The room was six tatami mats. The wallpaper was peeling away from the edges. The springs of the single bed were rusted, creaking with each movement. A thin curtain hung at the window. Neon red and blue seeped in from outside, alternating in the darkness. A cheap inn on the outskirts of Shione Ward. 1400 yen a night. That was the limit of what Ren could afford right now. Ten days had passed since the transfer. Ren sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at the ceiling. Even with a hand in his pocket, nothing came out. The ID card was gone. A ban on entering the office had been issued. The remaining money was a few hundred yen—barely enough to survive today with a single vending machine bottle of water. There was nowhere to go. Everything that had certainly existed until yesterday was gone. System access. Office colleagues. The reason for being here—all of it vanished the moment the SAF investigator closed the door. Ren stared blankly at a stain on the wall. He tried to think about something, but his thoughts wouldn't move properly. --- Past noon, the smartphone rang. Looking at the screen, it was an encrypted message with no sender name. He immediately knew it was from Yao. The first line said: I'll keep this brief. There's a possibility we're being monitored. Then came a bulleted list. Two sponsors formally announced contract terminations. "765 Pro Disbands" trended on SNS. One of the young idols submitted a resignation letter. The remaining idols continued to be shaken, and lessons were suspended. Ren read line by line. He tried to take it as numbers, but it didn't work. Beyond the words "two sponsors," the faded wallpaper of the office and the view from the window that Haruka opened every morning floated into his mind. The last line came. ——I have a message from Haruka. ——Because of getting involved with you, everyone's been hurt. Right now... I think it's better to keep our distance. Ren read those characters three times. Before reading them a fourth time, he turned the phone face-down. --- From evening into night, Ren couldn't move. Sitting on the bed with both hands on his knees, he watched the neon colors outside the window change. Red, blue, red, blue. Words floated through his mind and disappeared. It's all my fault. It was his ID card that brought the SAF investigator. It was because he advanced the analysis that Noise targeted them. Haruka's SNS being attacked, the office being cornered, the resignation letter being submitted—because Ren was there, they had their excuse. The causal relationship was clear. Not emotion. Data. And yet. Ren covered his face with both hands. Something else began to move in his head. In the original world too, he had no place to belong. His parents divorced, and whether he was at his father's house or his mother's, he never fit anywhere. In either house, that feeling of "am I allowed to be here?" never left. So he escaped into studying music production. He thought that if he could create someone else's stage, he could find meaning even without a place to belong. He sought the basis for his own existence in that. And in this world. In the old building of 765 Pro, Haruka said, "Why don't you stay here?" Yao looked at data with him. Haruka's singing voice echoed in the lesson studio. At the edge of the stage during the mini-live, the moment the filter worked, for the first time—he touched that feeling of being allowed to be here. Now it was all gone without a trace. Tears spilled from Ren's eyes. No sound came out. Only tears traced down his cheeks and fell onto the cheap inn's sheets. Realizing he was crying, he felt a little surprised. It was the first time since coming to this world. Hugging his knees, he stayed like that for a long time. The neon outside repeated red and blue. The rusted bed creaked quietly. Somewhere far away, the sound of a car passing. --- Past midnight, light flickered outside the window. Ren lifted his head. Across from the window was a street vision display. The bottom right of the screen was breaking down, and the image occasionally glitched with noise. It flickered, turned to static, then appeared again. On that screen was past live footage from 765 Pro. A small stage. There might not have been even a hundred spectators. But under the lights, Haruka held the microphone and smiled. Facing forward, singing with all her strength. Someone in the audience waved their hand. Haruka responded to that hand, raising her voice even louder. The breaking screen glitched with noise again for a moment. But Haruka's smile didn't disappear. Ren couldn't take his eyes off that image. He didn't want that light to go out. That emotion seeped up from deep in his chest. Not obligation. Not responsibility. Something more fundamental, something without logic. He wanted to protect Haruka shining on that stage. He wanted to protect that face. ——Ren still couldn't put that feeling into words. But it was definitely there. Ren gripped the sheets with his fist. His legs were shaking. Still, he stood up. --- With his hand against the window, Ren gazed at the street vision display. With dried tear marks on his face, he watched Haruka's image. In his head, the cipher patterns of the Void Sign kept spinning. He'd been turning them over for days. He and Yao had found they matched the SAF system architecture. Something that had been catching on him all along took shape in the deep night silence. (Wait.) The cipher skeleton matched. But—the error handling method was subtly outdated. Ren picked up his smartphone and opened the recorded data. His fingers were shaking. Still, he looked at the screen. Error handling code sequences. Key arrangement patterns. This wasn't the latest version that the current SAF used. It was the old security code introduced eight years ago—the year the Performance Preservation Act was enacted. When the law was created, the SAF's internal system was also set up at the same time. It matched perfectly with the specifications from that time. In other words. The Void Sign's internal collaborator wasn't a current SAF executive. It was someone deeply involved in system construction eight years ago. The premise of the investigation, which had been suspecting current SAF executives, suddenly narrowed down. Ren began typing a message to Yao. "[serious]The Void Sign uses old code. It matches the specifications from eight years ago when the Performance Preservation Act was enacted. Not the current SAF executives. Find the person who built the system back then." His finger hovered over the send button. He paused for a moment. ——Then pressed it without hesitation. The words "Sent" lit up on the screen. Ren looked out the window. The street vision display had switched to different footage, and the 765 Pro live was no longer showing. But the light that had illuminated that image—the breaking screen was still there. With dried tear marks on his face, Ren faced forward for the first time. He'd found a lead. But he had no means to prove it. No ID card. No office access. No connections to trustworthy adults. Ren had zero. How to make the next move—that was the question left for the night ahead.