THE STORY · EPISODE 00
She had already stumbled three times over the name of her new department.
“Security, times, English...”
Manami Saiba quietly reread the guide on her desk. Twenty-two years old. A literature graduate, and, as of today, a company employee. None of the introductions she had rehearsed over and over the night before had included a graceful way to put those two words together.
She straightened the cuffs of her navy suit. In the next seat, a senior colleague watched an unbroken stream of notifications while replying to someone on another screen. Half the words were Japanese, yet Mana could not understand even half of what was being said. Authentication. Permissions. Domains. Exceptions. Weren’t exceptions something for people who already knew the rules? She did not know the rules yet. She could not even see where to begin.
“Just ask if there’s anything you don’t understand.”
Mana nodded brightly at the colleague who had said it.
Being told she could ask and actually opening her mouth were two different things.
On the first page of the notebook she had been given, she wrote her name in blue pen. Manami Saiba. Just beneath it, a little smaller, she added “Mana.” She wanted to make sure that the name her university friends called her was still hers.
She tried to list what she had learned during the morning briefing, but her hand stopped on the third line. She did not know where her lack of understanding began. How could she ask about that without making things difficult for someone else?
Instead, she drew a little square at the edge of the page. When she understood something, she would put a check here. Six empty squares stood in a row.
At lunchtime, as she unwrapped a rice ball by the window, her shoulders finally relaxed. Outside, buses stopped and people crossed the street, just as always. Yesterday’s world and today’s world were supposed to be connected.
Yet the other side of a single pane of glass felt a little far away.
A short message had arrived on her phone: “How’s your first day?” Mana typed “Fine,” then deleted it without sending. She tried again: “So many words I don’t know.” At least that was not a lie.
That afternoon, she opened the company’s training material. At the bottom of the screen was the author’s name.
Manabu Tokimoto.
The guide in the material was a brown-haired man with angular black glasses and a short mustache and chin stubble. In the illustration, he raised one finger, his expression suggesting he was waiting for her to notice something.
“Check before you rush.”
Mana copied just that line into her notebook. Before she learned all the English, perhaps she had found one thing she could do.
Episode 0, Illustration 1 | Her first day and security training
By evening, though, she had almost forgotten even copying the line. How to return her access badge, tomorrow’s schedule, where she could save files and where she could not. Every time she opened a drawer in her mind, information that did not yet have a name spilled out.
With fewer people left in the office, Mana began clearing her desk. She did not mean to stay late working. She simply did not want to hand tomorrow’s self all of today’s unanswered questions, still unanswered.
Then her computer gave a short chime.
One warning in English appeared, then another.
“Unusual activity detected.”
She recognized some of the words. Joined together, though, they would not give up their meaning. Before she could try to close the window, another opened, pale blue letters flickering beyond it.
Mana stopped her finger as it reached instinctively toward a button.
Pressing it without understanding was not right.
“Excuse me, my screen—”
The instant she pushed back her chair to call her colleague, the floor disappeared beneath her.
Sound receded. Each key on the keyboard became a plate of light, lifted by a wind blowing out of the screen. The desk and chair vanished, but the corner of the notebook clenched in her hand still dug into her palm.
Mana had not pressed the button.
The light did not stop anyway.
There was a sky where she fell.
More precisely, countless strings of characters streamed beyond what she thought was a sky. Bridges of light stretched between tall buildings, and things shaped like envelopes hurried beneath them. A distant tower was made of stacked transparent panels; whenever one lost a piece, a dry bell rang.
“...A company evacuation drill?”
Her voice trembled. Perhaps making a joke of it would bring reality back.
No one answered.
A black stain spread across ground that looked like paving stones. It climbed a wall, blurred the letters on a sign, and flowed into a bridge joint. Farther ahead, people hurried back the way they had come.
When Mana stood up, the black thing stood too.
It was a black silhouette, its features hidden. Smoke drifted around its outline as it moved toward her. She could not tell what creature it had once been. She knew only that it was coming closer.
Mana backed away. Her heel caught a step, and she tipped backward.
“This way!”
At the sound of an unfamiliar voice, an emergency door opened in the alley. Mana caught the outstretched hand and tumbled inside. The man pulled a lever on the wall, and a blue barrier built into the doorway slid shut. He had not attacked the shadow. He had placed a boundary it could not cross between it and the two of them.
Outside, the black thing scraped against the door. Eventually, the sound moved away. The man helping her up looked very much like the man in the training material.
Brown hair. Angular black glasses. A short mustache and chin stubble. A steady voice. His blue jacket caught the light, and a little sweat marked his forehead in a way the illustration had not shown.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so. Um, where are we...?”
“Let’s talk once we’re somewhere safe. It isn’t your fault that there’s so much you don’t understand.”
At those words, her throat suddenly ached.
Before letting go of her hand, he made sure her feet were firmly on the ground.
Episode 0, Illustration 2 | An outstretched hand in Cybarin
Dr. Tokimoto’s house stood a little apart from the city’s bustle. Once the door closed, the sound of light racing outside grew distant. Half-read books and cups that still held a little steam sat among his research equipment.
Mana sat down and looked at her knees. Gray dirt marked the hem of her suit. What was someone supposed to tell the company after falling into another world on her first day? Was she absent from work, or missing?
“People call me Dr. Tokimoto. This is Cybarin—a world where the information used in your world takes physical form.”
“You mean we’re inside a computer?”
“For now, I think that comes closest to an explanation you can understand.”
The doctor spoke without mixing what he knew with what he did not.
Why had Mana come here? How could she be certain of getting home? Neither was a question he could promise to answer here and now.
“So...you don’t know.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
It was strange. She had wanted him to say she could go home. Yet for the first time, she felt she could listen to the person in front of her and believe him.
The doctor looked out the window. Another small piece of light broke off the top of a tower.
“That black shadow is a Virusun. It grows by exploiting haste, misunderstandings, actions taken without checking, and systems with weak defenses. Right now, the flow of information is being damaged all over the city.”
“Do we have to defeat every one of them?”
“Defeating them alone leaves the same problems behind. First, we understand what is happening and weaken the shadow by responding properly. Then we use this.”
He placed a square object on the table, small enough to fit in a palm. Fine lines of light ran inside the thin plate.
“Securies. A chip used for purification.”
Mana looked at his face before touching it. Only after he nodded did she gently pick it up. The surface was cool.
“It brings the power hidden inside the shadow back to the side that protects. We call the companions who emerge Wilestars.”
“Even that shadow just now?”
“Perhaps.”
That black thing had attacked before she could make sense of its outline. Inside it might be a face no one knew yet. The thought did not erase her fear, but it made room for another feeling too.
“It isn’t humans who fight.”
The doctor returned the chip to the table.
“Only the Wilestars who have become our companions can attack a Virusun. Humans read the situation and tell them what to do. A person qualified to give those commands is a Secure Star; together, they are the Secure Stars.”
“Then there’s nothing I can do?”
“You can earn that qualification by studying and taking a test. It isn’t reserved for people who knew everything from the start.”
He set a slim book in front of her. Square lines ran around a star on its cover.
“The Wilestars Encyclopedia. We also call it the WS Encyclopedia. It records the beings you purify and welcome as companions.”
The page she opened was blank. Though there was nothing in it, the book felt very heavy.
The doctor took an old tournament poster from a shelf.
It showed a ring of spectators, a person standing at the center, and countless companions gathered around them. A long name ran across the top.
“The Road of King Secure Star Tournament. The RKS Tournament for short. It’s held once a year.”
“...Could you say that again?”
Without laughing, the doctor wrote RKS in large letters in the margin.
“These three letters will do to begin with.”
The winning Secure Star received the title of King Secure Star. Then, once and only once, the winner could entrust a single wish to God Secure Star—the deity of this world who had created the Secure Stars.
Mana’s eyes moved from the poster back to the doctor.
“One wish? Anything?”
“So the story goes. Perhaps that is where you could find a way back to your own world.”
For an instant, every sound in the room grew quiet.
Home.
She had thought all she could do was search endlessly for a faraway place. For the first time, a path toward that word took shape.
“Do you know this god?”
“As a servant of God Secure Star, I guide the Secure Stars. But I cannot promise you a way home on my word alone. There is a condition you must meet even to enter the tournament.”
She would need at least a hundred Wilestars as companions, with those encounters recorded in the WS Encyclopedia.
Writing the same companion’s name over and over would still count as one. It was not a matter of collecting names, he explained. What mattered was the journey with companions she had faced and purified herself.
Mana looked down at the empty encyclopedia.
“A hundred...”
She did not know even one of their faces yet. A hundred was too large a number even to feel like a distance.
The doctor moved the poster aside without putting it away.
“You don’t have to meet a hundred tonight. Let’s begin by thinking things through, rather than deciding alone.”
The soup he reheated tasted a little like something Mana knew.
After one mouthful, she realized how hungry she was. Surely she had eaten that rice ball at lunchtime on this very day. Was her chair still there beside the window?
She had promised to treat her family to dinner when she received her first paycheck. They had not chosen a restaurant yet. Now, the thing still undecided became a reason to go home.
“If I said I wanted to become a Secure Star, could I take the test?”
“You could. I have a research Virusun under my supervision. For someone’s first test, before they have a companion, they face a shadow we keep safely contained. They judge what is dangerous and how to verify it.”
“So I wouldn’t be attacking without a companion?”
“Correct. The first test is an exception. It isn’t a test of ordering an attack, but of making judgments that allow you to entrust power to a companion. Once you pass and are certified, you purify that shadow with Securies. That is how you meet someone to walk beside you.”
Passing would not mean she knew every answer. The doctor said that stopping when she did not understand and asking the right person for help were also strengths that supported the qualification.
Mana took out her blue pen. Beneath the row of six empty squares, she drew a seventh.
When I don’t understand, call for help.
She put a check in that one box.
“I’ll try. If we do it together.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll go to the Research Garden.”
As the doctor reached to close the device at the edge of his desk, a notification arrived from the research district. The test records had been updated.
Security Support.
“Your account will be suspended.”
Mana still could not read the whole sentence.
But this time she knew there was another way besides pressing something she did not understand. She closed the empty encyclopedia and set it beside her notebook, ready to open tomorrow.
END OF EPISODE 00