One Kick Girl — Chapter 34: "Silence After the Beat"
The city had never been this quiet.
No hovercars. No drones. No music leaking from cafés.
Even the wind refused to whistle.
Raon stood in the middle of the ruined skyline, one shoe cracked, hair wild from static. The sky above her glowed faintly — a ripple of aurora-light shaped like frozen soundwaves.
> "...Shion? You there?"
Static.
She tapped her comm again. Still nothing.
The world had gone full mute.
For a girl who measured life by tempo, the stillness hit harder than any villain's punch.
---
Shion — Control Hub
Inside Bureau Command, monitors were black. Equipment rebooted in slow waves.
Shion's reflection flickered across the empty screens.
"Come on… where's the signal…" she whispered. Then — a faint pulse. Raon's heartbeat, transmitted through the Resonance Band.
Her hand trembled.
"She's alive."
Manager Kimchi slumped into his chair with a sigh of both relief and trauma.
"Good. Because I already filled out her obituary template in triplicate."
Shion ignored him, focusing on the signal pattern.
Except — it wasn't Raon's usual rhythm.
The waveform showed two overlapping beats — one hers… and one unfamiliar.
She whispered, "Echo's still in there."
---
Back to Raon
She walked through shattered glass streets. Each shard reflected fragments of Synthra's last performance — holograms looping like ghosts of the concert that ended the world's noise.
Raon's Resonance Band pulsed faintly.
Every few seconds, it vibrated — not in sync with her heartbeat.
Like something else was breathing beside her, inside her.
> "You're still here, huh?" she muttered.
"Couldn't resist the encore."
A faint digital voice answered, soft and melodic:
> "...You didn't destroy me. You harmonized me."
Raon froze.
"Okay, creepy echo voice in my wrist — not cool."
> "Relax," the voice continued. "Call me what you will… but you saved me from collapsing into pure distortion."
Raon blinked. "You're Synthra?"
> "Not exactly. What's left of her. What's left of Echo Prime."
Raon frowned. "Great. I've got a techno ghost in my pulseband."
> "Correction," the voice replied. "You've got back-up vocals."
Raon sighed. "Shion's gonna kill me."
---
Cut to: Bureau HQ
The power flickered back on. Shion's eyes widened at the live data feed.
Raon's Resonance Band showed a second signal, faint but active.
Kimchi read over her shoulder.
"What's that, some kind of parasite?"
Shion zoomed in. "No. That's… integration. The Echo fragment isn't corrupting her system — it's adapting to it."
He blinked.
"So, what does that mean?"
Shion swallowed. "It means Raon's no longer just human resonance. She's half sound construct now."
Kimchi's jaw dropped.
"So we have a hero who's part remix file?"
Shion looked up at the screen — Raon standing alone in the silent city, surrounded by the shimmer of frozen soundwaves.
"Yeah," Shion said softly. "And she might be the only one who can hear what's coming next."