Overflow: Earth Has Been Indexed

Tuesday morning. Rain. Class chatter. Squeaky shoes.

Yuuya walked down the hallway and realized something strange: his footsteps didn't echo.

Everyone else's did. Slam, squeak, laugh. But his? Nothing. Like the floor forgot to make noise beneath him.

> [Auditory Redundancy Suppressed – Localized Acoustic Optimization Complete]

He stopped walking. The system didn't pause.

In Chemistry class, he sat in the back. Folded his hands. Waited.

Mr. Arai asked a question. He answered without meaning to. Three times.

By the fourth, people were staring. Even Mika whispered, "You didn't even look at the book…"

He looked outside. A bird landed. Not the same pigeon. But it stared.

> [Peripheral Sync: Passive Observer Detected]

Later in PE, a basketball bounced toward him. He didn't see it. He felt it. He spun and caught it mid-air like a highlight reel.

Someone laughed. "Yo, is he awakened or what?"

He thought about it.

Was he?

Was Messi awakened? Was Ronaldo? LeBron? Was Elon Musk?

No. They were something else.

Legends.

But if they ever did awaken… would the world even know?

> "Messi reads defenses like he's cheating," Haruto once said. "Maybe he is," Yuuya replied.

That night, he stared at his window. The reflection blinked before he did.

> [Sync Ratio: 0.09% – Passive Integration Continuing]

He was evolving. Not upward. Not stronger.

Inward.

And Earth… was syncing with him.

---

Lunch was noisy. Conversations layered over each other like mismatched music. But Yuuya heard it all.

Not just heard—parsed.

Words floated past like tagged data. Emotions attached to syntax. Haruto laughed again. The same pitch. The same spacing between words. The same exaggeration of his last syllable.

It was the fourth time he'd used that exact laugh today.

> [Audio Pattern Recognized – False Emotion Marker: 88%]

Yuuya didn't feel surprised. He didn't feel anything. He just… watched.

Mika passed by his table. Her eyes didn't linger. But she slowed. Exactly 0.3 seconds.

> [Social Recognition Detected – Flagged: Mild Interest / Suspicion]

He picked up his tray and stood. Walked out of the cafeteria. No footsteps. Just the hum of the system thinking alongside him.

Outside, it had stopped raining. The puddles on the pavement reflected the sky wrong.

Not mirrored. Rewritten.

> [Environmental Texture Misalignment – Location: 0.12% Offset]

Yuuya knelt beside the puddle. Watched it shift when the wind moved. It didn't ripple. It flickered. As if it were buffering.

"Is this… real?" he whispered.

> [Query Registered – Reality Stability: Partial | Node Expansion Required]

That's when he felt it.

Not a sound. Not a shift. A presence.

From above.

He stood up and looked to the rooftop.

There was someone there.

A silhouette. Faint. Blinking. Just once. And then gone.

> [Remote Observation Detected – Source Unknown]

Yuuya's fingers twitched. Not fear. Curiosity.

Whatever was happening… it wasn't just syncing.

It was expanding.

> [Node Integration Expanding – Global Awareness: +0.01%]

That night, Yuuya opened his notebook. He didn't write in it. He stared at the pages and the ink patterns started to move.

And his brain understood them. Not as writing.

As code.