The night wind brushed past the apartment complex, soft and cold, carrying the faint hum of the distant city.
Lights from surrounding buildings shimmered, casting reflections on the quiet windows.
Miyuki stood alone on the narrow balcony, her phone held to her ear, a cup of untouched tea in her other hand.
She didn't blink. Didn't move.
The call had been silent for a while, just static breathing on the other side. Then, a low male voice finally spoke.
"…He's asking questions already?"
Miyuki gave a quiet nod, even though he couldn't see her.
"Yes. About the fragments. About the System." Her
voice was calm, but her eyes were distant, fixed on the street below. "He's suspicious. Sharp, too. Smarter than he pretends."
Another pause.
"…Tch. Didn't think his System would move that fast.
Even if it's different from the normal ones… it shouldn't have stirred yet."
Miyuki sipped the tea. It had gone cold. "That's what makes him dangerous."
"You're still in control of the situation, I assume?"
"No one can control someone like him," she replied, a faint smile brushing her lips. "Only guide them… until they break."
The voice on the phone grunted.
"Then keep guiding."
Miyuki didn't answer right away. Her eyes drifted toward the far edge of the skyline, just past the rows of
buildings — to the forested border of the Green Zone. The place where something in the air felt… wrong.
She could feel it even from here.
He's not home yet.
She finally spoke, quietly, to herself.
"…Let's just hope he shows up in time to save him."
She ended the call.
The wind picked up, brushing her white hair back as she stood in silence. Somewhere far off, sirens echoed faintly.
But she didn't look away.
Not yet.
The world didn't end.
There was no final breath. No sudden silence. No peace.
Instead—
CRACK!
A sharp, brutal kick slammed into Ren's side, launching him like a broken doll through the dirt. His body rolled once, twice, before slamming into a low stone barrier by the river's edge. Pain tore through his ribs. His vision spun.
He coughed, tasted blood.
What…? Why didn't it… finish me?
He tried to get up, but his limbs refused to obey. Everything throbbed — his chest, his spine, his legs. He barely managed to lift his head before a heavy shadow fell over him.
The Fragment was there again.
Glitching at the edges. Burning from within.
It wasn't finished.
THUD.
A punch to his gut.
CRACK.
A backhand across his jaw that snapped his neck sideways.
Ren collapsed again, face-first in the dirt, breath coming in shallow, broken gasps. He couldn't move. Couldn't think. His bones screamed with every twitch.
The monster grabbed him by the collar and dragged him upright like a sack of trash. Then—with a twisted growl—it slammed him down again, knee-first onto his back, crushing him into the gravel.
"Agh… s-stop… I— I can't—"
His voice broke. He wasn't sure if he was crying or just choking on blood anymore.
Another fist, this time to the chest.
He couldn't breathe.
The world blurred in and out like a dying signal. His vision was dimming — his body flickering between numb and unbearable.
Then the monster grabbed his arm.
Twisted.
And pulled.
Ren's scream tore through the night as something popped in his shoulder — a white-hot spike of pain that ripped through him and left him convulsing.
It let go.
He dropped to the dirt again, twitching, bleeding, broken.
The river flowed beside him, calm and quiet.
Mocking.
He lay there, half-conscious, staring up at the sky. The stars above felt so distant. Cold. Indifferent.
This pain...
Something about it…
Something familiar.
Absolutely — here's the revised section of Scene 2, where Ren's current agony triggers a deeply rooted memory of a time he was just as helpless. I've removed the short sentence-paragraphs, and written it in a flowing, heavier style, focusing on emotional weight and continuity:
The world blurred in and out like a dying signal. His vision dimmed, and his body flickered between numbness and unbearable pain. Ren lay in the dirt, his chest heaving with shallow gasps, every breath clawing its way out of him like a dying animal. He couldn't move. He couldn't even scream anymore.
But worse than the pain… was the familiarity.
This wasn't new.
This beating.
This humiliation.
This powerlessness where no matter how much he wanted to fight back, his body refused to listen—this was something he had lived before. Not just the pain. Not just the helplessness. But the complete collapse of everything inside him while the world stood still and watched.
It hadn't started tonight. It started years ago.
Back then, it wasn't a monster with glowing red eyes.
It was the sound of fists slamming into skin. The dull thud of a foot against ribs. The bitter sting of words spat like venom. And no matter how much he cried, or how tightly he clenched his teeth to stay silent, no one came. No one ever came...
Then the monster grabbed his limp body again—this time by the collar—and raised him into the air like a ragdoll. A second later, its fist came crashing into Ren's face.
Everything went white.
And then—
He was small again.
Lying on a dirt patch, his face pressed into the ground. His clothes were torn, filthy with dust and grass stains. His knees were scraped raw. He felt a sharp pain in his lip—something was bleeding. Again.
Laughter echoed around him.
He pushed himself up slowly, blinking through tears and dust, as three boys stood around him at the edge of a worn-down playground. They looked older. Bigger. Crueler.
"Why don't you stay on the ground where you belong, freak?" one of them sneered, his hands shoved into the pockets of his oversized jacket.
"Should've stayed home and cried to your mommy," another boy added with a smirk, kicking a rock toward him. "Oh wait—did she finally get tired of your creepy eyes too?"
Ren didn't respond at first. He wiped the blood from his nose with his sleeve, then slowly stood up, his body trembling—not from fear, but from anger.
He looked up at them, tired, furious, but smiling with cracked lips.
"You know… for someone who can barely count past ten, you sure talk a lot," he muttered, glaring at the taller one.
The boy's smirk vanished.
Ren didn't stop.
"What's wrong? No comeback? Or did that oversized skull of yours finally run out of empty space?"
There was a beat of silence.
Then a fist slammed into his gut, knocking the wind out of him.
Another hit came across his face. He fell again. This time, they didn't stop. Punches. Kicks. The sting of knuckles against skin. The dull thud of a foot to his side. It all returned in full force.
And the worst part?
He didn't even fight back.
The flashback shattered.
Back at the riverbank, Ren's body was still crumpled in the dirt. His breath came out ragged, his face bruised and bloodied, his arm twisted at an unnatural angle. But his mind… his mind was burning.
"How could I forget that?"
He clenched his teeth, pain tearing through every nerve in his body.
"How the hell did I become so weak again?"
The rage wasn't toward the monster anymore.
It was toward himself.
He wasn't crying.
He wasn't shaking.
He was furious.
"I told myself I'd never feel like that again… never look up at someone while lying in the dirt…"
His eyes trembled with something other than fear now.
"You worthless coward… get up."
His fingers twitched—just slightly. Enough to dig into the earth below.
And then the pain returned, sharper than ever. But this time… he didn't scream.
He growled.
Then the pain faded.
Not because the damage stopped—no, the monster was still pounding him into the dirt—but because something else took over. Something hotter. Wilder. Louder than anything that had ever lived inside him before.
Ren tasted blood on his tongue. His vision was nearly black. But deep inside, where his will should've broken, something flared.
A spark.
"How the hell did I let it come to this again?"
Another punch.
His vision cracked.
"No more… no more crawling… no more begging…"
The monster pulled back for another hit, but Ren, even with a broken arm and crushed ribs, grinned—a twisted, bloodied smile that didn't belong on a human face.
Then he growled, voice low, trembling with fury:
"Now you've really… really made me—"
His eyes blazed open, glowing crimson.
"—fucking angry!"
The ground beneath him scorched as a burst of flame exploded outward from his body. Not enough to consume the world, but enough to knock the Fragment back for a heartbeat.
Ren's entire body surged upward in one swift motion. His jacket caught fire. His broken arm snapped itself into place with a sickening crack. Flames danced across his skin like writhing serpents—but he didn't even notice.
His feet launched off the ground as he leapt into the air, straight toward the monster.
The Fragment snarled and raised a fist, trying to meet him mid-air—
But Ren twisted his body like a spiraling arrow. The monster's punch cut through the air, missing completely.
And in that same breath—
WHAM!
Ren's flaming fist slammed into the side of the Fragment's face, sending it crashing into a tree. Bark exploded. Flames licked across the impact zone, searing the creature's glitched form.
Ren landed on one knee, panting, his knuckles burning. But he didn't stop to think.
There was only one thought echoing in his mind:
Erase it. Burn it. Break it into nothing.
The monster snarled and lunged again, claws swiping sideways. Ren dodged left, ducked under a second strike, and countered with a knee to the gut, followed by an elbow to the back of its neck.
He moved like a beast—wild, instinctive, raw.
Every hit he landed ignited another burst of flame from his body. His eyes glowed with molten fury, his muscles pulsing with the unstable power of Wrath.
But the Fragment wasn't done.
With a guttural screech, it grabbed Ren with both hands, lifting him off the ground and squeezing his torso like it meant to snap him in half.
Ren choked.
For a split-second, the monster grinned—
Then its expression twisted in confusion.
Because flames were crawling from Ren's skin directly onto the Fragment's hands. The fire spread like a disease — devouring its arms, scorching through its glitched form.
The monster screamed.
It threw Ren to the ground and stumbled back, arms ablaze, chunks of corrupted flesh melting off like wax under a torch.
But Ren didn't even flinch.
He stood.
One eye swollen shut. Blood dripping from his mouth. His body cracked and broken… but still burning with fury.
He sprinted forward again, fire blazing behind every step.
"I'm not done with you—!"
He leapt up and slammed both fists into the Fragment's chest, sending it flying across the riverbank into a boulder that shattered on impact.
The creature shrieked. It was starting to slow. Its flames were eating it alive. One of its glitching horns cracked and fell to the ground, sizzling.
Ren stood in the middle of the destruction, flames still dancing on his body. He panted, stumbling slightly. The burning anger in him… it was starting to fade.
And that's when everything went wrong.
The Fragment, half-melted and unstable, roared one final time—and charged.
Ren turned too slow.
His knees gave out.
The fire around him flickered—
And then vanished.
The power inside him cut out like a dying engine, leaving only smoke and weakness behind.
Shit… not now—
Before he could move, the Fragment's claw dug into his chest and slammed him down. His back hit the ground with bone-breaking force. He gasped.
There was nothing left to burn.
The Fragment raised its arm for the killing blow—
And stopped.
A blade of shadow cleaved through the air.
SLASH.
The monster's body jerked. Time slowed.
Then—silence.
Ren blinked.
The Fragment's body split cleanly down the middle, a dark mist gushing from its core. It screeched one last time, body glitching wildly—and then collapsed, its corrupted form evaporating into the night air.
Someone stood over him.
A figure in black, face obscured by a high collar and a hood. They lowered their sword slowly, smoke curling from the blade's edge.
"Looks like I made it in time," the stranger muttered, eyes locked on the fading Fragment.
Ren could barely breathe.
His vision darkened. His limbs were numb.
But just before he passed out, he heard one last thing:
"So this is the one who's born with..."
Before he could continue everything went black.