Time stretched thin beneath the weight of despair, every second drawn out into what felt like a century.
Zhu Yuan did not know how she managed to stand up again. Her body felt like an empty shell, a vessel long since hollowed out, driven forward only by the duty of a Peace Officer carved into her bones. She staggered toward the driver's cabin, each step grinding over the shards of her shattered heart. The metal door slid open. At the central console, the bomb blinked with its cold, rhythmic red light—like the Nightmare's mocking heartbeat.
The Peace Bureau's training manual flipped through her mind with icy precision: cut the red wire, isolate the power source, neutralize the trigger. Thirty seconds. She could do it.
But when her fingers hovered above the wire that would decide fate itself, the same hand that had never once trembled while holding a gun shook so violently that it could not fall.
"So it seems the perfect Miss Peace Officer still has a small piece of the 'human' left inside her after all."
Without warning, the monitor flickered to life. Bomb Nightmare appeared on the screen, the glow in its electronic eyes brimming with the same cruel amusement as a cat toying with a mouse.
"Nightmare—" Zhu Yuan forced the name through a ragged growl, the fire in her eyes burning hot enough to pierce the display.
"Now, now. Don't get so worked up." The Nightmare waved a hand with mocking elegance, while its voice dripped venom. "You are about to become a great hero. Save hundreds of people, have your name engraved on a monument, be worshipped by the masses... just imagine it. What a moving scene. Will you cry when you accept it? For the sake of 'justice.'"
"I told you to shut up!"
"As you wish." The Nightmare gave an exaggerated nod, then casually snapped its fingers.
Beep.
The red light on the bomb in the driver's cabin changed at once. Bright crimson digits flared to life:
00:59
At almost the exact same moment, the surveillance feed shifted. The interior of the other speeding train—A03—came into view. In the exact same position on its own control panel, another bomb lit up with the same deadly countdown.
"One minute." The Nightmare's voice had softened into something almost gentle, which made it all the more horrifying. "A grand, synchronized finale. If you don't cut it, they both go off together. Fair, don't you think?"
"You're a complete lunatic!!"
"A lunatic? No. I'm simply helping you achieve 'enlightenment.'" The Nightmare lifted a miniature camera and began to walk through the A03 carriage. The lens moved like the eye of death, sweeping slowly across the train. "Look. You've already made your choice, haven't you? The 'justice' that bears more responsibility, more attention, more correctness. Then please—witness the other side of that justice with your own eyes. See just how alive its price really is."
The camera passed over face after defenseless face.
A sleeping traveler.
A student reading a book.
A mother humming softly as she rocked her child.
Peaceful. Serene. Entirely unaware of the destruction racing toward them.
"Look how happy they are," the Nightmare sighed, with false pity and perfect cruelty. "To meet their end while dreaming sweetly... perhaps that is mercy? Of course, with one exception—"
The camera stopped.
Locked in place on an elderly couple.
The mother was asleep, leaning lightly against the father's shoulder, still clutching the local gifts she had prepared to bring to her daughter. The father looked out through the window at the scenery rushing past, a smile of unmistakable anticipation on his face at the thought of seeing his girl.
"How heartbreaking," the Nightmare whispered, slithering close like a serpent at Zhu Yuan's ear. "To spend an entire lifetime nurturing a child, teaching her to be upright, kind, to protect others... only to be buried in the end by the very convictions you gave her. Tell me—do you think they would regret it? Raising such a 'heroic' daughter?"
"Dad... Mom..."
Zhu Yuan's nails dug so deeply into her palms that blood began to run down between her fingers. Yet the pain in her hands was nothing compared to the agony in her chest, where her heart was being flayed alive.
00:05
"Come now, Miss Peace Officer." The Nightmare turned the camera fully toward those two beloved faces, now unbearable to behold. "Complete your choice. Put on your crown of heroism."
00:04
In the image, her mother stirred slightly in her sleep. Her lips moved, releasing a murmur so soft it was barely audible:
"Xiao Yuan..."
00:03
Her father noticed. He lowered his head and, with the same gentle care he had shown for decades, reached up to smooth the few loose strands of hair near his wife's temple.
00:02
It was the warmest image in Zhu Yuan's memory.
And at this moment, it became the sharpest blade of all.
00:01
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH—!!!"
A scream tore through the cabin.
At the exact instant the numbers hit zero, Zhu Yuan squeezed her eyes shut, tears crashing down like rain, and with every shred of strength and despair left in her life, she cut the wire before her.
And with that wire, it felt as though she had severed the final thread tethering her to the world. Her reason snapped apart with a ringing hum and plunged into total darkness.
"HAHAHAHA! The finale has begun! Embrace this perfect despair, my dear he—"
The Nightmare's mad laughter rose to its highest pitch through the speakers.
And yet—
No explosion.
No fire.
No annihilating tremor.
Only a vast, absolute, dead stillness.
A silence so complete it devoured everything.
The laughter stopped at once, like a rooster with its throat seized. The Nightmare's electronic eyes flashed wildly, filling with broken code and impossible disbelief.
And in that all-consuming silence, a voice drifted in—lazy, almost casual, yet as immovable as stone. It struck cleanly through the wall of despair enclosing Zhu Yuan.
"Hey, hey. Don't go assigning the title of 'hero' all by yourself."
"The one worthy of being called a hero has never been just the person standing in the light."
"Impossible! That's impossible!!" The Nightmare's mechanical voice twisted into a shrill scream of fury. "Why didn't the bomb explode?!!"
The surveillance feed changed again.
Inside the driver's cabin of A03—the very place that should have become the center of the blast—a figure had somehow appeared. He was crouching beside the bomb as though he had always been there.
His gray hair was slightly messy. The sleeves of his white shirt had been rolled up carelessly, and his black dress pants were wrinkled from movement. The young man who always seemed to wear a half-playful, half-reckless smile was casually twirling a cut length of wire between his fingers. Then he looked up, straight through the camera, straight through the screen, and seemed to wink directly at Zhu Yuan herself. That familiar grin lifted at the corner of his mouth—exasperating, reassuring, impossible to ignore.
"You?! That damned agent!!" the Nightmare roared.
"Disarming an outdated parallel-link toy like this wouldn't even pass a rookie special agent's final exam." Zhe tossed the cut wire aside and rose to his feet, dusting off his hands as though they had gotten dirty. "And while I'm at it, let me educate you. If you're going to design a synchronized detonation system, don't forget about redundancy in synchronous failure. When both termination signals reach the main controller within an extremely narrow margin of error, the system interprets it as 'command conflict' rather than 'execute order'... and then it obediently drops into safety-mode hibernation. The flaw was painfully obvious. One-star review."
Zhu Yuan stared blankly at the monitor. Tears were still sliding soundlessly down her face, washing away the blood and soot smeared across her cheeks. Her lips parted, her voice dry and cracked like sand scraping stone.
"Why..."
"Why am I here?" Zhe tilted his head, his tone as easy as if they were discussing lunch. "Simple. Because I knew that when faced with a no-win choice like this, you, Zhu Yuan—you'd choose the side carrying more duty, more eyes, more of what's supposed to be 'correct.' That's your brilliance. And it's also your burden. So the other side..." He gestured down at the bomb by his feet. "I figured I'd handle that one. Looks like I guessed right."
"No..." Zhu Yuan shook her head hard, more tears spilling free, mixed now with trembling relief so violent it almost hurt. "That's not what I meant... I meant... why did you... go this far... for me...?"
The usual easy smile on Zhe's face slowly faded.
He stepped closer to the camera, as if he could see directly through the cold glass and into the soul on the other side—broken, exhausted, still stubbornly standing. In the eyes that usually carried a lazy, almost mocking light, there was now only the depth of the sea: steady, solemn, and gentle.
"Zhu Yuan, you are New Eridu's shield. You're the reason countless people sleep soundly at night. You protect this city, and you guard your own idea of 'justice' so fiercely it's almost cruel." His voice was low, but every word landed with absolute clarity and force. "But the one who protects others deserves to be protected too. You are still just a person in this city—a person who needs rest, a person who can feel pain."
He paused. Then the corner of his mouth curved upward again.
But this smile was different. Gone was the careless edge. It shone instead like the first beam of sunlight breaking through storm clouds and falling across frozen earth: warm, unwavering, full of strength.
"So just this once—"
"Let me be your hero."
Those words fell lightly, but unmistakably, into Zhu Yuan's world.
A world already cracked, already shattered, already frozen solid by despair.
And yet they were like a warm seed lodging itself in frozen ground. In the broken earth beneath the ice, something trembled—tiny, alive, just beginning to stir.
"You meddling nuisance!!!" The Nightmare's howl screeched like metal being ripped apart, brimming with fury at victory stolen at the final instant. "I was so close! So close!! Who the hell are you?!!"
Zhe paid no attention to that defeated scream.
Instead, unhurriedly, he reached into the inner pocket of his shirt and drew something out.
It was unlike any normal bullet or tool.
A capsule, deep crimson in color, gleaming like coagulated blood crystal. Inside it seemed to churn a force of overwhelming vitality and destruction.
A dark red capsule.
He flicked it with his thumb.
Click.
A crisp, decisive sound rang out as the capsule locked perfectly into the slot of the black Driver that had unfolded across his chest.
[IMPACT!]
The Driver core blazed to life in crimson light. A low, powerful activation sound rolled outward.
In the empty air, dark red energy surged forth like blood-mist, threaded with a pulsing sound that was half giant heartbeat, half roaring engine—a battle hymn for tearing through despair itself.
"As for me—" Zhe's voice remained level amid the rising hum of energy. There was even a hint of self-mocking amusement in it. "I'm just a somewhat romantic fool who can't stand seeing tragedies end badly..."
He snapped his fingers, then dragged his fingertips across the burning dark-red capsule at his chest. The motion was effortless, like the final note before the close of a grand symphony.
"Just a passing Kamen Rider."
"Henshin."
BOOM—!
The black armor did not simply cover him—it burst from the Driver core like a living thing, surging outward, spreading, instantly taking form.
Smooth lines sculpted the silhouette of explosive power. Burning red energy tracings ignited across the pitch-black plating, like magma coursing through veins.
And when the helmet sealed into place and the compound eyes flared to life in brilliant crimson—
Kamen Rider ZZZ descended.
He slowly turned his head. The scarlet glow of his eyes fixed on the distorted image of the Nightmare on the screen, while seeming also to look through it—toward the woman beyond, tears not yet dry, her shattered world beginning to rebuild itself.
The Rider raised one arm.
From the seams of the armor, dangerous, dazzling streams of energy began to gather and hiss.
"So—"
His voice, resonating through the armor, was low and commanding, filled with the finality of judgment.
"This nightmare forced upon others..."
"It's time to wake up."
The dream shuddered.
It cracked.
But this time it was not collapsing into the abyss of despair.
It was being torn open from within by something stronger, something hotter—by a fiercer, more stubborn kind of romance.
The ending had been rewritten here.
At this exact moment.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
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