A sleek, heavy helmet drops over Hina’s head the moment she is fully strapped to the chair.
Inside the observation deck, Principal Kenjiro taps a finger against his glass console.
“Engage the simulation immediately,” he orders the staff.
“Let us see what lies beneath her compliance.”
Dr. Akane nods, throwing a series of toggle switches.
“Engaging subconscious link now, sir.”
Down in the audience rows, the main screen hums to life with a deep, vibrating resonance.
Everyone gasps at the sudden change in light.
Arashi remains completely unflenched.
He sits with his arms folded, his pale eyes tracking the raw data feeds rather than the dramatic imagery on the display.
His face is a perfect vacuum of emotion.
“Look,” Min-sun whispers, clutching the front of her uniform.
“It’s starting.”
On the main screen, the audience sees the simulated Hina standing within her own aura mindscape.
She appears inside a small, remarkably calm house.
The rooms are dimly lit but clean.
She walks around silently for a moment, her fingers brushing against the edge of a wooden table.
“Hello?” Hina calls out, her voice echoing strangely through the empty corridors of her mind.
“Hello! Is anyone there? Mama? Papa?”
She receives no answer.
She moves faster, her steps turning frantic.
“A-Arashi? Anyone? M-Min-sun?”
Her voice sounds incredibly small, shattered by a deep, growing fear.
She reaches a heavy wooden door at the end of the hallway.
She grabs the brass knob, pulling it toward herself.
The door swings open, revealing a vast, absolute darkness.
She takes a step back, turning around to flee the house, but a pair of pitch-black hands suddenly erupts from the shadow.
They wrap around her ankles, dragging her forward.
The heavy door slams shut behind her with a booming crash.
In the physical arena, Min-sun leaps up from her seat, staring at the screen with absolute intensity.
“Hina!” she yells, her voice cracking.
“Get out of there!” Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“Sit down, Min-sun,” Arashi says, his voice perfectly level, monotone, and entirely unbothered by her panic.
“Your vocalizations have zero effect on her neural pathways. You are only burning unnecessary calories.”
Min-sun glares down at him, her lips trembling.
“How can you sit there and say that?! Look at her!”
“I am looking,” Arashi responds flatly, not even turning his head to meet her gaze.
“I am observing data. You are observing a spectacle.”
On the main screen, Hina is now seen completely covered by the thick, choking darkness.
Slowly, her simulated form wakes up on a cold stone floor.
She pushes herself up onto her elbows, but a loud clinking sound echoes through the void.
A massive iron chain is securely locked to her legs.
She tries moving away, crawling on her hands and knees, but the links violently pull her back, slamming her constantly to the floor.
In the physical chair on stage, Hina’s actual body moves aggressively.
She struggles against the obsidian bands, trying to get up.
She pants heavily, sweating profusely as her chest heaves under the intense stress of the simulation.
Suddenly, a small wooden cradle is pushed into the center of the darkness by unseen forces.
A simulated version of Min-sun appears inside the mindscape, trapped inside the small crib.
The illusionary Min-sun screams, her face twisted in agony as she reaches out toward Hina.
“Hina! Help me! Please, save me!”
Hina tries getting up, throwing her weight forward, but the heavy chain yanks her right back down to the stone.
“Min-sun! I’m trying! I’m trying!”
The simulation shifts violently again.
Two more figures materialize from the shadows—her parents.
They are bound in chains identical to hers, their eyes hollow as they look at her.
“Hina, why aren’t you helping us? Why are you leaving us here?”
“I’m not leaving you!” Hina screams, her simulated form clawing at the stone floor until her fingernails bleed.
“Please! I can’t move!”
Her physical form on the stage tries desperately to break out of the chair, her muscles tensing to their absolute limit.
Inside the mindscape, a towering demon rises from the black abyss behind her family.
With a brutal, swift movement, the entity tears through her mother, then her father, and finally turns its gaze toward the simulated Min-sun. New chapters come out on g.com first.
In the real world, Min-sun covers her ears, shouting loudly at the stage.
“Hina, stop! It’s not real! Calm down! Please, just breathe!”
Arashi tilts his head slightly, his dead eyes tracking the spike in Hina’s physical vitals.
“She cannot hear you, Min-sun,” he states smoothly.
“However, your assumption that she knows it is a simulation is incorrect. To her brain, that trauma is actively occurring.”
“Then do something!” Min-sun cries out, grabbing Arashi’s shoulder.
“Tell them to stop the machine!”
“The louder she shouts in there, the more it affects her physical body,” Arashi continues, ignoring Min-sun’s hands entirely.
“Look at her face.”
A thin trickle of bright red blood begins tracing down Hina’s lower lip where she has bitten through her own skin in terror.
Up in the control room, the technicians monitor her crashing vitals, reading off numbers in rapid succession.
“Spiritual stability is dropping below forty percent, Doctor. Neurological stress is approaching critical thresholds.”
Principal Kenjiro looks down through the glass, a cruel, satisfied smile touching his lips.
“Exquisite. The machine has found it.”
“What is the primary psychological anchor?” Ms. Sato asks, looking up from her terminal.
Dr. Akane inputs a command, analyzing the core thematic frequencies of the nightmare.
“Loneliness,” she reports softly, her voice filled with a trace of pity.
“Her entire power dynamic is built on the fear of absolute isolation and her inability to protect her utility to others.”
Down in the seats, Min-sun takes a step out into the aisle, her eyes wide with desperation.
“I’m going up there. I’m going to run to the stage and help her.”
Arashi reaches out, his grip locking onto her wrist with surprising, immovable strength.
His expression doesn’t change a single fraction, maintaining its total, chilling neutrality.
“I wouldn’t advise that, Min-sun,” he says, his tone like ice.
“If you interrupt the trial, you will violate protocol. You will get us both into serious trouble, and your own utility to this organization will be reassessed as a liability.”
“Let go of me!” Min-sun hissed, trying to pull her wrist away from his iron grip.
“She’s bleeding, Arashi!”
“An acceptable biological cost for evaluation,” Arashi replies flatly, slowly releasing his grip only when she steps back into the row.
“Watch the conclusion.”
Up on the stage, Hina violently vibrates in the strapped chair.
The blood races from her lips, completely staining the white cloth of her collar in jagged, dark streaks.
Her fingers twitch rhythmically against the metal armrests as the simulation reaches its absolute climax.