Kenji opened the file. The screen stayed black for exactly thirty seconds. Then, a low-frequency hum vibrated through his headphones, rattling his teeth. The visuals finally snapped into focus: it wasn't a cartoon.

The flickering neon sign of the "GATE" cyber-cafe cast a jagged blue light over Kenji’s keyboard. He was a digital scavenger, the kind of guy who spent his nights scouring dead servers for "Ghost Media"—files that shouldn’t exist.

On screen, the "anime" characters began to bleed into the footage—hand-drawn, hyper-stylized shadows flickering against the real-world walls of his apartment building. They were tall, faceless silhouettes with eyes like glowing static.

The camera moved with a slow, mechanical precision. It passed a row of lockers, a discarded ramen cup, and a stack of old motherboards. Kenji’s breath hitched. That was the hallway outside his room.