The Lazy Genius With 999x System

The world pulses like a broken heartbeat.

Every breath I, Rei Kazuma takes inside this half-restored simulation feels like inhaling glass. The air stings with uncertainty— data and dream meshed together in ways not even I, with all the fragments I've seen, can fully decode anymore.

Jay is near. Both of them.

And I don't know which scares me more.

Null-Jay is stable in a terrifying way. Controlled. Pure. Like a weapon sharpened not for justice, but efficiency. He's everything the System wanted us to become. Everything I was once on track to be before... I remembered who I was.

Jay— the real Jay— he's messy. Inconsistent. Undisciplined. His logic wanders, his priorities shift, and his emotions— when they finally surface— burn with a weight I don't know how he carries.

But unlike Null, Jay isn't just following a function.

He's choosing his way through the chaos.

That terrifies people like the Observer. And if I'm being honest… it terrifies me too.

I've always prided myself on control. On moving ten steps ahead, calculating the play before the board was even set. But here? In this half-dream, half-reality stitched together by remnants of broken code and buried memories?

Control doesn't matter.

Only clarity does.

And mine's slipping.

I remember the first time I met Jay. The real Jay. Not as a classmate. Not even as a rival. But as a variable. Someone who shouldn't have mattered in the grand scheme, yet refused to vanish. Every time the system tried to erase him from consequence, he bled back into the narrative like spilled ink on perfect lines.

And now?

He's become the last contradiction the System can't overwrite.

I don't know what he's going to do.

I don't know what Null is going to do.

But I know I have to be there.

Not as a backup plan.

Not as the clever one.

Not even as a friend.

I have to stand there as Rei Kazuma, a person who saw the fracture coming and still chose to jump.

I used to believe we were meant to fix this world.

Now I think… maybe we were meant to set it free.

And freedom, as it turns out, is messier than any simulation ever allowed.

So go on, Jay. Null. Show me what happens when two sides of the same soul stop pretending they're complete without the other.

I'll be watching.

I'll be ready.

And if I have to choose—

I'll bet on the one who still dreams.

____

Location: The edge of the reconstructed dream-space — a dim, glass-like corridor overlooking fractured system nodes

---

Alicia sat cross-legged on the crystalized floor, her white boots faintly scuffed from the last battle, cape draped like a blanket across her shoulders. Her usually radiant hair dimmed under the fractured light leaking through the glass corridor's cracks. The simulation flickered around them — data rain softly dripping from broken ceiling panels, dissolving before touching the ground.

Across from her, Rei stood still, arms crossed. A thousand calculations in his head, but none of them made her look any less tired.

She broke the silence first.

"Why are we always the ones left waiting while he throws himself into danger?"

Rei looked down, shadows stretching under his eyes. "Because we're the ones who remember what happens when he doesn't."

Alicia frowned. "That's not an answer. That's an excuse."

He sighed and sat down beside her, not quite close, not quite distant. "You're right."

The pause lingered.

She toyed with the edge of her sleeve. "You saw him, didn't you? The other Jay. Null."

Rei nodded. "I don't know if I saw a version of him… or a version of what we could have become if we lost ourselves."

"…He scared me," she admitted, voice low. "Not because he was powerful. But because he was empty. Like a perfect glass statue ready to shatter the world just to prove he's real."

Rei chuckled faintly, bitter. "That's exactly what makes him dangerous. He believes he's real. More than we ever did."

They sat in silence again. A soft breeze blew through the corridor, echoing with the dissonance of crashing memories and deleted code.

Then Rei asked, "Do you ever regret it?"

Alicia turned toward him. "Regret what?"

"Choosing this path. Following someone like Jay."

She blinked. "No. Never."

Rei tilted his head, skeptical. "Even now?"

"Especially now." She smiled faintly, like a candle relit. "Because he's the only one who ever made me want to choose. Not out of duty. Not out of legacy. Just… because it felt right."

Rei stared at her, that guarded shell of his cracking slightly. "You're not who I expected you to be, Alicia Renvale."

"And you're not as cold as you pretend to be, Rei Kazuma."

He looked away. "Don't let that get around."

She smirked, but her fingers trembled slightly. "You know what scares me most?"

"…What?"

"That he's starting to look like him. Like Null. When Jay's serious, when he's quiet… I can't always tell which version I'm talking to."

Rei's gaze dropped. "Neither can I."

A beat.

Then Alicia reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper—one of the last physical remnants from Jay's old notebook. She didn't say where she got it. But Rei knew enough not to ask.

She placed it between them.

"I found this when I was tracing the earlier node. It's his handwriting."

Rei leaned in, reading the scrawled note:

> "I'll mess up, I'll fall behind, and I'll doubt every step.

But if they still believe in me—then maybe I'll find the version of me worth becoming."

Neither spoke for a while.

Then Rei stood, brushing off imaginary dust.

"I think that version's already here."

Alicia looked up at him, then stood too. "You're not going to stop him, are you?"

Rei shook his head. "No. But I'll be there if he falls."

Alicia clenched her fist, the paper still inside. "Then let's both be there. One last time."

And as they stepped forward into the broken corridor's flickering path, something unspoken passed between them:

A silent oath.

Not to save the world.

But to remind the boy trying to carry it—

That he never had to do it alone.