something rose through the steam.
Not plated. Not grotesque in the way fiction promised.
Human.
Horribly so.
Skin stretched thin over exposed muscle. Veins pulsed like overloaded cables. Its mouth lacked lips, teeth locked in a permanent grin that felt less like aggression and more like delight. Pale eyes stared without focus, yet searched relentlessly.
A Titan stood where the road had been.
Heat rolled outward, fogging the windows instantly. Ayaan couldn't hear the screams at first—his ears rang, his chest refusing to draw breath.
The creature leaned forward, tendons shifting beneath impossible mass.
Then sound returned.
Glass shattered.
People screamed.
And the world, so carefully optimized, finally broke.