He pushed it down. Kaito walked forward. The bazaar was a labyrinth of looping alleys. Every stall sold the same thing: a mirror. And in each mirror, Elias didn't see the pixel-detective. He saw his own tired, stubbled face reflected in the CRT glass.

Then, the text box appeared. His blood chilled. The emulator didn't have a keyboard plugged in. He hadn't typed his name anywhere.

Elias, a man of solder and code, scoffed at ghosts. He clicked.

He looked away from the screen for the first time in hours. He saw his reflection in the dark glass of a display case. Behind the reflection, he saw the real world: a half-empty can of Monster, a soldering iron still warm, a framed photo of him at age ten, grinning ear-to-ear, holding a NES controller like a holy relic.

He tried to exit. The ESC key was dead. Ctrl+Alt+Delete did nothing. The only thing that worked was the D-pad on his USB controller.

Elias sat in the dark, breathing hard. He was poorer. He couldn't remember how to throw a fireball. He had forgotten his first bike. But he remembered his mother's lasagna. He remembered the snow.