Hello

Apricot crouched low in the narrow tunnel, arms locked over her head as the earth convulsed around her. The ground shuddered so hard it seemed to breathe, dust spilled from the ceiling in trembling waves, peppering her hair and lashes. A heartbeat later, a low, rolling boom surged through the concrete, deep and wet, the kind of sound that didn’t just echo—it passed through you.

The tunnel lights spasmed once, twice, then gave out completely. The world collapsed into black, broken only by thin ribbons of daylight filtering through the storm drains above. The air thickened, warm with grit and the faint electric tang of burned circuitry.

Apricot’s heart pounded so hard it hurt. That wasn’t an accident. That was a bomb.
Her breath came sharp and shallow. Every instinct screamed to stay still, to hide—but smoke was seeping in, creeping along the walls like something alive.

Pull it together, she thought, clenching her jaw. You wanted the truth? Then move.

Her knees wobbled as she stood, the tremor in her limbs barely under control. The tunnel ahead stretched into shadow, but there—a faint gleam caught her eye. A ladder. Rusted, slick with condensation. Above it, a grate hung half-open, a sliver of blue sky cutting through the gloom.

She swallowed hard and grabbed the first rung. The metal was cold, biting through the dust on her palms. One breath. Then another. And she climbed—out of the dark, toward the noise and light of whatever waited above.

Apricot limped forward, the throb in her ankle flashing sharp with every uneven step. She reached for the ladder, the rungs slick beneath her fingers, and pulled herself upward through the damp air. Her breath came ragged, echoing faintly off the concrete walls. One final heave—and the grate gave way with a screech of metal.

She climbed into the light.

The alley beyond was chaos incarnate. Shattered brick and splintered glass littered the ground, and dust swirled like a living fog. Overhead, the sky was too bright, sunlight cutting through columns of greasy smoke that twisted up from the ruins. She hauled herself clear and let the grate fall shut with a hollow clang that seemed to mark the end of whatever nightmare she’d just crawled from.

But the nightmare had only changed shape.

The air hit her like a furnace—thick with the acrid sting of burnt chemicals and something stranger, metallic and electric, like overheated circuits. Each breath seared her throat. She staggered toward the alley’s mouth and froze.

Beyond, the street had become a warzone. The Okabe Central Bank’s stone façade was ripped open, its grand columns split and blackened, flames licking at the bones of its interior. Police lights stuttered over the debris, red and blue bleeding through the smoke in sick rhythm. Figures moved within it—officers dragging limp bodies, civilians stumbling through haze, sirens wailing in uneven bursts. The crowd that had once chanted and surged outside was gone; only fragments remained, ghosts in the ruin.

Apricot wiped soot from her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Was that… a bomb?” she whispered, barely recognizing her own voice.

It sounded absurd even as she said it. A bank robbery turned battlefield? What kind of thieves planted high-yield charges just to crack a vault? Her pulse pounded in her ears as possibilities unfurled, each more surreal than the last.

No, she thought, clutching her arm against her chest. This isn’t about money. It never was.

Somewhere deep inside, the reporter in her stirred again—trembling, terrified, but awake.

She remembered something her old journalism instructor used to bark whenever a student overcomplicated a story: “Boken’s Sword slices cleanest. The simplest answer’s usually the right one.”

But there was nothing simple about this.

Apricot clenched her fists, grounding herself in the pain radiating from her ankle. Focus. Her head was still ringing from the blast, and fear gnawed at her composure, but beneath it pulsed a sharper instinct—the need to witness. To record. She was the only reporter back here, behind the barricades, and that meant she had to act.

Her hands trembled as she lifted the camera. For a moment, the viewfinder showed only black. Panic fluttered up her spine—No, no, please don’t be broken— Then she realized the problem and almost laughed at herself. The lens cap was still on.

“Idiot,” she muttered, easing it off with careful fingers. She clipped it to the strap and brought the camera back to her eye.

She tried again.

Through the lens, the chaos became artfully composed—crisp and unreal. A police officer cradled a coughing child. Smoke coiled from a burning car. A shattered bank sign lay half-buried in ash. Apricot adjusted the focus, half-pressing the shutter. Click. The sound felt grounding, like a heartbeat she could control.

She steadied her breathing and panned toward the blown-out bank entrance. Two officers crouched near the doorway, their silhouettes cut against firelight, weapons raised. The smoke framed them like a painting of ruin. Click. Another perfect shot.

Moving carefully, she stepped sideways for a new angle. Her boot scraped glass. The camera rose again—framing the jagged hole in the bank’s wall, where darkness spilled out like ink. Emergency strobes painted the smoke in pulses of red and blue. She adjusted her aperture, leaning in—

Something flickered across the frame.

Apricot froze. A blur, like static, darted through the image—too fast, too fluid. She pulled back, scanning the alley with her bare eyes. Nothing but drifting embers and dust.

Her pulse quickened. She pressed her eye to the viewfinder again, sweeping the lens left to right. There—the shadows along a brick wall moved wrong, slipping against the rhythm of the flames. Like they were… reacting.

She adjusted the zoom, breath caught in her throat. The autofocus whirred softly. For an instant, the lens caught something that shouldn’t have been there—a suggestion of shape, of depth—then it was gone.

The camera clicked once more, almost by instinct.

A hazel eye filled the frame.

A human eye—bloodshot, wide—staring straight at her through the lens.

Apricot yelped, jerking back so fast the camera nearly slipped from her grasp. No one was near her. She spun, scanning the alley—nothing. Just brick, smoke, drifting dust, and the scrape of a cat bolting behind a dumpster.

Her pulse hammered. Slowly, she brought the camera back up, as if it were a live wire ready to bite her.

The hazel eye was still there. Impossibly close, too close—like it was inside the camera. It moved, rolling to focus on her, the pupil contracting. Then, against all sense, it smiled. A perfect ring of tiny white teeth curled around the iris, stretching into a grotesque grin.

Apricot’s breath caught. Her mind refused to process what she saw. Then it, whatever it was, crackled—an ugly burst of distortion that warped into a voice.

“H—e—l—l—o,” it sang, each syllable dragged like a broken toy.

Her scream tore loose before she could stop it. She hurled the camera.

The impact rang out sharp—a crunch of glass, a sick snap of metal, then silence.

Apricot froze. The sound echoed through her bones, louder than the blast that had shaken the city minutes ago. Sato’s camera.

Her heart stuttered. That wasn’t hers. That was his.

“Oh no… oh no no no,” she gasped, staggering forward.

The rush of adrenaline that had fueled her fear now twisted into guilt so sharp it nearly steadied her. Whatever she’d seen, whatever that had been, it couldn’t matter now. She had to see if the camera could still be saved.

She dropped to her knees beside the wreckage. The lens was crushed inward, spiderwebs of glass catching the sunlight in cruel little sparkles. Bits of circuitry and black plastic were scattered like entrails across the asphalt.

Her hands hovered over it, trembling. For a moment, the world narrowed to the soft whine of cooling electronics and the taste of dust on her tongue.

Her terror dulled to a hollow ache. “Sato’s gonna kill me…” she whispered, the words small, raw, and human against the impossible silence that followed.

Her breath came shallow, caught somewhere between disbelief and shame. She sank to her knees, glass crunching beneath her. Her fingers hovered uncertainly before she dared to touch it, lifting the ruined shell as if gentleness could undo the damage. A shard of glass bit into her fingertip; a bead of blood welled, glinting red in the dusty light. She didn’t even flinch.

“I… I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice cracking. The words came out small and helpless, lost in the hum of distant sirens. It felt like confessing to Sato himself—like he could hear her across the smoke-choked streets. He’d trusted her with this piece of his soul, and she’d destroyed it.

Her eyes stung, half from the acrid air, half from guilt that had nowhere to go. She bowed her head, clutching the broken camera against her chest like a dead bird—

“Don’t move.”

The voice was low. Calm. Too close.

Apricot froze, every muscle locking in place. The fear in her belly turned solid, heavy, cold.

She turned her head slightly, heart hammering so hard it almost drowned out the crunch of approaching boots.

A young man emerged from the smoke billowing from the bank’s emergency exit. He looked barely older than her—early twenties, maybe—but his stance was deliberate, controlled. Ash-brown hair clung to his forehead with sweat, and his amber eyes caught the firelight in flashes of metallic gold.

A pistol was trained squarely on her chest.

He advanced, step by measured step, boots crunching over shards of glass. The faint buzz of an earpiece mingled with the crackle of flame. A lightweight ballistic vest hugged his frame over a black shirt dusted with concrete, a fresh bruise darkening his cheekbone.

Apricot froze, her pulse pounding so hard it filled her ears. He looked like the kind of person you didn’t want to make nervous—a professional, composed under pressure. A thief, maybe, but not the reckless kind.

Even through the fear, she noticed he was handsome in that wrong, dangerous way that made trust feel like a bad bet.

Slowly, she raised her hands, the broken camera dangling from one wrist like a guilty secret. The man’s pistol never wavered as his eyes studied her—sharp, calculating, too focused. Up close, she caught the uneven dilation of his pupils, one refracting light strangely. Cybernetic enhancement? Aftershock trauma? She couldn’t tell, and she wasn’t sure which was worse.

He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing down the barrel of his gun. “Why,” he asked in a voice calm enough to chill her, “is a girl like you skulking around out here?”

The question was simple, but his tone carried weight—a test, not curiosity.

Apricot swallowed, her throat tight. “I… I’m a journalist,” she said, the words tumbling out shaky and small. Still on her knees, she lifted the camera instinctively as proof, only to glance down and remember what she’d done to it. Cracked lens, split casing. Her stomach turned. “I was covering the story. The robbery. I took the tunnels to get closer.”

He followed her movement, eyes flicking from her face to the ruined camera, then back. The faintest curve touched his lips—almost a smile, almost mockery. “Hell of a job you’re doing,” he said dryly. “Looks like you just trashed your gear.”

Heat rushed to Apricot’s face despite the gun leveled at her. Was he mocking her? She wanted to shrink into the pavement but forced herself to meet his gaze. “Something startled me,” she muttered, voice trembling but defiant. His eyes caught hers again—amber burning through the haze, too sharp.

“I… I can still salvage the memory card,” she blurted suddenly. It came out desperate, absurd, but it filled the silence between them. Anything to keep him talking. Anything to keep that trigger finger occupied.

The smirk lingered at the corner of his mouth as he studied her—like a man deciding whether to laugh, or to shoot.

The young man let out a low chuckle—a quiet, almost disbelieving sound that somehow made the moment worse. “You must think I’m stupid,” he said. The pistol dipped slightly, gesturing toward the open grate behind her. “You crawled up from the damn sewers. Not exactly how the press rolls in.”

Apricot’s stomach twisted. He didn’t think she was a journalist—he thought she was something else. An infiltrator. An informant. Maybe worse.

“I’m not armed,” she blurted out, voice shaking as she raised the broken camera higher. “And I’m definitely not a cop.”

He snorted, a sound with no real humor in it. “Yeah? And if you were, you’d tell me, right?”

He stepped in close enough for her to smell the cordite still clinging to his clothes. The muzzle of the gun rose again until it filled her vision—black, endless, waiting. Apricot’s whole body tensed. Her heart slammed against her ribs so hard it hurt.

“There’s one way to be sure,” he said quietly. His eyes flicked down her body, quick, assessing, and then back to her face. “Strip.”

Apricot froze. “W—what?”

“Shirt off,” he repeated, tone flat but his jaw tight with restrained nerves. “Let’s see if you’re wired, sweetheart.”

The word hit her like a slap. Heat flooded her face, part fury, part terror. The alley felt smaller now, pressing in from all sides—the walls, the smoke, the weight of his stare.

She wanted to scream at him, to tell him how insane this was, but the gun never wavered. He didn’t look like he wanted to hurt her—he looked like he had to be sure.

“Go on,” he said, eyes narrowing, impatience creeping into his voice. “Prove it.”

Apricot’s throat was dry, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Slowly, she lowered one trembling hand to the hem of her blouse. Her fingers brushed the fabric, damp with sweat and grime. If he sees I’m clean, she told herself, maybe he’ll believe me. Maybe he’ll let me go.

Her breath quivered as she began to lift the edge of the blouse. It’s just your dignity, she thought bitterly. And that’s worth less than your life.

But another part of her rebelled—rage and panic clawing up through the fear. Her throat burned, her vision blurred. She hadn’t fought through smoke, chaos, and death to end up here—humiliated, cornered, being treated like a criminal… or worse, a victim.

Her trembling fingers found the first button. The tiny click as it slipped free was deafening. Then another. The sound echoed in her skull, each one like a countdown. One. Two.

She kept her gaze fixed on the young man’s face. If she saw even a flicker of lechery—one twitch of distraction—she’d bolt. She didn’t know how far she’d get, but she’d run.

“Stop.”

The word cut through the air like a blade.

Apricot froze. The blouse hung half-open, the white of her camisole catching the light, her breath quick and shallow. He had turned his face aside, jaw tight, eyes flicking down then away. For a heartbeat she thought—was that color on his cheeks? The pistol wavered slightly, lowering by an inch or two.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, low and rough, as if forcing the words out.

Apricot stared, unsure she’d heard him right. Was this a trick? A taunt? Yet his posture had changed—less rigid, more human. His shoulders weren’t squared like before. For the first time, he looked uneasy. This one has a conscience, she thought, the idea almost absurd in the moment.

Cautiously, she let the fabric fall back into place, clutching the edges closed with both hands. The cool air brushed her damp skin, making her shiver. Her pulse was still racing, but the panic had dulled to a cold, shaky anger.

“Turn around,” he ordered.

She hesitated, then obeyed, moving slow, her every step echoing in the narrow alley. Facing the brick wall, she shut her eyes and waited for the shot. If it was coming, she’d rather not see it.

Instead, there was a metallic groan behind her—the scrape of hinges, the heavy swing of a door.

“Inside,” he said. “Move.”

The command was quiet, but it carried weight. Apricot stepped toward the open doorway and the darkness waiting beyond.
The young man had pulled open a steel door recessed into the bank’s rear wall—a maintenance entry or fire exit, its paint scorched and peeling from the blast. He gestured with the pistol, silent but clear: inside.

Red emergency lights pulsed in the hall beyond.

She hesitated. Stepping into that gutted building with an armed stranger made her stomach clench—but staying outside felt just as dangerous. If he’d meant to kill her, he’d have done it already.

A grim little voice whispered: You’re his hostage now. Play along.

She swallowed and stepped through.

The air changed instantly—thick, metallic, heavy with smoke and heat. The young man followed, pulling the door shut with a clang that swallowed the city’s chaos. Silence rushed in, broken only by distant crackling fire and the hum of failing generators.

Apricot moved carefully down the corridor. Flickering crimson light stretched ahead, walls streaked with soot and warped emergency signage. The air tasted of melted plastic and ozone.

Her heart pounded against her ribs, each beat an uneven echo in the dark. Fear still ruled her body, but something colder had begun to stir—focus. The reporter inside her refused to die quietly.

She studied him from the corner of her eye. He kept a measured distance, weapon lowered but ready. His movements were clean, deliberate. No tremor, no wasted motion. Not a panicked looter. Not a kid playing soldier.

He’s done this before, she thought. Maybe too many times.

He nudged her with the gun barrel. “Why the smile?” he asked quietly.

Apricot hadn’t realized she was smiling at all. It was a faint thing, the absurd realization that she was living the very story she intended to write sparking a kind of hysterical giddiness in her. She quickly wiped the expression off her face. “I-I’m not… It’s nothing.”

He made a low sound, somewhere between annoyance and suspicion. “You get off on this or something? Being a hostage?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “What? N-no!” she protested. She risked a glance back at him and saw he was studying her intently, as if she were a puzzle.

She shook her head vigorously. “Look, I’m just nervous. I laugh when I’m nervous sometimes.” It was a feeble defense, but he seemed to consider it. He didn’t reply, only gestured for her to keep moving down the corridor.

Apricot bit her lip. The truth was, buried under the terror was a twisted kernel of excitement. She was in the middle of it all. If she survived tonight, she’d have one hell of a story; maybe even her ticket out of the minor leagues of journalism. But she sure as hell wasn’t about to admit that to him.