Eternal Art Online

Rain hammered a dull dirge on the corrugated metal overhead, a funeral march for this squalid corner.

Kiriya slumped against the cold, broken wall, his ragged breathing filling the tight space. With each breath, he could taste the sickly sweetness of decay mixed with the harsh, metallic scent of rust.

He stared at his fingertips.

The ghost of that inhuman, machine-like tremor still clung to his skin, alongside the memory of the hard, fused lump beneath the skin at the base of her skull – eyes from the abyss, silently watching him.

The figure on the ground stirred.

A fractional movement. One pale finger twitched, curling inward like a puppet shocked by a current.

Kiriya's muscles locked instantly, coiled like a spring at breaking point. He slid back half a step, soundless, his crimson gaze riveted to that deathly pale face.

Not fear. The instinctive wariness of a predator facing an unknown threat.

Damp white lashes began to flutter, beaded with tiny droplets. Eyelids, heavy as rusted floodgates, inched upwards, revealing a sliver of what lay beneath.

Blood-red pupils.

Even in the filthy gloom, the color was unnervingly intense, like two drops of refined, congealed poison.

But the piercing acuity from the alley mouth was gone.

Only a vast, unfocused emptiness remained, as if consciousness had just been dredged from the deepest void, still dripping with cold chaos.

Her lips moved slightly. A few fractured gasps escaped her cracked lips, nearly swallowed by the drumming rain: "…C…cold…"

The sound was thinner than a spider's thread in the wind, yet it carried a marrow-freezing chill that cut straight to Kiriya's core.

"Cold?" Kiriya's voice sounded jarring in the confined space, tight with an unacknowledged tension.

He looked around at their surroundings: old, damp newspapers, broken glass sticking out, cold, broken rubble, and that constant, damp chill in the air. "This is an icebox."

The girl seemed not to hear or lacked the strength to respond. Her lashes continued their tremulous dance.

The red eyes tried to focus, but remained clouded, like fogged glass, reflecting nothing. Only the whispered plea, "cold," repeated in the shallow gaps between her breaths, a dying litany.

Kiriya's fist clenched at his side, knuckles whitening. He drew in a deep breath, the foul air forcing down the storm of shock and unanswered questions raging inside him.

Stay here? Wait for those professional thugs to sweep the area, or bring reinforcements?

This girl… whatever she was… left in this trash heap, her only fate was "retrieval" or utter "decommissioning."

He crouched again, movements more deliberate now, weighted with the gravity of handling a fragile, complex artifact.

Staring at that face, pale as cheap porcelain, the eerie fluorescent gel still seeping from her temple wound, he pushed aside all distraction.

His right arm slid once more under her icy armpit, his left hand scooping behind her feather-light knees.

The feel was worse – stiff, unyielding, like carrying a frozen ceramic shell.

As his arm inevitably brushed the wet hair at her nape, his fingertips registered again the distinct, coin-sized outline of hardness fused beneath the skin.

He forced himself to ignore the crawling sensation on his scalp, tightened his core, and hauled her back onto his shoulders.

"Ngh…!" A stifled gasp, sharper than before, edged with a metallic rasp, escaped her tight lips.

"Bear it," Kiriya murmured, voice low, devoid of warmth, yet carrying an odd, anchoring steadiness.

He adjusted his stance, preventing her head from lolling completely. He listened intently to the alley depths.

Only the intensifying rain and utter silence answered. The hunters were temporarily lost in the stinking maze or had shifted tactics.

He had to gamble. Bet they'd expect him to bolt for the open streets, not double back towards the lion's den.

His apartment crouched on the ragged edge of this slum warren – close, a warren itself, its entrance a well-hidden rat hole.

Orienting himself, settling the unnaturally cold weight firmly against his back, Kiriya plunged back into the rain-lashed, shadow-choked steel intestines of the city.

This time, he wasn't fleeing blindly. He moved like a creature of the night, honed by instinct and countless virtual dungeon crawls.

Scaling a slick, low wall. Sidling through a stinking crevice clogged with discarded tires. Skirting bubbling sewer grates…

He navigated the labyrinthine alleys with predatory stealth. The icy touch of her body seeped through his soaked hoodie, a parasitic chill leaching his warmth.

Her faint, frigid breaths against his neck were constant reminders: he carried not a person, but an immense, frozen enigma.

The familiar, scabrous facade of his decaying apartment building finally materialized through the downpour.

He circled to the rear, aiming for the fire escape door half-buried behind massive, reeking green dumpsters. The lock was a mockery, held only by a loop of rusted wire.

Kiriya scanned the rain-blurred surroundings, lit only by distorted yellow streetlight haloes. Empty. He swiftly twisted the wire free.

The heavy door screeched in protest as he shoved it open, slipped through, then shouldered it shut with a muffled thud. Inside, a narrow concrete staircase reeked of dust, oxidized metal, and stale urine.

The emergency light was dead; only a grimy, cobwebbed skylight high above admitted a cheerless, greyish glow.

Step by heavy step, he ascended, the girl's icy burden seeming to grow denser with each movement.

His footsteps made tired, dull sounds as he walked down the empty shaft. Finally, the top floor. The corridor sensor light flickered on, bathing peeling paint and thick dust in a sickly yellow pall.

He hurried to his door, adorned with a faded anime poster. The metallic scrape of the key in the lock was unnervingly loud in the stillness.

The door swung open. The smell hit him—cheap instant coffee, stale sweat, and old paper all mixed together. It was harsh at first, but now it somehow felt like a weird kind of comfort, like he was holding on and surviving.

He spun, slammed the door shut, threw the deadbolt, and slid the security chain home. Movements are swift as lightning.

The living room was cramped, spartan. A worn sofa. A folding table was buried under programming manuals and electronic components.

A cheap wardrobe in the corner. The window was shut, but the drumming rain was loud, saturating the small space with damp chill.

Carefully, Kiriya lowered the girl onto the sofa, the only soft surface. She slumped into the threadbare upholstery, head lolling to one side, wet white hair plastered against the backrest.

The ruined white dress clung to her, shedding rivulets of filthy water that pooled darkly on the floor by the sofa legs.

She looked worse. Skin like cheap porcelain. Lips utterly bloodless. Only the faint tremor of long lashes beneath closed lids hinted at any lingering spark.

The bruise on her temple bloomed livid and swollen, the edges weeping that unnatural fluorescent gel. In the dim room light, it emitted a sharper, colder, more profoundly *wrong* radiance.

Kiriya stood before the sofa, dripping. Water fell from his hair, his clothes, hitting the floor with a monotonous *plink… plink…*.

His chest heaved, lungs burning from exertion and the aftershock of adrenaline.

He looked down at the being on his sofa, truly confronting the massive, icy complication this rain-swept night had dumped in his lap.

Who was she? What was the hard thing on her neck? Why no pulse? Why wasn't it blood? Who were those men? Icy questions coiled like vipers, constricting his breath.

He scrubbed rainwater from his face, forcing his chaotic mind into its most familiar gear: Observe. Analyze. Resolve. Primary Objective: Stabilize her.

He turned and entered the tiny bathroom. The faucet yielded hot water, steaming faintly in the cold air. He found a relatively clean towel, soaked it in hot water, and wrung it out.

Back at the sofa, he crouched again. Staring at the lifeless face, the alien wound, he drew a steadying breath.

Whatever she was, she presented as utterly vulnerable. He reached out.

With the warm towel, he gently, painstakingly wiped the grime and icy rainwater from her face and neck. Deliberately avoided the bruised, glowing area on her temple.

The warm moisture seemed to act as a catalyst. Her lashes fluttered violently. The heavy eyelids dragged upwards once more.

Blood-red pupils snapped open!

This time, no emptiness. The eyes ignited like activated scanners, momentary confusion vaporized in a microsecond, instantly locking onto Kiriya's face mere inches away.

Alert! Like a cornered, dying animal, radiating a cold, penetrating acuity. Weak, but that soul-piercing intensity was back.

Kiriya froze, the damp towel hovering centimeters from her cheek.

He didn't flinch. He met those inhuman eyes squarely, his voice deliberately low and steady: "Listen. You're in my place. Safe. For now."

Her chest rose in an almost imperceptible breath. The razor-sharp vigilance in her red eyes didn't waver.

If anything, it intensified, seeming to analyze his expression, his voice timbre, the dilation of his pupils, assessing the truth of his words. Her lips worked again, dry skin rasping like sandpaper: "…W…water…"

The word was broken, but carried the weight of absolute necessity.

Kiriya was on his feet instantly. He fetched a half-glass of lukewarm water from the kitchenette.

Returning, a new problem: She couldn't sit up. He tried tilting the glass to her parched lips. Her head moved the tiniest fraction, a feeble attempt to meet it.

Hesitating only a beat, he slid his left hand behind her head, carefully avoiding the nape of her neck, providing minimal support.

His right hand tipped the glass, letting cool water touch her lips.

She absorbed it like parched earth. Much spilled, tracing paths down her chin and soaking her collar.

But she managed small, desperate swallows. The cool liquid seemed to grant a sliver of animation.

The knife-edge alertness in her red eyes dulled, replaced by a deeper, more fundamental exhaustion, like a machine pushed beyond its power reserves.

"More?" Kiriya asked, still supporting her head.

A minute shake of her head. Her eyes drifted half-closed, long lashes casting fragile shadows on ghostly skin, like embers about to gutter out.

Kiriya set the glass aside, easing her back against the sofa. His gaze returned to the unnaturally glowing wound on her temple.

He needed to act, even if futile. He dragged a dusty, cheap plastic first-aid box from under his bed. Inside: antiseptic wipes, a roll of gauze, a few plasters, a bottle of faded iodine. Useless tools for a wound weeping luminous gel.

He tore open a wipe. The sharp tang of alcohol flooded the small room. He held the saturated white square poised over the bruised, swollen flesh weeping its faintly glowing fluid.

Just as he wavered—

"U…useless…" A voice, thin as wire, laced with static, stated the fact with chilling objectivity.

Kiriya's head snapped up. Her eyes were open again, red gaze fixed not on him, but on the useless alcohol wipe in his hand. No emotion. Only stark, brutal fact.

"What's useless?" Kiriya pressed, leaning forward slightly, hanging on every strained syllable. "The wound? Or cleaning it?"

Her gaze seemed to pass through him, focusing on some distant, invisible point.

The focus in her red eyes wavered.

Her lips formed words, each one dragged from a damaged mechanism, hoarse, faint, yet unnervingly clear: "…Neural… interface… damaged… Requires… stabilization… protocol…"

Neural interface?!

Kiriya's pupils contracted to pinpricks. His heart slammed against his ribs.

The image of the coin-sized hardness fused at the base of her skull exploded in his mind. A neural interface? Connected to what? Stabilization protocol? What was that? 

"What neural interface? Where? What's the stabilization protocol? How do I do it?"

The questions tumbled out like gunfire, his voice edged with an urgency he didn't recognize, a fierce, almost hungry excitement kindled by the unknown puzzle. The coder, the elite gamer both surged to the forefront.

But the girl had spent her last reserve. Her eyelids fluttered violently, like moths in a gale. The light in her red eyes dimmed, blurred, then extinguished completely.

Her head slumped sideways against the sofa back. Her eyes sealed shut. Her breathing became shallower, more ragged, the faint internal thrum seeming to falter towards silence.

"Hey! Wake up! Explain!" Kiriya's hand shot out instinctively, stopping millimeters from her icy shoulder.

He stared at the faint glow on her temple, the subtle bulge beneath her wet hair at her nape. Shaking her? Forcing a response from this enigma? The potential backlash was terrifying.

He snatched his hand back, raking frustrated fingers through his wet black hair, scattering droplets.

His eyes darted between the useless medical supplies and the girl on the sofa – a beautiful, broken automaton on the verge of collapse.

Damaged neural interface… requires stabilization protocol… It sounded ripped straight from a nightmare tech-thriller.

Just as the icy grip of despair and maddening confusion threatened to overwhelm him, his gaze snagged on her right hand.

It had lain limp at her side, palm loosely curled inward. Now, perhaps shifted while drinking, or relaxed in unconsciousness, a sliver of something impossibly small, yet utterly arresting, escaped between her fingers.

A flicker. A gleam. Pure, flowing, golden light – composed of data.

Kiriya's heart stopped. He held his breath, moving as if defusing a bomb. Slowly, painstakingly, he crouched. With infinite care, he used his fingertips to gently, one by one, uncurl her cold, stiff fingers.

Cradled in her palm, suspended just above the skin, lay an object.

Not physical. It was light… compressed, solidified? Or pure information? No larger than a fingernail, its form shifted in constant, minute flux.

One moment resembling a twisted ancient rune, the next a cascading stream of minuscule golden points – dynamic code.

It pulsed with a soft, unwavering golden radiance.

Within that light lay unfathomable depth, as if countless bytes flickered in and out of existence, reassembling themselves in patterns governed by an arcane, mesmerizing rhythm.

The light illuminated the lifeless lines of her pale palm and reflected starkly in Kiriya's own eyes, wide with absolute shock.

He knew this. He knew it!

In Eternal Art Online (EAO)! This was the unique visual signature – the unmistakable aura – of a legendary-tier hidden quest item!

A key to the world's deepest lore! That radiance of pure data-streams, that profound resonance humming with the game's fundamental rules… as a top player, he couldn't mistake it!

But here? Now? In the gritty, rust-scented, instant-coffee reality? Held in the palm of an ice-cold girl with a neural port in her neck and luminous gel oozing from a wound?

Virtual and real. Game and flesh. Engineered rules and chaotic physics. In this instant, the golden key of data-light suspended over that pale palm shattered the boundaries, churning them into a seething, lethal vortex.

Dizziness washed over Kiriya, the world tilting beneath his feet.

He stared at the golden mote, the initial shock in his eyes consumed by a hotter, fiercer mix of profound confusion and a kindled, almost covetous curiosity.

Drawn by an invisible force, he slowly, with near-reverent focus, extended his index finger. A faint tremor betrayed his tension as his fingertip inched towards the suspended, flowing, dangerously alluring…