Z-69 stood in the middle of that gray, empty space with a sketchbook in one hand and a bag of premium beef jerky in the other.
Three boys lay scattered across the rooftop behind him, groaning softly or not moving at all.
The scene should have felt absurd.
Instead, it felt strangely still.
The whole world had gone quiet again after the violence, as if the simulation itself had paused to watch what would happen next.
In front of him, the girl remained frozen for a moment.
She was the only thing on the rooftop that didn’t look like it belonged in a dead photograph.
The sky was gray.
The railings were gray.
The schoolyard below looked like it had been rubbed over with charcoal.
But around her, there was still that faint, impossible hint of color.
Soft gold.
Not bright enough to be called a glow. Not dramatic enough to feel supernatural. It was simply there, woven into her presence like a secret the world had failed to erase.
Z-69 held the jerky bag out a little farther.
“Want some beef jerky?”
For one second, she only stared at him.
Then she laughed.
The sound landed so cleanly in his ears that it almost made him frown.
It didn’t come through warped or flattened the way every other voice in this town did. It didn’t hiss like radio static or drag like broken tape. It was clear, light, and startlingly real.
That alone made it dangerous.
The girl bent to pick up the brush near her feet, dusted it off against her skirt, then took the sketchbook from his hand.
Her fingers moved carefully, but not timidly. There was a precision to the way she handled her things, as if she valued them far more than they appeared to be worth.
“Premium beef jerky…” she repeated, glancing at the bag. “The cafeteria one?”
Z-69 gave a small nod.
“It’s good.”
She looked at him again, then at the three boys behind him, then back at the jerky.
“You beat up three people,” she said, “and then your first idea was to offer me a snack?”
Her mouth curved upward.
“That’s such a weird way to approach someone.”
Z-69 said nothing.
She tilted her head slightly, studying him with open curiosity.
“Usually people ask, ‘Are you okay?’ first.”
The breeze lifted a few strands of her hair. For a brief moment, the gold around her thinned and then gathered again.
Z-69 watched the change without comment.
He had already learned enough to know that answering too quickly in this world was often a mistake.
Naturally, the Tower didn’t let him keep the silence for long.
A translucent window appeared in front of his vision.
SHE’S SMILING AND WAITING FOR YOUR RESPONSE
Time Remaining: 00:30
- “Girl, shut up and start eating.”
- “Don’t misunderstand. It’s not like I like you or anything.”
- “They say the stomach is the shortest road to a woman’s heart.”
Z-69 stared at the options.
The letters pulsed faintly, as if they were alive.
Not moving exactly. Breathing.
The timer started to fall.
00:28
00:27
He examined the first option and could almost see the outcome: the air going flat, her smile disappearing, the conversation dying on the spot.
The second option made something in the back of his mind stir. A concept. A role. A type of character.
A Tsundere that is.
He knew what it meant.
He had no idea why he knew thought.
The third option was awful.
Embarrassing, transparent, almost offensively corny.
Which was precisely why it had the highest chance of working.
Z-69 exhaled slowly through his nose.
The Tower really had no shame.
He fixed his gaze on the third line.
The letters brightened. A prickling sensation ran from behind his eyes into the base of his skull.
Click.
The choice box vanished.
He looked at the girl and delivered the line with the same expression he might have used to announce a death sentence.
“They say the stomach is the shortest road to a woman’s heart.”
The girl blinked.
Z-69 continued, perfectly calm.
“The jerky is just an excuse.”
A short pause.
“An excuse to talk to you.”
Silence.
Then the girl burst into laughter, louder this time, hand rising to cover her mouth.
“You cannot be serious.”
Her eyes curved with amusement.
“How are you saying something that cheesy with a face like that?”
Z-69 didn’t answer.
He wasn’t sure what answer would even fit.
The girl shook her head, still smiling, then looked down at the jerky again.
“But…” she said more softly, “thank you.”
There was a slight change in the air after that. The tension from the fight didn’t disappear, but it loosened enough for breathing to feel easier.
She held the sketchbook close to her chest for another second, then lowered herself back to where she had been sitting before everything went wrong. After settling down, she patted the empty space beside her.
“Come on,” she said. “Since you’ve already opened with premium beef jerky.”
Z-69 walked over and sat down, though he left a careful amount of distance between them. Not too far to seem cold. Not close enough to crowd her.
The girl opened the bag, took one strip, and bit into it.
The moment she started chewing, her eyes widened slightly.
“Oh.”
She swallowed, then looked at the strip in her hand as if reassessing it.
“It’s actually good.”
A beat later, she seemed to remember herself and turned toward him.
“Right. I’m Jenny.”
Z-69 repeated the name silently in his head.
Jenny.
Simple. Ordinary.
And yet in this monochrome town, it felt attached to that impossible trace of gold.
“Raito.” he replied.
Jenny smiled faintly.
“Raito…” She rolled the name around once, testing its sound. “That sounds kind of cool.”
Then she added, almost teasing, “It sounds like the name of someone from an anime.”
A familiar word.
Another concept without context.
Z-69 knew what anime was.
He knew the type of tone she meant.
He understood the joke immediately.
But the memory behind that understanding remained blank.
He let the pause linger for a moment.
“Maybe.”
Jenny laughed under her breath.
“That’s such a vague answer.”
She didn’t seem bothered by it, though. If anything, she appeared to find his lack of normal social responses amusing rather than uncomfortable.
She took out a pencil, opened the sketchbook across her knees, and looked at him with renewed interest.
“Raito,” she said, “can I draw you?”
Z-69 almost said no.
The refusal rose to his lips on instinct. Staying unobserved felt safer. Being studied felt dangerous.
Then the HUD appeared again.
JENNY WANTS TO DRAW YOU
Time Remaining: 00:30
- “Sure, but you have to make me handsome.”
- “Sure, but it’s not free.”
- “No. Don’t draw me.”
The countdown started.
00:29
00:28
Option three matched Raito’s instincts. Hide. Deflect. Reduce interaction.
That was exactly why Z-69 discarded it.
Option two would prolong the conversation, but in a direction that felt needlessly awkward.
Option one was stupid.
Which meant it was probably the right choice.
He selected it.
Click*.*
He looked at Jenny and said, “Sure.”
Then, after the briefest pause, “But you have to make me handsome.”
Jenny blinked, then stared at him like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or check if he was serious.
He was completely serious.
Or at least, his face was.
That made it worse.
A moment later she laughed again, shoulders shaking lightly.
“You really are strange.”
She lightly tapped the end of the pencil against the sketchbook.
“No promises,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”
Then she started drawing.
Her pencil moved with quick, practiced confidence. No hesitation, no repeated corrections, no searching for the line. She sketched the way some people breathed, easily, naturally, as if the hand and the thought behind it were the same thing.
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And while she drew, she talked.
Not because she was nervous. Not to fill silence for herself.
It felt more like she genuinely believed silence should be shared with words rather than left empty.
“What class are you in?”
“12A2.”
“Oh, same grade.” Her pencil kept moving. “I’m in 12A10.”
She glanced up at him, then back down.
“It’s weird. I’ve been here for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”
“Probably because I’m easy to miss.”
Jenny smiled at that.
“Maybe.”
The pencil scratched lightly over paper.
“Where do you live? Near the forest? Or near the lake?”
“Not far.”
“That’s vague too.”
She adjusted the angle of the page and continued sketching.
“The lake is nice,” she said. “On sunny days the water looks—”
She stopped.
Only for a fraction of a second.
Then she corrected herself.
“…No, I guess not.”
Her voice had gone quieter.
“You probably see it as gray.”
Z-69 turned to look at her fully.
Jenny didn’t meet his eyes. She kept drawing, but the movement of the pencil had slowed.
The wind brushed across the rooftop again.
The question formed in his mind immediately.
How did she know that?
Not color blindness. Not depression. Not metaphor.
The world in Raito’s eyes was truly colorless. That was not information she should have had.
He watched her face.
No visible panic. No obvious lie.
Only a slight tightening around the fingers holding the pencil.
Jenny looked up after another moment and caught him staring.
Then she smiled again, smaller this time, gentler, but also more careful.
“You really don’t talk much.” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t mind.”
She lowered her eyes to the paper.
“I can talk enough for both of us.”
There was no resentment in her tone. No passive-aggressive edge. If anything, she sounded relieved.
As though his silence created room she could safely stand in.
The sketch finished quickly after that.
Jenny tore the page free and held it out toward him.
On the paper, she had drawn him in a few swift lines: dark hair, hoodie, that distant, watchful expression he apparently wore even when he wasn’t trying.
The proportions were simple, but not careless. In the empty space behind his shoulder, she had drawn a thin streak of light.
Not enough to be called a bolt.
Just enough to suggest one.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Handsome enough?”
Z-69 took the paper.
Still black and white.
But the eyes in the drawing felt wrong in a way that made him linger. Not distorted. Not hostile. Just… incomplete in a deliberate way, as if she had sensed something behind them and chosen not to name it.
“Acceptable.” he said.
Jenny laughed. “That’s your version of a compliment, huh?”
Z-69 looked out across the town beyond the school railing.
Gray rooftops. Gray trees. Gray road cutting through everything like a scar.
Jenny followed his gaze.
“You feel like someone who won’t stay here long.” she said.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then, quietly, “I’m just passing through.”
Jenny nodded as if that made perfect sense.
“Maybe,” she said. “But even people who pass through leave traces.”
Before he could decide whether that line mattered, the bell rang below.
The sound sliced through the rooftop air.
Jenny made a face.
“Seriously?”
She closed the sketchbook with obvious reluctance.
“Lunch is way too short.”
She packed her things quickly, then rose to her feet.
“My homeroom teacher is going to kill me if I’m late again.”
She hesitated for a moment, then looked down at him with that same soft gold still wrapped around her like a stubborn contradiction.
“See you later, okay?”
Then she left.
Just like that.
Her footsteps faded into the stairwell, and the rooftop returned to its old dead quiet.
Only Z-69 remained, along with the three boys sprawled across the concrete and the cold breeze moving over the roof.
The pressure in his chest shifted almost immediately after she disappeared.
Raito’s emotions crept back in like groundwater through cracked stone.
Not overwhelming.
Not yet.
But there.
Z-69 rose slowly and turned toward the stairs. Before leaving, he looked once more at the sketch in his hand.
It should have been entirely black and white.
Yet for a fraction of a second, in the drawn eyes, he thought he saw a tiny stain of gold.
He blinked.
It was gone.
He let out a small, amused breath.
“What an interesting girl.”
Ring. Ring. Ring.
An alarm echoed in the small bedroom.
Z-69 opened his eyes.
A gray-white ceiling. Thin morning light leaking through the window.
A new day.
And he was still here.
In this distorted, monochrome, absurd world where everything ran like a dating simulation.
He lay still for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling.
No sign the trial was nearing an end.
He sighed.
“Looks like… this one’s going to be long.”
He got up, washed quickly, and left the house.
Evergreen High.
Z-69 entered class like a ghost.
No one looked at him. No one greeted him. Even the teacher didn’t call his name.
He sat in his usual seat, back row, by the window.
Class began.
But through Raito’s eyes, the classroom looked like a broken painting.
The teacher’s voice played, but the sound was warped like an old cassette tape.
On the blackboard, the white chalk formulas looked like they were melting, symbols bending and warping.
The students around him were gray silhouettes, like TV static.
No faces.
No color.
Only Jenny was different.
The thought slid through him.
And strangely, the only thing Z-69 looked forward to now… was lunch.
Because that was when he could see her again.
Jenny.
Just thinking her name made this gray world easier to endure by a fraction.
So he acted.
Z-69 stood.
“Teacher, may I go to the restroom?”
The teacher didn’t even look back, just nodded mechanically.
Z-69 walked out.
And didn’t return.
“12A10…” he muttered.
“If I remember correctly.”
It didn’t take long.
He stopped outside her classroom and crouched, peering through the small window.
Inside was the same gray scene: students, desks, chalkboard, colorless.
But at the back of the room, by the window, a pale gold halo.
Jenny.
She had her head lowered, pencil moving across her sketchbook.
Z-69 couldn’t tell what subject the teacher was teaching. The warped symbols on the board resembled math.
This clearly wasn’t art class.
Jenny still drew anyway.
A warm sensation rose in his chest—
then—
a sharp pain stabbed deep inside his mind.
An image flared.
No.
A memory.
A window.
But not a classroom window.
Outside: a ruined world, collapsed buildings, distant smoke, a sky thick with gray dust.
By the window sat a girl with shoulder-length hair.
A notebook in her hand.
A drawing pen.
She was focused on the view, so he couldn’t see her face clearly.
A voice spoke.
A man’s voice.
His voice.
“Don’t you think spending time drawing a ruined world like this… is pointless?”
The girl laughed softly.
“And you?”
“Don’t you think standing there watching me… is pointless?”
She patted the space beside her.
“Come here.”
“Sit with me.”
The next moment, Z-69 realized he was sitting beside her.
Wind poured through the broken window, carrying dust and the smell of burned metal.
The girl kept staring outside.
“I know it’s pointless…”
She let out a quiet breath.
“It’s just…”
“Sometimes I wish I could draw this world again… back when it was at its most beautiful.”
She turned.
“And you?”
“What do you think?”
For a split second, Z-69’s heart beat faster.
Then—
horror rolled over him.
The girl’s face…
didn’t exist.
It was pure static.
A bottomless, endless void.
Exactly like everyone in Evergreen appeared through Raito’s eyes.
The lunch bell rang.
The hallucination shattered.
In the final instant before the memory disappeared, Z-69 saw
the girl’s face.
And Jenny.
Two images overlapping.
A headache exploded behind his eyes.
The world spun.
Nausea surged up hard enough to choke him.
Z-69 jerked upright and sprinted for the restroom.
Inside Jenny’s classroom, she suddenly looked up.
She turned toward the hallway window.
She only caught a glimpse of Raito running past then vanishing.
In the restroom, Z-69 vomited.
Once.
Then again.
Until his stomach was nearly empty.
Finally, he straightened slowly.
He splashed cold water on his face. It ran down his neck.
He gripped the sink with both hands and looked into the mirror.
The reflection was distorted like water stirred by wind.
“What the hell…”
“What just happened?”
The question looped in his head.
And it dragged others behind it.
Who was that girl?
Why did Jenny resemble her?
And why did a character inside a Tower trial feel this familiar?
Z-69 exhaled.
“Maybe…”
“Raito’s body can’t handle my memories.”
Even that explanation didn’t settle him.
A few seconds inside that hallucination and he’d lost far more time than he should have.
At least no one had seen him.
With his skull pounding and his stomach reset to empty, Z-69 forced himself toward the cafeteria.
He picked up a tray.
His hands still shook slightly.
Right then a warm gold streak slid into the space beside him.
Jenny.
She stood there holding her own tray, smiling exactly like yesterday.
“Raito!”
“What a coincidence—we met again.”
“Do you want to sit together?”
Z-69 looked at her.
And the moment Jenny appeared…
the unpleasant pressure in his head dissolved.
As if someone had shut off a storm.
“She really showed up at the perfect time.” He thought.
The HUD flashed.
SHE WANTS TO EAT LUNCH WITH YOU
Time Remaining: 00:30
- “No. I like eating alone.”
- “Are you stalking me?”
- “Sure. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Z-69 barely needed to think.
If Jenny left, he’d return to what he’d felt earlier.
He didn’t want that.
He locked his gaze on option 3.
Click.
“Sure.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jenny blinked. “Really?”
“How did you know I’d come to the cafeteria today?”
“Intuition.”
Jenny pulled out a chair and sat across from him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
While they ate, she talked about everything.
Teachers.
The art club.
Paintings she wanted to make.
Then she paused, looking at Z-69’s tray.
“You eat a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“You like food?”
Z-69 stared at a chicken nugget.
And suddenly remembered floor 10 of Crimeria where “food” had been chemical imitation, something that made him want to vomit.
“Yes.” he answered.
Jenny smiled.
“Then tomorrow I’ll take you to the bakery in town.”
“The pastries there—”
“You said bakery?”
Z-69 cut in.
His face was deadly serious.
Jenny nodded. “Yeah. It’s really good.”
“You should come with—”
Z-69 leaned forward and grabbed her hand.
His eyes lit up like someone who’d discovered treasure.
“Of course.”
“We’re going.”
In his peripheral vision, the HUD flickered.
A choice.
He didn’t even read it.
He skipped straight through, selecting YES.
The HUD blinked once, almost like it was protesting then disappeared.
Jenny stared at the hand holding hers.
Her cheeks turned faintly pink.
The gold around her brightened noticeably.
Not imagination.
A real change.
Z-69 realized he’d gone too far.
He released her hand immediately and looked away.
“Ahem…”
“Sorry.”
“I got… too excited.”
Jenny didn’t look upset.
She looked amused.
“Yay.”
“Then we’re going tomorrow.”
She lowered her head and kept eating, voice softening.
“Thank you.”
Z-69 looked at her.
“For what?”
Jenny shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“It just… feels like I should.”
Z-69 didn’t push further.
But a strange thought surfaced.
Maybe Jenny wasn’t just a character in this “game.”
Maybe…
she was something else.
The third morning began with the same alarm sound.
Z-69 opened his eyes to the same pale gray ceiling, weak daylight leaking through the curtains, and the immediate disappointment of realizing he was still here.
Still in the room.
Still in Raito’s body.
Still inside the Tower’s monochrome farce.
He lay still for several seconds, staring upward and listening to the ordinary sounds of a normal morning, the kind of sounds that only felt unnatural because of how hard this world tried to be ordinary.
Then he sat up, washed, dressed, and left for school.
Evergreen High looked exactly the same as the day before.
That in itself was suffocating.
The classes were no better.
The teacher’s voice dissolved into warped, meaningless sound. The chalk writing on the board looked unstable, as if the symbols might melt if he stared too long. The students around him remained gray forms with faces the world refused to finish rendering.
He sat through it all without trying to force comprehension.
There was no point.
And somewhere in the middle of the lesson, he became aware of something faintly ridiculous:
He was waiting for lunch.
Not because of food.
Because of Jenny.
That realization sat in his chest for a while, uncomfortable but undeniable.
When the opportunity came, he stood.
“Teacher, may I go to the restroom?”
The teacher nodded without looking at him.
Z-69 left the classroom, walked into the hallway, and kept going.
The corridor outside that room was quiet. The polished floor reflected pale light from the windows, and the air smelled faintly of paper and cleaning solution.
Soon he reached class 12A10 again.
Z-69 crouched and peered through the window.
Inside, the students were lively. It looked like a self-study period, small groups chatting, comparing homework, trading gossip.
But in the back corner by the window, Jenny sat alone.
Head lowered. Pencil moving gently.
She didn’t react to the noise.
Then a male student approached her desk.
Jenny looked up immediately.
And smiled.
The shift was smooth enough to be unsettling.
She spoke to him politely, nodding at the right moments, even laughed once. Nothing in her expression seemed forced if you only glanced at it.
Then, the moment the boy left the smile disappeared.
Not slowly.
Not with a sigh.
It simply switched off.
Her eyes went back to the page. Her pencil resumed moving.
The rest of the room ceased to matter.
Z-69 stayed perfectly still.
That was new.
Jenny wasn’t just quiet. She knew how to perform normal interaction when necessary, then discard it the instant it stopped being useful.
He filed the observation away.
On the page beneath her hand, he could make out the shape of a tree.
Large.
Leafless.
Its branches stretched upward through the blankness of the paper like black veins.
Something about the image tugged faintly at the back of his mind, though no memory attached itself to the feeling.
The lunch bell rang.
Z-69 left before anyone could notice him standing there.
As expected, the cafeteria became the meeting point again.
Jenny found him with almost suspicious precision, tray in hand, smile easy and warm.
They sat together.
He ate.
She talked.
Still the same about teachers, art club, things she wanted to paint, small gossip about classmates he couldn’t distinguish anyway.
The conversation flowed around him rather than demanding much from him, and for the most part, he let it.
This time, though, there was something different hanging beneath the ordinary rhythm.
An expectation.
After school, they were supposed to go somewhere.
The bakery.
Jenny brought it up again near the end of lunch, as if checking whether he had changed his mind.
He hadn’t.
Whether because the Tower wanted him to go or because he wanted to observe her further made no practical difference.
When the final bell rang, he found her waiting near the school gate exactly where she said she would be.
She was leaning against the iron fence with her sketchbook in hand. When she saw him, she straightened and waved.
“Raito!”
The name came to him more naturally from her than from the world itself.
They started walking through town together.
Jenny did most of the talking.
She pointed things out as they passed them, the library, a used bookstore, the road leading toward the lake, a corner shop she said had terrible coffee but good candy.
Her tone was light, but not empty. She talked like someone trying to stitch small pieces of the world together before they could come apart.
Z-69 walked half a step behind her, listening and memorizing.
Evergreen remained gray.
Sidewalks, shop windows, parked cars, pedestrians, everything still looked rubbed down into shades of ash.
Only Jenny carried that faint trace of color with her.
They stopped in front of a bakery with large glass windows and a little bell above the door. The moment they stepped inside, warmth wrapped around them.
Butter.
Sugar.
Fresh bread.
The smell hit Z-69 hard enough for his stomach to tighten.
Jenny noticed immediately.
“Wow,” she said, glancing sideways at him. “You really do like food.”
Z-69 said nothing.
That was answer enough.
The display case was filled with pastries he couldn’t properly see but could absolutely smell.
Fruit fillings, sugar glaze, warm dough, butter-rich layers.
Jenny leaned in to inspect them with bright, focused attention, like this was a serious artistic decision rather than choosing dessert.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Anything good.”
Jenny looked over her shoulder at him and laughed.
“That’s not helpful at all.”
She chose two pastries for them and led him to a small table by the window.
Inside the bakery, the lighting was warm enough that the world almost felt less hostile.
Outside, Evergreen remained gray and distant through the glass.
Jenny cut into her pastry, took a bite, and closed her eyes briefly in satisfaction.
“Mm.”
She swallowed and looked out the window.
“Life still has a little hope left.”
Z-69 watched her for a moment.
“You say that a lot.”
Jenny looked back at him.
“Hope?”
He nodded.
She turned her fork slowly between her fingers.
“If I stop saying it,” she said quietly, “I feel like it might disappear.”
The line should have sounded forced.
Instead, it landed with the fragile honesty of something she had repeated to herself many times before.
Z-69 didn’t answer.
Jenny seemed to accept that.
A few moments later, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pencil, then held it toward him.
“Try drawing something.”
Z-69 looked at the pencil, then at her.
“Why?”
“Because I want to see what you’d draw.”
She said and looked at him with eyes like a puppy waiting for its owner to throw a ball.
Again, the HUD appeared.
JENNY IS WAITING FOR YOU TO DRAW SOMETHING
Time Remaining: 00:30
- Draw a heart.
- Draw Jenny.
- Don’t draw.
Z-69 stared at the options and sighed inwardly.
This Tower is doing it on purpose.
The third was eliminated immediately.
He couldn’t refuse that look of Jenny.
The second carried far too many ways to go wrong.
He wasn’t even confident he could draw a circle.
Which left the first.
Ridiculous. Manageable. Harmless.
He selected it.
Jenny slid a napkin toward him.
Z-69 took the pencil and, with the awkward seriousness of someone defusing a bomb, drew a heart.
It was terrible.
Lopsided. Uneven. A shape that looked as though it had been assembled under protest by someone who knew the concept of romance only from hostile documentation.
Jenny stared at it.
Then she laughed so hard she had to put a hand over her mouth.
“Oh no,” she said between breaths. “That’s amazing.”
Z-69 frowned slightly.
“It’s a heart.”
“It is technically a heart.” she agreed, still laughing.
Then she looked at him with eyes bright enough to make the tiny gold around her seem a little stronger.
“You’re kind of cute, you know that?”
Z-69’s expression did not change.
But he turned his face toward the window.
“No.”
Jenny only laughed harder.
“Yes.”
The bakery window reflected the gray world outside and the warm light inside.
Between the two, Z-69 sat in silence while Jenny’s laughter softened into a smile.
And without meaning to, he noticed one more thing.
Whenever she laughed like that the gold around her became clearer.
Not dramatically.
Not enough for anyone else to notice.
But enough for him.
Enough to matter.