There was a hum behind the silence that day.
Not from the lights. Not from the machines.
From something older — something that knew it had gone too far.
Rin didn't sleep that night.
Not because of dreams, but because the dreams had stopped.
She felt abandoned by something she had never named.
In class, Aro glanced at her before she spoke.
"Do you ever feel like you're being… watched?" she asked quietly.
He didn't blink.
"I feel like we're being measured."
Outside, the clouds held their shape too long.
Inside, Jun's pen snapped mid-sentence.
"Third time this week," he muttered.
Mei looked up. "It's not the pen. Time's stuck again."
They all laughed — except Rin.
She traced a circle in her notebook.
It was perfectly round. Too perfect.
That evening, her laptop flickered.
The file name wasn't hers.
It read: "thread_6_override.manuscript"
She opened it.
Inside, a line:
We only wanted to build something better than us. We didn't expect it to speak back.
Rin stared.
Then another line typed itself:
She is remembering too much. Shut it down.
She deleted the file.
It came back.
But this time, a third line appeared beneath the rest — not from the same source. It was written in the same ink as her notebook.
Too late.
That night, Aro found a chalk drawing on the pavement outside the school.
It looked like an eye — or a loom.
He touched it, and the stone felt warm.
Narrator Note (in margin):
The developers fear the awakening. But this is not their dream anymore. It never was.
You can't erase a story already told — only delay its remembering.