During a regular practice session for her beloved music circle, "Wonderlands×Showtime," AIchin HIBIYA feels a strange pang of sadness. She thinks, "Maybe... they'd be better off without me?" It's a tiny, prickly feeling of being left behind while her friends shine brightly.
Noticing her gloom, a quirky upperclassman from her school, Arata JOZAKI, calls out to her. Arata is a brilliant hacker with an obsession for the "Sekai" system. He has a secret—he can access "Minor Sekai," unstable worlds b
In a Corner of Sekai, You Wait for the Stars - Goodbye with a smile, hide-and-seek of tears
Before dawn broke, Hibiya Aichin woke in her dimly lit room. She reached for the smartphone by her pillow. On the screen, the message she had typed with trembling fingers the night before still sat there, unsent. *"I'm quitting Wonderlands×Showtime."* Her thumb hovered over the send button, frozen in place.
(I have to send it. It's for everyone's sake.)
She squeezed her eyes shut and chanted the words over and over in her mind. Like a spell to convince herself.
But in the end, she couldn't send it.
Instead, Aichin slowly sat up and slipped her arms through her uniform sleeves. The face reflected in the mirror was terribly pale. Dark circles from crying too much hung beneath her eyes.
"...I have to smile."
She forced her stiff cheeks upward with her fingers, practicing her smile. It's fine. If I can do this, no one will notice. By the time I enter the Phenix Hall studio, I have to have my perfect smile ready.
Inside her bag was the withdrawal notice she had somehow managed to finish writing the night before.
"I'm sorry... everyone... I'm so, so sorry."
―― ―― ――
Morning light streamed into Studio B at Phenix Hall.
The light sound of a piano. Someone's laughter. The same warm atmosphere as always.
When Aichin entered the studio, her classmate Misaki noticed her immediately and waved.
"Morning, Aichin! You're early today."
"G-good morning."
Her voice cracked. Flustered, Aichin pretended to do warm-up exercises and averted her eyes from Misaki.
A short while later, all the members had gathered. The leader was just about to explain the practice menu when it happened.
"Um...!"
Aichin's voice rang sharply through the studio. Everyone's eyes gathered on her.
Her heart felt like it was about to leap out of her mouth. Her fingertips tingled with numbness. Even so, Aichin plastered a smile onto her face.
"I'm quitting Wonderlands×Showtime...!"
The air in the studio froze in an instant.
"...Huh?"
A dumbfounded sound escaped Misaki's lips. The leader nearly dropped the sheet music. The other members exchanged glances, their faces showing they had no idea what was happening.
"W-wait a second! What's this all of a sudden!?"
Misaki stepped forward. Her eyes were clearly shaken.
Aichin rattled off the lines she had prepared in advance.
"Oh man, my grades have been seriously bad lately! I want to focus on entrance exams! At this rate, my parents are gonna take away my game console! Ahaha!"
A lie.
Inside her head, another version of herself was screaming.
(A lie, a lie, a lie. I want to be with everyone. I don't want to quit at all.)
"Aichin... if something's troubling you, I want you to talk to us."
The leader's gentle voice pierced her chest.
Aichin desperately held back the tears that threatened to spill. The muscles in her cheeks were frozen into the shape of a smile, aching.
"T-there's nothing troubling me! I'm just a little tired! And when I'm around, I just hold everyone back!"
"That's not true! You've been working so hard, Aichin!"
Misaki's voice was trembling.
That was it. She couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Because everyone does better when I'm not around!!"
The moment she screamed it, tears overflowed.
Her fake smile crumbled with an audible crack. Aichin turned her back on everyone and threw open the studio door with force.
"...Aichin."
The remaining members stared at the door in stunned silence. Only Misaki murmured quietly.
"That girl... she's definitely hiding something."
―― ―― ――
She ran down the hallway at full speed.
Her breath gave out. Her legs tangled. Tears flew behind her.
"Ugh... uuuh...!"
She raced down the stairs and burst outside the school building. Her heart pounded violently.
This was the right thing to do.
This way, she wouldn't drag everyone into danger.
Even though she thought that, the tears wouldn't stop.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... senpai..."
In the empty morning schoolyard, Aichin continued to cry, stifling her voice.
―― ―― ――
Meanwhile, in a room at Jozaki Arata's apartment.
The curtains in the six-tatami-mat room were shut tight. Dusty air stagnated throughout the room. Sheets of craft paper covered in scrawled observation records of minor Sekai remained plastered to the walls. On the desk, a cracked, modified tablet lay lifelessly.
Arata lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He hadn't moved from that spot for hours. No sound came from the headphones around his neck. His silver hair was tangled into a mess against the pillow.
The cord wrapped around his wrist was irritating. Like a chain binding him.
Inside his head, Yukito's cold voice repeated itself over and over.
*"Your code-reading ability has been completely sealed."*
So I can't do anything anymore, huh?
Can't go to Aichin's Sekai. Can't protect Aichin.
"...What a pain."
He muttered the words and closed his eyes.
He didn't want to think about anything.
Then, his smartphone vibrated.
With eyes like a dead fish, Arata glanced at the screen.
It was a LINE message from Aichin.
*"Senpai, thank you for everything. I quit the club too. I think it's better if we don't see each other anymore."*
At the end of the message was a single small rabbit stamp.
That, ironically, spoke volumes about her pain.
"Don't screw with me..."
He hurled his smartphone against the wall.
A dull crash. The screen cracked even further.
He couldn't stand how utterly useless he was. It wasn't anger toward Yukito or anything like that. It was a purer anger, directed at himself.
He curled his body up on the bed.
In the darkness, past memories flashed back.
Three years ago.
The first minor Sekai he had dived into alone. It was the wreckage of "Carnival Hall," which had suffered a chain collapse years before. A forgotten Sekai that no one paid any attention to.
That place was terribly quiet.
The sound was dead. The colors were murky, as if rotting. But that distorted, dangerous solitude had deeply captivated Arata's heart at the time.
Back then, Yukito had said:
*"It's dangerous. Don't ever go near it again."*
Ever since that moment, Arata had always believed: it's precisely because it's broken that it's worth protecting.
"...You think I'm gonna let the same mistake happen again?"
Arata slowly sat up.
Yukito's methods were wrong. Just because something's dangerous doesn't mean destroying it is the only option.
"I won't erase it. I'll just lock it up so no one can touch it."
It was a reversal of thinking.
But he immediately shook his head. Right now, he had no ability. Even the means to interfere with Sekai had been sealed away.
(Hang on...)
The system lock. That damnable wall Yukito had put in place. But at the same time, it was proof that it was deeply linked to Yukito's system.
"Turn Yukito's system lock against him... Use that wall as a stepping stone to seize control of every line in the Vigilnet."
Arata let out a dry laugh.
"That's way too impossible."
But there was no other way.
Arata jumped off the bed and sat down in front of his desk. He swept the empty instant noodle cups piled on the desk onto the floor with his arm. Trash scattered with a clatter.
Instead of the cracked tablet, he opened an old laptop. He placed his fingers on the keyboard.
"Wait for me, Hibiya. I'm definitely coming to get you."
With trembling fingers, Arata began his desperate programming.
―― ―― ――
After bolting from the club, Aichin had made her way to Kamihara Central Park.
A weekday morning. The park was sparsely populated. The hands of the clock tower seemed to have stopped just past ten o'clock.
Aichin slumped down weakly onto a bench near the fountain.
"I... I just want to disappear..."
The moment she murmured those words—
*Bzzzt.*
With a sound like an electric jolt, the space before her eyes warped.
The water in the fountain suddenly stopped moving. The shadow of the bench began to split into two, then three overlapping layers. The leaves of the roadside trees lost their color in an instant, turning into gray silhouettes.
"Huh...?"
Only around her, the colors and sounds of the world twisted in strange directions.
As if someone had mixed all the paints together, murky light filled the air. The hands of the clock tower began to spin backward.
Terror rooted her body in place.
"What... is this...?"
―― ―― ――
At that moment, in the server room of Miharu Academy.
Only the cold light of monitors illuminated the dark room. Soga Yukito stood before a terminal, watching countless data streams.
Emergency alerts began rising all at once from the Vigilnet surveillance network.
*"Singularity energy exceeding threshold by 300%."*
*"Spacetime oscillations observed across wide area of Kamihara City."*
*"Sekai Key status: Critical point breached."*
Yukito's expression stiffened slightly.
"So it's finally exceeded its limit."
The epicenter displayed on the monitor was Kamihara Central Park.
He immediately accessed the system and activated the final protocol.
"Sekai Freeze Protocol Omega. Erase the subject's Sekai from its very root."
The moment he tried to run that forced intervention program—
Warnings flashed across every monitor.
*"Anomaly detected. Unauthorized external access."*
*"Unable to identify source."*
Yukito's fingers stopped.
"...What?"
He immediately deployed offensive firewalls and attempted to trace the intrusion path.
But the intruder slipped through as if they had known his defense systems from the very beginning.
In fact, they were using the line of the system lock he had set up as their very intrusion route.
There was only one person in the entire world capable of such a feat.
Yukito narrowed his sharp eyes behind his glasses ever so slightly.
"It can't be... Jozaki Arata?"
A cold smile formed at the corner of his mouth. It was the opening of a quiet yet fierce battle of wits between just the two of them.
―― ―― ――
Night.
After fleeing from the park, Aichin huddled in her apartment room.
She hadn't turned on the lights.
The glow of the streetlamps filtering in through the window dimly illuminated one corner of the room.
There, the unstable rift of a Sekai Gate that had appeared the night before still lingered.
As if responding to her despair, the crack of light flickered more intensely, growing larger. It looked ready to spill something out at any moment.
Aichin pulled the blanket on her bed over her head.
She hugged her knees and curled up. As if trying to hide her very existence from the world.
"My Sekai... please, don't let anyone find it..."
The hide-and-seek she used to play so often as a child.
If she stayed hidden forever, no one would get hurt. If no one found her, it would be the same as if she had never been there from the start.
Trembling, she closed her eyes.
Just then, the smartphone by her pillow glowed faintly.
A LINE message from Arata.
*"Don't run. I'm definitely coming to get you."*
It remained unread.
Aichin simply continued to cry, stifling her voice beneath the blanket.
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