The curtains were so thick they didn’t merely block daylight—they smothered it. Whatever afternoon existed outside this government building had been reduced to a faint pressure against fabric. Inside the conference room, the air held the sterile chill of constant climate control and the faint chemical scent of polished wood. The long table at the center looked too heavy to ever move, its surface a dark, reflective plane that swallowed the edges of stacked documents.

  Some of those stacks were bound with clips. Others were sealed in red-stamped folders.

  [TOP SECRET]

  The letters weren’t dramatic. They were mundane in their bluntness, as if the word “secret” was just another bureaucratic checkbox. That banality made the room feel even colder.

  Along one wall, several monitors glowed with restrained brightness: orbital diagrams, telemetry readouts, time stamps, graphs so clean they looked like they had been scrubbed. Thin red lines traced paths around a pale blue sphere. Tiny markers blinked like restrained alarm bells. Overhead fluorescent lights buzzed faintly, and every time someone shifted in their chair, the fabric whispered.

  Mamiya sat with her back straight, hands folded on the table, posture precise enough to be mistaken for calm. The analog clock on the far wall ticked with a slow, mechanical insistence, a sound that felt louder because nothing else dared compete.

  “This is Dr. Kaori Mamiya. One of the original members of the EWS development team.” A bureaucrat in a dark suit cleared his throat, and the sound landed like a gavel.

  “Kaori Mamiya. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mamiya said, bowing just enough to satisfy formality without offering vulnerability, and she rose smoothly, chair legs scraping softly against the floor.

  Several pairs of eyes tracked her—the kind of gaze that didn’t look at a person so much as measure an asset. The insignias on lapels and shoulders caught the fluorescent light and flashed gold in small, sharp bites. It was not a room where anyone entered by accident.

  “And these are intelligence officers dispatched from the Joint Staff Office.” The bureaucrat gestured to the uniformed group seated beside Mamiya.

  “We look forward to working with you,” the officers said in unison.

  Their voices blended into one polished line, their faces disciplined into neutrality. Yet tension still lived in the tiny things: the way a thumb pressed too hard against a folder edge, the way a jaw tightened for half a second, the way someone’s eyes flicked to the monitors and back like they were afraid the diagrams might change while they weren’t looking.

  At the head of the table, the Minister overseeing the meeting tapped a pen once against the wood. The sound was small, but it flattened the remaining murmurs.

  “My apologies,” the Minister said, voice heavy with the practiced gravity of someone used to being heard. “But let us proceed immediately.”

  “No objection.” Mamiya didn’t let her expression move.

  Silence answered her. Only the clock continued its slow, indifferent counting. The main discussion regarding the Missing Star was about to begin.

  ?

  A decorated officer stood. His uniform carried rank the way the table carried documents—weight made visible. Medals lined his chest like a dense constellation, and when he spoke, the room reacted before anyone had time to think. Spines straightened. Pens stilled. Even breathing seemed to become a controlled resource.

  “Dr. Mamiya,” he said, and the honorific sounded less like politeness and more like confirmation of jurisdiction, “we ask that you first listen to the events leading up to the incident, along with our current analysis. We would appreciate your frank opinion afterward.”

  “Understood,” Mamiya replied.

  The officer lifted a remote and clicked. One monitor changed, and the orbital diagram sharpened, red markers appearing like fresh wounds.

  “On X-Day, at 0200 hours—Satellite A went dark. Signal lost.” The officer said. A faint ripple moved through the room—not noise, not even a sigh, but the subtle shift of attention becoming heavier. The word “lost” meant something different when it referred to metal moving at kilometers per second above the planet, full of sensors and classified payloads.

  “Under the defense treaty, we obtained relevant tracking data afterward from our allies,” the officer continued. Another click. “On the 3 days later, at 0215 hours—we detected Satellite A again.” The officer’s tone remained steady, but something restrained edged it, like a blade held carefully in a sheath.

  “We cannot confirm whether internal logs were recovered. However…” the officer continued. Another click. The diagram changed. A clean arc became a broken path. A line that should have been a smooth curve now stuttered, then angled, then plunged. “Soon after reappearing, Satellite A entered the atmosphere and was destroyed.”

  Short. Clinical. Horrifying in its simplicity. Mamiya lowered her gaze to the documents in front of her, as if reading could keep her face from betraying what her mind had already done. Malfunction, part of her wanted to say, because that was the safe word. The word governments used to wrap uncertainty into something manageable.

  “If these are factual observations,” Mamiya said carefully, “then… I see no area upon which I could provide a definitive conclusion. It sounds like a malfunction.”

  “Indeed. If it were just a crash.” The officer clicked again. “But the data says otherwise. May we proceed?” He didn’t flinch, as if he had expected the first answer to be a shield.

  “Please do,” the Minister said, voice dry.

  The officer switched the display. Two orbital paths appeared side by side—before and after the signal loss. Even to a non-specialist, the difference struck the eye immediately. One line was where it should be. The other was where it had no right to be.

  “As you can see,” the officer said, “the orbit prior to loss and the orbit upon reappearance differ significantly.”

  “Quite clearly so,” A bureaucrat said. “It jumped.” He narrowed his eyes, leaning forward.

  “Correct.” The officer’s pointer traced the separation. “This deviation is impossible without external interference. No thruster burn can achieve this delta-v instantly.” Another click. A trajectory appeared, not as a gentle decay but as a decisive stroke toward the atmosphere.

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  “After reappearing, Satellite A bailed out of orbit and descended.” The officer said.

  “And what of it?” the Minister asked, irritation sharpening at the edges. He wasn’t a man who liked mysteries that couldn’t be punished.

  “It descended vertically.” The officer answered.

  For a moment, the room stopped being a room and became a held breath.

  Mamiya felt the words in the back of her teeth before she fully understood them. Vertical descent wasn’t merely “unlikely.”

  “Ordinarily impossible,” the officer continued. “Atmospheric drag would push it into a skipping trajectory. To drop straight down requires a force stopping its orbital velocity instantly.”

  “You are suggesting a violation of physical law?” Mamiya’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

  The officer nodded once. It wasn’t dramatic. That made it worse.

  “EWS. Another world. Magic.” The officer let the last word settle, then continued. “If we consider every surrounding factor—then our conclusion is this.”

  She watched several people unconsciously hold still, as if movement might make the conclusion real.

  “The person who did this,” the officer said, “is an amateur.”

  ?

  The word hung there—amateur—absurdly small beside the scale of what it described.

  “You mean… someone from the other side did this?” A bureaucrat finally broke the paralysis, his voice thin with disbelief.

  “Unlikely,” the officer said immediately. “That world has not even conceptualized space flight.”

  Mamiya’s throat tightened. She forced air into her lungs like she was performing a routine experiment. If they don’t know space, they can’t aim for it. But they can still reach for something they don’t understand.

  “Then who?” the Minister pressed, pen now still in his hand as if he had forgotten it existed.

  “With respect, Minister, the ‘who’ is less important than the ‘how’. Whoever did this possesses power that defies physics, but lacks knowledge of orbital mechanics. They simply grabbed it and pulled it down. Brute force.” The officer stepped forward and bowed, formal enough to be careful.

  Mamiya felt cold sweat bloom between her shoulder blades and slide downward in a slow, unpleasant line. Bullseye.

  Not because the officer had named anyone—he hadn’t—but because the description matched a profile she couldn’t stop seeing. Not a soldier. Not a strategist. A boy with too much power and too little control, driven by panic and love and that terrible human hunger to fix what hurts immediately.

  “Even if we identify the culprit,” the officer continued, “there is no existing law we can apply.” He didn’t sound frustrated. He sounded like someone reciting the boundaries of a cage and realizing the animal wasn’t inside it. “They may not even be a citizen of our nation. Or a human of this dimension.”

  The fluorescent lights seemed colder.

  Mamiya reached for the stack of documents in front of her and aligned them precisely, edge to edge, a small act of order to hide the faint tremor threatening her fingers. The red stamps stared up at her like open wounds.

  “Our agenda today has two points,” Mamiya said, because if she stayed silent too long the room would hear the pounding of her heart. “The possibility of foreign nations entering the other world. And the possibility of invasion from the other side.”

  Several heads nodded. Papers shifted. The room leaned into structure the way drowning people leaned into driftwood.

  “First,” Mamiya continued, “regarding foreign access: officially, no country other than the EWS team can detect mana particles.”

  “In fact, detection relies solely on the Returner. He is the only known asset who can sense it.” An officer on the far side of the table answered, his tone crisp.

  A different officer lifted a report, the pages thick enough to resist bending.

  “In the real world, mana is nearly nonexistent,” An officer said. “Even if a connection opened, supplying a military brigade through it would be impossible.”

  “And there is no evidence,” another officer added, “of individuals in the other world possessing comparable large-scale magic to steal a satellite.”

  “Why?” The Minister asked sharply, as if the question itself could cut through uncertainty. His eyes narrowed.

  “Because they have no need,” The officer said. “They face too many shared enemies—magical beasts. Their conflicts rarely escalate to nation-level warfare requiring orbital strikes.” He hesitated just long enough to show he knew how strange the answer would sound in this room.

  A deep silence followed.

  The logic was sound on paper. That was the problem. Paper didn’t bleed. Paper didn’t panic. Paper didn’t pull a satellite out of the sky because someone cried for help.

  Mamiya kept her gaze on the documents in front of her, but in her mind the red orbital line was no longer a diagram. It was a scar carved across the sky.

  ?

  “So in summary,” the Minister said at last, rubbing his temples as if he could press the headache out through his skull, “we have no effective countermeasures.”

  No one contradicted him. That alone felt like a verdict.

  “It is not impossible,” the officer replied, choosing his words with care, “that tanks or aircraft could be stolen—on a global scale. If this amateur decides to reach out again.”

  The phrase “reach out” was too gentle for what it described. It made Mamiya imagine a hand extending through invisible space, not toward a person, but toward infrastructure and weapons and the fragile systems nations pretended were stable.

  “But the culprit is an amateur,” Mamiya said. “They likely acted on impulse, not strategy,” lowered her eyes.

  The officers nodded. The conclusion offered a strange kind of relief—not safety, but a shape to fear. An invasion implied planning. Planning implied intent. Intent implied predictability. Impulse was worse in some ways, but easier in others. A tantrum of a god. Not a war.

  “What about the Ambassador?” The Minister asked. “They certainly do not think so.” He exhaled, weary enough to show the man beneath the title.

  “We will send information through our channels,” an official said. “If it reaches their administration…”

  “Then we must decide what gift to offer to smooth things over.” The Minister snorted, the sound bitter.

  “That is politics to determine, Minister.” A bureaucrat added, as if reciting a line from an internal manual.

  The Minister leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if looking for a crack to escape through.

  “Then we’ll build some commemorative bridge in the middle of nowhere in their Ambassador’s hometown and call it even,” he muttered. “Or buy more of their jets.”

  A few people released something like a breath—half laugh, half despair. The joke cut through the stale air, but it didn’t lighten it. It only made the shape of their reality clearer: a small island nation caught between superpowers and supernatural forces, forced to negotiate with both using the same tired tools.

  Mamiya kept her face neutral, but her stomach tightened. We’re bargaining with gifts while a boy bleeds in his room.

  “That will be all for today,” The Minister said. “I sincerely hope we don’t have to meet again regarding lost stars.” His shoulders sagged, then squared again as he reclaimed the posture of command. He stood. Chairs slid back. The scrape of wood against stone sounded harsh after so much controlled stillness. People bowed, gathered folders, tucked documents into briefcases with careful hands, as if secrecy could be preserved by neatness alone.

  Mamiya remained seated until the flow began to thin, then rose as well, bowing at the appropriate angles, exchanging the appropriate words. Her voice did not tremble. Her face did not crack. But inside her, something stayed rigid and cold.

  When the room finally emptied, the ticking clock became unbearable again, loud in its insistence that time moved forward whether they understood the world or not. Mamiya looked at the monitors one last time—the thin red lines, the impossibility rendered into clean geometry.

  The Amateur. Not a terrorist. Not a foreign operative. Not a trained mage. A person who could grab a satellite and pull it down like a toy.

  In her mind’s eye, it wasn’t the stamped documents she saw. It wasn’t the orbit diagram. It was a profile lit by the glow of a phone screen. A former student, sitting hunched on the edge of his bed, tissues stained red on a desk, a faint seam in the air trembling in front of his hand. Yu Shiro. The amateur who held the world in his palm.