Silence.
For the first time since the beginning of everything, there was no humming machinery, no flickering lights, no synthetic air hissing from vents. Just… silence. Not absence. Not emptiness. Something deeper.
Kaito floated in it.
He couldn't see.
He couldn't move.
But he felt—an awareness pulsing through the void. Like he existed as data itself, not as flesh or thought, but something in between. There was no ground, no ceiling, no direction. Just darkness and the distant echo of a voice he hadn't heard in a long time.
A real voice.
His mother's.
"Wake up, Kaito."
He flinched.
Another voice followed—familiar, calming.
His father.
"We're here. You're okay."
Something fractured.
A memory snapped into place—not a system memory, not a fabricated dream, but real.
The day of the accident.
The rain.
The headlights.
The screech of tires.
Then nothing.
Until now.
Kaito opened his eyes.
It was blinding.
He gasped and sat up violently—lungs burning, chest rising and falling like he hadn't breathed in days. A monitor beeped beside him. A nurse's voice called out from the hallway. Footsteps rushed toward him.
The world swam into focus.
A hospital room.
Clean, white, painfully bright.
His mother clutched his hand. His father stood over him, tears in his eyes. He didn't understand. None of it made sense. He tried to speak, but no words came.
Not yet.
He looked at the television in the corner. It played softly.
A school campus. A news anchor.
"—coma patients showing signs of recovery after experimental neural mapping research—"
The words didn't matter.
Because what flashed across the screen next shattered everything.
Nagakawa High School.
It was real.
But it wasn't.
Not his Nagakawa. Not the system. Just a place. A location.
"Wha…" His throat was dry, broken. "How long…?"
His mother leaned in gently, voice trembling. "Five months, baby. You were in the car with us. Do you remember?"
He blinked. "I was… a student… there. But it wasn't real. It felt real."
His father placed a hand on his shoulder. "It was a simulation. They used memory feedback systems to keep your mind active. You coded parts of it yourself, Kaito. You always loved building little digital worlds. Your brain filled in the gaps. You survived."
Kaito stared blankly at the ceiling.
The classroom.
Misaki.
The system.
Echo-Nine.
Was it all just a coma dream? An elaborate fantasy stitched from trauma and memory?
He felt a tear fall down his cheek. But he didn't know why.
"Someone kept talking to me," he said finally. "Helping me."
His mother nodded slowly. "They told us you sometimes responded. Even smiled. Maybe that was them."
He looked at the monitor beside him. The heart rate display pulsed gently.
For just a moment… it flickered.
And in the corner of the screen, four words appeared—impossibly, silently, only for him.
[System: NOT FOUND]
He smiled faintly.
Not everything had been fake.
Somewhere, in some way, part of him had truly fought for his life. For identity. For freedom.
And maybe, just maybe, the system he created to trap himself…
…was the same system that taught him how to escape.