[Saki Yoshida POV]
Saki lay on her stomach on her bed, her chin resting on her hands as she stared dreamily out the window. The late afternoon sun cast a warm, golden hue across her small bedroom. It had been, without a doubt, the most insane, terrifying, and wonderful day of her entire life.
Beside her, Terriermon was perched on a stack of manga, his long, floppy ears twitching as he chewed on a rice cracker.
"You're doing that face again," Terriermon pointed out, his voice muffled by the cracker.
Saki blinked, her cheeks immediately warming up. "What face?"
"That weird, spaced-out, goofy face," the small Digimon teased, floating up slightly to hover at her eye level. "The one you've been making ever since that blonde guy—Kenji, right?—did that whole dramatic confession routine behind the gym. You totally fell for him, didn't you?"
Saki buried her face in her mattress, letting out a muffled squeak of embarrassment. "I couldn't help it! Did you see him, Terriermon? He was like... like a fairytale royal. He just walked right into my life, completely fearless, and protected me. He even held my hand..."
"He also said it was just a strategy to get the other girls to talk to you," Terriermon reminded her gently, landing on her shoulder. "And, you know, he and that Subaru guy kind of... killed someone. Like, actually ended a human life."
Saki rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her expression didn't shift into horror, fear, or guilt. Instead, a faint, annoyed pout formed on her lips.
"I know," she murmured, hugging her arms to her chest. "It's just such a shame they had to leave so soon. If Hayato hadn't been such an awful, disgusting creep, Kenji wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of dealing with him. We could have walked home together normally. We could have stopped for crepes..."
Terriermon froze, the half-eaten rice cracker slipping from his paws.
He stared at his partner, his large black eyes wide with sudden, quiet alarm. Saki wasn't disturbed by the murder. She wasn't questioning the morality of Kenji taking a life in a dark alley or wondering if the boys she had just met were actually dangerous. She was actively blaming the victim for inconveniencing her crush and cutting their date short.
'Wait a minute,' Terriermon thought, his ears drooping slightly. 'Is she... is she completely glossing over the homicide?'
Saki sighed wistfully, completely oblivious to her Digimon's internal crisis. "He was only here for a few hours. It feels so unfair."
"Saki," Terriermon started carefully, trying to gauge her mental state. "You only met him today. I mean, sure, you guys chatted on that weird app yesterday, but..."
"I know," Saki interrupted, a soft, almost eerie smile spreading across her face. "But sometimes, you just know when someone is your destiny, right? He crossed universes just to save me."
Before Terriermon could formulate a response to that massive red flag, Saki sat up. She reached over to the side of her bed and pulled out a spare throw pillow from under her blanket.
Terriermon's jaw practically hit the floor.
Taped securely to the front of the pillow was a piece of sketch paper. On it was a surprisingly detailed, highly idealized pencil drawing of Kenji Sato. Saki had perfectly captured his sharp, refined features, his golden eyes, and that intense, protective gaze he had given her behind the gymnasium.
Saki hugged the Kenji-pillow tightly to her chest, resting her cheek against the paper with a contented sigh.
"I can't wait until he comes back," she whispered to the drawing, her eyes half-closed in bliss.
Terriermon slowly floated backward, putting a few extra inches of distance between himself and the bed. He watched Saki nuzzle the pillow, a profound realization dawning on him. His sweet, timid, easily frightened partner had just been rescued by an impossibly handsome, dimension-hopping killer, and instead of being traumatized... she had completely short-circuited into something else entirely.
'Oh boy,' Terriermon swallowed hard. 'My partner might actually be a little delusional.'
Terriermon hovered in the air for a long moment, watching Saki gently trace the pencil lines of Kenji's jawline on the pillowcase. He needed to derail this train of thought before it went entirely off a cliff.
"So!" Terriermon chirped, forcing a bright, overly enthusiastic tone. He landed on her desk and kicked a pencil eraser across the wood. "What's the plan for tomorrow? Back to the normal grind? You still have to go to school, right?"
Saki didn't look up from the drawing. She just hugged the pillow a little tighter to her chest.
"I don't know..." she murmured, her voice soft and airy.
Terriermon's right eye gave a visible, violent twitch.
"What do you mean you don't know?" he asked, waving his short arms. "You still have classes! And homework! And... didn't Kenji specifically tell you to use that whole fake confession thing to make actual friends? You know, build a social circle so nobody messes with you again?"
Saki finally blinked, pulling herself out of her daydream just enough to look at her partner.
"Oh. Right," she said, sitting up slightly. "The girls who were hiding behind the gym... they were whispering about it all afternoon. I guess they'll probably swarm my desk tomorrow morning to ask questions."
"Exactly!" Terriermon said, letting out a breath of relief. "That's a good thing! You can talk to them. Be normal. Do normal junior high girl stuff."
"I will," Saki nodded with sudden, renewed determination. She looked back down at the sketch of Kenji. "I have to do exactly what he suggested. If I make friends and become popular, it'll prove I'm a capable partner for him. I want to make him proud when he comes back."
Terriermon slumped forward, his face hitting the desk with a soft thud.
It was hopeless. He had tried to steer her toward normal social integration, and she had somehow instantly weaponized it into a quest to become the perfect waifu for a guy who literally assassinated a teenager a few hours ago.
"You know what?" Terriermon mumbled into the wood of the desk. "Sure. Whatever works. Let's just... get through tomorrow."
———
[Subaru Natsuki POV]
Meanwhile, in a completely different universe, Natsuki Subaru was dealing with his own brand of absolute utter confusion.
He stood in the middle of a sprawling, ridiculously opulent hallway, staring blankly after two maids who had just walked around the corner.
It had been a full day since he woke up in this massive, European-style mansion—belonging to Emilia's backer, Roswaal. Yesterday had been an emotional rollercoaster. Surviving Elsa, waking up here, and then having an absolute, tear-soaked mental breakdown in this very hallway after Kenji had completely seen through his 'Return by Death' secret.
Honestly, despite the lingering trauma, Subaru felt a little lighter today. Knowing he wasn't entirely alone, having Guilmon by his side, and having a multiversal chat group that somehow included an insanely competent, mind-reading friend gave him a weird sense of stability.
But the maids were still thoroughly creeping him out.
Ram and Rem. Twins. One with pink hair, one with blue. They were objectively cute, hitting every single metric on the classic anime maid checklist. But the way they looked at him... it was like they were dissecting him with their eyes.
Just a minute ago, they had stood perfectly side-by-side, entirely synchronized, and effortlessly insulted him with a deadpan delivery that would have made Kenji proud.
"Sister, sister, the guest is staring with vulgar eyes."
"Rem, Rem, the guest's brain is as empty as his gaze."
"I mean, I know I'm a freeloader right now, but that was just unnecessarily mean," Subaru muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his neck. Guilmon was currently outside exploring the massive gardens, leaving Subaru to navigate the indoor minefield alone.
He needed to find Emilia, or at least a bathroom. Wandering around a nobleman's estate looking like a loitering convenience store patron was doing wonders for his imposter syndrome, and he desperately wanted to escape the feeling of the twins' eyes boring into the back of his head.
"Let's just check the next room," he sighed, walking up to a grand, heavy wooden door down the hall. "Maybe it's a guest lounge. Or a dining room."
He grabbed the ornate brass handle and pushed it open, stepping through.
The second his foot crossed the threshold, the air changed. The smell of old paper, dust, and rich ink hit him like a physical wall.
Subaru blinked. He wasn't in a hallway anymore.
He was standing in a massive, dimly lit library. Towering bookshelves stretched up toward a vaulted ceiling, packed with thousands of ancient-looking tomes. The sheer scale of it was dizzying.
"Whoa..." Subaru breathed, taking a step inside. "Did I just walk into Narnia?"
"You walked into Betty's archive, you utterly profound nuisance, I suppose."
Subaru flinched, his head snapping toward the center of the room.
Sitting on a small, velvet-cushioned step stool was a girl. She looked incredibly young—maybe ten or eleven years old—but she carried the aura of someone who had been annoyed by the world for several centuries.
She had striking, butterfly-patterned eyes and elaborate, twin-drill blonde pigtails that defied the laws of physics. She was wearing an extravagant, frilly pink and red gown that looked like it belonged to a Victorian aristocrat.
She turned a page in the massive book resting on her lap, not even bothering to look up at him.
Subaru stared at her, his anime-trope radar immediately pinging at maximum volume.
"Uh," Subaru started, pointing a finger at her. "Are you... the library spirit? Or just a really grumpy kid in cosplay?"
The girl finally lifted her eyes from her book, fixing him with a glare so profoundly irritated that it made the twin maids' insults look like compliments.
"To barge into Betty's sanctuary and immediately spout such foolishness... you truly are a creature of low intelligence, in fact," she said, her voice dripping with haughty disdain. She snapped her book shut. "I am Beatrice. And you have exactly three seconds to leave before I launch you through the ceiling, I suppose."
———
[Kobayashi POV]
Kobayashi stared blankly at the lines of code scrolling across her monitor, the mechanical clacking of her keyboard the only sound keeping her tethered to reality. It was late afternoon at Jigokumeguri System Engineering, the exact time of day when the caffeine wore off and the mind started to wander.
She let out a long, exhausted sigh, leaning back in her ergonomic chair until it creaked.
She glanced around the open-plan office. Takiya was at the desk next to hers, entirely absorbed in his screen, likely auto-farming some new gacha game event while pretending to compile data. Nobody was paying attention to her.
Kobayashi looked down at her desk. Sitting near her mousepad was a bent, entirely useless paperclip.
Her mind drifted to the bizarre, translucent blue interface that had hijacked her life yesterday, and the terrifying ability sitting in her newly acquired 'Status' screen. Crush Magic. Kenji had warned her about it. He had said it was from a series called Fairy Tail, capable of shattering matter and magic alike on contact.
"Just a tiny bit," she muttered to herself. "Just to see."
She reached out, extending her index finger, and gently tapped the bent metal paperclip. She didn't say an incantation; she just willed the system's ability to activate at the absolute lowest output she could manage.
Crack.
There was no explosion, no flash of light. The paperclip simply ceased to exist as a solid object. It instantly fragmented into a tiny pile of metallic dust so fine it looked like gray powdered sugar.
Kobayashi froze, her hand still hovering over the desk.
She slowly pulled her hand back, her eyes wide behind her glasses. "Okay," she whispered, quickly sweeping the dust into her palm and dumping it into the trash can under her desk. "Kenji was absolutely not kidding. Note to self: never, ever use that on anything larger than office supplies."
Needing a distraction from the fact that she was now a walking demolition hazard, she mentally pulled up her system interface. The familiar blue screen overlaid her computer monitor.
She opened her inventory, expecting it to be mostly empty. Instead, a new notification pinged in the corner of her vision.
[Participant Reward Distributed: Mission 'Protect Saki Yoshida']
Kobayashi frowned. "Participant? I didn't even do anything. I was literally asleep."
She clicked the notification. A small, golden icon of a ticket materialized on the screen.
[Item Acquired: Random Member Invitation Ticket]
[Rarity: Ultra Rare]
[Description: Allows the user to send one randomized multiversal invitation to a new entity to join the group chat. Note: This item shares the same drop rarity tier as 'Crush Magic'.]
She clicked her teeth, leaning her elbow on the desk and resting her chin in her hand.
An invite ticket. And a ridiculously rare one at that. It felt wrong to get such a high-tier reward for a mission she had completely sat out of. She thought about using it right then and there just to see who would pop out of the multiversal woodwork, but she hesitated.
Given the sheer chaos of their current lineup—a dragon-taming time-looper, an overpowered amnesiac in a death-game city, and a traumatized middle schooler—adding a completely random variable without consulting the others seemed irresponsible.
"I'll save it," she decided, closing the inventory screen. "I'll ask the group what they think later."
But as the blue screen vanished, leaving her staring at her boring, mundane code, the real weight of the situation settled over her shoulders.
She took off her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose as a headache began to form.
Kenji's text message from earlier that morning echoed in her mind.
Yeah, I did.
He hadn't flinched. He hadn't sugarcoated it. Kenji and Subaru, two teenagers who couldn't be older than eighteen, had cornered a bully in an alleyway and killed him to protect a fourteen-year-old girl. And the system had rewarded them for it.
Kobayashi let out a heavy, conflicted sigh. She was a normal, working adult. She dealt with deadlines, taxes, and hangovers. But now she was the "oldest" in a group of kids who were casually hopping across dimensions and committing homicide to solve their problems.
"What kind of messed up worlds are those kids living in?" she muttered quietly to herself, staring blankly at her keyboard.
———
[MC first pov: Kenji Sato]
The air smelled sweet. Too sweet.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see the water-stained ceiling of my cheap Fuyuki apartment. Instead, the sky above me was a brilliant, impossible expanse of clear cerulean.
I pushed myself up, the rustle of vegetation brushing against my clothes. I was sitting in the middle of a vast, endless field of vibrant blue flowers. They stretched out in every direction, swaying gently in a warm, phantom breeze that carried a cloying, heavy fragrance.
I stood up, brushing imaginary dirt from my pants, my brow furrowing in deep confusion.
'Where am I?' I thought, my heart rate picking up slightly. 'A Reality Marble? A mental landscape? I was just taking a nap.'
I spun around, scanning the endless sea of blue petals. The atmosphere was incredibly peaceful, bathed in warm sunlight, but every single instinct in my body was screaming that something was fundamentally, terrifyingly wrong. It felt less like a dream and more like a trap waiting to spring.
Then, I saw her.
Standing a few dozen yards away, amidst the highest blooms, was a girl. She was small, delicate, and undeniably beautiful. Her short, pale blonde hair caught the ethereal light, framing a face of absolute, porcelain innocence. She wore a pristine, frilled dress of blue and white that looked entirely out of place in a normal world, yet perfectly suited for this surreal landscape.
My breath hitched. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe.
I knew that description. Anyone who had dug into the deepest, darkest lore of the Fate universe knew who wore that dress and possessed that specific, angelic appearance. The omnipotent magus connected to the Root. The girl who treated the Holy Grail War like a romantic fairy tale and casually slaughtered innocent people to make her 'Prince' happy.
The girl slowly turned around. Her striking, hollow eyes locked directly onto mine. A smile bloomed across her face—a smile so pure, sweet, and obsessive that it made my blood run absolutely cold.
She clasped her hands together in front of her chest, taking a joyful, bouncing step forward.
"There you are..." her voice echoed, sweet and suffocatingly affectionate, piercing straight through the dream. "...my dear Saber!"
My eyes snapped open.
I jolted upright in the dark, gasping for air as if I had just been pulled underwater. My hand flew to my chest, my fingers gripping the fabric of my shirt directly over my hammering heart. I was drenched in a cold sweat, sitting on my futon in the dim Fuyuki apartment. The cheap clock on the wall ticked steadily. Over in the corner, Okita was still sleeping peacefully under the blanket I had thrown over her.
I stared wide-eyed at the dark wall opposite me, my chest heaving, the phantom scent of sweet blue flowers still lingering in the back of my throat.
"Manaka..." I muttered into the quiet room, my voice shaking with a primal, deeply ingrained dread. "...Sajyou?!"