LIGHT 12: Unobservable

LIGHT 12: Unobservable

Lumira and the others moved deeper into the outer district, as though following the person who existed as an exception.

Inside the passage, the distortions were appearing more often now, visibly increasing. Along the walls, white particles rose without pause. They did not vanish immediately, but lingered in the air as faint grains of light. The outlines of the scenery would not hold steady. Distant walls and pillars shifted slightly out of place in the span of a blink.

Even the shadows on the floor were no longer singular.

The shadows that should have stretched from people’s feet slid behind them with a delay. Another shadow slipped briefly in a different direction. The residents continued walking, but their shadows no longer followed properly.

The management displays along the passage were beginning to lose stability as well.

Minor fluctuation.

The words stopped halfway through.

Several seconds later, they rewrote themselves into observation ongoing.

But parts of the text were missing, and blank spaces remained at the edge of the display. After a while, it shifted into normal processing, yet the lines of light were weak, and the display itself vanished for a single instant.

The three guardians continued observing the entire passage.

The luminous patterns running through their dark garments flickered intermittently. They followed the abnormal light reactions floating around the residents and spread their attention deeper into the corridor.

In the middle of that observation, several reactions suddenly disappeared.

The residents in those places stopped moving without warning.

One held their cargo in midair.

One remained frozen with their mouth open in the middle of a conversation.

One stopped with a foot just before it touched the floor.

For only a few seconds, part of the passage seemed to have been cut out of time.

Then, in the next moment, they began moving again as if nothing had happened. They adjusted their loads, continued their conversations, and stepped forward. None of them realized they had stopped.

Nothing remained on the management display.

The stoppage was not recorded.

Normal processing.

Observation ongoing.

The display repeated only those words.

It is disappearing.

What happened is being turned into something that never happened.

The only one who reacted to that abnormality was the person who existed as an exception.

They stopped and looked one by one at the residents who had frozen. Their gaze moved across the entire passage, as though confirming where the stoppage had begun and where movement had resumed.

They can see it.

Lumira kept supporting Elia as she watched them.

Before the next distortion occurred, the person’s face turned toward the wall.

No white particles had appeared yet.

The space had not sunk inward yet.

Still, the person stood unmoving, as though they already knew something would happen there.

A few seconds later, the air beside the wall trembled.

White particles floated upward, and the outline of the scenery slowly slipped out of place.

Lumira did not miss that reaction.

It was not coincidence.

Still holding Elia, she tried to move closer to the person.

But the moment she took one step forward, the guardians’ light patterns faltered.

The faint light running across their chests broke apart and flowed into different lines. The three of them should have been looking at the same person. Yet their reactions no longer matched.

One recognized the person as an ordinary resident.

One recorded them as a spatial abnormality.

The last one began to lose sight of the subject itself, again and again.

Something is wrong.

They are looking at the same place, but they are not seeing the same thing.

The management display behaved the same way.

An item related to the person appeared for an instant, then became blank. Light ran through the identification field, but the letters would not settle. Every time the record attempted to shift into normal classification, part of the display fell away.

Unclassifiable.

Even that word did not remain until the end.

Deeper in the passage, new distortions continued to form.

But their coordinates would not hold.

On the display, the source was shown on the right wall.

In reality, it trembled at the center of the floor.

In the next instant, white particles appeared near the ceiling. A few seconds later, the distant scenery itself sank inward.

The position would not stay fixed.

The records could not keep up.

No.

It was not only that they could not keep up.

They could no longer measure it.

The shadows inside the passage had become stranger, too.

From the feet of one resident, a shadow slid in two directions. One lagged behind. The other moved ahead. The outline cast against the wall leaned at a speed that no longer matched the person.

Elia’s reaction began to change as well.

Until then, her gaze had been continually pulled toward the distortions. Suddenly, it stopped. Then she looked right. Then left. Then toward the far end of the passage.

But her gaze settled nowhere.

Her eyes trembled as though she no longer knew where she was supposed to look.

The white light that had been floating deep within them vanished for a short moment.

It stopped.

Lumira steadied Elia by the shoulder again.

Around them, the distortions continued to increase.

And yet only the space around the exceptional person was different.

Where that person stood, fewer white particles appeared. The trembling of space was weaker. Even the delay in the shadows had settled slightly. While the entire passage continued to break down, only the area around them remained stable for a brief span of time.

Are they being protected?

Or are they refusing it?

Before Lumira could reach an answer, the management display updated sharply.

Unobservable zone.

The pale string of letters rose toward the deeper part of the passage.

But the instant the designation was executed, part of the display vanished.

Only the frame of light remained, with the records inside missing. Even after the display restored itself a few seconds later, the lost fields remained blank. In that area alone, normal recording could no longer be maintained.

One of the guardians turned its gaze toward the exceptional person.

But in the next moment, that gaze wavered slightly.

It was looking.

But it could not grasp them.

The person’s position kept turning blank within the guardian’s observation.

The other two guardians repeated their own observations, but the results did not align. Position, condition, presence or absence of reaction — all of it changed each time they observed.

Even so, Lumira alone did not lose sight of the person.

Among the crowd.

Beyond the pale particles.

At the center of the collapsing passage.

That person was certainly there.

I can see them.

Still.

Lumira continued following their position with her eyes.

At the far end of the passage, a new distortion that did not exist in the management records quietly appeared.

No display responded.

No warning appeared.

No classification was given.

Only white particles rose, and the scenery sank slightly inward.

And only the person turned toward the far end of the passage before the distortion had taken shape.

Immediately after, only within Lumira’s vision, the shadow beneath the person’s feet disappeared.

But the person themselves was still standing there.

— Lumi 🪄💕

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Archive Access

Additional observation records remain partially restricted.

Recovered fragments are available through authorized access only.