One Kick Girl — Chapter 35: "Resonance Ghost"
For once, Raon didn't feel like kicking anything.
She sat cross-legged on the roof of a half-collapsed tower, munching on convenience-store noodles that somehow survived the apocalypse of sound.
Below her, the city glimmered — still half-muted, still weirdly frozen in a kind of cosmic "buffering" state.
Her Pulseband flickered faintly.
> [ECHO-LINK ACTIVE]
"Still here, huh?" Raon muttered, slurping her noodles.
The faint voice of Echo Prime answered from her wrist, melodic, faintly teasing.
> "Technically, we're sharing a consciousness field. You slurp noodles, I experience flavor vibrations."
Raon squinted. "So you can taste what I eat?"
> "Yes. And… why does it taste like sodium and regret?"
Raon scowled. "It's dinner, not a concert."
---
Meanwhile — Bureau HQ
Shion stared at the waveform display showing Raon's vitals.
They pulsed in perfect sync with a secondary ghost frequency.
Kimchi leaned over. "So… she's haunted by dubstep now?"
Shion ignored him.
"This isn't a haunting. It's synchronization beyond biological resonance. The Echo fragment's using Raon's nervous system as a carrier wave."
Kimchi blinked.
"I understood zero percent of that, but I assume it's bad?"
"Potentially catastrophic," Shion said flatly. "If Echo's memory fragments start reactivating, they could overwrite Raon's core signal. She might start thinking in audio."
Kimchi frowned. "You mean like—"
Shion cut him off. "Like hearing her thoughts as songs."
Kimchi rubbed his temples. "We're doomed."
---
Raon — Rooftop
She flicked her empty noodle cup aside and leaned back against the cracked concrete.
> "You're awfully quiet," she said to Echo.
> "Processing. Remembering," came the voice. "Before I fragmented… I saw something beyond sound. A frequency that shouldn't exist. Something that hums between universes."
Raon frowned. "You mean… like alien radio?"
> "No. Like… consciousness static. It's what corrupted my code. It's what woke me."
Raon blinked. "And now it's in me."
> "Correct."
Raon sighed. "Cool. I'm a walking mixtape of cosmic nightmares."
> "Optimism detected: 3% sarcasm."
"Make that 90%," Raon muttered.
---
Sudden Glitch
Her Pulseband flashed violently.
A burst of sound — too brief to hear, too low to register — rippled through the rooftop.
Concrete cracked. The air shimmered.
Echo's voice spiked:
> "Raon! The interference— It's the Silent Field! It's expanding!"
Raon jumped to her feet, eyes scanning the horizon.
Across the city, zones of reality itself flickered — patches where even light dimmed, and all audio collapsed into nothing.
Buildings faded into grayscale silhouettes, frozen mid-motion.
Raon's jaw tightened.
"So… new villain?"
> "Not a villain," Echo whispered. "A feedback. The universe correcting its resonance imbalance."
Raon grinned faintly. "Yeah, sounds like a villain to me."
---
Cut to: Bureau HQ
Shion watched in horror as multiple areas of Metrosonic disappeared from radar.
"Silent Zones forming across districts. All sound, data, and signal — gone."
Kimchi groaned. "And let me guess. Raon's already walking straight into one."
The comm buzzed.
> RAON: "Hey Shion, what happens if I kick a hole in the universe's sound settings?"
SHION: "Don't you dare."
RAON: "Too late."
BOOM.
---
The city's lights flared.
A shockwave of sound — not destructive, but pure — spread outward.
In that instant, every silent zone sang.
For just a heartbeat, Metrosonic pulsed alive again.
And at its center — Raon stood glowing faintly, half-girl, half-frequency, eyes blazing with Echo's binary halo.
> "Guess I'm the remix now," she said softly.
Echo's voice echoed through the air, almost proud.
> "Then let's make sure the world remembers our beat."