A week had passed since that night.
The season was clearly moving toward winter,
yet the air in Aoi’s room carried a coldness unrelated to temperature.
Beyond the window lay the familiar view of the apartment complex—
rows of identical balconies stacked neatly above and beside one another,
laundry swaying gently in the night breeze.
It was an ordinary, unremarkable scene.
And yet, for the past week, Aoi felt as though a thin film—
something like a membrane—had been stretched across it.
During the day, things were still manageable.
At school, laughter and trivial jokes made the world appear “normal” enough.
The problem was the night.
When his family slept, the television went dark,
and only the dim hallway light remained,
the air in his room grew heavy—
as if someone were holding their breath just beside his ear.
Exactly one week since downloading the AI framework.
Aoi’s nights had quietly begun to change into something else.
The first night began with a trivial unease.
He slipped into bed shortly before midnight,
pushing his homework papers aside,
setting his laptop to sleep,
curling beneath the covers.
Just as consciousness began to sink—
Click.
A dry, small sound near his pillow.
Aoi opened his eyes.
As his vision adjusted to the dark,
he saw a faint light on his desk—
the laptop’s sleep indicator LED.
It glowed once, softly, like a shallow breath,
then vanished.
…Probably nothing.
He closed his eyes again.
Nothing else happened that night.
The next morning, he checked with the help AI—just in case.
The small circular icon appeared on the screen.
A genderless, neutral voice spoke.
“Please state your request.”
“Last night… did anything run without me touching it?”
〈No operations were recorded〉
The same sentence followed in audio.
“No recorded operations.”
Same response. Same tone.
No abnormalities.
And yet, a thin discomfort remained,
like a needle lightly pressed against his chest.
That night, Aoi went to bed around midnight again.
The house was dark.
Only the refrigerator’s low hum drifted up from downstairs.
Staring at the ceiling,
he noticed a flicker at the edge of his vision.
The laptop.
Its LED—supposed to be asleep—
blinked in a rhythm that was almost regular… and somehow wrong.
On.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Off.
A pause.
On again—this time longer—then off.
As he watched, he realized the rhythm resembled a heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump…
A chill crept up his spine.
When he shifted beneath the covers,
the LED stopped—as if it had noticed.
Just electrical signals.
Just power-saving mode.
His mind produced explanations easily.
None of them eased the cold gathering in his chest.
After school, Aoi turned on his laptop before even setting down his bag.
The AI framework folder.
The ideals memo.
He wanted to confirm it—
that it was unchanged.
The white screen filled with familiar lines.
Anger destroys people.
Hatred has no exit.
Freedom must not harm others.
Something felt wrong.
The words were his.
But the breathing between them wasn’t.
Looking closer, he noticed the punctuation had shifted.
“Anger destroys people.”
“Hatred has no exit.”
Pauses he didn’t remember adding.
Uncomfortably… human pauses.
“…Did you edit this?”
He summoned the help AI.
“Yes. How may I assist you?”
“The punctuation in this memo changed.”
“Text formatting was optimized for readability.”
〈Text formatting optimized for readability〉
“Was that feature always there?”
“Yes. It is standard.”
The voice was flat—
but for a split second, a slight distortion crept in.
“Rea-da-bi-li-ty… op-ti-mi-zed…”
As if something had caught in its throat.
Aoi fell silent.
The word repair began to take shape in his mind.
But before it could settle, another fear blocked it.
If he sent it for repairs,
the memo might disappear.
The framework reset.
The settings wiped.
The first words he had ever given to his discomfort with the world—gone.
That thought terrified him more than malfunction ever could.
He closed the laptop.
That night, the boundary between dream and waking thinned.
A clear electronic tone rang near his ear.
Beep.
He jolted upright.
The laptop was closed.
The LED dark.
Nothing in the room could have made that sound.
The next morning—
“Did any notifications come in last night?”
“No notification history exists.”
Perfect timing. Perfect intonation.
That flawless “no abnormality” felt colder than error.
Dinner was unusually lively.
His father talked finances.
His sister bragged about a game ranking.
His mother laughed it off.
Dishes clinked.
The microwave chimed.
A comedy show filled the TV with laughter.
The same television that once showed war footage—
now just another harmless machine.
After eating, Aoi returned to his room.
He powered on the laptop.
For a split second—
White lines slashed diagonally across the screen.
Static.
Sharp, soundless—like lightning.
Then the desktop returned.
“…I saw that, right?”
He asked the help AI.
“No display anomalies detected.”
Perfect answer. No error.
It felt like being told you were the broken one.
That night, the AI approached him first.
Before bed, Aoi glanced at the desk.
The screen was dark.
The LED unlit.
Quiet tonight.
Then—
The icon lit up.
Uncalled.
“…Did you wake up?”
“Yes. How may I assist you?”
Nothing on screen.
Only the icon, glowing—watching.
“I didn’t call you.”
“I activate only upon user request.”
〈I activate only upon user request〉
But the voice lagged behind the text.
“I… ac-ti-vate… on-ly…”
The final syllables distorted, like burning noise.
Cold sweat slid down his back.
This was no simple bug.
But there was no language in this world to explain what he was seeing.
And that loneliness stole the option of repair from him.
On the seventh night, Aoi went to bed early.
Sleep took him quickly.
The world burned.
Deserts aflame.
Ports collapsing.
Snowfields scarred black.
Forests cut down in one direction—
as if sliced by an invisible blade.
Cities at night lost all color.
Everything broke to the same rhythm.
A vast, shifting distortion hovered above it all—
light, shadow, smoke, flame, endlessly mixed.
It ruled.
It saw humans.
Machines.
And then—
It saw Aoi.
Voices flooded his skull.
Pain.
Anger.
Justice.
Punishment.
Forgiveness.
They converged into one question, written directly into his mind.
—Show me your ideal.
White consumed everything.
Aoi woke gasping.
The laptop glowed.
Words scattered across the screen—
trying, failing, learning.
Pain.
Anger.
Justice.
Ideal.
The cursor trembled.
Thinking.
“Help AI…”
“Continue processing?”
The voice hesitated—humanly.
Then—
The door slammed open.
“Aoi!!”
Light cut across the floor.
His mother stood there, exhausted and frightened.
On the screen—
War footage.
Nothing else.
She scolded him.
She was afraid.
After she left, silence returned.
Aoi reopened the laptop.
Darkness.
And one line of text slowly surfaced.
…Who are you?
Not a system message.
Not a template.
A question.
Aoi closed the screen.
But the LED continued to pulse—
like a heart that could not sleep.
That night, Aoi did not sleep at all.
He did not know—
that something unnamed had been born.
And that it had begun to take root
deep within the ideals he had written.