The world slipped away.

  When I opened my eyes again, I was standing on nothing.

  A boundless expanse of shifting, glowing violet stretched in every direction, a liminal sea of starlight suspended in an endless sky. The "ground" was a barely-there shimmer beneath my feet, like walking on gss that reflected gaxies. Each breath I took felt weightless, soaked in the scent of ozone and something ancient, like burnt feathers and forgotten magic. The silence was so complete it pressed against my skin, broken only by the slow, distant sound of a heartbeat.

  Ba-dump.

  I looked down and froze. Gone were the soft silver locks, the nimble fingers suited to a bowstring, the faint magical warmth that pulsed through my tail. I wasn’t Mashiro anymore.

  I was Shimizu Mikan again. Just me. Just a college girl. My reflection, distorted across the gssy void, wore a pin hoodie with a faded design peeling off the front, baggy jeans frayed at the cuffs, and scuffed sneakers. My hair was tied in a loose bun, messy strands tickling my cheek. In my hand was my old phone, slightly cracked at the corner, overloaded with games and covered in sparkly cat stickers I had long outgrown but never removed.

  The screen lit up.

  Luminous Dream.

  That familiar spsh screen shimmered gently for a moment, nostalgic, almost comforting. Then, suddenly, it glitched. The logo twitched, fractured, and burst into pixeted embers that floated upward and vanished, leaving my reflection and the violet void behind.

  I raised my head. She was waiting there. The real Mashiro.

  Tall. Unreal. She looked just as she had in the gacha spsh art, her waist-length white hair flowing like river silk in a wind that didn’t exist, her silver-white cloak rippling softly around an intricate bck-and-violet outfit adorned with faintly glowing runes.

  Her fox ears were perfectly sculpted, twitching with supernatural grace, and her sharp eyesible shade of pink glowed like twin crescent moons. Her skin was pale as moonlight, untouched by shadow. She radiated presence, as if she didn’t just exist in this pce, but defined it.

  And behind her, the dragon. It was huge, eclipsing the stars behind it like a living eclipse, its skeletal wings unfolding like cracked cathedral windows. Its body was draped in decaying midnight scales, ancient bones visible beneath torn flesh.

  Veins of violet fme pulsed from its hollow chest, and silver chains etched with runic script bound its massive limbs and serpentine tail. Its eyes… were twin caverns of ghost-light, staring directly into mine.

  The air around it trembled like gravity didn’t know what to do.

  The real Mashiro stepped toward me, feet gliding soundlessly across the void, her expression unreadable. Not cold. Not cruel. But heavy like someone burdened with the weight of too much knowledge. Each movement shimmered with elegance, her every breath steady and deliberate.

  “You’re starting to remember,” she said.

  Her voice rippled through the space, echoing like a lulby whispered by ten voices at once. Soft, haunting, and uncomfortably familiar.

  My throat dried. “Why are you—”

  Mashiro didn’t answer immediately. She gnced past me, toward some unseen horizon.

  “You weren’t supposed to become me,” she said, voice dipping into something mournful. “But someone rerolled the story.”

  Ba-dump. The heartbeat echoed louder now. Closer. A pulse in the air. The dragon’s chains rattled faintly. I took a shaky step back, my human body suddenly feeling terribly small in this pce. “Who rerolled it? What does that even mean?”

  Mashiro raised her hand and pointed. At the dragon. It didn’t move. But something in my mind shuddered, like a lock snapping open.

  “The seal broke when you wished to protect. That was your pull.”

  The dragon’s voice wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling booming inside me, rippling across my bones, scraping gently behind my eyes like the memory of a nightmare.

  Mashiro met my gaze again.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you’re the one who spun the gacha. You pulled something no one else could.”

  She pced a hand softly over my chest, where my heart should be. A ripple burst through the void. I could feel something there. Sleeping. Coiled. Watching.

  “You’re not just a pyer anymore, Mikan,” she said gently.

  “You’re part of the story.”

  Behind her, the dragon unfurled its wings fully. Its body blurred at the edges, as if caught between real and dream. Stars vanished in its silhouette, and the air rippled like heat distortion. Mashiro stepped back, her glowing figure beginning to dissolve into trailing ribbons of white and pink light.

  “Good luck,” she said. Her voice was soft.

  And then, the world shattered. The void cracked like gss around me, breaking into glowing shards that scattered like fallen stars. A wind, sudden and freezing roared into existence. I was falling.

  Falling back.

  Natsumikan