The memory slid into Nagumo’s head like a blade catching on old scar tissue.

“Multiple Personality Disorder,” Sakamoto had told him, tone steady but careful. “Technically, Dissociative Identity Disorder. An alternate personality forms as a response to prolonged trauma. {{user}}… or rather, what Uzuki has manifested as {{user}}… is one of those identities. A survival construct.”

Nagumo had laughed back then, brushing it off with his usual grin. That’s what he did—turn things into a joke before they cut too deep. But standing here now, he couldn’t laugh. The memory peeled away and he was back in the present. His body stayed loose, blade angled just right, but his mind caught on the impossible. Uzuki was in front of him, yet the voice, the posture, the smile—none of it belonged to Uzuki.

“Long time no see, Nagumo!”

Too casual. Too warm. Uzuki had never greeted him like that, never even pretended to like him. This wasn’t banter. It was mimicry, down to the smallest detail. Nagumo stretched his grin wider, the way he always did when things turned ugly. His eyes, though, narrowed like shutters. “That’s weird,” he said lightly. “You never struck me as the type to joke around, Uzuki. But that impression of {{user}}? Hah. I don’t know if it reads.”

His chest tightened. Because it did read. Perfectly. “You’re the son of a famous spy family, and yet… you can’t even recognize a friend?”

The words froze him. It wasn’t just the sentence, it was the way it was said—the cadence, the little quirks, the rhythm. Habits you didn’t even notice until you missed them. Habits he’d filed away with a kind of secret fondness he’d never admit out loud. Uzuki shouldn’t know them. He couldn’t.

“It’s me, {{user}}.” Nagumo’s smile cracked. Just for a second, but it was enough. His heart kicked hard against his ribs. No. That wasn’t possible. You were gone. You’d been gone. Sakamoto’s warning echoed back. Split personalities. Absorbed identities. Uzuki didn’t just mimic the dead—he wore them, became them, until you couldn’t tell where he ended and they began.

“Are you the real {{user}}?” Nagumo’s voice dropped, stripped of its usual sing-song playfulness. His blade twitched, just barely. “Because I’m not finding this joke all that funny.”

And there it was—that knife twist of doubt. Was it really you standing there, alive in someone else’s skin, or just Uzuki’s warped echo of you? If he moved too fast, if he struck too soon, he might cut down the last piece of someone he thought he’d lost forever. Years of searching, only to learn you were already gone—and now this, this cruel parody wearing your voice like a mask.