Knock.
Knock.
The soft, rhythmic sound of small knuckles rapping against the wooden frame of his bedroom door echoed into the quiet room.
Outside, the sound of cicadas had long faded, replaced by the dark stillness of a Kamiyama night.
“…Ni,” Shiro’s flat, monotone voice called out through the barrier.
“Dinner is ready. The Caretaker made hamburg steak, and she says it’s going to get cold if we don’t eat it soon.”
Inside, there was only silence.
Shiro waited, her large red eyes blinking slowly in the dim hallway.
Usually, Yuki would answer instantly, offering a tired smile or a gentle reassurance that he was coming.
Hearing absolutely no response, a sudden, sharp spike of anxiety flared in her chest.
Her tiny fingers gripped the handle, and she slid the door open.
“Ni…?”
She stepped over the threshold into the dark bedroom.
The only illumination came from the moonlight filtering through the window and a faint glow emitting from the smartphone resting face-up on the wooden floorboards.
Yuki was sleeping peacefully, though he lay awkwardly across the mattress with his limbs slightly tangled in the sheets.
Shiro walked over to the edge of the mattress, her large red eyes softening as she realized he hadn’t collapsed from sickness, but from sheer, deep exhaustion.
Deciding to fix his posture so he wouldn’t wake up with a sore back, she grabbed his arm and pulled with all the strength her tiny body could muster.
It proved incredibly hard; she barely managed to budge him an inch before her footing slipped.
“Shiro-chan? Is everything alright?” Tohru’s gentle voice called out as she walked into the room, wondering what was taking her so long to call Yuki for dinner.
Tohru stopped as she saw the situation, her eyes taking in Yuki’s deep sleep and Shiro’s stubborn efforts.
A sympathetic, maternal smile crossed her face as she stepped forward to help.
Together, they gently adjusted Yuki’s posture and pulled a warm blanket up over his shoulders.
“He’s been pushing his body way too hard lately with his work deadlines on top of his schoolwork,” Tohru whispered softly, brushing a stray lock of hair from Yuki’s forehead.
“It’s a good opportunity for him to finally get some early rest tonight.”
Tohru turned to the silver-haired girl and gestured toward the desk.
“Shiro-chan, could you leave a note on his table? Just let him know that I’ll leave his dinner covered on the kitchen table in case he wakes up hungry later tonight.”
Shiro nodded quietly, navigating the dim room toward the desk.
On her way, she spotted Yuki’s smartphone lying on the floor.
She picked it up, expecting to see the bizarre screen from earlier, but noted with a slight tilt of her head that the display was completely back to normal.
Grabbing a small piece of scrap paper and a pen from his desk, Shiro neatly scribbled out Tohru’s message.
She placed the written note flat against the wooden surface of the table, then used the heavy weight of Yuki’s smartphone to pin it securely in place so it wouldn’t blow away if the wind picked up.
Giving her sleeping brother one last lingering look, Shiro followed Tohru out of the dark room, quietly sliding the door shut behind them to preserve his hard-earned peace.
***
A soft click echoed through the silent bedroom as Yuki switched on his desk lamp.
The warm, amber glow chased away the shadows of the middle of the night, revealing that his room was completely quiet.
His stomach let out a loud, demanding growl, reminding him that he had completely skipped dinner.
Yawning deeply, Yuki rubbed the sleep from his eyes and noticed his smartphone resting on the desk, pinning down a neatly folded piece of scrap paper.
He pulled the device away and picked up the paper, instantly recognizing Shiro’s precise handwriting conveying Tohru’s message.
Smiling faintly at his makeshift family’s thoughtfulness, Yuki stood up, stretched his stiff muscles, and quietly slipped out of his room.
He navigated the dark hallway of the orphanage, heading straight for the kitchen.
Just as promised, Tohru had left a plate of hamburg steak covered tightly on the counter.
Yuki quickly warmed it up, sat down alone at the dining table, and began to eat.
As he chewed, his hand instinctively moved out of habit toward his smartphone sitting beside his plate.
He tapped the screen to check for any line messages or publisher updates, but the interface didn’t load his usual home screen.
Instead, the display flickered, locking him out as stark white text began scrolling down a pitch-black background.
Yuki froze, his chopsticks hovering in mid-air as he read the words clearly blinking back at him.
___
[ 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.
___
The food felt like lead in his stomach.
It wasn’t a hallucination from exhaustion, and it wasn’t a digital prank.
The self-installing app was active, and it was officially telling him that he was completely on his own in a world filled with undetected anomalies.
He dropped the phone onto the wooden table with a soft clatter and leaned heavily back into the chair.
For a long moment, he just stared up at the dim kitchen ceiling.
He raised both hands to his face, letting out a deep, agonizing sigh before burying his fingers into his hair, scratching his head repeatedly as if he could physically shake the absurd reality out of his brain.
Finally, his hands dropped to his sides, and he let out another long sigh of pure resignation.
Having a good, deep sleep had really calmed him down.
The blinding panic from earlier had subsided, replaced by the grim, practical clarity.
He couldn’t ignore it anymore.
It wasn’t a hallucination, and it wasn’t an elaborate prank.
It was real.
“A literal peaceful world…” Yuki whispered to the empty kitchen, a dry, self-deprecating chuckle escaping his lips.
“The skies are always blue, the high schoolers are busy fighting over school festivals, and I’m supporting the orphanage by plagiarizing sci-fi plots from my past life. It was a perfect, comfortable routine.”
He looked back down at the smartphone, where the stark white text was still glowing patiently on the black screen.
After accepting his situation, he picked up the phone again to check for any other information he could get.
The moment his finger clicked the glassy surface of the screen, the static text vanished, and another sequence of sharp white letters began to appear, typing themselves out with a rapid, mechanical clicking sound.
___
[ CONTEXT TIMELINE COMPROMISED ]
A catastrophic containment breach has occurred at a baseline focal point.
Anomalies have been scattered all over the multiverse, fracturing local realities.
[ DIRECTIVE ]
Establish the SCP Foundation as the newly designated Administrator.
Secure, contain, and protect all anomalies anchoring onto this planet.
___
The letters stopped typing themselves, leaving the screen completely silent.
Yuki stared at the display, his jaw tightening as the absolute absurdity of the scale hit him.
“All over the multiverse?” Yuki cursed silently to no one, his voice dropping into a harsh, frantic whisper as he glared at the device.
“Are you kidding me? A multi-universal containment breach? I’m a novelist. I write fictional timelines on a secondhand laptop to pay for groceries. How am I supposed to build an international, multi-trillion-dollar secret organization from a mountain valley in Gifu?!”
He let out a sharp, frustrated breath, trying to steady his pounding heart.
Taking a chance, he clicked the screen once more.
The previous block of text was instantly deleted, the black background clearing out before the white letters began to appear again, typing out an immediate follow-up notice.
___
[ PROTOCOL RECRUITMENT ]
To compensate for zero local assets, the SCP Foundation will provide a localized anomalous space.
This space will randomly select individuals from this world who may assist you in your endeavors.
___
The message stopped again, leaving a sterile terminal prompt blinking patiently at the bottom of the black screen.
Yuki stared at the words, his mind racing as he processed the new parameter.
“A localized anomalous space… and it recruits from the residents of this world?”
He let out a dry, breathy laugh, leaning his elbows on the kitchen table.
“So my future containment team, my prospective Mobile Task Force operatives, or my researchers are going to be ordinary citizens or worse, students who have absolutely no idea what an anomaly even is. I have to turn normal people into the SCP Foundation.”
He rubbed his temples, a grim but resolved expression settling onto his face.
If the app was drawing from the existing population of this reality, it meant he might end up recruiting people he already knew from the news, or even from his own school.
But whoever the app selected, it would be his job as the Administrator to guide them, protect them, and keep the reality from fracturing.
“Securing the world from a smartphone…” Yuki ran a hand over his face, a wry, self-deprecating smile pulling at his lips as he looked at the blinking prompt.
“Fine. Let’s see who the lucky ones it picks to help me build this foundation.”
He tapped the glass one more time.
The text dissolved, and the smartphone instantly flipped back to his standard, everyday home screen.
The device looked completely ordinary again, save for the newly added SCP icon sitting starkly among his regular apps.
Yuki took a slow breath and clicked the icon.
The screen instantly flashed into a crisp, clinical white interface dominated by a metallic, 3D SCP logo spinning smoothly in the exact center.
Below the rotating emblem, only two distinct options were available to select.
SCP and O5-Council.
“Only two options,” Yuki muttered, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the minimalist design.
“Simple, clean.”
Curious, he clicked the SCP button first.
The screen transitioned into a structured index layout, displaying the official containment classifications in bold, block letters.
Yuki tapped Safe.
The interface loaded instantly, displaying a single, lonely entry at the very top of the list.
SCP-005.
“So it really registered the key I picked up,” Yuki whispered, a cold chill confirming the system’s terrifying reality.
“It logged the anomaly the exact moment it crossed into my possession.”
He hit the return arrow and tapped the next category, Euclid.
The screen remained completely blank, a subtle message reading No registered entities found in this sector fading into view.
He systematically clicked through the remaining classes, Keter, Thaumiel, Apollyon, Archon, and Neutralized, but each directory returned the exact same empty result.
Only the Safe category held any data.
“Nothing else is cataloged yet,” Yuki sighed, leaning back slightly as he processed the findings.
“The rest of the directories are completely cleared out. The multi-universal breach means the database is starting from scratch on this planet. Aside from the antique key sitting in my school bag.”
He stared at the blank categories, a strange sense of relief mixing with his underlying tension.
The catastrophic containment breach had happened in an entirely different reality, after all.
It would take time for those fractured anomalies to drift across the dimensional void and anchor themselves onto this planet.
They wouldn’t all arrive at once; they were going to randomly pop up across the world, completely unannounced, like unpredictable glitches in a peaceful slice-of-life script.
For now, he had a brief window of relative safety.
Yuki tapped the return arrow, bringing himself back to the main menu.
His gaze drifted down to the second option, and he clicked on the O5-Council button.
The screen shifted, displaying a sterile black interface with just two options listed in block text: Members and Assembly.
He clicked on Members first.
The screen populated with a long list of thirteen official slots, but from O5-2 all the way down to O5-13, the files were grayed out and stamped with a flashing [VACANT] notice.
The only active slot was the very first one.
Right beneath the bold designation of O5-1, his own real name was typed out in crisp white letters, paired with an official, chilling title, The Reincarnator.
Yuki let out a dry, incredulous chuckle, staring at his own dossier.
“O5-1 The Reincarnator… They really didn’t mince words, did they? The app knows exactly what I am. I guess when you’re the only soul on the planet who remembers the database, you automatically get the top seat in the boardroom. Talk about a forced promotion.”
He shook his head, tapping the back button to return to the previous screen.
Taking a deep breath, he clicked on the final unexplored option, Assembly.
Instead of loading a text file or an inventory grid, the smartphone didn’t change screens.
Instead, a heavy, system-wide prompt box flashed violently across the display, accompanied by a low, rhythmic vibration that pulsed directly against his palm.
A stark warning message typed itself out in crimson text.
___
[ ! ] ADMINISTRATIVE PROTOCOL: ASSEMBLY ACTIVATION
[ WARNING ]
Initiating this protocol will detach and project your current consciousness directly into the O5 Council Assembly area.
[ STATUS ]
Your physical vessel will enter a comatose, unresponsive state during the transition.
[ DIRECTIVE ]
Before proceeding, ensure your physical body is resting in a secure, stable, and completely private environment.
___
Yuki froze, his thumb hovering over the phone’s screen as a cold sweat broke out across his neck.
The fog of sleep was long gone by now.
This wasn’t just a database viewer or a logistics app.
The phone was a literal gateway to an anomalous space.
“A consciousness transfer…” Yuki whispered, his voice shaking slightly as he glanced around the quiet, dimly lit orphanage kitchen.
He looked down at his half-eaten dinner, then back at the ominous warning blinking in his hand.
“If I trigger this right here, anyone who walks in could find me completely unresponsive at the dining table. They’d panic and call an ambulance.”
He carefully canceled the prompt for a moment, letting the screen revert to the main menu.
Looking down at his plate, he decided it was best to finish eating his meal first.
He quickly ate the rest of his food, washed his dishes, and cleaned up the kitchen counter to leave everything exactly as it was.
Once the chores were finished, Yuki pocketed his smartphone and quietly navigated the dark, creaking hardwood hallway back to the safety of his private bedroom.
He slid the door shut, locking it from the inside to ensure his privacy.
Moving over to his bed, he lay down flat on his back, pulling the blanket up to his chest so it would look like he had simply fallen back asleep.
Holding the smartphone securely over his chest, his thumb hovered over the screen once more.
He clicked the Assembly button again and braced himself for the transition.
“Alright,” Yuki muttered, his heart hammering against his ribs as his vision suddenly began to blur.
“Let’s see what this O5 assembly looks like.”