Something was off. Not just in the air, not just in their heads—something in the very fabric of reality felt wrong.
Alepou, Yuki, and Taiyo stood there, frozen in place, like they had just glitched out of a game. The space around them felt... unstable. The colors didn't look right. The sounds were warped, just slightly off-pitch. It wasn't just about losing memories anymore—it was like something was actively rewriting them.
Were they even real anymore?
Alepou narrowed her eyes, her body tense. "Yuki's right," she muttered, voice low. "This ain't just some random memory loss. Someone—something—has been pulling the strings from the start."
Yuki turned to her, heart pounding. "Wait—what do you mean? Is it this world doing it? Or is it us? Are we the ones changing?"
Alepou exhaled sharply, shaking her head. "I don't know. But I feel it. There's something we're supposed to remember—something big. But every time I get close, it's like my brain just... stops. Like there's a wall blocking me." She clenched her fists. "What if every time we almost figure it out, they erase it?"
Taiyo stiffened. "You're saying we've been messed with this whole time? That nothing we know is even real?"
Yuki's breath caught in her throat. "I don't know," she whispered, staring at her own hands, like she half-expected them to vanish. "What if we're just... data in some system? NPCs in a world that isn't ours?"
Alepou's eyes locked onto hers, sharp with realization. "Yuki. Think back. The moment we first woke up here—does it make sense? Do you remember what happened before that?"
Yuki's mind raced. The day they arrived, the first battle, the first quest... but what came before?
Her blood turned cold.
Nothing.
No school, no home, no last moments before being thrown into this world. Just static.
Yuki's voice cracked. "Alepou... I don't remember. Nothing. Like it was never even there."
Alepou nodded slowly. "Exactly. What if we're just... pieces in someone's game?"
Taiyo took a shaky step back. "No way. That's insane."
"Is it?" Yuki's voice was barely a whisper now. "Then tell me—if this is real, if we're real, then why don't we remember who we were before?"
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Then, like a switch flipping, Yuki's head exploded with pain.
She gasped, staggering back, gripping her skull. The world around her blurred, colors bleeding into each other, shapes twisting. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and for a second, she wasn't sure if she even had a body anymore.
Flashes. Broken memories.
A city that didn't exist.
A family with no faces.
A younger version of Taiyo, but distorted—like his very existence was being rewritten, over and over again.
"STOP—!" Yuki gasped, but the words stuck in her throat.
Alepou caught her before she collapsed, shaking her. "Yuki! Stay with me! Whatever's happening, fight it!"
Yuki forced herself to breathe, eyes wild. "It's them," she whispered, the realization slamming into her like a truck. "The ones behind this. They're watching. Listening. And they don't want us to wake up."
Alepou's grip tightened. "Then we break the cycle."
Taiyo swallowed hard, his expression shifting from fear to something colder. "So... what do we do?"
Yuki took a shaky breath. "We stop playing by their rules. We find the cracks, the glitches. The pieces of this world that don't make sense. And when we find them...*"
Alepou smirked, the fire in her eyes burning brighter than ever. "We break out."
The world around them shuddered, like it knew.
Like it was watching.
Waiting for their next move.