Yu’s phone began to glow.

  Not in the way a notification flared and vanished, not in the quick, impatient blink of a screen waking up after a tap. This light seeped out gradually, as if someone were turning a hidden dimmer beneath the glass—slow, deliberate, wrong. The room around it stayed dark, the edges of furniture swallowed by shadow, but the pale rectangle in Yu’s hand kept brightening until it painted his knuckles and the underside of his wrist a sickly white.

  He hadn’t touched it.

  No vibration. No chime. No banner. The lock screen should’ve been there. The time, the wallpaper, the small comforts of normalcy.

  Instead, the EWS interface was already open, as though the device had decided his permission was optional.

  A gray notification strip hung at the top like a cold eyelid.

  [ Frame: Rize – Connected ]

  Yu swallowed and felt his throat click. His heartbeat rose into his ears, not loud, but insistent, a steady pounding that made the silence in his room feel thinner than paper.

  This isn’t a stream notification.

  There was no LIVE marker. No rating badge. No viewer count climbing in the corner. No chat activity spilling in like rain. Just a single line of text and the sterile, flat geometry of the app.

  His thumb hovered over the glass. For a moment he didn’t move—not because he was calm, but because he was afraid that if he touched it, it would vanish. That the system would realize it had made a mistake and snap the door shut before he could look through.

  Then he forced himself to breathe and tapped.

  The image unfolded with the slow certainty of something heavy sliding into place.

  A rooftop—stone tiles weathered smooth, darkened by age and rain. The edges were uneven, patched in places, as if the building beneath had survived by being repaired again and again by hands that didn’t have the luxury of perfection. A low parapet framed the far side, and beyond it, a distant town spread out in muted colors: slanted roofs, narrow streets, smoke threads rising from chimneys like thin sighs.

  Wind moved across the rooftop. Yu could hear it faintly through the phone’s speaker: a soft, constant hush, carrying the faraway murmur of a waking city. It wasn’t loud, but it had texture—the way a living place never truly went silent.

  And standing near the parapet, her back to the camera, was a girl with hair that swayed gently as the wind combed through it. Rize.

  Bandages wrapped her arm thickly, the cloth layered until it looked like a protective cast. More bandages crossed her side beneath her gear, bulkier there, as if someone had needed to compress something that wouldn’t stop bleeding. She stood still, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes angled toward the sky as if she were trying to read something written in cloud.

  Yu’s stomach tightened.

  The comment section beneath the video pane was dead gray. No input box. No scrolling. No replay icon. No “Report” button, no moderation warnings, none of the usual junk the app loved to layer on top of human lives.

  View-only. Yet the frame felt unmistakably alive. The wind moved. The distant town breathed. A tiny bird crossed the sky and vanished behind a roofline.

  “…Rize?” Yu’s lips parted before he realized he’d decided to speak.

  His voice sounded too loud in his room, but on the screen she didn’t react at first. She didn’t turn. She didn’t flinch. She kept staring upward like she hadn’t heard anything at all.

  “What happened to you?” Yu tightened his grip until the phone bit into his palm.

  “Those injuries—what happened?” he asked, the words tumbling out rougher than he intended.

  The camera remained behind her, unmoving, a silent observer that refused to offer him even the mercy of her face. For a moment the only answer was wind and the faint, distant clatter of the other world—somewhere far below, a cart wheel rattled over stone, and someone shouted a greeting that turned into laughter.

  Then Rize turned. Slowly. Deliberately. Not toward the lens—toward empty air just beside it, as if she were looking at a place where a person might stand. Her gaze slid over that nothingness, and for an instant, Yu felt as if the phone had grown heavier.

  She held that glance long enough for him to feel seen, even without a mutual frame. Then she looked back to the sky.

  When she spoke, her voice was worn thin at the edges.

  “…I lived in an orphanage once.” Not trembling. Not dramatic. Just… used up, like a blade that had been sharpened too many times.

  Yu froze. His questions stopped in his throat, caught on surprise.

  “The one behind the collapsing church at the far edge of town,” Rize continued, still facing away.

  Wind brushed her hair aside, and in profile Yu caught a sliver of her cheek, the curve of her jaw.

  “No one called us by names. Numbers were enough.” She didn’t look proud or ashamed.

  “I was… Number Twelve.” She sounded like she was reciting facts that had stopped hurting only because she’d run out of strength to react. The words landed with a dull weight. Yu’s fingers went numb around the phone.

  “I cleaned floors,” Rize’s shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath.

  “Hauled water. Got my fingers stuck in broken planks,” she said.

  Her tone stayed flat, but the images arrived sharp anyway: cold water sloshing out of a bucket onto bare feet, splinters under nails, cracked boards that pinched skin until it bruised purple. Yu’s chest tightened as if his own ribs had shifted inward.

  “And every time someone else died…” Rize’s voice didn’t change, but something hollow opened underneath it. “I stayed alive.”

  “No reason. No meaning.” She let the wind fill the space for a beat, as if even she couldn’t stand to hear herself say it too quickly. “Just luck.”A faint exhale.

  Yu tried to speak and found his mouth dry. His tongue felt thick, useless.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Rize’s gaze remained fixed on the sky. The city below kept murmuring, indifferent. That contrast—the ordinary life continuing while she talked about death like it was weather—made Yu’s stomach turn.

  “Back then…” she said. “In that forest, when I almost died. When I met you.”

  Yu’s heart jumped hard enough to make his breath hitch. The memory of that connection—her eyes snapping to the air, the frame aligning, the impossible moment of recognition—flared hot behind his ribs.

  “I think it was a monster,” Rize went on. “No direction. No restraint. Just destruction,” choosing the words with careful fingers.

  The wind softened, then briefly went still, as if the world itself were listening.

  “There was nowhere to run,” she said. “I thought that was the end.”

  Yu remembered how his own room had felt then—how the air had sharpened, how the screen had bled red warnings. How his voice had cracked as he screamed at her to run.

  “But—three adventurers saved me.” Rize continued, quiet but relentless.

  “One huge man. One restless woman. One girl who was far too kind.” She paused, as if arranging their faces in her mind. A faint, bewildered edge slipped into her voice on that last description, like she still didn’t know what to do with kindness that wasn’t transactional.

  “The big one was Naz,” she said. “He’s a [Maxima] user. He carried me out like I weighed nothing.”

  Yu imagined it: a giant of a man lifting her as if she were a bundle of cloth, boots pounding through ash and smoke while something enormous moved behind them.

  “The loud one is Hanara,” Rize continued, and for a moment there was the slightest shift in her tone—something like reluctant familiarity. “She casts spells by numbering them. She calls it [Lost Memory.]”

  A faint, almost invisible tilt of her head.

  “Just laziness,” she added, as if the judgment helped her breathe. “She nearly burned me alive trying to save me.”

  Yu’s grip tightened again. He could see it too clearly: fire ripping through trees, heat punching the air out of her lungs, the world turning red.

  “And the quiet one is Roa,” Rize said. “A bit scary when our eyes meet.”

  “But she used [Holy Glory],” her shoulders twitched, betraying a tremor she refused to let into her voice. “If not for her hands… I wouldn’t be here.” Rize said, and the words softened as though they’d been warmed by memory.

  Yu swallowed hard. His eyes stung, and he didn’t understand why until he realized his body had been bracing for a different ending.

  “But I know,” Rize’s next words cut the warmth cleanly. “I wasn’t saved,” she said quietly.

  “What…?” Yu’s breath caught. The syllable slipped out before he could stop it.

  “I just…” Rize’s voice dropped, almost swallowed by wind. “didn’t die.”

  The resignation in that sentence was terrifying—not because it was dramatic, but because it sounded honest. Like someone describing the outcome of a coin toss.

  “Could’ve gone either way,” she whispered. “Would’ve been fine.”

  “What are you saying?” Yu’s throat tightened until it hurt. “Don’t—don’t say things like that,” he forced out.

  “Even now,” Rize didn’t turn. She stayed facing the sky, as if she needed distance from him to say what came next. “sometimes… I feel like someone’s listening.” she said.

  Yu’s chest clenched.

  “Probably just in my head,” Rize added, and there it was again—that practiced dismissal, the habit of lowering expectations before the world could do it for her. “But sometimes the wind feels warm.”

  “That’s not your imagination!” Something in Yu snapped—not rage, not anger. The sheer inability to let her erase herself like that. “It’s not—!” he shouted, the words tearing out of him raw.

  ?

  The screen flickered violently.

  The image tore sideways for a split second, the rooftop smearing into bright static as if the app couldn’t decide what it was allowed to show. UI elements that hadn’t existed a moment ago flared into being, sharp and white.

  [ Mutual Frame: Rize – Establishing ]

  The camera view swung, repositioning itself with a swift, uncanny precision, and suddenly Rize’s face filled the frame.

  Her eyes were closer than they’d ever been in a normal stream. Yu could see the faint shadows beneath them, the dryness at the corners, the thin line of a healed scrape on her cheek that the rooftop wind kept trying to touch. Bandage edges peeked from her collar. She looked like someone who’d been mended but not restored.

  At the same moment, a pale rectangle of light appeared in front of her—hovering in her world like a window cut out of air.

  And inside it—Yu’s face. Not a reflection. Not a ghosted silhouette. Him.

  His room behind him was dark, lit only by the phone’s glow. His eyes were wide and wet, his mouth half-open as if he’d been caught in the act of wanting too much. They stared straight at each other through a sheet of impossible light.

  “Don’t say things like that,” Yu’s voice dropped without him meaning to, trembling now that she could see him tremble. “Don’t talk like life… doesn’t matter,” he whispered.

  Rize didn’t look away. Her expression didn’t shatter. She simply watched him, still as a held breath.

  “I don’t want you to die,” Yu said, each word pushed out like he was dragging it through his own ribs. “I want you to live. Really live.”

  He leaned closer to the screen, as if inches could become miles if he just tried hard enough.

  “And when your time comes,” he continued, voice cracking, “you should leave smiling. Because you chose it. Not because you gave up.”

  Rize’s gaze stayed locked on him. For a heartbeat, something softened—just a little—at the edges of her eyes. A small shadow of a smile touched her mouth and then hesitated, like it wasn’t sure it belonged there.

  “It’s easy for you to say that,” she murmured. “You’re just watching.” Her voice wasn’t cruel.

  It wasn’t even angry. It was tired in a way that made Yu feel suddenly ashamed of his own passion, as if he’d shouted color into a world that didn’t have the paint for it.

  Yu went still. The sentence struck him like a clean fist to the chest. His lungs stopped moving. For a moment, even his heartbeat seemed to falter, as if his body didn’t know what to do with that much truth.

  Rize’s eyes bored into his, unblinking.

  “…Maybe,” Yu swallowed hard. His throat hurt as if he’d swallowed ash.

  “Maybe I am.” he admitted, and his voice was barely audible. “But—” He tried to lift his head, tried to push past the shame like it was just another obstacle he could step over.

  The frame warped. Static swallowed the edges of Rize’s face. Her outline tore like burnt film, colors peeling away into white noise. The mutual window shuddered, and Yu’s own image flickered on her side like a failing lantern.

  “Wait—Rize, I’m—” He reached forward without thinking, as if he could hold the frame in place with his hand.

  The screen went blank. White letters replaced everything with brutal simplicity.

  [ – Stream Ended – ]

  ?

  Yu’s room was silent.

  The phone’s light dimmed to the cold neutrality of the EWS logo, as if nothing had happened at all, as if a door hadn’t just opened and slammed shut inside his chest.

  Yu stared at the screen without blinking. His body stayed rigid, breath stalled halfway between inhale and exhale. The air in his room felt thick, like it had been stirred with something heavy.

  Just watching. Rize’s words echoed again, precise and merciless. She’s right.

  Back then, when Team Emera’s broadcast had been severed mid-battle—no warning, no explanation, just a gray ethical notice and a channel that “did not exist”—he had been powerless. Thousands of viewers had been there, typing jokes and outrage and speculation, but none of them had been able to reach through the screen and pull anyone back.

  Not unseen. Unshown. Hidden away by the system as if lives were merely content that could be deleted for violating a rule.

  And now—now that the frame had opened again, now that Rize had looked at him and called him what he was—

  Yu felt the weight of it settle fully into place.

  Was it wrong to even think he had been helping by watching? Was he just consuming her life as entertainment, clinging to her because she made his own world feel less empty?

  His hands finally moved.

  He placed the phone gently on the desk, careful in a way that made it feel like setting down something fragile and alive. The plastic tapped softly against wood.

  For a moment, the screen stayed on the EWS logo, inert, harmless.

  Then a faint shimmer ran across the glass—barely a flicker, like the afterimage of a window that had been there a moment ago.

  Yu’s breath caught. The shimmer vanished. The screen went still. And the silence that remained wasn’t ordinary at all.