I'm worthless

A cursor, or what we call the Hand of God, began issuing commands. However, only the letters in the Mega Company Alphabet could receive direct orders from the divine hand. I feel a bit jealous, but since I am weak and useless in this world, perhaps it's just a dream to ever rival them.

Only the letters from Mega Company Alphabet can receive direct commands from the Hand of God.

The rest of us?

Well, we're just background noise—like bloatware that can't be uninstalled.

I let out a heavy sigh as I stepped through the school gate. Yeah, Private School Google was an enormous place, maybe like a small Folder. I ended up in this school because my grades were poor in every subject.

I saw many numbers, letters, and symbols talking about things I couldn't understand. I... just sat at the front as usual, waiting for Mr. + to arrive.

"Why is my life always like this? I keep trying to improve, but the results are always nothing..."

I opened my liminal screen:

[Task: Categorize and Optimize Archive Entries]

 [Priority: Low]

 [Efficiency Expectation: 98%]

This was one of the unique aspects of this school. Normally, letters, numbers, or symbols would only receive a liminal screen when they started working, but here, we got one from the start.

Maybe that's why this school is so expensive. Not because of advanced facilities. Not because of high-quality teachers. But because they know we'd pay a fortune just to access a liminal screen. Capitalism truly is genius.

Y stood in front of me and said, "Like you mentioned in the chat room, you said you've experienced a glitch and other strange things, right?"

He looked calm, though his slightly messy hair suggested he hadn't bothered to comb it.

I met his gaze and replied, "Yeah, I felt a glitch, but it was only for a moment. It seems like the news from @ isn't just a mere rumor."

Y narrowed his pixelated eyes slightly, as if searching for the truth in my words.

I stared at my liminal screen—it was glitching and distorting slightly. But... I was the only one who noticed.

"What is that?"

I was a bit startled. It was rare for a system as secure as the liminal screen to experience errors or bugs.

Maybe the school hadn't fixed it yet because no one had reported this glitch? That was a possibility.

I frowned at my liminal screen as the distortion flickered in and out, like static interference in a corrupted file. Y, noticing my reaction, leaned in slightly.

"You sure you're not just imagining things?" he asked, crossing his arms.

I hesitated. Was I? No, that glitch was real. The way it twisted for just a moment, the strange flickering—I wasn't making it up.

"Maybe," I muttered, not wanting to sound paranoid.

Before Y could respond, the classroom door slid open with a soft click, and in walked Mr. +, our math instructor. His presence instantly shifted the atmosphere.

Mr. + wasn't just any teacher—he was sharp, efficient, and had an almost mechanical way of speaking. A single miscalculation in his class could earn you a long lecture about the importance of precision in the digital world.

"Good morning, students," he greeted, adjusting his rectangular glasses. "Let's begin today's lesson on data sorting and structural optimization."

I glanced at my liminal screen again. The distortion had disappeared completely.

Was it nothing after all? Or... was it something only I could see?

As Mr. + started writing formulas on the holographic board, I forced myself to focus. But no matter how hard I tried, my thoughts kept drifting back to the strange glitch.

The classroom was silent except for the sound of digital pens scribbling on virtual notebooks. Y, sitting beside me, occasionally glanced in my direction, as if expecting me to say something.

"Now," Mr. + continued, adjusting his tie, "can anyone tell me the most efficient method to categorize and optimize large-scale data archives?"

A few hands shot up—mostly those from the Mega Company Alphabet group. Of course, they always had the right answers.

"Binary tree indexing," said A, a tall, confident letter.

"Hash mapping is faster in some cases," added another.

Mr. + nodded approvingly, then turned his gaze toward the rest of us. "And what about those of you who aren't part of the Alphabet? Do you have any insights?"

Silence.

I kept my head down, hoping he wouldn't call on me.

"X," Mr. + said suddenly.

I flinched.

"What do you think?" His gaze was sharp, expectant.

I swallowed hard. My mind was blank. I knew the answer—I had read about it before—but in this moment, my brain refused to cooperate.

"Uh..." I opened my mouth, but before I could speak—

Glitch.

A sudden flicker. The entire room shifted for a brief second, as if reality itself had lagged. The walls distorted, the students flickered, and Mr. + froze mid-sentence, his form blurring into unreadable code, A low voice echoed, repeating the same chilling phrase:

"This world is not real."

Again and again.

I was the only one who could hear it.

A cold sensation crept over me, like the lifeless touch of a corpse wrapping around my body.

And then—

Everything snapped back to normal.

No one reacted. No one even noticed.

Except me.

My hands were trembling. My liminal screen flickered wildly, displaying corrupted symbols before stabilizing again.

What... was happening to me?

Y's eyes flicked toward me the moment the glitch happened. He had noticed my reaction.

"You okay?" he whispered, leaning slightly toward me.

I clenched my fists under the desk, trying to steady my breathing. "Did you see that?" I muttered back.

"See what?" His voice was calm, but his gaze sharpened. He was watching me closely now, analyzing every movement.

I hesitated. "The room... it just—" I stopped myself. What was I even supposed to say? That everything had glitched for a second, that the world had flickered as if reality itself was unstable?

But Y didn't laugh. Instead, he frowned. "You're acting weird," he said. "And this isn't the first time."

I glanced at my liminal screen again. It looked fine now. Perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened. But I knew what I saw.

Before I could respond, Mr. + cleared his throat. "X?"

I stiffened. Right. I was still in the middle of class.

I forced my brain to work. "Uh... Hash mapping works for fast searches, but..." My voice wavered, but I pushed through. "But if we need structured organization for scalable systems, binary tree indexing might be better."

Mr. + raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Acceptable answer." He moved on, turning his attention to another student.

I exhaled, relieved.

He would usually scold me for hours, Mr. + was the kind of teacher who could explain a topic with flawless precision—then stare at us as if our failure to understand it was a personal insult to his existence.

But Y wasn't done. He leaned in again, lowering his voice. "Tell me exactly what you saw."

I swallowed. "The whole room glitched. It was like... the world itself lagged for a second."

Y didn't react immediately. He just stared at me, his fingers tapping lightly against his desk. Then, after a moment, he asked something that sent a chill down my spine.

"X... when you saw that glitch, did it feel like it was happening to you... or to everything else?"

I opened my mouth to answer—but I wasn't sure what to say. Because the truth was...

It felt like both.

I hesitated. The answer should've been simple—either the glitch affected everything, or it was just me. But somehow, it felt... different. As if reality itself had warped, yet at the same time, something inside me had shifted too.

"I don't know," I finally admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. "It felt like... everything glitched, but also like I was the one causing it."

Y's fingers stopped tapping. He leaned back slightly, analyzing me with the same unreadable expression he always had when he was deep in thought.

Before he could say anything, the school bell rang.

LUNCH BREAK.

The holographic letters blinked above the classroom door as students packed up their digital pens and liminal screens. Conversations resumed, laughter filled the air, and just like that, the tension in the room dissolved.

For everyone except me.

I felt Y's eyes still on me as I grabbed my bag. He wasn't going to let this go.

As we stepped into the hallway, the artificial skylight cast a soft glow on the flowing data streams that lined the corridors. Students walked in groups, chatting about updates, trending files, and the latest security patches. It was normal. Ordinary. Everything should've felt normal again.

But it didn't.

Because my liminal screen flickered again.

Just for a second.

A single, glitched-out notification appeared.

[ERROR: SYSTEM ANOMALY DETECTED.]

Then, as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.

I stopped walking.

"X?" Y had noticed. He followed my gaze to my empty screen. "You saw something again, didn't you?"

I swallowed hard. "Y... something's wrong with me."

This time, he didn't dismiss it. Didn't tell me I was imagining things.

Instead, he asked, "Do you think it's happening because of the glitch in File Explorer?"

I shook my head. "No. I think... I think it's happening because of me."

Y exhaled, rubbing his temple. "Then we need to figure out why."

I wanted to believe it was just a bug. A temporary error. Something fixable.

But deep down, a cold, creeping thought was already forming in my mind.

What if this wasn't just a glitch?

What if I was the glitch?