First Encounter.

Tokyo, January 1996.

It was autumn, and the leaves of the old tree along the sidewalk were falling to the earth. Their vibrant orange color adorned the dull concrete color; some of those leaves were crushed under the foot of a man. He walks with no hurry, but there is an invisible burden on his shoulder.

His name was Shuzo, an employee at SEGA Company working for the art department. He is a pretty well-known person in the department of arts, contributing his works to almost every developed SEGA game, but his work isn't appreciated enough, mostly scrapped by the game director, or the game got cancelled. Sometimes disappointed by the decision, but at least it's improved his artistic skills and view. Today is no different; another art he made got trashed away like an otiose piece, but he doesn't care. He left his office early, and he might take a day off for several days. His expression is still calm as ever, but there is a spark of hope and determination in his eyes.

The artist is still mourning the loss of his old friend and co-worker, Takai Kanzen. It's been exactly four months since his sudden disappearance from his office and his residence. That man left no trace for the authorities, friends, and even his own family, almost as if he didn't want anyone to find him. Takai's disappearance made Shuzo feel that a part of his life was gone. Despite their contrasting personalities, they have always understood each other, from childhood into adulthood, which makes them best friends. With Takai's help and guidance, Shuzo can express himself easily and socialize more with other employees at the office. Now? After the programmer disappeared, he occasionally zoned out from reality, distancing himself from everyone, as he carried the boulder of sorrow behind his back. But today, Shuzo found something that could lead him to the cause of Takai's disappearance.

In his bag, there is his art equipment, which he always takes with him anywhere, at any time. But an unusual object has joined his equipment inside the bag: a CD. It's not an ordinary CD, but rather it's the only CD that contains the "Journey", a now-cancelled Sonic game that Shuzo was involved with. He found it inside Takai's CD-ROM drive when he decided to visit their old staff room. They have never finished the game and just left the build there on Takai's computer, so it's weird to see it already burned onto the CD.

The CD gave him some hope in helping to find Takai. After arriving at his abode, Shuzo quickly started up his computer, put the CD into the drive, and ran the installer before launching it. After a while, a small window game popped up. He was greeted by a simple blue title screen, a Katakana word that simply read "Joruneji". That wasn't there before..

Title screen.

He pressed the Enter key on his keyboard, and the window showed him Sonic from an isometric perspective, standing in the first zone, Beach (Proposed name: Calm Coastal).
The HUD was incomplete; the 'RINGS' counter isn't working as it doesn't show the number of rings the player has collected, and the same goes for the 'TIME' counter. Lastly, the 'LIVES' counter doesn't exist here; that doesn't mean anything since Sonic can still die to hazards and enemies, but in exchange, Sonic has an infinite amount of lives. Despite the three flaws, everything seems to work perfectly fine.

Starting point.

Shuzo decides to move Sonic around using the arrow keys; the movement is pretty janky. The enemies that Takai and Genta programmed work pretty well, as they would attack Sonic once he is near their domain range. The music that Harue composed is played without any interruption. She did a great job after several attempts at capturing the zone atmosphere. Shuzo is controlling Sonic around, collecting rings, destroying the enemies, while looking for something unusual in this build. After roaming around aimlessly for 5 minutes, Shuzo decided to just enjoy the game, reminiscing about the sweet yet short time they worked on this project.

As he continued to play, Shuzo noticed a low-frequency static noise appear as the music went on. He dismissed it as a game bug caused by its own code. But he soon realized that the static noise started to turn from low to high frequency, which almost sounds like a whisper. Shuzo decides to ignore it as he continues to control Sonic to move, but then he finds something weird. As Sonic moves to a different direction, the static noise slowly returns to its original frequency. Curious, he then controls Sonic to return to the previous spot, and the noise slowly turns into high frequency again. Sonic stands on that spot for a couple of seconds, before walking forward slowly, and the static noise turns into low frequency before gone, as if it moves away. Shuzo came to two conclusions: First, that the frequency of the static noise would turn if Sonic was far away, near, or even standing in this spot before it's gone. Second, that static noise isn't a bug; rather, it came from something that is somehow moving with freedom in here.

Shuzo now starts controlling Sonic's movement more cautiously, a little creeped out by that. But soon he started to feel dread, the static noise returned, but it gradually changed from low to high frequency and vice versa. As if it moves around, observing the blue bur from a far distance, unseen by Shuzo's vision. Shuzo decides to lure it out by making Sonic run far away from the noise source. The static noise frequency starts to turn into high as it follows Sonic closely behind. Somehow, the source of the noise shows a glimpse of it forms at the top right corner of the window before quickly retreating offscreen. Shuzo didn't let the chance go, as he turned around and ran towards it, ready to hit it with Spindash in case that thing tried to attack him. But it was too fast as the static noise slowly faded. Shuzo stops his chase, letting Sonic stand there while the zone music continues to play in this small world.

Glimpse.

Until suddenly, the static noise returned out of nowhere at a really high frequency that startled Shuzo. The source of the noise showed its full form: a bizarre, lanky creature with black arms and legs, a blue, round torso, and a long blue beak. It rammed into Sonic, causing the blue blur sprite to glitch out and the game to freeze with an Error message. After 5 seconds of a long static noise, the game window closed. Still in shock, Shuzo tries to open the game, but it doesn't work; no matter how many times he clicks on the game, it won't budge.

Exposed.

Shuzo sat there, stunned as he questioned his experience with this build. What is that thing? Is this some kind of sick joke? Why is it there? Who made this? After collecting himself, Shuzo decides that it's for today; he shuts down his computer, makes himself dinner, takes a bath, and then lies on the bed. But still, the encounter lingering in his mind, Shuzo doubts if that thing was man-made or sentient. He decided that tomorrow he would ask Kenji, one of the pixel artists of the game, if he had made an unusual and weird sprite, and Genta if he had programmed it into the game.

Slowly, he drifted off to deep slumber..

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Pub: 20 May 2026 16:11 UTC

Edit: 24 May 2026 15:59 UTC

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