The daily morning routines that she fulfilled every day were becoming more and more of a bore to her. With a frustrated yell, Ene flung the word document away from the screen in front, abruptly closing the window. Blue eyes flashing and dainty fingers fidgeting around in boredom, she began to look around for something else to do. Her master was currently still asleep, for the first time in months, and so was his sister. Sighing, she began typing random things on the internet browser, topics ranging from soda cans to triceratops. Then without realizing, she had typed in the aliases of all her no longer alive friends - Hero, Concealer, Stealer, Deceiver, Queen and… Captivator. Ah that's right. Momo was now also one of the dead.
A blog appeared as one of the search results, one labeled as 'Kokkuri-San'. Hm? If she recalled correctly, that was the name of some sort of fortune-telling ritual, where you asked a question and the coin would tell you the answer. Interested, she opened it and immediately let out a horrified scream. The faces of her friends' corpses were staring right back at her, pictures taken before they had been discovered by the police officers. But it was the captions underneath them that shocked her the most. 'Red is the color of Death' and 'Poking into one's business comes with severe consequences'. Anger boiled inside of her as she continued to scroll down the blog page, seething. Who? Who would do such a thing?! Somehow, she had a feeling that this sick person was also the reason why they died. As if their deaths were a mere coincidence!
Ene suddenly stopped. On the second page, there was a list of names she knew very well. They were written in a specific order, and most of them were crossed out with what seemed to be blood. And the first one not yet crossed out was a name most familiar to her out of all of them. Takane Enomoto. That was when she knew; she was the next to die.
Face pale and breath heavy, she took a step backwards and let out a shriek when a face suddenly appeared in front of her. "Calm down, it's just me!" Shintaro sat down in the chair in front of his computer, dark hair still ruffled in a mess from just waking up from a long sleep. "Geezus, you scared me! Knock on the door, would you?" She sighed, floating up closer to greet him. He simply shook his head in response and said, "Computers don't have doors." Ene shrugged, a bright smile slowly breaking out across her tiny face, mainly obscured by her blue bangs and the armor-like objects on her cheeks.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I'll be going out to get mum the groceries now, do you want to come?" He began putting on his favorite red jersey, stopping when the tiny cyber-being suddenly went into a fit of giggles. "What? What's so funny?!" Ene simply continued laughing, showing no signs of calming down anytime soon. "Just tell me!" He demanded again in a furious tone, having no idea as to why she was acting this way. She finally ceased a while later, wiping tears away from her eyes with those blue sleeves of hers. Apparently, whatever made her laugh was so hilarious that she cried.
"You, going outside this willingly?!" After making that brief statement, she chuckled once more, to the frustration of the NEET standing before the computer. He blushed out of embarrassment and snatched up his mobile phone, glaring at her before leaving the room. Ene smiled to herself and shook her head as she began travelling to his device through the internet in the house. All thoughts of the blog and Kokkuri-San had vanished from her mind at this point, and she wanted it to stay that way as long as possible.
At this time of hour, there were lots of people loitering around the shopping mall, busy scampering around to prepare for the upcoming Christmas holiday. For once, Shintaro would be spending it with an incomplete family, what with his sister already being dead. And as for Ene… She had never really spent it in her current body before, so it was going to be a new experience.
"Hey, how much are you going to buy?" She asked for what must've been the tenth time in the last hour. With a sigh, the NEET suddenly stopped in his tracks and stuffed the phone into his jersey pockets, to the surprise of the cyber-being. "Master!" She cried out, beginning to pout. A sly grin spread across her face as she was about to play out loud an embarrassing song Shintaro had been singing in the shower.
Before she could do so however, everything tilted sideways and the sensation of falling enveloped her whole body. A dull clutter could be heard, and for a moment, she could see nothing. Just darkness. "Master? What's going on? Hello?" She kept on asking, although she already had a feeling as to what had just happened. Shintaro's phone had fallen out of his pocket. With her still inside.
The footsteps of people continued to echo around her as she sat there in the dark, panic beginning to grow inside of her. What if someone stepped on the phone? What if a gangster picked it up and sold it? Hundreds of horrible possibilities swirled inside of her mind, giving her a slight headache. She wished Shintaro would suddenly realize it had fallen out and turned around to search. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. Apart from footsteps and the chattering from other people, the only thing she could hear was her own tiny heart-beat.
It was half an hour later before the phone was picked up and the bright white blinded her eyes. Spirits lifted and heart relieved, Ene opened her mouth to greet her master with the usual greeting, but stopped. It wasn't his face staring back at her. It was one of a stranger – a foreign looking female with skin as pale as snow. A real looker, actually. The girl blinked, seeming to be just as surprised. "Huh? Are these shimejis a thing now?" The cyber-being said nothing, not knowing what to say in response. "Ah! Maybe these are new updated ones that have the same characteristics as Siri!"
Ene tried to distract her from thinking of such a thing. "Hey, lady! Bring this phone to the police right this instant!" The foreigner shook her head, a cheeky grin spreading across her face. "No. New shimejis like you are capable of hacking into accounts, right?" Ene opened her mouth, wanting to convince her that she couldn't.
"You want to go to the police? Then let's make a deal. You hack for me, and I take you there. What do you say?" The cyber-being thought for a moment, then reluctantly agreed. Why not? What harm would there be in agreeing to this deal? Just as long as it wasn't the account of some famous celebrity or politician. Though that was likely to be the case. "What's your name then?"
"I'm Catherine. And you are…?"
"I'm Ene."
"Wow, that's a cool name! It sounds rather familiar though…" Catherine closed her eyes, trying to remember the reason as to why that was. "Ah, no matter. Let's go over there under that tree; it's rather sunny here." Of course, having no legs and being confined inside the phone, Ene wasn't the one that needed to move. "So, whose account am I going to be hacking into?"
A grin. That was the foreigner's first response to her question. "Have you heard of a game called Dead Bullet?"
Ene slowly nodded and smiled a tiny smile. Of course she had! That had been her favorite game as a human after all. As if she could not know what it was, especially since she had placed second in the whole country.
"I want you to hack into hers and delete her account." The smile instantly melted away.
"Wait, whose?" Somehow, there was a sinking feeling inside of her, one she couldn't explain.
"Lightning Dancer Ene!" Was the answer she had been dreading, and it was the answer to her question.
"What?! Why… why that one…?" Ene gasped. She never knew there were people who hated her for being… so good at the game. It had taken months of practice, so of course she would become so good at it!
"I hate her. I hate how she always… always beats me every time! It's so unfair!" Catherine gritted her teeth, her fingers curling up into a fist, making it look like she wanted to fight with someone.
Ene would've never agreed to this deal if she had known it would've been her Dead Bullet account. In an attempt to dissuade Catherine, she tried telling her that practice makes perfect, but to no avail. The foreigner was too consumed by her anger to listen. She disliked having to train so hard. Little did she know that Ene had to do exactly that to get where she had gotten to back as human.
"Hey. I remember now."
Ene stopped, and held her breath, wanting to hear what she had to say, although also dreading it. "Your name is the same as the Lightning Dancer's. And she had been inactive on the game for months already, with people thinking something had happened to her."
"You're Takane, aren't you?"
The cyber-being's blue eyes widened, her mouth opening and closing as if to respond, but no words came out. She simply stared at Catherine with a shocked expression on her face. Feeling numb and cold.
The stranger's fingers pressed onto 'Settings', and hovered over the words: Reset and delete everything. Ene saw what she was about to do and cried out, "No! I'll hack into the account! Please don't delete me!"
Catherine smiled sadly, and pressed it. "I'm sorr– "
There was a flash of blue and white, then nothing.
