THE COLDEST DEMON GOD
An Unwanted Hero's Ascension
Volume 1 — Summoning & Rejection
Chapter 2 — Anomaly
The alarm never had a chance to ring.
Renjiro's eyes opened at 5:19 a.m., forty-three minutes before he needed to leave the apartment. For several seconds, he remained beneath the blanket and stared at the ceiling. The room was dark except for a thin strip of early morning light slipping through the curtains, and nothing around him appeared different from any other weekday morning.
His phone rested where he had left it, closer to the bed than usual. Renjiro reached for it and activated the screen normally. No notifications. No applications running in the background. No unexplained system event. Battery: 68%.
He sat up. The disturbances from the previous night remained clear enough that he did not need to reread his notes to remember them: a monitor flicker, a second disturbance involving both the monitor and room lighting, then his phone activating without any recorded reason. Three incidents. Three different symptoms. One evening.
Not enough.
Renjiro got out of bed and crossed to the desk. His computer woke from sleep, and a few seconds later the text file from last night filled the left monitor.
22:17:43 — display flicker.
22:18:21 — display flicker + room light fluctuation. External buildings appear unaffected. Cause unknown.
23:48:12 — phone display activated without notification or recorded system event.
He reread the entries once. There was no sequence, no consistent interval, and no confirmed shared mechanism. Electrical instability remained possible. Hardware failure remained possible. Electromagnetic interference, firmware behavior, software error, building infrastructure, damaged wiring—there were plenty of mundane explanations available before anything stranger needed to be considered.
Renjiro closed the file. If the disturbances repeated, he would collect more information. If they did not, then three unexplained glitches were simply three unexplained glitches.
He checked the time. 5:24.
The problem could wait. Training could not.
✦ ✦ ✦
At 6:07 a.m., a bokken stopped several centimeters short of the dojo mirror.
Renjiro held the position. His breathing remained even despite the sweat dampening his hair, and the wooden blade rested along a line that would have ended at an opponent's throat if anyone had actually been standing in front of him.
He withdrew. One step. Weight transfer. Cut.
TAK!
Recovery. Another step.
TAK!
This morning's practice was less repetitive than the previous day's. Rather than isolating a single strike, Renjiro moved through short combinations—horizontal cut into withdrawal, thrust, lateral step, diagonal return. Nothing was performed for speed alone. Every movement existed because another movement could logically follow it.
He stopped after the seventh sequence and examined his right hand. Grip pressure was too high—not enough to ruin the technique, but enough to slow adjustment if the imagined opponent changed position halfway through the exchange.
Renjiro loosened his fingers and repeated the sequence. The next exchange flowed better.
"Hmm."
Acceptable.
Training continued. The events from last night did not occupy his thoughts while he moved. He could investigate them later. Allowing an unanswered question to interfere with something unrelated would not make the answer appear faster.
By 6:31, he was finished. Tokyo continued waking beyond the dojo windows. Nothing flickered. Nothing failed. Nothing unusual happened.
For the moment, ordinary life remained ordinary.
✦ ✦ ✦
Class 3-B was already loud when Renjiro arrived. That was normal enough to be reassuring.
He stepped through the doorway, passed two students arguing about a television show, and reached his seat near the windows without being stopped. Bag beside the desk. Book out. Page marked yesterday.
Renjiro had barely read three lines when a shadow fell across the paper.
"Kurogane."
He continued reading. "What?"
Okada Junpei stood beside the desk looking as though sleep had personally offended him. His hair pointed in several directions, his tie was loose, and the dark circles beneath his eyes suggested he had ignored several reasonable decisions the night before.
"You knew the answer to number seven."
"Yes."
Junpei waited. Renjiro turned the page.
"...You knew it?"
"Yes."
"Last night?"
"Yes."
"And you watched me suffer?"
Renjiro finally raised his eyes. "You were doing mathematics."
"Exactly."
"That's not suffering."
Junpei stared at him. "Sometimes I forget how little sympathy you have."
"You survived."
"Physically."
"Then the problem is solved."
From a nearby desk, Mika snorted. Junpei ignored her and dragged an empty chair closer, sitting on it backward with his arms folded over the backrest.
"Why didn't you answer me?"
"You didn't ask me."
"I asked in the group chat."
"The group chat isn't me."
Junpei's mouth opened, closed, then opened again. "That's... technically true."
Renjiro returned to his book.
"Sometimes your answers make me want to punch a wall."
"Don't."
Junpei blinked. Renjiro turned another page. "You'll hurt your hand."
A spark of hope appeared on Junpei's face. "You're worried about my hand?"
"No."
Mika laughed. Junpei slowly lowered his forehead onto the chair.
"Cold bastard."
"Hmm."
"Could you at least be offended?"
"No."
"You're impossible."
Renjiro continued reading. Mika leaned against her desk.
"I told you not to bother him first thing in the morning."
Junpei raised his head. "I'm trying to be his friend."
Renjiro's eyes stopped on the page. "Why?"
Silence settled around the three of them. Junpei turned slowly while Mika's smile disappeared for half a second before returning twice as wide.
Renjiro looked up. "What?"
Junpei pointed at him. "That. Someone tells you they're trying to be your friend, and you ask why?"
"Yes."
"Why would you ask why?"
"Because I want to know."
Junpei stared. Renjiro waited for an answer. The question had not been rhetorical, and after several seconds Junpei seemed to realize that.
"I don't know. You're interesting."
"That's vague."
"You cook, you're good at school, you catch flying pencil cases like they're nothing, and every conversation with you feels like I'm trying to negotiate with a refrigerator."
"Refrigerators don't talk."
"That's the part you object to?"
"It's inaccurate."
Mika covered her mouth. Junpei stood.
"I give up."
"Okay."
He took two steps, stopped, and turned around. "You're supposed to stop me."
"Why?"
Junpei closed his eyes, then continued walking. Mika's shoulders shook with silent laughter.
Renjiro returned to his book. Conversation over.
Probably.
Three minutes later, the ceiling lights flickered once.
Renjiro's eyes left the page. A few other students noticed, but the disturbance was brief enough that complaints about maintenance replaced concern almost immediately.
He checked his watch. 7:42 a.m.
Renjiro did not take out his phone. One timestamp was easy enough to remember.
7:42.
He returned to reading.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Good morning."
Shizuka entered several minutes later carrying a file under one arm. Class 3-B gradually settled, although Junpei was still standing.
"Okada-kun."
He sat immediately. "I was just about to, Sensei."
"Convenient timing."
Shizuka placed the file on her desk. "Before attendance, there's an announcement. Maintenance will be inspecting the building's electrical system today. We've had several reports of minor disturbances since yesterday."
Renjiro raised his eyes.
"If any lights, outlets, projectors or classroom equipment start behaving strangely, don't touch anything yourselves. Tell a teacher."
Junpei's hand rose.
Shizuka stared at him. "Sensei," he began.
"What?"
"What if it's a ghost?"
"Tell the ghost to submit a maintenance request."
Laughter moved through the classroom. Junpei lowered his hand solemnly.
"Understood."
Shizuka opened the attendance sheet. Renjiro's attention remained on the lights overhead for another moment. Electrical disturbances at school offered an explanation for the flicker at 7:42. They did not explain his apartment, and they did not prove the two were connected.
At most, he now had another incident in a city containing millions of electrical devices.
Nothing more.
"Kurogane Renjiro-kun."
"Present."
Shizuka marked his name. Renjiro stopped thinking about the lights as attendance continued.
✦ ✦ ✦
The first class passed normally. So did most of the second.
At 9:13 a.m., the mathematics teacher was halfway through an equation when the projector behind him went black. The room reacted before he did.
"Again?"
"Seriously?"
"Did maintenance unplug something?"
The teacher lowered his marker. For four seconds, the projector remained dark. Then the screen returned exactly where it had been—no restart animation, no visible error.
The teacher sighed. "Apparently mathematics itself has become unpopular."
Junpei raised a hand. "It always was."
"Okada."
"Sorry."
The lesson resumed. Renjiro checked the classroom clock.
9:13.
Second school incident.
The teacher continued explaining the equation. Renjiro returned his attention to it. If something mattered, repetition would make that clear eventually.
✦ ✦ ✦
Break time scattered Class 3-B into its usual groups. Junpei disappeared with several boys to buy drinks, Mika stood near Akari's desk discussing something on her phone, and Daiki and Ryusei were arguing over whether afternoon physical education counted as proper sprint training.
Renjiro stayed at his desk with the fantasy novel from that morning open in his hands.
"Kurogane-kun."
He recognized the voice before looking up. "Shirakawa-san."
Reina stood beside his desk. Her attention settled briefly on the book.
"You always read during breaks?"
"Not always."
"What is it?"
"A novel."
"I can see that."
Renjiro waited. Reina gave him a look.
"What genre?"
"Fantasy."
Her eyebrows rose slightly. "I didn't expect that."
"Why?"
"You don't look like someone who likes fantasy."
"What does someone who likes fantasy look like?"
Reina paused. "...Fair."
Renjiro returned to the page. He expected her to leave. She did not.
Several seconds passed before her tone changed. "Kurogane-kun."
"Hmm?"
"Did anything strange happen at your apartment last night?"
His eyes stopped. Renjiro closed the book around one finger to keep his place.
"Why?"
"My bedroom lights flickered a few times."
"What time?"
Reina hesitated, mildly surprised by the immediate question. "A little after ten. Maybe ten fifteen. Ten twenty."
22:15–22:20. Close. Too broad to be useful by itself, but close.
"Anything else?"
"My phone screen dimmed once. I thought the battery was dying, but it wasn't."
Renjiro's attention sharpened slightly. "Notification?"
"No."
"Charging?"
"No."
"Did it restart?"
"I don't think so."
Uncertain. Still worth remembering.
Reina studied him. "So something did happen at your place."
"Yes."
"What?"
"Screen flicker. Light fluctuation. Phone activated by itself."
Her gaze sharpened. "And you don't think that's strange?"
"Strange isn't the same as connected."
"Two houses had electrical problems at almost the same time."
"Tokyo has millions of houses."
Reina fell silent. Renjiro continued before she could misunderstand the point.
"Two reports aren't a pattern. They're two reports."
"You're really not going to guess."
"No."
"You don't have any theory?"
"I have several."
"Such as?"
"Electrical interference. Hardware faults. Infrastructure instability. Coincidence."
"And which one do you believe?"
"None yet."
Reina considered him for another moment. "Are you always like this?"
"Like what?"
She seemed to reconsider her answer. "Never mind."
"Okay."
Renjiro opened the book again. This time Reina left, returning to the center of the room where Mika immediately gave her a look that made her say, "Don't."
Mika raised both hands. "I didn't say anything."
"Your face did."
Renjiro turned the page. Whatever that was had nothing to do with him.
✦ ✦ ✦
At lunch, Renjiro stood and reached for his lunchbox. Junpei appeared directly in front of him.
"Kurogane."
Renjiro moved left. Junpei moved left. He moved right. Junpei followed.
Renjiro stopped. "What?"
"Lunch."
"I know."
"Eat with us."
"No."
Junpei blinked. "That was fast."
"I already know the answer."
"Why not?"
"Too loud."
Junpei glanced around Class 3-B. Someone near the back had started shouting over a card game, Mika was threatening to confiscate Junpei's abandoned drink, and Ryusei had somehow begun arguing about football with someone who did not play football.
Junpei nodded. "Fair."
Renjiro walked past him. This time, Junpei did not follow.
Good.
The upper stairwell remained empty when Renjiro arrived. Daylight entered through the broad window, and the noise from the school grounds reached him only as a distant mixture of voices and whistles.
He sat on the same step as yesterday and opened his lunchbox. Karaage. Rice. Vegetables. Tamagoyaki. The first several minutes passed exactly as he preferred them.
Then footsteps climbed from below.
Renjiro recognized the pace.
Reina appeared around the turn carrying bread and a carton of juice.
"You're here again."
"Yes."
She glanced at the steps. "Can I sit?"
Renjiro took another bite. "They're stairs."
Reina waited.
He finished chewing. "I don't own them."
A small smile appeared, and she sat two steps below him.
Neither spoke. Two minutes passed, then three. Reina opened her bread and ate without forcing conversation.
Renjiro found that considerably less irritating than most people would have expected.
Eventually, she glanced back. "Don't you feel awkward?"
"No."
"Sitting here without talking."
"No."
"You really don't like conversation."
"Not when there's nothing to say."
Reina considered that. "At least you're consistent."
Renjiro continued eating. After another quiet minute, she spoke again.
"The lights."
"What about them?"
"You're curious."
"Yes."
"But you don't seem worried."
"I'm not."
"What if something is actually wrong?"
"Then worrying before I know what it is won't fix it."
Reina went quiet. Renjiro closed the lunchbox after finishing and stood.
"Leaving already?"
"Yes."
"Class doesn't start for another ten minutes."
"I know."
He picked up the lunchbox.
"Kurogane-kun."
Renjiro stopped at the top of the stairs.
"If it happens again at my house?"
"Write down the exact time."
"And?"
"Record what happened."
"What should I do with it?"
"Whatever you want."
Reina blinked. "That's it?"
"Yes."
He started downstairs.
"You don't want me to tell you?"
Renjiro stopped after one step. "If you want to, you will. If you don't, it's your data."
Then he continued down without looking back.
✦ ✦ ✦
Physical education began at two.
Sprints.
Junpei reacted to the announcement as though the school had introduced public execution.
"I hate running."
Mika passed him while tying her hair back. "Running doesn't hate you."
"That somehow hurts more."
Renjiro stood in lane four. Daiki occupied lane five, while Ryusei took lane three.
The teacher called them forward.
Renjiro lowered himself into position. His rear foot settled at an angle slightly worse than optimal, and his center of gravity remained a little higher than it should have been. Nothing exaggerated enough to look deliberate—just inefficient enough.
There was no reason to win. Winning would produce attention. Attention would produce questions. Neither offered anything useful.
"Ready!"
The whistle blew.
Daiki launched forward. Ryusei followed almost immediately. Renjiro accelerated with them, but held back the full extension of his stride and allowed his upper body to rise earlier than proper sprint form demanded.
Fast enough. Not memorable.
Daiki crossed first. Ryusei second. Another student third. Renjiro fourth. Farther behind them, Junpei crossed the line with the expression of a man betrayed by his own lungs.
Renjiro accepted a bottle of water from the equipment table.
"Kurogane."
Daiki approached. "What?" Renjiro asked.
"Your form."
Renjiro drank. "What about it?"
"It's weird."
"Okay."
Daiki frowned. "You're tall. Your stride should be longer, and you're standing up too early. You'd probably be much faster if you fixed it."
"Probably."
"Then why don't you?"
Renjiro closed the bottle. "I don't need to."
Daiki waited. Renjiro waited too.
"Don't you want to know how fast you can run?"
"I already know."
That caught him. "Then why—"
"There's no reason to show everyone."
No arrogance. No challenge. Just an answer.
Renjiro walked away. Behind him, Ryusei asked, "What?"
Daiki answered after a pause. "Nothing."
Renjiro did not look back.
✦ ✦ ✦
At 3:08 p.m., every light in the corridor went out.
Not flickered. Out.
Several students reacted at once. Someone yelped, a bag hit the floor, and two seconds later emergency lighting activated along the walls, washing the corridor in dim white illumination.
"Don't run!"
Shizuka's voice cut through the confusion.
Renjiro remained where he was and listened. No electrical crack. No transformer noise. No smell of overheated wiring. No smoke. Emergency circuits functional.
His watch read 15:08.
Junpei appeared beside him. "I told you."
Renjiro kept his attention on the ceiling. "What?"
"Cyber ghost."
"That isn't a thing."
"You can't prove that."
"You can't prove it is."
Junpei pointed triumphantly. "Exactly."
"No. That's not how evidence works."
Renjiro started walking. Junpei followed.
"Where are you going?"
"Class."
"Wait."
"Why?"
"It's dark."
Renjiro stopped. The emergency lights clearly illuminated the corridor. He looked at Junpei.
Junpei looked back.
"Scared?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Junpei hesitated. "...I can't see properly."
Renjiro examined him for a second. "You should get your eyes checked."
"Kurogane!"
Renjiro continued toward the classroom. Behind him, Junpei muttered something impolite.
The main lights returned less than a minute later.
✦ ✦ ✦
5:21 p.m.
Renjiro opened his apartment door. "Tadaima."
Silence greeted him.
Shoes aligned. Bag down. Jacket away.
He entered his bedroom before changing clothes and woke the computer. The anomaly file appeared on the left monitor.
Three events from the previous night.
Renjiro added the school incidents beneath them.
07:42 — classroom lighting flicker.
09:13 — classroom projector interruption. No visible restart sequence.
15:08 — corridor lighting failure. Emergency circuit remained functional. School electrical maintenance ongoing.
Then a separate section.
External report — Shirakawa Reina
Approx. 22:15–22:20 previous night — bedroom light fluctuation; possible phone display disturbance. Time uncertain.
Renjiro reread the page. The school events had an obvious shared explanation available: reported electrical maintenance. His apartment did not. Reina's home did not necessarily have anything to do with either.
He opened the utility outage map and checked his area for the previous evening. Nothing significant. Telecommunications maintenance: nothing. Public electrical incident reports: nothing matching his building.
He checked the general district where Reina lived based on what he knew. Nothing useful.
Renjiro closed the browser. Still not enough.
He did not feel frustrated. He disliked incomplete systems, but incomplete information had only one solution.
More information.
Renjiro stood.
Dinner first.
✦ ✦ ✦
Curry simmered quietly on the stove.
Renjiro tasted the sauce. A little flat. He added a small amount of salt, stirred, and tried again.
"Okay."
His phone vibrated on the counter. He ignored it. The curry required another three minutes before the vegetables reached the texture he wanted.
The phone vibrated again. Renjiro finished stirring before checking the screen.
Junpei: Kurogane
Junpei: you play Eternal Frontier right
Renjiro read both messages and returned to the stove.
Another vibration.
Junpei: I KNOW YOU'RE ONLINE
Renjiro stared at the phone, then typed.
Renjiro: I'm cooking.
The response arrived instantly.
Junpei: carry me after dinner
Renjiro: No.
Junpei: BRO
Renjiro placed the phone facedown.
Done.
The curry was more important.
✦ ✦ ✦
At 8:47 p.m., Eternal Frontier occupied the right monitor.
Renjiro's character stood in the center of one of the game's largest cities, maximum level and wearing equipment that had required enough grinding that Junpei would have complained about it for several weeks.
Junpei did not know Renjiro's username. Renjiro intended to keep it that way.
The left monitor contained a code editor. He was halfway through correcting a small utility program when the room light flickered once.
His hand stopped above the keyboard.
20:51.
Renjiro opened the anomaly file, added the timestamp, then returned to the code.
Three minutes later, the right monitor froze. The game image stopped mid-animation while audio continued. The left monitor remained normal.
Renjiro watched. One second. Two. The game resumed.
20:54.
Another entry.
He opened the system logs. No driver failure. No application error. GPU normal. Network latency stable. Temperature normal.
Nothing.
"Hmm."
Renjiro leaned back. The problem was beginning to irritate him—not because it was frightening, but because it kept producing symptoms without useful evidence.
He opened one of the lower desk drawers. Electronic components filled several organizers: microcontrollers, spare cables, environmental sensors, a cheap power monitor, old development boards and parts left over from previous projects.
Renjiro placed several on the desk. If the anomaly insisted on repeating itself, then guessing was unnecessary.
He connected a voltage logger to the outlet. A small electromagnetic sensor went beside the computer, another near the window. The microcontroller received its own time source and wrote locally rather than relying entirely on the computer.
Renjiro opened a new project.
Timestamp. Voltage. Network status. Electromagnetic field strength. Temperature. Event threshold. Continuous logging.
His fingers moved quickly. A few minutes later, the first monitoring window came alive and numbers began moving across the screen.
Sampling interval. Correct. Clock synchronization. Correct. Logging path. Correct.
"Good."
He returned to the game.
The sensors continued watching the room.
✦ ✦ ✦
10:16 p.m.
Renjiro sat against the side of his bed reading manga when his phone vibrated. He turned the page. Another vibration followed. Still reading. A third arrived before he finally reached for it.
Reina: Kurogane-kun.
Reina: The lights flickered again.
Reina: 22:15.
Renjiro checked the current time. 22:16. Then the sensors.
Normal. Voltage stable. Electromagnetic field normal. Temperature unchanged.
He placed the phone back down. Reina had recorded the time. That was what he had suggested. Nothing else required action.
Renjiro turned the page.
Forty seconds later—
BEEP.
His head rose immediately.
A warning marker flashed on the monitoring program. At the same moment, the room light dimmed once and returned to normal.
The manga was already on the bed by the time Renjiro reached the desk.
Timestamp:
22:17:03
He expanded the graph. Voltage: stable. Network: stable. Temperature: no meaningful change.
Electromagnetic field—spike.
Short. Sharp. Far above the preceding baseline. Then gone.
Renjiro magnified the raw samples. One sensor. One event.
Interesting.
Not reliable.
Sensor error remained possible.
He connected a second electromagnetic module on the opposite side of the room, this one using a different microcontroller and separate data stream.
The phone vibrated again. Renjiro ignored it until the second sensor was running.
One minute. Two.
Nothing.
Only then did he check the screen.
Reina: Kurogane-kun?
Reina: Are you asleep?
Renjiro typed.
Renjiro: No.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Reina: Then?
Renjiro glanced at the graph.
Renjiro: Record it if it happens again.
Reina: That's it?
Renjiro: Yes.
A pause.
Reina: Did it happen at your place too?
Renjiro considered whether answering served any purpose. It did: external timestamp comparison.
Renjiro: Yes.
Reina: Time?
Renjiro: 22:17.
The typing indicator appeared, disappeared, then returned.
Reina: Two minutes apart.
Renjiro did not respond. Two minutes was potentially meaningful. It was also potentially nothing.
Reina: You think they're connected?
Renjiro: Don't know yet.
Reina: Did you find anything?
His gaze returned to the spike. One electromagnetic sensor. One unexplained event.
Renjiro: Not enough.
Several seconds passed.
Reina: Okay.
Renjiro placed the phone down. Conversation over.
He created a second graph beside the first.
Now he waited.
✦ ✦ ✦
At 11:31 p.m., both sensors had spent more than an hour producing almost perfectly ordinary data.
Renjiro had stopped watching them continuously. The anime on his right monitor was approaching the end of an episode, and the protagonist had just discovered that the heroine had been captured and was preparing to charge directly into an enemy base alone.
Renjiro stared.
"Idiot."
The character ignored three allies telling him exactly the same thing.
Of course.
Renjiro reached for his tea.
BEEP.
Sensor one.
A fraction of a second later—
BEEP.
Sensor two.
The room went black.
Not dimmed. Black.
The anime disappeared. The computer switched to battery power.
Renjiro remained still for half a second, then activated the phone flashlight and checked the monitoring window.
Both electromagnetic graphs had climbed almost simultaneously. High. Much higher than the 22:17 event.
He crossed to the breaker panel. Everything remained on. No trip. No heat. No burnt smell.
Renjiro opened the apartment door. The corridor lights were functioning normally, and a neighbor's television could be heard through one wall.
He closed the door and crossed to the balcony. The surrounding buildings remained lit. Streetlights below: normal. Traffic signals: normal. No visible outage.
Renjiro returned inside. Three seconds later, the apartment lights came back.
Time: 23:31:46.
He sat at the desk and opened the data.
Then stopped.
Voltage logger—normal.
Renjiro expanded the graph. No drop. Not even a brief one corresponding to the loss of light.
The outlet supply had remained within expected range while every visible light in his apartment had gone dark. His laptop had switched to battery power as though external electricity had disappeared, yet the electrical logger insisted it had not.
Renjiro read the graph again.
Same result.
Both independent electromagnetic sensors had recorded spikes. The voltage monitor had recorded no failure.
For the first time that night, Renjiro leaned closer to the screen.
Now that was useful.
His phone vibrated.
One message.
Reina: 23:31.
Nothing else. No question.
Renjiro looked from her timestamp to his data. Close enough that coincidence was becoming increasingly difficult to treat as the simplest explanation.
Not impossible.
Just less attractive.
He did not reply. Instead, he opened the anomaly file.
23:31:46 — localized apparent power loss. Breaker remained active. Corridor/buildings externally unaffected. Voltage logger recorded no corresponding supply failure. Two independent EM sensors registered near-simultaneous spikes.
Another line.
Shirakawa residence reported disturbance at approximately 23:31.
Renjiro rested his fingers on the keyboard, then added one more sentence.
Coincidence increasingly unlikely. Cause unknown.
He saved the file.
The phone remained silent.
Good.
Renjiro opened a terminal window. The current program was no longer enough.
He began writing another—not to explain the anomaly. Explanation could wait. First, he wanted to make it difficult for the next event to happen without leaving evidence behind.
✦ ✦ ✦
12:14 a.m.
Three independent electromagnetic sensors now monitored the apartment: one near the window, one beside the computer, and one close to the entrance. Renjiro had deliberately changed their orientation and separated the data channels. Each wrote its own timestamps locally. The voltage logger remained active, and the network monitor continued recording alongside them.
All normal.
He sat in front of the monitors for another minute. Nothing moved beyond ordinary environmental noise.
Renjiro closed the anime, returned the manga to its shelf, and carried the tea cup to the kitchen. Before shutting down the displays, he created a new folder.
The cursor blinked in the empty name field.
He considered it for less than a second.
ANOMALY
Enter.
Every relevant log, timestamp and note moved inside.
Renjiro checked the automated recording process one final time. The sensors would continue running while the displays slept.
Good.
He stood. No answer. Not yet.
That was acceptable. An answer built on bad data was worse than no answer at all.
Renjiro entered the bedroom and closed the door.
The apartment became quiet.
Minutes passed.
The monitoring program continued writing measurements into separate log files.
00:24:11 — NORMAL
00:25:34 — NORMAL
00:26:52 — NORMAL
Then—
00:27:08.184 — SENSOR A: EM SPIKE
00:27:08.181 — SENSOR B: EM SPIKE
00:27:08.186 — SENSOR C: EM SPIKE
Three independent readings, less than five milliseconds apart. No corresponding voltage loss. No network interruption. No light flicker.
Outside, Tokyo remained bright beneath the night. Inside the folder named ANOMALY, three new lines waited for morning.
End of Chapter 2