The heavy front door of the orphanage glided open right on schedule, and Yuki stepped into the familiar entryway.
The lively, distant sound of younger children laughing and playing in the back rooms echoed through the halls.
He let out a long breath, checking the digital clock on the wall.
It was exactly 4:30 PM.
“I’m home,” Yuki called out, setting his uniform bag down on the entryway bench.
Before he could even unlace his outdoor shoes, a rapid, frantic pattering of bare feet echoed from the hardwood hallway.
The sound grew louder in a fraction of a second.
Yuki barely had time to look up before a small, spectral figure emerged around the corner.
Shiro was running at full speed, her incredibly long, chaotic white hair billowing wildly behind her.
As she reached the edge of the entryway, she took a tiny, desperate leap forward, throwing her small frame directly against him.
Yuki caught her with his body, absorbing the impact as Shiro wrapped her arms tightly around his abdomen.
She buried her face deeply into his school blazer, her tiny fingers clutching the fabric tightly.
Her entire body was trembling slightly, the residual panic of her separation anxiety melting away the moment she made physical contact.
“…Ni…” Shiro mumbled against his coat, her voice a fragile, muffled whisper.
“Welcome back…”
“I told you I wouldn’t be late,” Yuki said gently, placing a reassuring hand on her hair as he stood there, letting her anchor herself to him.
He carefully shuffled his feet out of his school shoes and stepped up into the main hallway of the orphanage.
“Did you actually rest as I asked, or have you been waiting by the door this whole time?”
“…Waiting,” Shiro confessed softly, pulling her face back just enough to look up at him with her large, striking red eyes.
The analytical blankness in her gaze softened with genuine relief, though her grip around his waist didn’t loosen a single millimeter.
“The whole house feels completely empty when Ni isn’t here. I couldn’t focus on my games at all.”
From the kitchen down the hall, Tohru peeked her head out around the corner, holding a wooden spoon and wearing a bright apron over her clothes.
“Welcome home, Yuki-kun!” Tohru beamed, her face lighting up with genuine warmth.
“Oh, thank goodness you made it right on time. Shiro-chan was hovering around the front hall for the last twenty minutes. Every time the floorboards creaked, she thought it was you!”
“I figured as much,” Yuki smiled helplessly, gently patting Shiro’s shoulder as she kept her arms locked around his abdomen.
“Sorry for making you worry, Shiro. But look, I’m right here. Just like I said.”
“Uhmm,” Shiro murmured, letting out a tiny, soft sigh of relief as she rested her head back against his chest.
“Ni is back… so it’s okay now.”
“It’s just… still updating,” Yuki muttered, gently peeling Shiro’s arms from around his abdomen so he could pull out his phone.
The progress bar on the screen had quietly ticked past 90% during his walk, the black screen casting an uncomfortably bright glow against the dim lighting of the orphanage hallway.
He held the smartphone down so Shiro could look, tapping the unresponsive glass.
“My phone has been acting up since I left school. Do you know anything about this kind of software update? Is it some new operating system bug?”
Shiro tilted her head, her hair swaying as she leaned in close.
Her large red eyes narrowed, shifting into the intense, calculating focus she normally reserved for multi-layered game puzzles.
She stared at the moving bar for a long, quiet minute, her mind running through every known operating system architecture, hardware, firmware, and localized digital features in Japan.
“…Unknown,” Shiro finally murmured, her tone dipping into a rare, frustrated frown as she pushed the smartphone back into Yuki’s hand.
“No network signature… no background data packets. The code structure… doesn’t make logical sense. Shiro… doesn’t like it.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Yuki said, trying to offer a reassuring smile to mask the sudden chill creeping up his spine.
He patted her head gently.
“Don’t worry about it too much. I’ll go wash up and clean up first, then I’ll see if I can force a hardware reset in my room.”
“Uhmm,” Shiro nodded reluctantly, though her gaze lingered heavily on his pocket as he turned away.
Yuki walked down the familiar hardwood corridor of the orphanage, greeting a couple of the younger children who ran past him toward the dining room.
Stepping into his private bedroom, he closed the door behind him, letting out a heavy breath as the comforting smells of Tohru’s cooking wafted under the frame.
He hung up his school blazer, unbuttoned his collar, and quickly changed into a pair of comfortable, ordinary lounge clothes.
He was just reaching for his discarded uniform trousers when a sharp, freezing noise pierced the quiet space.
PING!
Yuki froze, his hand hovering in mid-air.
It was that same clinical, high-frequency chime from earlier.
With a swallowing throat, he slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the smartphone.
The pitch-black loading interface was entirely gone.
The device had returned to his standard, everyday home screen, but right there, sitting squarely in the center of his app grid, was a brand-new icon that made his heart instantly hammer violently against his ribs.
The icon was a stark, minimalist black logo.
A solid circle surrounded by three inward-facing arrows, encapsulated within a bold, shield-like outer ring.
Yuki’s breath hitched, his lungs suddenly feeling entirely too tight as his vision tunneled on the glowing screen.
“No…” he whispered, his voice cracking into a frantic, hushed murmur as he took a ragged step back against his desk.
“No, no, no… this is a joke. This is a hallucination.”
His hands began to tremble so violently that he nearly dropped the smartphone.
Even after seventeen long years of living a completely detached, mundane slice-of-life existence, that exact geometric pattern was burned into the deepest recesses of his past-life memories.
It was a symbol he had deliberately kept locked away.
“It’s just fiction…” Yuki mumbled, his face turning entirely pale as he backed away towards his own bed, staring at the screen in pure denial.
“It was just a wiki. It was a collaborative writing website. It’s not real. It can’t be real…”
As if responding to his mounting panic, the phone vibrated violently twice, and the minimalist logo expanded to swallow the entire screen, flashing a single line of bright text:
___
[ ! ] ACCESS GRANTED: WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR.
___
The screen didn’t stop there.
A sharp, mechanical clicking sound emitted from the phone’s speaker as a stark white typing sequence began, letters appearing on the pitch-black display one by one as if typed by an unseen hand.
___
Establishing secure local network grid…
Done.
Scanning local inventory for conceptual anomalies…
Anomaly detected, Safe class object within proximity.
Analyzing quantum signature…
Validation successful.
___
Yuki watched in mounting horror as the text blinked, clearing the screen for the final, terrifying line of data.
___
Item locked.
Connection established with the successful containment of SCP-005 Skeleton Key.
___
Reading those final words, Yuki’s fingers completely lost their strength.
He let go of his phone, letting it slip from his hand.
The smartphone tumbled to the ground, landing face-up on the wooden floorboards with a dull thud.
Even from his height, he could still clearly see the screen glowing in the dim room, more letters continuing to appear in that relentless, clinical typing sequence.
“This isn’t happening… this isn’t happening,” Yuki muttered to himself repeatedly, his voice shaking.
“It’s a glitch. Someone hacked my phone. It’s an elaborate prank. There is no SCP-005. There is no Skeleton Key. I just picked up an ordinary piece of antique brass…”
He desperately tried to deny the reality of the anomaly unfolding right in front of him.
But deep down, his meta-knowledge from his past life reminded him exactly what SCP-005 was.
A key capable of opening any lock in existence.
And it was currently sitting right inside his school bag across the room.
The sudden surge of raw panic, combined with the crushing, accumulated exhaustion from his late-night novel-writing sessions and heavy school workload, finally caught up to him all at once.
His heart hammered one last time against his ribs as a wave of dizziness swept over him.
The room began to spin, his vision darkening rapidly until the glowing screen on the floor dissolved into a black blur.
Losing complete consciousness, his body slumped sideways, collapsing heavily onto his bed.
The apartment room fell completely silent, save for the rhythmic hum of the cicadas outside and the faint, clinical glow of the smartphone resting on the wooden floorboards.
On the screen, the white text continued to type itself out, line by line, completely unbothered by its user’s collapse.
___
[ LOGISTICS NOTICE ]
Acting Administrator status verified.
[ SYSTEM NOTICE ]
Searching for local sector assets…
[ WARNING ]
No SCP Foundation facilities, personnel, or sites found within regional parameters.
___
***
Author’s note:
muwahahaha…
I’m here…
Now this chapter is 500 words short, so I’m here trying to add a little to the count…
Anyway, how’s the story so far?…
Are you guys enjoying it, even a little?…
hehe…
ow on a side note…
The Novels he has written in my head are Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song, Cyberpunk Edgrunners, and Stiens;Gate…
see ya guyz!…