The Night Division's monitoring room was rarely this quiet.
Screens were arranged in rows, displaying blue-white data streams that scrolled steadily, like a steady breath. Sounds were usually abundant here: keyboard clicks, hushed conversations and the faint hum of equipment. Someone was always speaking.
But not now.
Several members stood before the screens, none of them making the first move.
The anomaly had emerged after three in the morning.
It wasn't an alarm-triggering spike, nor the usual spiritual pressure disturbance. Instead, it was a more subtle phenomenon: the values remained within normal thresholds, yet there were persistent 'deviations'.
It felt as though a signal that shouldn't exist had been forcibly inserted into the system.
"Double-check the source."
Someone finally spoke, their voice hushed.
The operator at the console reloaded the data, extending the timeline and splitting it to overlay comparisons. Seconds later, the display froze.
The system identified the centre of the spiritual pressure fluctuation as:
—No corresponding individual.
No name.
No ID number.
No file.
Every field that could be used to identify someone was blank.
A palpable silence hung in the air.
'This is unreasonable.'
Someone frowned. 'Spiritual pressure cannot manifest independently of its host.'
But the data remained, cold and stubborn.
What followed was even more implausible.
Someone cross-referenced the timeframe of the spirit pressure fluctuation with recent anomalous events. As the progress bar reached the end, a new marker line appeared on the screen.
Perfect overlap.
'The timing matches.'
The operator's voice faltered.
Beginning at 3:14 am,
ending at 3:26 am.
The timing matched Mio's dream exactly.
There was no immediate response from anyone in the monitoring room.
This went beyond mere coincidence.
'If it's neither a spirit intrusion nor a registered individual...'
Someone spoke slowly. "Then only one possibility remains."
No one urged him on.
He paused for several seconds, as if considering whether his words were worth uttering.
Then, his voice dropped so low that it nearly vanished beneath the hum of the machinery:
'Could it be... someone is being rejected by the world?'
The moment those words left his lips, the atmosphere in the monitoring room shifted abruptly.
Not panic, but a shattered silence.
What if existence itself could be denied by the system?
If recording, matching and acknowledging were integral to the world's operation,
—then what was labelled 'no matching individual'
—was not vanishing,
but being stripped away.
The data on the screen continued to fluctuate slowly. The values were tiny, yet stubbornly persistent.
They seemed to be proving something.
The world had detected the anomaly.
It just hadn't decided how to handle it yet.
Mio was awakened from her dream.
It wasn't a sudden jolt, but rather a gradual stirring of consciousness, as if someone in the darkness was checking to see if she could hear them.
"Mio."
The voice was faint.
It was almost swallowed by the surrounding emptiness.
She stood in a hazy space, with no solid ground beneath her feet. The surroundings resembled unformed outlines. This place wasn't a classroom or any other specific location; it felt more like a forgotten liminal space.
She knew who was calling her.
Mio lifted her head.
Li was standing not far away.
This time, she wasn't sitting, but standing and leaning forward slightly, as if straining to cross some invisible boundary. Her expression was no longer serene, but showed a hint of urgent focus between her brows.
"Mio."
She spoke again.
This time, Mio 'heard' it clearly —
Not through her ears, but as a sound acting directly upon her consciousness.
Mio responded almost instantly.
She opened her mouth,
Yet no sound emerged.
The air was eerily silent.
Mio froze, then tried again. She could feel her throat straining and herself speaking, but no sound came out.
But the sound seemed to be blocked, unable to escape.
Li's expression changed in that instant.
It wasn't disappointment,
but panic.
Though fleeting, it was painfully real.
Li took a step forward, but then seemed to be pulled back by an invisible force and stopped in her tracks. She fixed her gaze intently on Mio, her lips moving rapidly.
Mio couldn't make out what she was saying or hear it.
Nor could she hear it.
Although the distance between them remained unchanged, it felt as if they had been forcibly pulled apart.
Mio began to panic.
She shook her head and raised her hand, trying to make any gesture that might be understood. She wanted to tell Li that she was there and that she could hear; she wanted to make her stop wearing that expression.
But all her efforts seemed to be cut off unilaterally.
Li's movements slowed.
She looked at Mio as if to confirm something.
Then, she gently lowered her hand.
In that instant, Mio suddenly realised something:
This disconnection wasn't hers alone.
The dream began to crumble.
The space seemed to lose its supporting structure, its edges collapsing rapidly. Li's figure was pulled away, as if being dragged in another direction.
Before vanishing completely, Li's lips moved.
Mio couldn't tell if it formed a complete sentence.
She only caught the shape of the words:
'I'm sorry.'
Mio snapped her eyes open. Dawn had not yet broken.
The sky hadn't brightened yet.
The room was dim. Her throat felt tight and her chest was rising and falling rapidly as if she had truly shouted something.
She sat up, instinctively reaching for the notebook beside the bed.
The paper felt real and cold.
Mio opened it.
Below last night's page, a new line of writing appeared.
The handwriting was steady.
There were no unnecessary strokes and no trace of emotion.
'She can't hear me.'
Mio stared at those words for a long time.
This time, she didn't close the notebook immediately.
Because she understood.
It wasn't that the world had erased Li unilaterally;
It was that the connection between them was being severed bit by bit.
She didn't even know who to blame.