The sky was gray—not the gentle gray of rainclouds, but a decaying veil, stretched thin like flesh over bone. Hiragi stood beneath it, alone on the rooftop of what used to be Tsukimori Academy. His uniform hung loosely on him, the sleeves torn, the buttons cracked. Blood had dried at the edges of his collar, not all of it his.
The air was thick. Not with smog or smoke—though both were present—but with something worse. Something quiet.
Something watching.
He blinked. The city below him shimmered. The buildings were intact, the roads clean, the people moving as if nothing had changed. But when he focused, their faces blurred, melted, then reassembled. A woman walking her dog blinked out of existence for a second before reappearing three feet to the left. The dog didn't notice.
"This… isn't the real world," he muttered.
"No," a voice answered beside him.
Hiragi didn't flinch. He already knew who it was.
Ishigami Kurogami stepped forward from the shadows, his black uniform untouched by dust or blood. His eyes were sharp as ever, scanning the city like a surgeon studying a cadaver.
"We're back," Ishigami said. "But something came with us."
"The Void?" Hiragi asked.
"Not directly. But Eden.exe... infected the city before it collapsed. Now, the dream and the waking world are bleeding into each other."
Below them, a church bell rang. There was no church in this part of town. Hiragi frowned. He felt it too—a pulse. A heartbeat. Not his. Not the city's. Something in between.
"I've been tracking the frequency," Ishigami continued. "Three blocks down in the Yumeshiro district, people are reporting shared dreams. Identical ones."
"Eden dreams?"
Ishigami nodded. "One dream in particular. A little girl with white hair, standing in the middle of the road. She says the same thing to everyone: 'You shouldn't have left us.' Then she disappears."
Hiragi said nothing. His hands clenched unconsciously.
"She's not just a figment," Ishigami added. "Her name is on a list. Yuna Shinohara. Missing since the Eden collapse. She died in the simulation."
"Then what the hell is she doing haunting people in their sleep?"
"That's what we're here to find out."
They arrived at Yumeshiro just before sunset. The district was eerily quiet, its shops closed earlier than usual, shutters drawn tight as if hiding from a storm. The light was wrong—golden, but sickly, like sunlight filtered through spoiled honey.
An old man on a bench watched them approach. His eyes were completely white.
"She's crying," the man whispered as they passed. "She's crying and she won't stop."
Hiragi paused. "Who's crying?"
But the man just smiled, eyes rolling into the back of his skull.
They reached the incident site: a narrow street flanked by vending machines and a half-demolished bookstore. The air was ten degrees colder here.
Then they saw her.
A little girl. White dress. White hair. Barefoot.
Yuna.
She was standing still, unmoving, eyes wide open but unblinking. Her mouth twitched. Not into a smile, nor a frown—just wrong. Her arms slowly lifted and pointed at Hiragi.
"You left me there," she said.
"Not real," Ishigami muttered. "A residual data ghost. Probably a manifestation of—"
"You left me," she screamed.
The street lights exploded one by one. Glass rained. Shadows pulsed like veins.
And suddenly Hiragi was back in Eden.
No warning. No loading screen. Just boom—and the sky was made of eyes again.
But something was different this time.
He wasn't alone.
Behind him, a dozen versions of himself hung from strings like broken marionettes. One had no mouth. One had too many eyes. One was still smiling.
"This city dreams," a voice whispered in his skull.
"And when it dreams, it remembers."
A face formed in the sky. Not Yuna's. Not Eden's.
His.
Twisted. Magnified. Godlike.
"You came back to save it," the face said. "But this place doesn't want to be saved."
When Hiragi blinked again, he was back in the real street. Ishigami was kneeling beside him, snapping his fingers.
"You were gone for five minutes," Ishigami said coldly. "Just standing there. Eyes wide. You didn't blink once."
Hiragi exhaled sharply. His pulse was racing. His fingers were bleeding from his own clenched nails.
"Five minutes..." he said. "It felt like hours."
"Welcome to the city that dreams in blood," Ishigami muttered. "Whatever Eden.exe left behind—it's growing."
Hiragi stood, steadied himself, and looked back down the street.
This wasn't just aftermath. It was only the beginning.
[End of Chapter 71]
Next: Chapter 72 - The Child Who Remembers Every Death