The first thing I saw after dying was... a sky stitched together from a thousand different beginnings.
Not heaven. Not darkness. Just fragments of stories I had watched, read, and dreamed about in my old life.
Cherry blossoms frozen mid-fall. A girl laughing on the steps of a school that never existed. A hand reaching for another, but never quite touching. A confession line that never finished.
It was like someone paused a hundred different slice-of-life anime and visual novels at once—and left them there to rot.
Then, a voice. Cold. Mechanical. Distant.
"Crossover stabilization required. Narrative overload detected. Assigning external variable."
A glowing screen unfolded in the sky, floating above the fractured scenes.
Name: ———Role: UndefinedNarrative Value: 0
I stared at that number. Zero. Not hero. Not villain. Not even a side character. Just… zero.
"Function: Background Stabilizer. Interference must remain unrecorded. Termination acceptable."
I swallowed. Termination… acceptable.
I almost laughed. Even before being born again, I was disposable.
Then the fragments began to shift. Five worlds collided at once. Five heroines. Five protagonists. Five stories that were never meant to overlap. The air twisted around me as if reality itself had hiccuped.
Romantic tension stacked like unstable code.Comedy cackled nervously in the background.Friendship threads tugged, frayed, and threatened to snap.
And the sky cracked.
Something crawled through the fissures. A distortion, formed entirely from unresolved feelings and abandoned plotlines. It moved like liquid shadow, stretching impossibly long arms toward the ground.
The system had chosen me.
It pushed me down.
---------------------
I woke up in a classroom.
Second-year transfer student. Seat near the back. No introduction scene. No curious stares. The teacher didn't even mispronounce my name. Because no one cared enough to notice.
I looked around.
There they were. The heroines I had once watched from the comfort of my room.
Aoyama Hikari—laughing too loudly at something her childhood friend said, golden hair catching the light.
Kanzaki Reina—posture perfect, eyes distant behind her glasses, radiating calm authority.
Tachibana Mio—smiling like sunlight, the kind that makes the rest of the world feel like background.
Shinohara Rika—head down, tapping her phone, silent strategist, hiding behind her bangs.
Saegusa Arisa—elegant, untouchable, the kind of beauty that makes you afraid to breathe near her.
For a moment, I forgot the system.
I just felt… warmth.
I had cheered for their confessions, cringed at their misunderstandings, cried at their almost-breakups. They were never real.
Until now.
And now… they were fragile.
Because beneath the polished floors of Hoshizora Academy, something moved.
Black threads wrapped around their ankles. Thin. Subtle. Like destiny preparing a bad ending.
I exhaled slowly.
"They… can't see it. None of them can."
I muttered to myself. The original protagonists, laughing, oblivious to the cracks forming around them, would never notice. Luck still favored them. Coincidences still fell perfectly. But I could see it.
And I knew what would happen if I did nothing.
I turned my gaze to my desk.
Nothing. Just my hands. Normal. Unremarkable. No aura of heroism. No flash of chosen light.
I whispered:
"I guess… I'm the one who has to fix this."
The bell rang. Petals drifted past the window.
Hikari ran past my desk, her sleeve brushing the back of my hand. She didn't notice. Of course she didn't. But I felt it—warm, real, and painfully temporary.
A soft sigh escaped me, half-melancholy, half-resignation. I had watched her countless times in another life, cheering for her from the sidelines. And now… I was still nothing.
Then a voice echoed inside my head, soft and almost mocking:
"Background character. Begin stabilization."
I rose from my chair. No dramatic pose. No heroic declaration. No fanfare. Just a boy walking out of the frame, toward the invisible threads that no one else could see.
The hallway was empty now, but I could feel the air thicken. A chill ran along my spine—not from the spring wind, but from something waiting in the shadows.
I gripped my fingers until they ached.
"If I was given no story… I'll protect theirs."
I rounded the corner. And then I saw her.
Mio. She had stopped mid-step, her hand frozen over her phone, eyes wide.
"Eh… what…?"
The shadow emerged behind her—stretching too far, limbs bending the wrong way, an unfinished face formed from discarded emotions and abandoned storylines.
Most people couldn't see it. But it could see me. Because I didn't belong in this story.
It lunged.
Time didn't slow. I did.
Silver fractures ignited along my hand, snaking up my arm. Black light coalesced into a blade, fractured and incomplete—Aethernox.
I didn't shout. Didn't pose. Just stepped between her and the shadow. One clean movement.
Its claw passed through where her throat had been. Warmth spread along my arm—pain followed. Perfectly acceptable.
I whispered into the hallway itself:
"Return."
The distortion split down the middle, failing to exist. No explosion. No sound. Just… absence.
Mio blinked. Her hand dropped, her phone forgotten.
"…Huh?"
She ran off, laughing at herself, brushing off the moment as if nothing had happened. Unaware.
The blood on my hand shimmered for a brief second… then vanished. My reflection in the window was only a faint silhouette, like a background extra not worth animating carefully.
I leaned against the wall, shoulders slumping, and closed my eyes.
"Tomorrow, the petals will fall again. And I still won't be in the frame."