The Others Who Run

I thought there were only two of us.

Me and Nao.

Two ghosts sprinting through a dying city.

But I was wrong.

There were dozens.

Nao blindfolded me before we left the karaoke bar. "It's not personal," he said. "Protocol."

I grumbled. "I'm not joining a cult."

"Not unless they've got better snacks," he muttered.

He led me through back alleys, down forgotten subway entrances, past stations that didn't appear on any map. I stopped counting turns after the twelfth set of stairs.

When the blindfold came off, I wasn't ready.

The place was underground — literally — but it didn't feel like it.

A wide, open chamber lit by string lights, projector beams, and pulsing orb-lamps floated midair. It looked like a dreamer's garage collided with a hacker's hideout: chalk maps on the walls, layers of data pinned with glowing thread, old mattresses, and zipline harnesses hanging from support beams.

And people.

Runners.

Some were meditating. Some stretching. Some sprinting in place like they were revving up a storm. All of them wore clothes dusted with glitch-light or patched with stabilizer tape. They moved differently — like dancers, or athletes who'd memorized the weight of falling cities.

One girl drifted upside-down on the ceiling. Literally.

"Rei," Nao said, "Welcome to Kilometer Zero."

A woman with stark white hair and a cybernetic eye approached us. Her presence hit like gravity. She was older — maybe mid-twenties — with a calmness that felt earned.

"Nao," she said. "You brought him."

"He saw a full rift and survived."

"Name?"

"Rei Akihara."

She studied me. Her eye flickered faintly.

"You glitched yet?"

"…I think I did, yeah."

She nodded. "Then you've crossed the threshold."

Behind her, more people were starting to gather. Some curious. Others cautious. Like I was a new virus in their fragile network.

"I'm Kuro," she said. "I founded Kilometer Zero. We monitor distortions, stabilize break zones, and map the collapsing gridlines of Tokyo's rift events. You're not alone, Rei. There are more of us than you think."

I looked around.

People high-fiving after test sprints. Others scribbling time-lapse sketches of fracture maps. One guy typing code with bandaged hands and glowing fingertips.

"…Why do you all run?" I asked.

Kuro pointed to a massive wall where names were etched into the concrete. Hundreds of them.

"Because the moment we stop…"

She gestured to the faint flickering along the wall's edges — a black corrosion, moving like ink.

"…this place stops existing."

Later that night, Nao brought me a cup of warm barley tea and handed me a thin notebook. On the cover:

THE RULES OF RUNNING.

"You're not a solo glitch anymore," he said.

"But be careful."

I opened to the first page.

It wasn't printed. It was handwritten — messy, fast, almost desperate.

And it only had five lines.

Don't stop moving in a rift.

Don't let the shadows hear your real name.

Stay near the blue zones.

Memories can be liars.

The finish line doesn't mean safety. It means choice.

I closed the book, and suddenly the whole weight of it hit me:

This wasn't just about saving the city.

It was about choosing to keep going — even when the world forgets how to hold itself together.

Even when the people you love are only visible in the gaps between.

Even when running is the only thing keeping you from vanishing.