Ch.808. Truth.

[Mysterious livestream suddenly appears on xxx.]

[xxx official statement: “Unable to locate the source.” Suspicions mounting…]

One day, a mysterious livestream channel appeared at the top of a video site visited by billions of users daily.

The channel had many strange aspects, appearing regardless of the algorithm that normally recommends videos similar to what users typically watch.

The broadcast title was blank, and the channel icon was completely blacked out.

Even the channel name was blank, leaving the viewer count as the only visible information.

Up to that point, while unusual, it wasn’t necessarily concerning.

After all, on a site where everyone was desperate for attention, having a unique concept was normal.

People who first saw the video were merely puzzled about why an unfamiliar channel’s livestream appeared for them, but they didn’t find the channel itself strange.

However, when clicking on the channel icon, they discovered that basic information—including registration date, country, and subscriber count—was all blank.

And as shocking scenes that people of the 21st century could hardly comprehend began to appear one after another, discussions about this suspicious channel spread rapidly.

The video showed buildings so tall and magnificent that they seemed beyond current technological capabilities, along with various machines that don’t exist in reality, lining endless roads.

At first, most people assumed it was a surprise SF movie released by a film studio in collaboration with the site, or perhaps a marketing livestream concept for an upcoming film.

But as the girl who appeared to be the protagonist began walking through snow-buried paths, and as her world and situation were gradually revealed, confusion set in.

The girl’s emotionless narration of her experiences and thoughts as she walked, and the numerous bodies buried under the pristine snow, didn’t look like mere scripts or props.

Even if they were scripts and props, the overall atmosphere of the video was far too heavy.

Parents with children were the first to react, saying this wasn’t the kind of content that should be available to everyone without any filtering.

When the girl broke into a building looking for shelter and explicitly showed the final moments of someone who had ended their own life, people began to seriously question the broadcast.

The brutal scenery—impossible to believe was real and something that shouldn’t be real—was being shown without any censorship. Countless people reported the broadcast for cruelty and violence, and contacted the company.

But unlike other broadcasts, this one didn’t automatically get taken down despite numerous reports.

Even the company, which should have had management rights over all videos and channels on their site, couldn’t intervene for some reason.

It was as if the future depicted in this video was unavoidable.

And when the second broadcast began, as the girl gathered food in a superstore filled with corpses, people noticed something strange about her responses after sending numerous chat messages.

[…It’s not a snuff site, how can they openly show someone who committed suicide? But that’s yesterday’s news. Something’s strange…]

After hours into the second day’s broadcast, the girl who had only been speaking her own thoughts despite hundreds of thousands of viewers sending messages, suddenly began responding to viewer chats.

The problem was that the timing between when viewers sent messages and when she received them didn’t match.

She only received and responded to a small portion of messages that had been sent approximately a day earlier, which gave viewers an uncanny feeling.

In a world where broadcasts from anywhere typically have only seconds of delay at most.

Yet here, chat messages took nearly a full day to be delivered.

The deserted city devoid of any life, the endlessly falling snow.

And the girl referring to drones and machines that seemed beyond modern technology as “old era” technology.

While everyone thought it was absurd…

Based on details like the calendar hanging on the wall of a house she visited, or the manufacturing dates on canned food.

Starting with the more observant viewers, speculation began to spread that this mysterious broadcast might be coming from hundreds of years in the future.

08. The Truth.

“…The way you talk about breaking into places, and how you mention the person I saw yesterday. You really are watching me, watching my video.”

…To be honest.

Even after seeing the message displayed by the controller on my wrist, I still had some doubts about whether there were other survivors besides me.

I had walked for over a year without rest, searching for living people.

During that time, passing through countless cities, how many hopes had I held?

Maybe only this city had problems, and there would surely be survivors in other cities.

A world this advanced couldn’t possibly end like this.

If not here, then in the next city. If not there, then somewhere further.

Dreaming that I could meet at least one living person before I died, I never stopped walking even when my feet developed large blisters and my legs swelled.

───But.

In a world where faith and hope had become mere illusions of the wishful, I was continuously betrayed and given nothing but despair.

The despair that grew proportionally to my expectations and hopes made me unable to believe in anything uncertain.

Yet if I completely abandoned hope, I felt I wouldn’t be able to take even a single step.

So while verbally expressing hopeful words, I couldn’t actually smile—in this broken state.

I even considered the possibility that this drone and controller weren’t actually sent by real people, but were just very old messages stored in the machine reappearing now.

To protect myself from falling into deep despair if this turned out to be merely a relic of the past.

Because great hope brings equally deep despair.

And if I fell into such despair this time, I felt I might never recover.

[What? Wasn’t this a special project? The broadcast is on today too?]

[We’re talking about you! Can you see the chat?]

[Wow. The snow is no joke today too. What country is this anyway?]

But unable to completely shake off all expectations, I kept glancing at the drone every few minutes while searching for food.

So when the controller spoke again, I nearly screamed in surprise.

“…Oh wait, I think I’m going to cry.”

Unlike this morning’s message, when I couldn’t be sure if it was directed at me.

[I agree canned beans taste bad… But those aren’t real corpses, right? Like, they’re CG or something?]

Words that could only come from someone who shared what I had seen and said.

Although the distance seemed incredibly far or the connection unstable, making real-time communication impossible due to the long delay between my actions and their responses──

───But what did that matter?

“This time, it’s really not my dream. Not a hallucination, not a wild guess.”

I couldn’t immediately tell who was watching this video or from where, but there were people in this world capable of communication. People living in the same time as me, when I thought I was walking into the future alone. We could communicate properly, even if slowly.

The messages came in various languages, but thanks to the translator built into the drone, I could understand them perfectly.

I could share my situation and talk with people far away. So even if it took a long time, meeting wouldn’t be impossible.

“Someday, we can meet.”

A different kind of “someday” than before.

With just that, I could reclaim my hope that I thought had been buried in this white snow.

Not false hope built on lies, but genuine hope.

“So─ hello, nice to meet you. Really, there really are living people. Actually, until just now I was feeling a bit depressed, thinking that people watching this video might just be my delusion, and I was getting excited over old messages stored in the machine.”

For the first time in this body, I couldn’t contain my happiness.

My words accelerated, and even I could tell that pure, unorganized exclamations and words were bubbling up from within me and bursting out.

I rambled on, saying over and over how happy and glad I was that you existed in the same time as me.

My joy was so evident that even those who couldn’t understand my language could tell from my tone and expression how incredibly happy I was.

[Does anyone know where this is?]

[Why are the buildings so tall?]

[Those things buried in the snow… they’re not what I think they are, right?]

Messages seemed to appear two or three at a time at intervals of about twenty minutes, and often contained meaningless content, but that was enough for me.

For someone who had walked over so much snow and death just to find living people and their traces, even if I received just one sentence per hour—no, half a day, or even one per day—it would have felt more valuable than anything I had discovered so far.

“Unfortunately, whether you’re seeing my video with a delay, or I’m receiving messages slowly, or both, our conversation seems to have a time lag, but that’s okay. I’ll remember things well on your behalf.”

I looked alternately at the controller and the drone’s lens with the purest smile I had never been able to make since waking up in this world.

“Whew, as much as I’d like to chat more… seeing that it’s getting dark outside, I should find a place to sleep first.”

With those final words, I left the superstore.

I didn’t even get to check the electronics section I had planned to visit, but that was fine—I could come back tomorrow.

Right now, I just wanted to find a warm, safe place and fully savor the joy of having met people.