OBSERVER | Episode 2: Error

▼View Log History
　LOG 01　A Happy Death

Access Authority: Approved

LOG 02　Error

Yuto Fujisaki's room was surprisingly tidy.

Desk.
Bookshelf.
Terminal.
Clothing.

Everything was arranged systematically.
It lacked a sense of daily life.
But it wasn't unnatural.

Nanami operates the terminal.
No abnormalities.
It was too clean.

Kuze leans against the wall.
A sense of discomfort. A discomfort that couldn't be quantified.
The corner of the desk. An old memo. A handwritten mathematical formula.

“Efficiency, efficiency. Try doing some useless calculations once in a while.”
The words Miyasaka once muttered while looking at Kuze's notebook resurfaced in the back of his mind.

The handwritten memo he picked up. It had a circle drawn on it in red pen.
Kuze stared at the memo.
───Miyasaka would have surely laughed.
《Observational Error》

“Soma.”
“Yes?”
“This.”

Nanami peers over.
“Observational error?”
There are prediction errors. There are no observational errors.
It was an unfamiliar term.

Nanami tilted her head.
“Is that a research term?”

At that moment, a voice came from behind them.
“No, it isn't.”

They turn around. It was a man they didn't know.
Around fifty. A lab coat. Glasses.
His salt-and-pepper hair was overgrown, and deep fatigue was etched into his gaunt cheeks.
Even so, only the eyes beneath his deep dark circles were strangely sharp.
They didn't know when he had entered.

“Observational error is not a research term. It is a problem with the very premises this city is built upon.”

Nanami is on guard.
“Who are you?”

The man took an ID card out of his pocket.
External Consultant. Koichi Mikage.

Kuze knew the name.
One of the developers of the city operation model. An authority on predictive theory.

“Professor Mikage.”
Mikage smiles slightly.
“I am honored that you know me.”

Mikage looks at the memo on the desk. He is silent for a while.
Then, he lets out a small sigh.
"I knew it."
"What do you mean?"
Kuze asks.

Mikage does not answer immediately. Instead, he looks at Fujisaki's bookshelf.
Mikage takes out one of Fujisaki's old research notebooks.
"He had come this far."
He says, as if whispering to himself.

Nanami asks back.
"What are you talking about?"
Mikage shakes his head.
"It's still too early."

Kuze is caught by those words.
Still.
In other words, he knows something.

"Professor," Mikage looks at him.
"How do you think Fujisaki died?"

Silence.

Eventually, Mikage says.
"He didn't die."
Kuze frowns.
"What do you mean?"

Mikage drops his gaze to Fujisaki's desk and whispers in a low, raspy voice.
"To be precise, he was erased."
Mikage was smiling.
But his eyes were not smiling at all.

Nanami laughs.
"It's not like it's an urban legend."
Mikage laughs too.
"That's how it sounds, doesn't it?"

On the way back to the Audit Bureau, Nanami stretches widely.
"He was a strange person, wasn't he?"
Kuze does not answer.

"Erased."
That word remained.

It is not logical. There is no evidence.
Yet, for some reason, it won't leave his head.

The cafeteria.
Nanami says happily.
"It's curry today."
"If it's nutritional efficiency, it's the B set meal."
Kuze chooses without hesitation. Placed on a synthetic tray, it provides exactly the right amount of nutrients, and in exchange, even the steam rises only at a calculated temperature.

"Kuze-san, there's more to life than that."
Nanami moves her spoon with a look of exasperation. From the curry Nanami chose, a strong scent of spices rose, which felt out of place in this orderly cafeteria.
Usually, he would have dismissed it by saying, "Excessive stimulation to the sense of smell is not rational." Yet, Kuze could not take his eyes or his senses away from that scent.

He brings the bland B set meal, whose steam temperature is even calculated, to his mouth.
The log of nutrient absorption rate calculations, which usually runs automatically in his brain, somehow blurred and disappeared halfway through.
Mikage's words cling to his mind like an indelible stain.
--Erased.
The calculations are breaking down.
The food, which should have been perfect, felt like terribly bland sand.

Night. Audit Bureau. Senior meeting.
Tension hung in the conference room.

Wall display.
[List of Death Cases]
No. 1142
No. 1143

Two cases.
Abnormal increase rate.

The senior information officer says.
"The prediction success rate is being maintained."

The screen switches.

<<99.97%>>
City operation model normal.
No abnormalities.

"Then why are deaths increasing?"
Someone asks.

Silence.

The Information Control Officer does not answer. Instead, he looks at Kuze.

"Kuze."
"Yes."
"Lately."

A beat.

"Your judgment errors have been increasing."
Kuze remains silent.
"Emotional attachment to subjects. Independent judgment. Delayed reporting."
Numbers appear on the display.

[Audit Evaluation]
A+ → A → A-

Every time the text on the screen changed, Kuze felt his heart contract coldly.
His evaluation is dropping.
"An auditor must be objective."
The Information Control Officer's cold, emotionless voice freezes the air in the conference room.
"We ourselves must not become an error. Errors are eliminated."
His breath hitched.
Kuze's inner state—pursuing Miyasaka's death and being swayed by Nanami's words—is being judged as "abnormal" by the system in real-time.
In the world he thought he was auditing, is it actually Kuze himself who is being evaluated and judged as unnecessary?
An unfathomable terror raced up his spine.

After the meeting ends. He leaves the room.
The city's perfect night view spread out from the hallway window.
Perfect light. Perfect order.
And, behind Kuze reflected in the glass, someone was standing there.
He turns around. No one is there.
He looks at the window again. A man was definitely there. He couldn't see his face well. Without a sound, he moved only his lips.
"Who do you think is really being audited?"
Kuze couldn't move for a while.

After returning home. A new notification arrives on his terminal.
Sender unknown.
Timestamp unknown.
One attachment.
What was displayed was only a single line.

<<Don't go to that side>>
Sender: Naoto Miyasaka.
Three days before his date of death.
He holds his breath. A message had arrived from a dead person.

[Observation Log No.02]
Observation error: 0.02%
Status: Monitoring continued

▼Log update
LOG 03 Deleted

▼Observation log list