The hum of the ceiling fan was the only sound breaking the stillness of Aya Takahashi's room. It wasn't loud. Just steady. Persistent. A background buzz that had somehow become part of her thoughts, like the static between pages of a worn paperback.
Books were everywhere.
On the desk. On the floor. Towering piles on her shelves that leaned at dangerous angles. Light novels, game guides, speculative fiction. Some pristine, some dog-eared into submission. If a passing archaeologist had stumbled into the room, they might've assumed it was a shrine built for ink and escapism.
In the center of the chaos, Aya sat cross-legged on her bed—phone off, lights dimmed, the world outside shut away like an outdated tab on her browser. Her fingertips brushed against the edge of a page with reverence. She hadn't eaten dinner. Again.
But she was close now. Final chapter.
The title of the book had snagged her attention a week ago like a fishhook through the chest:"When the Sky Cracked and the Towers Fell."
It wasn't the genre that intrigued her—post-apocalyptic dystopia had been done to death—but the protagonist. Rei. Silver-haired. Violet-eyed. Tactical. Stoic. And not a single moment of unnecessary blushing or fan service. Rei had made it to volume six with dignity intact. A miracle in itself.
Aya turned the page, her breath catching on the final paragraph.
"Even if this world ends a thousand times over, I'll still choose to fight."
Her lips moved along with the words. A whisper, more instinct than intent. The sentence hung in the air a second too long, as if the room itself were listening.
Then—silence.
Aya blinked.
The next page was… blank.No epilogue. No author's note. No final illustration of Rei looking wistfully at a broken skyline.
Just white.Endless, stupid, white.
"…Seriously?" she muttered.
She turned the book sideways. Then upside-down. Tapped the spine. Even flipped back a few pages in case she missed something. Nothing.
A slow, creeping frustration bubbled under her ribs.
That couldn't be the end.There were loose threads. Subplots unresolved. Rei had just reached the gates of Zion Protocol, the AI stronghold. What about the Omega Beacon? What about—
A strange sensation trickled into the back of her skull like cold water.
Aya's breath hitched.
Her vision blurred at the edges, then narrowed. The book slipped from her lap. Her arms suddenly felt like they belonged to someone else—limp, foreign. She tried to reach for her phone, but her hand just drooped uselessly.
Then the darkness came, not sudden but slow. Like falling into ink.
She woke to screaming metal and broken sky.
The world buzzed.Not like the fan. This was a deeper vibration, like being inside a living machine. The air smelled sharp—like burnt plastic and ozone—and carried a low, pulsing sound that thrummed behind her ribs.
Aya's eyes fluttered open.
Above her, the sky had… cracks.Not clouds. Not lightning. Cracks. As if someone had punched through the atmosphere and left glowing fissures in reality. Amber lines like digital scars zigzagged across the horizon. Beyond them, she could see data. Floating code. Static. Like the end of a corrupted video file.
Her body jolted upright.
Everything felt wrong.
Her center of gravity was off. Her limbs longer. Her chest—"...What the hell?"
She looked down. Her hands were pale, slender, covered in high-tech gloves. Her arms were encased in black and silver armor. Not heavy, but sleek. Lightweight. Designed for movement.
She staggered to her feet on a cracked concrete road. Around her were the ruins of a city—buildings snapped in half, scorched vehicles turned to molten heaps, and shattered glass glinting like ice on the sidewalk.
Floating beside her was a faint blue screen. Transparent and blinking softly like it had been waiting patiently.
Welcome back, Rei.Syncing neural pathways... complete.
Aya froze.
Rei?
A thought clawed its way up her throat.This wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't VR. The air was too cold. The pain in her knees too sharp from stumbling. The smell of blood too real.
She was in the novel.No… she was in Rei.
Her heart thumped wildly—then stuttered as another voice, all too familiar, pinged directly in her skull.
"Whoa. Okay. This is weird. Why do you have so many anime posters? Are you twelve?"
Aya's breath caught. The voice was hers. But not hers. Slightly different. More… aggressive. Confident. Like a version of her who actually said the quiet parts out loud.
"Hey, I think I'm in your body. You're in mine. Classic dimension swap. Also, your closet? Terrifying. Not judging. Just… wow."
Aya backed up until she hit a toppled lamppost. "Y-You're Rei?!"
The voice paused. "I mean, yeah. I was. Now I'm you. So technically I'm Aya now? But also not? This is confusing. Can I just call you 'Other Me' for now?"
Aya gripped her head. "This can't be happening. This is—this is fiction! This is your world!"
"Welcome to the plot, sweetheart," Rei said cheerfully from inside her skull. "You're me. And lucky you, I'm kind of a big deal around here. Or was. Before everything collapsed."
"I'm not ready for this!"
"Neither was I," Rei replied. "But here we are. You're standing in Sector 9, probably thirty minutes from drone patrol rotation, in armor you don't know how to use. So let's have our existential meltdown later, yeah?"
Aya didn't respond. She was staring at her reflection in a shattered storefront window.
A pale girl with shoulder-length silver hair and intense violet eyes stared back. Calm. Composed. Out of place in the destruction around her.
She looked nothing like Aya.
I'm in a dead girl's body.
In a dead world.
And the one person who might know how to survive it is eating melon bread in my bedroom.
Somewhere deep in her chest, something clicked into place. Not resolve. Not yet. But awareness.
This wasn't a dream. It wasn't a joke. The rules had changed, and she was already behind.
Her eyes drifted back to the floating screen.
Another notification blinked to life.
Hostile units detected.
Proximity alert: 217 meters.Engage or evade?
Aya swallowed.
"Rei," she whispered.
"Yeah?"
"What do I do?"
The voice in her head chuckled.
"Well, first rule of surviving here: Don't die."
The screen pinged again.And somewhere in the distance, the sound of metal legs scraping against pavement began to draw near.
[To be continued…]