Magitopia

4. Error Code: Humanity

The hallway was no longer just a hallway.

Kairi stood frozen in the middle of the school’s third floor corridor, staring at the flickering light overhead. The world around him felt like a glitch—walls bending, shadows twitching at the corners of his vision, like the simulation was fraying at the seams.

He didn’t know what the hell was happening anymore.

His phone buzzed again.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

"You’ve completed your first awakening. Your compatibility is 91%. System syncing: 74%..."

He swiped the notification away, heart pounding so loud he couldn’t even hear the bell ringing. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered right now except understanding what the hell this "System" really was—and why it had chosen him.

“Kairi.”

He flinched.

The voice was soft. Almost familiar.

He turned, and there she stood. Hana.

Except… it wasn’t really her.

Her face was the same. Her smile. Even her school uniform, right down to the chipped nail polish on her thumb.

But her eyes were hollow. Too still. Too perfect.

Like she’d been coded.

“Hana…?” he asked, voice hoarse.

She tilted her head, blinking slowly. “You’re progressing faster than expected.”

“What the f**k—” he backed away, instinct screaming. “Who are you?”

She smiled. Not kindly.

“I’m just a placeholder,” she said. “Until you’re ready.”

Kairi ran.

Sprinted down the corridor like the walls were closing in—which they were. Literally.

Lines of binary code slid across the lockers, rippling like water. The ceiling began to pixelate. Behind him, the not-Hana thing followed without walking. She just glided forward, her form twitching like a broken NPC.

“Kairi,” she said calmly. “You can’t run from your protocol.”

“Screw your protocol!”

He turned the corner and collided—hard—into someone solid.

Arms caught him.

Kairi looked up, gasping.

It was the guy from the rooftop.

The one who had pulled him out of the glitch.

“You again?!” Kairi spat, adrenaline spiking. “Who the hell are you?”

The boy didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed Kairi behind him, hand raised toward the approaching fake Hana.

A flash of pale-blue light burst from his palm like static electricity crackling through the air.

The glitching girl stopped mid-step. Froze. Her body spasmed once—then shattered into dust, dissolving into the same pixel fragments from the rooftop.

For a moment, everything was still.

Then Kairi screamed.

“What the actual f**k is going on?! I’m dreaming, right? Just hallucinating all of this?”

“You’re not dreaming,” the boy said, lowering his hand. His voice was cool, clipped, slightly irritated. “Though I wish you were. Would make my job easier.”

He turned to Kairi, pale eyes glowing faintly beneath the school’s dying lights. “You’ve been chosen by the System. That glitch you saw earlier? That’s just the beginning. Welcome to the simulation, Kairi.”

Kairi just gaped at him.

“You can’t drop that on me like it’s a normal thing!” he snapped. “What simulation?! Why me?! Who even are you?!”

The boy sighed, as if he’d been through this before.

“My name’s Riku. I’m a Beta. You’re a new Player—though your syncing rate is abnormal. Too high.”

“That’s not an answer—”

“I don’t have time to explain everything,” Riku cut in. “Your data’s unstable. If we don’t get you into the Interface soon, you’ll crash.”

“I’ll what—”

Suddenly, the lights went out. Complete blackout.

Then a voice echoed through the hallway. It wasn’t Riku’s. It wasn’t even human.

It was the same voice that had whispered in Kairi’s head the night the app appeared.

"Welcome back, User Kairi. Your Awakening has been acknowledged.

Commencing Trial Phase: Level 1."

Riku grabbed Kairi’s arm. “Run.”

—

The blood pounding in Kairi’s ears muffled the hum of the world around him. One moment, everything had been quiet—eerily still—and the next, chaos. His trembling hand still clutched the gun. Smoke curled from the barrel.

The boy—no, the glitch—stood still, head tilted, a hole blooming crimson just under his collarbone. His expression didn’t twist in pain. No scream escaped his lips. Only silence. His inhuman eyes flickered, a burst of static jittering across his features.

“Target response: fatal,” the system droned flatly in his ear. “Progress: 25%. Leveling up... Initiating data synchronization.”

Kairi stumbled back as the boy’s body hit the floor with a muted thud. The impact sent a wave of nausea through him.

“I… I killed him,” Kairi whispered.

[Correction: It was not human.]

The system’s voice snapped inside his skull like a whip, cruel and mechanical. It didn’t care about the mess on the floor. It didn’t care about the blood on Kairi’s hands. It only cared about stats, missions, and objectives.

“No,” Kairi muttered, shaking his head. “No, he spoke to me. He felt. He—he was scared.”

[Glitches mimic human behavior. Emotional response: irrelevant.]

“Shut up!” he shouted, the gun falling from his hand as he backed into the wall. His legs gave out and he sank to the floor, pressing his palms over his ears as if he could somehow block out the system.

A buzzing filled the air again—low, deep, like static crawling through his bones. And then… the boy on the floor twitched.

“What the—?”

Glitches weren’t supposed to move once terminated. Kairi’s breath caught in his throat as the boy’s fingers curled against the cold floor.

But this time, when he looked up… something was different.

His eyes. They weren’t full of static anymore. They were normal. Human.

The boy groaned, coughing. “Y-You… i***t…”

Kairi froze. His heart was a wild drumbeat in his chest. “You’re—still alive?”

“You were supposed to scan me… not shoot me,” the boy rasped, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “System… triggered… too early…”

“What?” Kairi crawled closer, grabbing the boy’s shoulder. “You’re not a glitch?”

“Do I… look like a glitch now?” the boy hissed through clenched teeth.

Kairi’s hands shook again—but this time, not with fear. With guilt.

“I didn’t know,” he said, voice breaking. “I didn’t know…”

The boy’s gaze locked with his. “There are two systems, Kairi. Yours… and theirs. And you just pulled the trigger on the only person who could’ve helped you survive them both.”

The lights overhead flickered. The air shifted—thicker now, heavier—as if reality itself was about to shatter.

Then came the sound again.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Slow. Mocking.

Another figure emerged from the corridor, tall and dressed in a sleek black coat, eyes hidden behind round lenses that reflected light like a predator in the dark.

“Well done,” the man said, voice like silk wrapped around razor blades. “You’re progressing much faster than anticipated, Subject 0001.”

Kairi's blood ran cold. “Who the hell are you?”

The man ignored him. He stepped over the bleeding boy, who coughed again, barely conscious.

“A misfire, of course. But no matter,” the man continued, crouching beside the dying figure. “We’ll recycle him. His data will serve us better next time.”

“You’re with the system.”

“I am the administrator,” he replied smoothly. “And you, my dear anomaly, are the wild card we’ve waited for.”

Kairi’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t agree to this. I didn’t sign up for murder.”

“You didn’t sign up at all. The moment you woke the system… you became owned.”

The man snapped his fingers—and the air behind him shimmered.

From it stepped three more figures. Dressed in black. Faces hidden.

[New mission available.]

[Survive the retrieval team.]

[Reward: Truth.]

“Oh no,” Kairi whispered.

“Oh yes,” the administrator smirked. “Let’s see what you're really made of.”