Tokyo never sleeps.

But tonight, the silence was wrong.

Kira lay still in bed, her breath shallow, ears straining for something—anything—familiar. No honking taxis. No muffled conversations from the apartment next door. Just an unnatural stillness pressing against the walls like a held breath.

A heaviness settled in her chest—that familiar dread that had become her constant companion. Ever since the glitches started appearing, sleep had become a luxury she could no longer afford. Even with her eyes closed, fractured code seemed to dance behind her eyelids, a digital reminder that normalcy was slipping through her fingers.

Her fingers tightened around the sheets. She never woke up before her alarm. She never slept through it either.

Her gaze flicked to the digital clock on her nightstand.

6:00 AM.

Exactly when it was supposed to go off.

Then why hadn't it?

A cold prickle ran down her spine, ice crystallizing along her vertebrae. The wrongness of the moment clawed at her senses. Slowly, she reached for her phone and unlocked the screen, the blue light harsh against her dilated pupils.

A message.

Her stomach clenched, a knot of fear tightening beneath her ribs. The number was unsaved, but she didn't need to check. She already knew.

The same presence that had been slipping into her life for weeks—unseen but never unnoticed. Rearranging files. Shifting timestamps. Leaving subtle, taunting reminders that he could reach her anytime he wanted. A digital phantom that had somehow breached every firewall she'd constructed around her carefully compartmentalized lives.

But this?

This was different.

This was closer.

She exhaled slowly, forcing herself to stay calm. Don't react. Don't let him know he's getting to you. The mantra echoed in her mind, one of many survival tactics she'd adopted since the stalking began. Reaction was vulnerability, and vulnerability was death in this game of digital cat-and-mouse.

Throwing the covers aside, she moved to the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her—pale skin, dark circles under tired eyes. She barely recognized herself anymore. The confident performer who commanded stages as Luna had been replaced by this hollow-eyed ghost, jumping at shadows and checking over her shoulder.

Then—

A glitch.

A tiny flicker in the glass, like a frozen frame in a corrupted video.

Her breath caught.

Her pulse roared in her ears, blood rushing like a tsunami.

No. Not again.

She spun away, heart hammering. She needed something normal—coffee, the news, anything to drown out the unease slithering under her skin. Something tangible to anchor her to reality as it continued to fracture around her.

She stepped into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, hands trembling slightly, and switched on the TV. The bitter scent of coffee grounded her momentarily, a small sensory mercy.

Static.

Then the news.

Then—

The screen froze.

Not buffering. Not a weak signal. Just... stuck.

The news anchor's face was locked mid-sentence, lips parted.

Kira's fingers tightened around her coffee mug, ceramic hot against her skin. First the alarm, then the mirror, now this. The pattern was escalating, becoming bolder, less subtle. A cold dread unfurled in her stomach—he was testing the boundaries now, seeing how far he could push before she broke.

Something was wrong.

She grabbed the remote, pressed buttons. Nothing. The image didn't flicker, didn't refresh. It just—

Stayed.

Then—

The lights flickered.

Her breath stalled, crystallizing in her lungs.

A power issue? No. The fridge was still humming. The clock on the wall still ticked. Everything electrical seemed normal except for what was directly in her line of sight. As if the glitches were meant specifically for her—a personalized haunting.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the TV resumed. The broadcast continued like nothing had happened.

But Kira knew better.

She reached for her phone again, her skin ice-cold. Breathe. Just breathe. No new messages. No notifications.

Yet that silence didn't mean he wasn't there. It was worse, somehow—the knowledge that he was watching, waiting, gathering data with each passing second. The weight of his invisible surveillance pressed down on her shoulders, heavier than any physical burden.

Taking a slow, steady breath, she whispered,

But the words felt hollow, a feeble attempt to deny what she already knew to be true. This wasn't paranoia. This wasn't imagination. Something—someone—had found a way to manipulate her reality, one digital artifact at a time.

Then—

Her blood ran cold, freezing in her veins.

The voice wasn't coming from the TV.

It was coming from her phone.

Her fingers trembled as she looked down. The screen displayed a call in progress.

00:01

00:02

00:03

She never answered.

How is this possible? The thought raced through her mind, panic rising like floodwater. Even with her technical knowledge, she couldn't fathom how someone could bypass the security protocols she'd built herself.

Slowly, she lifted the phone to her ear, her pulse hammering. Her throat constricted, fear a physical presence now, squeezing the air from her lungs.

Silence.

Then—

A whisper.

Her grip turned white-knuckled, fury momentarily overriding terror. This was her life he was toying with, her sense of security he was systematically dismantling.

A soft chuckle, low and unbothered. The sound crawled across her skin like insects.

The call ended.

The screen flickered back to normal. The apartment returned to stillness.

But Kira knew better.

This wasn't over.

He was getting closer.

And she was running out of places to hide.

---

 A FEW DAYS EARLIER – KAIROS WATCHES LUNA

In a dimly lit room tucked away in the shadowy edges of Tokyo, a single figure sat surrounded by monitors. Blue-green light from the screens flickered across his face, reflecting off dark eyes that hadn’t slept in days. Cables coiled like veins across the floor, and half-drunk energy drinks cluttered the desk.

His name was Kairos. A recluse. A ghost in the system.

To the world, he didn’t exist.

But in the world of firewalls and backdoors, of private surveillance streams and deleted search histories, Kairos was a god. He loved secrets. Loved cracking open the truth like a locked file. There was a strange beauty in the chaos of other people’s lives—and nothing thrilled him more than unraveling them, piece by piece.

One of the screens shifted.

He paused.

A live feed.

An underground concert, not broadcast on any public channel. The kind that disappeared off the net within hours. He hadn’t meant to stumble into it—but his idle crawling had brought him here.

And there she was.

The girl with silver hair that shimmered under the low stage lights.

A mask covered her face, but her voice—her voice was celestial. Raw and powerful, tinged with sadness and defiance. The kind of voice that didn’t ask for attention, but demanded it.

The stage name appeared on the corner of the hacked feed: Luna.

He leaned closer, mesmerized. This wasn’t just another faceless singer clawing for relevance. No. This girl was different.

He tried to trace the broadcast back to its source.

Nothing.

He ran a scan on the footage. No metadata. No digital fingerprints. Whoever Luna was, she knew how to hide. But Kairos didn’t mind. In fact, it only made the game more fun.

Just as he began running another trace, his phone buzzed.

He answered without looking. “Talk.”

A deep voice on the other end. “Hello, Kairos. How have you been?”

He didn’t respond.

Kairos’s fingers paused over his keyboard. “Name it.”

A moment later, his monitor flashed—a single image.

Long blond hair. Sharp, inquisitive eyes.

The name: Yukimura Kira.

Kairos narrowed his gaze.

And then, something strange happened.

He looked at the image.

Then back at the frozen feed of Luna.

And a chill crept down his spine.

“…Interesting,” he muttered.

He leaned back, whispering to himself,