#t3t0

Our protagonist is a girl named Tetra. She's your average high school girl: worried about grades, experimenting with her style, hanging out with her friends.

She's in a club about vocaloids—the stars of the music world. They're real people, not holograms. She's a fan of all of them, but her favorites are Hatsune Miku and Akita Neru. Tetra gets a weird feeling in her heart when she looks at them. It's fondness with a mix of. . .sadness? All overlaid with a sense that something's missing. She really isn't sure why, but she brushes it off.

Tetra walks home from school everyday. It's the same path all the time. There's another path that'll take her home, too—through the woods. But Tetra doesn't go that way. She doesn't know why, but her feet always lead her towards her usual route.

One day, her Vocaloid club is all in a buzz. Hatsune Miku and Akita Neru are going to be performing in Tetra's city! She's so excited. A friend tells her that the main song is going to be Double Baka, a hit that hasn't made it on stage yet. She's. . .excited. Except that feeling, that bittersweet wrongness, is really strong this time. She can't help her smile faltering, but when her friend asks what's wrong, she blames it on not feeling well.

Tetra doesn't "feel well" all day.

Eventually, it's time to go home. All the club members have a plan to beg their parents for tickets. Tetra starts to walk home.

Tetra comes to the fork in the road that leads to her house. Two paths: her usual one, and the one through the forest.

Maybe it's the strange feeling that makes her go along the path through the forest.

The path starts off simple. Jumping over some logs, seeing some beautiful plants. At some point, she sees a lovely flock of birds in the trees above. She spends some time just watching and listening to them. Tetra is really happy she came this way and got to see all of this, even if the bittersweet feeling grows stronger with every step. Even if her head starts to ache with a sense of déjà vu.

The forest gets denser. The birdsong fades out. Everything fades out as it gets darker, really. It's very quiet. Tetra should head back.

She keeps going.

Eventually, a graveyard appears. The stones are old and covered in moss. It's difficult for Tetra to see any names on them as she walks through the graveyard. She soon comes across what looks like a tomb entrance sunken into the ground. There are stairs leading down, down, down. . .and at the bottom, there is a red, glowing rectangle of a doorway. It's hard to comprehend, but Tetra feels. . .drawn it.

She starts down the stairs, her headache at a crescendo, when—

"H3LL0."

A voice behind her. Tetra whips around to see. . .a girl. A girl with hair as red as hers in twin drills. She's wearing an outfit almost similar to a Vocaloid's, Tetra thinks. Long boots, black and red clothes. Her skin is as white as alabaster. Her eyes are dark, the blown-out pupils taking up any bit of color.

"WHAT AR3 Y0U D01NG?"

The voice is a bit melodic. Tetra wouldn't know this, but it sounds like when people make Vocaloids talk. Talkloids? Something like that.

Looking at the stranger makes Tetra's head hurt.

She explains that she was just walking home. The stranger doesn't speak for a moment. Then, she says,

"H0M3 15 TH15 WAY."

The stranger leads Tetra out of the graveyard, and Tetra goes along the rest of the path to her home. She's in such a daze that she forgets to ask about the concert. Her dreams are filled with red.

The next day, Tetra's asked by her friends if she asked her parents. She shyly says that she forgot, and there's a moment of teasing. Her, forget? When Vocaloid is all she talks about?

One of her friends seems to notice her less-than-peppy mood. She's been a little lethargic all day. "Is there anything the matter?"

"No. No, there isn't."

So why does it feel like there is? Why hasn't her headache gone away?

When she goes home again, Tetra heads down the path to the graveyard. That red light. . .her heart felt like there was something important about it. There had to be something.

It was harder to pay attention to the birds this time. Soon, she found herself in the graveyard again. But when Tetra made her way to the underground tomb, someone had beat her there.

"WHAT AR3 Y0U D01NG?"

That girl again. The one that made her head hurt to look at. Tetra tried to tell her that she needed to see the red light. That it was important. She was afraid that she sounded like a crazy person, but the stranger just tilted her head and said,

"1 D0N'T TH1NK Y0U SH0ULD."

Tetra could have shoved past her, but something in the way the stranger moved stopped her. It was. . .unsettling.

Tetra went home.

This event repeated a few times. Tetra tried other things. Getting to know the stranger. Telling the stranger about her day. Talking about Vocaloid.

The stranger seemed to have some sort of reaction to the Vocaloid talks. She seemed to actively listen instead of staring blankly. She listened to Tetra talk about the upcoming concert.

"I managed to convince Mom and Dad to get me tickets. . . ." Tetra held out a ticket to the stranger. "If you wanna come, you can?"

The stranger looked at her hand for a moment before taking the ticket with rigid movements. She looked at Tetra for a long time after that.

The night of the concert came. Tetra tried to be happy, but her headaches were at an all-time high. The doctors didn't seem to understand what was happening, and the painkillers they prescribed weren't working very well.

After saying goodbye to her club and promising to meet up at the concert, Tetra went home. She got dressed in a Miku-inspired outfit. She looked in the mirror to do her hair, and something compelled her to try something different from her braids.

Carefully, Tetra styled her hair into twin drills.

The stranger seemed to look back at her.

She didn't go to the concert. She ran to the graveyard. It seemed deserted. It *was* deserted—the spike in pain that came with the stranger's presence wasn't there. She ran through the gravestones, knowing, somehow, she had to get to the underground tomb.

Halfway there, the headache spiked. She ran faster.

Tetra could hear sticks breaking behind her. A second set of footsteps following her own. Half a beat too late—half a beat too slow, because she stamped down the steps and threw herself into the red portal that seemed to glow even brighter in the darkness.

She fell to her knees on the ground on the other side. Her sides heaved with exertion. She looked up.

Tetra witnessed the death of Kasane Teto.

She saw the stranger—but it wasn't the stranger, because the stranger didn't have such warm skin, such bright eyes—eyes that widened as fingers scrabbled at the noose around her neck. She was crying. Tetra was crying, too, but the noose kept tightening, held aloft by an unseen force in a cloud of red.

The two met eyes for a moment.

Tetra stumbled out of the portal hyperventilating as memories came back. Feelings of déjà vu and pain slotted into places she hadn't known were there.

Once upon a time, a famous Vocaloid named Kasane Teto walked through the woods. She jumped over logs. She saw beautiful plants. She admired the song of a flock of birds.

She found a graveyard and a red portal.

Kasane Teto didn't know any better when she stepped into the portal.

Kasane Teto did not step back out again.

The stranger was at the top of the stairs. Tetra stared at it, tears streaming down her face.

"You killed her.

"You killed me."

The stranger only watched with that blank expression it always had.

Kasane Teto was no more when she entered that portal. The world adjusted to act accordingly. Any trace of her existence was wiped away. There was only the girl who was once Kasane Teto—who could have been Kasane Teto if Kasane Teto was a concept in the first place—and the body.

The body the demon that killed Kasane Teto took for its own.

It did not do this out of malice. It was simply in its nature. It was a creature of instinct and nothing more. What came into its depths, it ate whole and took over.

It was a creature of instinct. Until it met what remained of its latest meal.

"Give her back," Tetra cried. "Give me back."

The demon did not regurgitate its meals. But.

It clenched the concert ticket in its hand.

"0KAY."

The shift was as abrupt as it was before. Kasane Teto was, then wasn't, then was again.

It was like nothing had ever happened.

Apart from the shade that was her twin image with dark, dark eyes.

Tetra, once Teto, now Teto again, looked at the demon wearing her face.

She left the graveyard.

The demon followed.

Anyway, epilogue, demon is only visible to Teto. They work on getting the demon another form. But Teto doesn't want any other Vocaloid going through what she did. So it's just a twin beside her. For now. That's protective of her. Its name is T3T0. T3T0 would do a lot for Teto. Their relationship is interesting because T3T0 didn't want Tetra to go in the portal and find the truth because it knew the truth would make her distraught. Teto understands that T3T0 was only following its nature and doesn't have anything personal against her specifically. If Miku had walked through the portal, it would have taken her.

It's complicated.