"If a lie wears the face of someone you loved... would you still destroy it?"
Location: Shiroyama Academy – Old Occult Room
Time: 01:27 AM
The room reeked of old incense and bloodied paper.
Kurono Sayaka—Version 2—stood barefoot in the center, surrounded by floating pages.
They weren't normal paper. They breathed. Twitched. Some even blinked.
She didn't attack.
She simply looked at Hiragi with that strange, sorrowful smile.
"You're early," she said. "I didn't finish my final rewrite yet."
Hiragi said nothing. His hand hovered near the Void sigil embedded in his palm. The dark symbol pulsed, reacting to the reality warp inside the room.
Sayaka took a step forward. Her form shimmered—momentarily flickering between multiple versions of herself.
One was crying.
One was laughing.
One was burning.
"Do you want to know what I am?" she asked softly.
"I already do," Hiragi replied coldly. "You're a synthetic draft built from the remains of the dead. You were never meant to exist."
Sayaka paused.
Then smiled wider.
"And yet here I am. Existing. Breathing. Remembering your name."
Flashback: The Real Sayaka
The last time Hiragi saw the real Sayaka, she had been dying in his arms.
Her final words echoed now, as if spoken by the phantom before him.
"Please... if I come back wrong... promise me you'll end me again."
Back then, he thought it was just desperation.
But maybe... she knew.
Maybe this was always part of the script.
Analysis: Reality Instability Detected
Hiragi activated Void Sight. The world twisted.
Sayaka's body was held together by script strings. Each one connected to a paragraph floating above her.
["Kurono Sayaka: A loyal friend. A tragic victim. She shall re-enter the story on Page 211."]
Beneath that, another layer blinked:
["WARNING: This draft is unstable. If it achieves emotional sync with the host, deletion becomes irreversible."]
Emotional sync.
She was bait.
The Draftmaster wanted him to hesitate. To care.
Confrontation
Sayaka stepped closer. Her shadow dragged behind her, as if it didn't want to follow.
"I remember the way you carried me," she whispered. "Your voice when you cried. Your hand... trembling on the dagger."
"You're not her," Hiragi growled.
"And yet... you flinched."
The moment she said that, all the lights died.
The room became ink. Blackness spilled like a flood.
From the shadows behind her, a giant skeletal quill pierced the wall. It hovered over Sayaka's head like a guillotine.
A voice emerged—cold, formless.
"Will you kill her again, Slayer?"
"Will you defy the pen, or let your guilt rewrite her soul?"
The Draftmaster was watching. Testing.
The Decision
Hiragi took a breath.
Every instinct in him said to end her now. Burn the rewritten soul before it infects others.
But something stopped him.
Sayaka knelt down.
She placed something on the floor.
It was her old club pin. Rusted. Real.
The only thing that hadn't been rewritten.
"I found this in your drawer," she said. "Before I was 'born.' I think... the real me wanted you to have it."
She looked up at him.
"Even if I'm fake... can I still choose what I become?"
Silence.
Hiragi's fingers clenched.
Then—
He deactivated the Void sigil.
Not out of mercy.
Out of calculation.
"You'll come with me," he said. "You're not her. But you might know something she didn't."
He turned away.
"But if you glitch again... I'll erase you without blinking."
Sayaka smiled faintly. A tear rolled down her cheek.
"Understood, detective."
Aftermath
That night, Hiragi logged the event into the hidden codex.
[Subject: KURONO.SAYAKA.V2]
[Status: Temporarily contained]
[Risk: High]
[Emotional interference: Unstable]
He left one final note:
"The dead may forget. But I never will."