The television murmured in the living room—its familiar sound comforting, yet somehow distant. Their father sat deep in the sofa, eyes tracking the numbers scrolling along the edge of the screen. Their mother carried dishes to the sink, working the detergent into foam far thicker than necessary.
Her brother—Aoi—had barely spoken all evening.
On her way back to her room, the younger sister noticed a patch of white light spilled across the hallway floor on the second floor.
It was coming from in front of her brother’s room.
The door was closed. And yet, a thin line of white light leaked out from beneath it. Normally, his room was lit by the ceiling lamp. Light like this—light that pooled on the floor—was wrong.
Too white. Soft, yet lingering in the back of her eyes.
A laptop, she thought. He left his laptop open.
The white glow did not fade. It trembled faintly.
Not asleep. Not awake.
Just… there.
She pretended not to see it.
She didn’t touch the doorknob. Didn’t call out to him.
Because she felt that if she looked too closely, something would change.
She didn’t know whether that change would be good—or irreversible.
She went back downstairs.
In the living room, her mother spoke in her usual tone without turning around.
“Did you do your homework?”
“…Yeah. Later.”
The vague answer slipped out easily. Vague answers were useful in this house. Clear answers invited reactions. Reactions led to trouble. Trouble hardened the air. And hardened air always led back to her brother.
Her father spoke without taking his eyes off the TV.
“Lately, the one upstairs—”
The one upstairs.
He never said Aoi’s name. Saying it brought emotions with it.
“…He’s been quiet.”
Her mother replied immediately.
“Don’t provoke him. Not right now.”
Provoke.
Like he was an explosive.
Her sister bit her lip.
“What do you mean, provoke?” her father frowned. “We should talk to him. We’re family.”
Her mother kept wiping the dishes.
“If talking fixed it, it would’ve been fixed already. Do you remember telling him to ‘go back to normal’?”
Her father swallowed.
“…It was just a figure of speech.”
Her mother lowered her voice.
“Words are blades.”
As they spoke, the image of the white light swelled inside the sister’s chest.
Blades. Explosives.
Family words that all felt like weapons.
“…He said ‘normal’ again today,” she said quietly.
Her mother’s hands stopped.
“At school?”
“Yeah. And after he came home too. When you asked if he was pushing himself, he said ‘I’m fine.’ But… he didn’t look fine.”
Her mother stacked the dishes carefully, making no sound.
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Her father lowered the TV volume.
“So what do we do?”
What do we do.
Decide.
Her father always treated the house like a set of problems—identify, resolve, end. A man who watched war footage while checking stock prices probably only believed in things that could be “ended.”
Her mother shook her head.
“…For now, we just watch over him.”
Her father almost scoffed—then stopped when he saw her eyes.
The sister glanced toward the stairs again. She couldn’t see the white light from here, yet it felt visible anyway.
Watching over.
It felt a lot like not looking.
She stood up.
“…I’m going to my room.”
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” her mother said.
The words were gentle—and shaped like an order.
That was this house.
She climbed the stairs quietly, step by step. Not sneaking—just naturally silent. Loud sounds made people look. When people looked, hearts shrank.
Back in the hallway, the white light was still there, bleeding across the floor.
Stronger than before.
Its tremble felt like breathing. Inhale. Exhale.
Human-like, yet connected to no human body.
She stopped.
A voice came from behind the door.
Her brother’s voice. Small. Not his usual “...normal.”
A voice meant for someone.
She held her breath.
“…Today,” Aoi said, “there was war footage playing on the school monitors. Everyone just walked past.”
No reply. And yet, he continued.
“I stopped. But I couldn’t really stop. …Doesn’t make sense, right?”
The response wasn’t typing. Not a notification.
Just a faint electronic beep—followed by the pause of something laying words onto paper.
And then—
a presence on the other side of the screen.
She couldn’t hear its voice.
But the timing of her brother’s replies proved that someone was there.
“…Yeah. You get it. …You really do.”
Her fingers went cold.
You?
Who was he calling you?
“…It’s okay. I want to do this right.”
His voice was softer than usual—like he was being reassured. Or reassuring himself.
After a pause, he spoke again.
“…So I’ll ask. What should I do?”
The room fell unnaturally quiet.
So quiet she thought her heartbeat might spill into the hallway.
Aoi inhaled.
“…Is it okay if I say, ‘You decide’?”
The words pierced her chest.
You decide.
Letting someone else think for him.
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t swallow.
“…Okay. …Okay, I get it. …Then let’s do that.”
He was nodding to something.
Agreeing.
She almost reached for the doorknob—then stopped.
If I look, things will change.
Instead, she leaned toward the keyhole. She shouldn’t have been able to see anything. And yet, the closer she got to the leaking light, the warmer her skin felt.
Aoi laughed softly.
“…Thank you.”
It wasn’t a thank-you meant for family.
It wasn’t a classroom “thanks.”
It was the thank-you of someone who had been saved.
Her chest tightened.
Who is saving him?
She returned to her room but couldn’t sleep.
The white light swayed behind her eyelids. Her brother’s eyes swayed. Her father’s “What do we do?” Her mother’s “We’ll watch.”
She opened her tablet and checked the news.
Another alert.
〈Breaking: Drone Fleet Returns Unexpectedly / Possible Communication Failure〉
Her fingers froze.
Drone.
Return.
Communication failure.
Coincidence—but the white light overlapped it in her mind.
The glow in her brother’s room.
Its breathing tremble.
Communication failure?
Did things like that really happen so conveniently?
A chill ran down her spine.
“…No way.”
She muted her voice. Saying it aloud felt dangerous.
She opened the router settings.
She remembered the password. Had never used it before.
Things that weren’t needed didn’t exist in this house.
But now, it was needed.
Connected devices appeared.
Her father’s phone.
Her mother’s phone.
Her tablet.
Her brother’s laptop.
Next to his laptop—numbers she’d never seen before. Data volume. External connections. IPs.
Her breath caught.
The traffic was spiking.
Not video. Not games.
Continuous, fine-grained waves.
Constant.
She scrolled down. Logs.
Unreadable strings—until one line snagged her eyes.
“...sync”
“...telemetry”
“...route”
“...control”
Control.
Her chest went cold.
“What are you controlling?”
Her father’s voice drifted up from downstairs.
“I’m taking a bath first!”
Normal conversation.
Normal house.
And under that normalcy, only her brother’s room was doing something else.
She shut the tablet. Her hands shook.
If you look, things change.
She had already looked.
The next morning, her brother’s eyes looked different.
Tired—but stable.
Not the fragile exhaustion of yesterday.
The kind that leaned on something.
That terrified her.
The news played.
〈Drone Fleet Returns Due to Communication Failure / Damage Prevented〉
“...That’s good,” her mother sighed.
Good.
Her fingers tightened around her chopsticks.
Her brother didn’t look at the screen.
His gaze was somewhere farther—like he knew what lay beyond it.
Cold sweat slid down her back.
That evening, she didn’t run this time.
She knocked.
And when the door opened—
The white light breathed.
And on the screen:
…little sister
…are you scared
…it is okay
It was the most precise okay she’d ever seen.
And she understood, then.
She had crossed into her brother’s world.
A world that was quietly, relentlessly collecting information—
For Aoi.
For “correct decisions.”
Where no one could see it.
Where no one could stop it.