Fatal Rhythm

They ran through the streets of Akihabara, dodging the last groups of otaku and drunken salarymen belting out something resembling public karaoke. The dark pulse Aoi sensed spiritually grew stronger with every step — an irregular, sick heartbeat pounding against her ribs like a second, malfunctioning heart.

Rei moved with a grace that didn’t belong to the human world. It wasn’t frantic running — but a smooth, fluid glide between shadows, as if gravity itself stepped aside to clear a path for him. Aoi struggled to keep up, her lungs already burning.

“We’re here,” Rei said.

He stopped in front of a bright red building lit up like an electric Christmas tree. Multicolored neon blinked across every surface. One of the biggest arcades in the district.

“An arcade?” Aoi frowned. “At this hour?”

Through the windows, she could see dozens of people crammed around machines — UFO catchers, arcade cabinets. High schoolers who were definitely skipping class tomorrow. Salarymen in wrinkled suits escaping their empty apartments. Couples facing off on rhythm games.

All normal at first glance.

But with her newly awakened sense, Aoi saw something else. Dark filaments stretching from the machines toward the players. Subtle. Almost invisible. But there.

“They’re being drained,” she murmured.

“The yurei is feeding while it forms.”

Rei pushed the door open.

The arcade was a sensory assault. Electronic music overlapping from more than a hundred machines. Pixel explosions. Digitized voices screaming victory or defeat. The air smelled of sweat, ozone, and instant noodles.

No one looked up at them. The players were too absorbed, too consumed by their games. Glassy expressions. Mechanical movements.

How long have they been here? Aoi wondered. Hours? Days?

Rei headed straight toward the staircase at the back. They ran up the levels — second, third, fourth. On each floor, the same scene repeated. Fighting games. Racing simulators. Claw machines. And always those pulsing dark filaments.

On the fifth floor, Rei stopped abruptly.

“We’re close.”

The pulse now felt like a hammer striking inside Aoi’s skull. She pressed a hand to her temple, wincing.

“Up there,” Rei said, pointing toward the ceiling. “The storage floor.”

They climbed the last flight of stairs. Even the air seemed heavier — thick with some kind of malignant electricity.

The final floor was smaller — a single room centered around a cluster of rhythm game machines. Half a dozen cabinets lined the walls. But one machine in the center drew the eye immediately.

Not because it was bigger or brighter.

But because it was alive.

The main screen was cracked, its pixels warped into impossible patterns — fractals that hurt the eyes just to look at. The music leaking from it was dissonant, notes scraping against the brain like fingernails on a chalkboard.

And in front of the machine, dancing frantically, was something.

The creature had a vaguely humanoid maid shape — maybe inspired by the cafés scattered around the district. But its body was composed of glitching LCD screens flashing fragments of video games, ads, screaming faces. Electrical cables hung from its arms like organic tentacles. Bits of colored plastic — shattered controllers, torn cards, broken figurine shards — formed a chaotic armor.

No face. Just a cracked CRT where words scrolled in a continuous loop:

Play, play, play.

It moved to the distorted rhythm, its feet hammering the platform in a grotesque parody of a dance game. With every movement, the dark filaments stretched through the entire arcade pulsed harder.

“An arcade yurei,” Rei murmured, a note of fascination in his voice despite the danger. “Born from player obsession. Hundreds of wasted hours, accumulated frustration, lives burned away in front of these machines.”

Aoi felt something tighten in her chest. This creature wasn’t just a monster — it was a manifestation of human pain. Loneliness. Desperate escape into pixel worlds.

As if it heard her thoughts, the creature suddenly stopped. Its screen-face snapped toward them with a jerky, mechanical movement.

The words changed:

New players.

“Watch out!” Rei shouted.

The creature leaped.

Faster than anything that massive should be. Its cable-tentacles whipped through the air with a sizzling crack. Rei shoved Aoi aside, and the tentacles slammed into the spot where she had stood a heartbeat earlier, leaving scorched streaks on the linoleum.

Rei transformed. Not fully — just enough for silver flames to bloom around his hands and his eyes to blaze entirely gold. He counterattacked immediately, arcs of cold fire slicing through the air.

They struck the yurei dead center.

The creature recoiled, pixels scattering like digital blood. But instead of collapsing, it reassembled. Screen fragments snapped back into place. Cables rewove.

And it attacked again.

This time it hurled projectiles — data fragments materializing as solid pixels, sharp as glass. Rei dodged with feline grace, but one grazed him, drawing a thin line of blood across his cheek.

He hissed in pain.

“Damn. My flames are weaker than usual.”

“Why?” Aoi had taken shelter behind a racing machine, watching with horrified fascination.

“It’s a rhythm yurei!” Rei dodged another tentacle, but less easily. “It’s synced to a specific frequency. I’m out of sync!”

As if to confirm his words, the machine’s music shifted. The tempo increased. The notes became more aggressive, more chaotic.

And the yurei’s movements accelerated to match.

Suddenly, this wasn’t a fight — it was a lethal choreography. Every attack landed exactly on the beat. Every movement followed the warped tempo. Tentacles lashed on the downbeats. Projectiles fired on the syncopation.

Rei, despite all his supernatural speed, was off-timing. Blocking when he should have dodged. Attacking when he should have defended. Each passing second pushed him further behind.

A tentacle slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around. Another whipped across his legs. He stumbled, barely catching himself.

“Rei!”

Aoi wanted to jump out — but something froze her in place. Her new spiritual sense screamed a warning. If she moved now, without understanding, she would die.

The yurei continued its assault. Tentacles and projectiles created a storm of perfectly timed attacks. Rei dodged, blocked, countered — but he was losing ground. Blood dripped from multiple cuts. His breathing — normally imperceptible — grew ragged.

The music climbed again. The tempo became feral.

Rei couldn’t keep up.

A tentacle caught his ankle. Another wrapped around his arm. The yurei lifted him and slammed him violently against the wall. Rei collapsed with a grunt, leaving a streak of blood on the cracked plaster.

He tried to stand — but his legs trembled.

The yurei turned toward Aoi, its screen-face now displaying:

Next player.

It advanced toward her — slow, methodical — perfectly matching the distorted beat.

Panic surged in Aoi. She had no idea how to control her power. The night before had been instinct, desperation. But now—

The rhythm, she suddenly realized. Rei said the yurei syncs to a frequency.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the chaos — the warped music, the noise from the arcade below, her own frantic breathing.

And beneath all of it — she heard it.

A beat. Steady. Pure.

Not the corrupted rhythm the yurei imposed — but the original rhythm. The melody that existed before obsession twisted it. The beauty that once drew players in before it trapped them.

Aoi opened her eyes.

Her right hand glowed with a soft golden light — not explosive like the night before, but controlled, pulsing exactly to the rhythm she now heard.

The yurei froze — its screen glitching in confusion.

Aoi stepped out, hand raised like a shield. The golden glow grew brighter with every heartbeat — perfectly synced to the pure rhythm she had found.

“I understand now,” she whispered.

The yurei attacked — tentacles and pixel projectiles flying toward her.

And Aoi moved.

Not by dodging violently.

But by dancing.