Mururunsoft
Online/Offline Compatible Roguelike MO Action + Online Versus Action.
Ritsu's Memory
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The Psychic Idol - Chapter 1
When the curtain rose, the heat of the spotlights washed over the stage.
My father swept his tailcoat as my mother lifted the hem of her red dress and bowed deeply to the audience. At the center stood a black table. Mother raised a silk cloth, showing the audience that there was nothing beneath it. Father gave a light wave of his hand, the music stopped, and silence fell. The cloth fluttered down. Mother's hands moved, and—click—a faint sound came from beneath the fabric. As Father snapped his fingers and pulled away the cloth, there was a white dove. The audience gasped in unison.
Next, Father brought a child from the front row onto the stage and let him choose a card. As he shuffled, he spoke to the boy with a warm smile. Mother clapped her hands rhythmically at the back of the stage, keeping the tempo light and lively. Those handclaps drew the crowd's attention at just the right moment—when Father switched the card.
I was only just out of kindergarten then. But as I watched from behind the curtain, I somehow understood what was happening. The placement of Father's thumb, the tiny bend in the corner of the card, the pocket hidden beneath the cloth—I saw it all.
Father raised his wand. Sparks flared from its tip, and a thin strip of flash paper ignited and vanished in an instant. When the flame died, the chosen card remained. The crowd erupted in cheers. My mother waved, laughing; my father bowed proudly to the applause.
I watched from the dark wing of the stage. The dove, the card, the fire—none of it was mysterious. I could tell exactly which mechanisms moved and when. There was nothing magical about it.
And yet…
Only that sound—that wave of cheers and applause—felt undeniably real.
Even within a world built on deception, there was a heat in that sound that wasn't fake. Something was alive inside it. And I wanted, someday, to create that same living sound with my own hands.
* * *
Father used to appear on national television. Sometimes Mother would play the old recordings. In them he looked younger, confident, radiant. His magic was flashy and easy to understand—the kind of miracle people once believed in.
But times change.
New magicians appeared one after another, video technology advanced, and the bar for astonishment kept rising. Father's tricks grew stale; the laughter and applause thinned out.
Now he's just another performer in an event company registry, driving to shopping malls, kids' clubs, hot-spring inns, and nursing homes every weekend with Mother. Sometimes he teaches magic at a community center, though that's irregular too. On stage, he's little more than a relic.
The passion to create new acts was long gone. He just wrapped the same old safe tricks in louder lights and sounds. Each time the audience laughed and applauded, he stood a little taller. And every time I saw that side of him, something inside me grated.
*How can they be satisfied with such "safe miracles"?*
One day, Father and Mother went out to perform, leaving me home. In the living room lay old playing cards and broken lighting gear. When I flipped a switch, a cheap yellow light filled the room. I stared into it and thought—*this isn't the light I want.*
If I was born with blood that can't live without applause and cheers, then I want to show them a real miracle.
I decided to find my own way to stand on stage—different from my father's.
* * *
After graduating middle school, I went straight into acting. I wanted to stand beneath the lights. I wanted to live inside that sound of applause.
So I chose a theater academy. On the first day, we all lined up clutching the same script, listening earnestly to the instructor. Everyone wore the same expression—a mix of tension and expectation. Standing among them, I felt the air itself pressing down, as if it had a shape.
The instructor said, "Free your emotions. To act is to liberate yourself."
Something about that felt wrong to me. I thought *controlling* emotions was far more interesting than freeing them.
Classes drilled us in classics and vocal projection. We practiced smiles in mirrors, emotional expression, improvisation—but none of it excited me. Acting out prewritten feelings felt meaningless. Even when the audience said "you're good," it was only a *planned surprise.* There was no real spark in predictability.
I began frequenting live houses instead. Small stages, sweat, smoke, and scorched metal. In those cramped spaces where performers and audience nearly touched, their heat mixed together. Whenever that heat reached me, something stirred deep inside. I thought—*if I stand in that light, something will change.*
* * *
After going often enough, people began to recognize me.
One night, as I watched from my usual spot at the edge of the front row, the man on stage glanced my way. He held a guitar, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, smiling into the mic.
"Hey, you—yeah, you who's always here. Not feeling it tonight?"
Just a harmless joke. Laughter rippled through the crowd. But when I realized the laughter was aimed at me, my chest burned.
"Maybe it's because *you're bad at this*," I said.
The words came out before I knew it—clear and sharp. The room froze, then burst into laughter. A spotlight flicked over me; the stage's heat hit my skin. The sound of laughter and clapping—strangers' voices—exploded in my head.
After the show, the organizer approached me.
"You've got good timing. Ever been on stage?"
He paused, grinned.
"Wanna try next time?"
* * *
Everything changed after that.
I joined a small underground idol group.
I learned to sing and dance, more or less. But that wasn't what mattered. What I wanted were the eyes on me—the flashes, the waves of applause. Their heat kept me alive.
Still, I grew restless.
I wanted to *shock* them more. I wanted to show them something they'd never seen.
I began sneaking in props my father had left me.
Cards that vanished. Paper that burst into flame.
That moment when the crowd gasped—
That *sound.*
It made my blood boil.
Before long, I became known as *the idol who could do magic.*
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The Psychic Idol - Chapter 2
Back then, I lived only for the stage.
I wanted applause. I wanted to drown in cheers.
In the underground live houses, surrounded by sweat and heat, I sang, made them laugh, and amazed them. Only then did I feel alive. My magic-infused performances drew attention; the crowd grew with each show. I could tell—the cheers came more for my tricks than for the songs or dance. I rebuilt Father's tools, made them louder, faster, more dangerous. The bigger the applause, the higher I soared. It was as if my heart beat in rhythm with the noise outside me.
But gradually, the sound thinned.
At first, barely perceptibly—a delay in clapping, a faint pause between beats.
Just that, and I couldn't breathe.
The stage lights looked dimmer. Some smiles in the audience hid a trace of indifference. Online comments read, *"Same old act,"* *"Running out of ideas."* People stopped coming.
I counted the applause. Three fewer hands than yesterday. The sound's thickness was gone. And no one noticed that I could hear that difference more precisely than anyone else.
I wanted something stronger. Something *real.*
Father's props weren't enough anymore.
I brought my own devices, meddled with lighting and sound. Asked for one extra dose of flash powder, slightly offset the speakers to make the sound crack, added more par lights to the rig. Still not enough. I wanted to *make* that gasp myself. I wanted that sound, that heat—again.
Then it struck me: I'd become exactly like Father.
Relying on louder lights and sounds…
The same "safe miracles" I once despised.
* * *
The truss creaked. One of the par lights had come loose, dangling from its clamp. The steel wire groaned; the heavy fixture swung side to side, its beam slicing the crowd. If it fell, someone would die. A scream rose from the front row—
I moved before I thought.
*Stop,* I wished.
And it did.
The light froze midair.
I froze too. So did everyone else.
The whole world held its breath.
In that stillness, I saw the faces of the audience—fear, confusion, and pure astonishment. Real expressions. That was it—that was what I'd been chasing. I wanted more. I wanted to see that look again.
Without thinking, I reached out my hand. The light drifted gently through the air. Murmurs spread through the hall. I didn't understand what was happening—but if this was part of the act, it was the greatest show of my life. I believed that.
The light quietly returned to its mount. The house lights came back. Some in the crowd applauded, uncertainly. I pretended not to notice. Offstage, my knees shook. That sensation—the feeling that if I reached out, the world would move—still lingered in my body.
After that, I stopped holding back.
I made moving lights, floating fire, shifting microphones—all part of the act. I lit disconnected flash paper and pretended to grab the drifting flame. When a mic stand slid on its own, the audience must have assumed it was a trick. The thinner the line between illusion and reality, the hotter the show burned. People gasped, cheered, screamed. I thought it was a success. I thought this was my true miracle.
But the crowd kept shrinking.
The applause grew faint, the timing off.
No matter how I strained, the heat didn't reach them. Some looked uneasy. Fear seeped into their smiles.
Weeks passed. The audience halved.
The organizer grew distant; so did my groupmates.
In the dressing room, whispers started when I wasn't around.
"She's doing something weird."
"The lights moved on their own."
* * *
Late at night, I stood alone in the empty hall.
I turned on a single spotlight. Dust hung in its beam, slanting across the stage. I gripped the mic and spoke to the empty seats.
"Hey… can you hear me? I'm doing it right."
Only my own voice answered, sliding along the walls and fading away. For a moment, the air trembled—as if someone had clapped once, softly.
Then I heard a sound behind me.
When I turned, something floated in the backlight.
A creature like a cat, with four translucent wings that beat slowly like an insect's and four long, fluffy tails that swayed behind it. One eye was gold, the other pale blue—the gold one rimmed by a matching golden mask.
A catlike fairy—that was the only way to describe it.
"Well, well," it said in a boyish voice, light and amused.
"So this is the one everyone's been talking about."
"Who are you?" I asked, keeping my voice steady.
"Just passing by," it said. "Lately I've been looking for interesting humans—ones with abilities. Like you."
"Did you know? You're trending. They call you the idol who uses real psychic powers under the guise of stage magic—*the Psychic Idol.*"
I stayed silent.
"I saw the video—the one where you moved the overhead lights in midair. If that was your first time using your power, you're a natural genius."
"Don't be afraid. If anything, you should be excited. There's a stage far more fitting for someone like you."
"A… fitting stage?"
"Yeah. A place where you can use your full power, no limits. Your show will leave the audience breathless."
The fairy smiled, the edge of its golden mask catching the light.
"Wanna go see it?"
At that moment, the stage lights flared all at once.
White light surged like a wave, and the world dissolved.
Somewhere in my ears, faint applause echoed—
like the cue for a curtain rising.
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The story will continue in the app around August 2026.
Memory Fragments Top
Ritsu's Memory – The Psychic Idol
Maya's Memory – The Devil Summoner
Taka's Memory – The Delirium Killer
Shin's Memory – The All-Seeing Boy
Ai's Memory – The Girl of Flame
Ritsu's Memory – The Psychic Idol
Maya's Memory – The Devil Summoner
Taka's Memory – The Delirium Killer
Shin's Memory – The All-Seeing Boy
Ai's Memory – The Girl of Flame
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This page is updated irregularly.
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© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
The English version uses AI-generated translation.