Green icons scattered among the jagged cradle of the cave surrendered one by one to their exhaustion. The ground was uncomfortable—jagged limestone and fragmented shale under thin coats of moss—but even discomfort couldn't rival the weight of what they'd survived.
The slow, constant rhythm of cave water echoed softly. It wasn't peaceful. It was ancient—like the earth itself was breathing in shallow, uneven breaths. A sigh from the belly of the world.
The flicker of filtered bioluminescence from glowing fungus along the cave walls gave off a dull, aquamarine sheen, casting elongated shadows over sleeping figures curled under threadbare cloaks. Kazami snored faintly under his coat, Decker muttered some half-swear before turning to the wall. Tang-Ji shifted restlessly, a twitch behind closed eyes. Junyo's gauntlet blinked once, dim, then went dark. Even Kompto, sitting cross-legged and upright like a sentinel, eventually closed one eye.
Near the edge of the cave, beside a thick river that gurgled over smooth obsidian rocks, Emiko sat alone.
Her bare feet slipped into the cold current, skin mottled from the contrast. She winced slightly but kept them submerged, letting the water tug gently at the aches in her legs. The river's shimmer caught her reflection in fragments—a face stitched together in fleeting silver shards. The exhaustion hung under her eyes like bruises. Her fingers traced the edge of a rock beside her, silent.
Then—
"Couldn't sleep?"
Ji-Soon's voice was low, casual, like the question barely needed an answer. He stood a few steps behind her, hands in the pockets of his coat, gaze set on the ceiling.
A pause.
"…Go away," Emiko said, not looking at him. Her voice was cold, brittle. "Mind your own business."
The words hung in the cave air like frost. Ji-Soon blinked once, nodded a little. He turned on his heel, his boot scraping gently against the stone.
But then—
"…Wait."
He stopped. Slowly turned his head.
Emiko still faced the water. But her fingers had stilled, curled faintly at her side.
"Why…" she began, the word catching in her throat. "Why did you save me back then?"
The silence that followed wasn't awkward—it was raw. Bare.
"You don't know me," she said, voice rough, fighting itself. "You don't even like me. I've treated you like shit. Again and again."
Her breath hitched.
Then, quietly, like something she didn't want to believe herself:
"…Is it because I'm a girl? You think I'm a weak girl that would need a man's help?"
She turned her head then—just slightly—and he saw her face. Her lips trembled faintly despite the steel in her voice. Her eyes, rimmed red from strain, held a reflection of something far away. Not this cave. Not this moment.
Red hair.
A river of blood.
Another boy.
Another time.
Her eyes glossed—not from tears, but memory. Pain not yet healed, wound not yet scabbed.
Ji-Soon's face was unreadable, not blank, but inward. His gaze softened—not with pity, but with weight. Like he saw her. Not the cold exterior. But the hollow beneath.
He exhaled once, then crouched near her—but not too close.
"To me," he said quietly, "girl or boy… that doesn't matter."
His voice was calm but not empty. Just honest.
"Everyone has a heart. Some people bury it, some people forget how to listen to it. But no one's born without one. And no one's born emotionless. They're shaped. By where they're from. Who they've lost. The crap they've had to endure and survive."
He looked at her now, fully. The cave light caught the edge of his face.
"I don't know what your story is. But I can see it's carved into you."
A beat.
"And yeah. You can be bitchy and hella annoying sometimes."
That surprised a breath out of her. Not a laugh, not quite. But not anger either.
"…But I still see a person. One who feels things so much, she's trying not to feel anything at all."
Emiko looked down. Her fingers gripped the edge of the stone harder.
The river rippled. Her face broke in its reflection—splintered like a mirror dropped from height. A girl standing behind a boy she never got to save. A scream she swallowed. The sound of a heartbeat, not hers, as it slowed. Because someone had to.
"…You're wrong," she whispered, though her voice held no teeth.
But Ji-Soon didn't reply.
Instead, he reached forward—not to touch her, but to rest a flat hand on the stone beside her. Their shadows merged just faintly in the water's glow.
Then, he stood up again, quietly, and stepped back.
She didn't thank him.
And he didn't expect her to.
But her eyes stayed on him long after his footsteps faded, and the sound of the river returned to claim the space between them.
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The neon haze hung, a suffocating veil that blotted the sky—if there were stars at all. The air smelled of burnt chrome and synthetic rain, ozone threading down from spires of circuitry that clawed the murk. This place had forgotten how to breathe; even the clouds came manufactured in permanent grey. No sun, no true horizon—only wires and flickering screens running to the edge of a reality that had long since slipped its moorings.
"Don't breathe too deep," a voice whispered somewhere inside the hum. "It stains your lungs."
On the streets, people drifted as ghosts, faces layered in projection—masks, avatars, identities woven from their own wanting. Few remembered their first names. The rest buried those beneath glittering skins that fit poorly against the shape of their hearts.
"They change clothes but never skin," the voice murmured. "They say the mirror is kinder if you blur it."
Sound pressed in: machinery and voices blending to a single white noise. Advertisements spun through the air, promising more power, more freedom, more beauty—everything for a price paid in credits, compromise, or borrowed memories.
"Who are you?" the city asked without moving its mouth. "What are you hiding?"
"It already knows," the voice returned—higher now, bell-clear—"but it likes to hear you lie."
Vice had storefronts. A woman in electric pink sold the sensation of real feeling; a man with translucent skin hawked rented affection, tailor-made and pre-returned. Longing came bottled.
Numbness came in bulk. Wrath hid in the flash of a stray bolt; hunger queued for empty sweets. Pride floated in the billboard glare—look at me—envy whispered in alleys where eyes measured strangers and came away starving. Slowness pooled in doorway shadows; hoarding glittered in vault-gray towers.
Above, structures leaned into eternal twilight, the city pulsing to a slow metronome, a heart with light instead of blood. There were no walls, only layers of code wrapping the body in a soft arrest. Deep beneath, a truth slept—cracked but unspilled—under the lacquer of wanting.
"It's a room that won't open its windows," she said. "But the latch is loose."
Familiarity haunted every corner, wrong by a degree you could feel in your teeth. Faces smeared into one another, towers copied their neighbors, and names slid off the tongue. People became reflections of reflections until the glass remembered more than the owners did.
And then, at the end of a narrow run where the neon thinned, an alley forgot to perform. The hum dropped. A sign in tired letters: The Pause. A door hid behind a snarl of cables and orphaned ads. The hinges complained; inside, dimness held.
Old, faded screens along the walls flickered with static—a relic vocabulary. A long wooden bar wore its history smooth. The air tasted of stale whiskey and burnt circuits, but there was comfort in the faint warmth of it, the way noise from the street died at the threshold.
"Here," she breathed, "they speak without helmets."
The bartender—gaunt, chrome-eyed—polished a glass, metal on glass the only rhythm. No avatars. No holos. Just people, or close enough to keep the hands from shaking. For a moment, masks loosened.
"Change begins when the room remembers your name," the thought aloud, the voice threading through the grain of the wood. "You don't have to use it yet. Just hear it once."
The weight of the city still clung; nothing here truly escaped its gravity. But the air moved. Something unlatched in the dark—small, unnoticed by most. Not a miracle, only a hinge deciding not to rust shut.
The door eased closed behind them, neon blinking once and then receding. Inside: the quiet, the knowledge of the game's trap still around their ankles—and the thin permission, for a little while, to pretend otherwise.
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The door to The Pause clicked shut behind them, muffling the city's noise. Emiko led the group through the dim room, her steps sure, breath held in that tight way that meant she already knew the answer and needed the proof to catch up.
Decker, scowl first as always, muttered, "Why are we following her here?" No one bothered to answer. The unspoken moved between boots and floorboards. "Tsk… always dragging us into the weirdest places."
Emiko's voice cut the hush, sharp and steady. "He's here. He has to be."
Kazami raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
She paused—half a heartbeat where resolve gathered—then faced them. "The reason I've been trying to reach the second Delve is to find my brother."
The group froze. Tang-Ji's eyes widened. "Brother??!!"
Emiko nodded, the set of her jaw softening into something fierce. "We got separated at the start. Up until recently we were in touch—then nothing. I've been chasing traces. I think he's here."
Kazami tipped his chin, weighing it. "So he's with another school's club? One of the teams we're up against?"
"Yeah."
"Which school?" he pressed.
Emiko's gaze slid past him, catching on nothing. "It's been years," she said, voice even. "We crossed paths when the servers opened. I don't know what school he goes to." The words were tidy; the pause before them wasn't.
"I see," Kazami murmured, a quick look flicking to Kompto.
As they moved deeper, Tang-Ji watched the icons above heads. A handful glowed green—players. Most shone blue. NPCs, regardless of the warmth in their smiles. Even the bartender, all polish and chrome eyes, wasn't real.
They threaded past laughing patrons. Tang-Ji leaned toward Kazami, whispering, "Everyone here looks so… real."
Kazami scanned the room, slow. "Yeah. If not for the colours, I'd buy it. Their laughter…" He watched a table of blue-name regulars toast nothing in particular. "It's too free. They talk about things we haven't had in a while. Look at us." A small, dry sound that might have been a laugh. "We're the ones carrying weight."
Around them, armor shifted, buckles pinched tired shoulders, faces creased with grind. The NPCs wore clean lines and neon-threaded boots that belonged in this city. The players did not.
"Yeah, we stick out," Kazami muttered, adjusting his gear.
He glanced back. Ji-Soon trailed, and for a breath their eyes met. Ji-Soon looked away first; something unsaid tightened the air between them.
They walked until Emiko stopped at a corner table, the group bunching behind her. Decker complained on cue.
"Oi, monkey, why'd you stop?" he snapped at Kompto.
Kompto huffed, unfazed. "Can you relax for a sec?"
"Shut up, old man," Decker growled, the edge all posture, not heat.
Wedged between them, Junyo tried to breathe smaller. "Uhh… guys, could we not squash me here?" His voice barely made it past his throat.
'It was my cast. My line. The log said lethal. You can't roll that back. He swallowed. Don't think about the sound.'
Emiko reached the table. A boy lounged there, head tipped back against the sofa, arms resting wide. Hair naturally permed, a soft fuzz that refused order. The name tag was clear: Wintersune.
Emiko stepped closer. His eyes snapped open, widening, expression flipping through disbelief into light. "Sister?!" He sat up, grin breaking across his face. "You came!"
Emiko gave a small nod. Winter's hands moved quick, urging. "Come, sit, sit."
They crowded in. The table was too small; they made it work. Kompto swung up onto the sofa's upper arc—the very top of the curve—and settled there, legs askew. Decker dragged a stool over and dropped onto it, grumbling, "This place is too small, and I still don't get why we're here."
Ji-Soon blinked, leaning forward, words catching on the first syllable. "Wait, you're—"
Winter glanced up, the grin easing into something warmer. "Still breathing. Good to see some familiar faces made it through." He gave Ji-Soon a small nod, then swept his gaze over the rest.
Kompto tipped his chin and whispered from behind. "You know him?"
"Yeah," Ji-Soon said simply. "He's the reason we made it out of the first town alive."
Emiko settled into a chair, her face easing for the first time since they'd entered. The boy continue to studied the group, curiosity skimming their gear and scars, then returned to her with the same warm grin.
"Sister, what took you so long?" he teased, leaning in. "I've been waiting."
Meanwhile, Junyo stared at the wood grain, breath caught behind his teeth. 'It was a team call. He would've killed us. We did what we had to.' The thought didn't land. It hovered, cold and useless.
Decker side-eyed him, then clicked his tongue. "Hey." He nudged Junyo's shin under the table, not gentle, not cruel. "For all we know, admins don't stay dead. He probably respawned in some other pit. And we still don't even know if dying here means dying out there." A lift of the shoulder, the closest he got to kind. "So quit writing your funeral speech in your head."
Junyo's fingers loosened a fraction on his forearm. 'Maybe.' The word didn't heal anything, but it stopped the shake in his wrist.
Somewhere in the room a laugh rose and fell, bright and untroubled. The air in The Pause felt faintly different at the edges, as though a window had opened somewhere no one could see.
Emiko's gaze didn't leave her brother.
Tang-Ji's eyes flicked between the blue and green above heads and wondered when, exactly, a name decided it would change its colour. Kazami let his shoulders settle, one notch, the smallest concession to the idea that a turn could be taken instead of forced.
Winter tapped the table twice, a tiny rhythm that wanted to be the start of something. "From the looks of you all, I'm about to hear an insane story," he said, and the quiet leaned in to listen.