In the footage, as his younger self walked out the door, a tall, thin man in a black coat stepped into the frame from the opposite direction. The man didn't look at the camera. He looked directly at Natsu's younger self. Then he pulled a small, rectangular device from his pocket—it looked like an old MP3 player with a cracked screen—and pointed it at the retreating figure.
“You are already in the archive. Would you like to download yourself?”
The screen went black. Not the sleep mode black, but an infinite, velvet darkness that seemed to suck the light from his desk lamp. Then, a grainy image materialized. It looked like security camera footage from a convenience store—a 7-Eleven he recognized from his old neighborhood in Chiba. The timestamp in the corner read: 2024-03-15 02:14:17 JST .
Derby Drainage