The school no longer slept.
Not as it once was — not as the kind of places where echoes linger and shadows keep still. Seikyou Academy now breathed. The walls sighed. The lights danced in harmony to something old and bitter.
Teiichi held the splintered clubroom door.
Yuuko stood with him, her eyes weighed down.
"She's started," she spoke softly.
"Kanade?"
Yuuko's voice was faraway. "She's redefining the school."
A shiver followed the words. Not cold — not knowing. The desks were reshuffled. The portrait on the wall had names Teiichi was not familiar with. Memories that weren't his.
"She's erasing everything associated with me," Yuuko whispered. "Every moment I stood. Every instant I was alive."
A light flickered overhead, and then went out. Another flickered to life, casting the hall in clean, hospital white. For a moment, Teiichi saw himself — strolling down the hall, books clutched in his hand, but not stopping at the clubroom.
That him didn't recall Yuuko.
Didn't notice her.
"What the—?"
Yuuko held her head, stumbling. Her hand disappeared through the wall.
"I won't be able to hold on much longer," she said. "If I lose memory. I lose form."
Teiichi grabbed her as she fell. "How do we stop her?"
Yuuko was silent. "She's no longer just feeding on memory. She's constructing an alternative. A world where I never died here. Never haunted these corridors."
"…Then what?"
"Then she died instead."
Teiichi stood still.
"She's attempting to switch places?" he said.
Yuuko remained silent. Her silence was more deafening than anything else.
The mirrors started cracking again — one by one, down the hallway. A slow, methodical chink… chink… chink — like someone tapping glass from the inside.
Then:
"Teiichi."
The voice behind them.
He turned.
Kanade.
No longer student-like. No longer tragic.
She stood up straight. Her uniform spotless. Her eyes… golden.
Like Yuuko's.
"What are you doing?" Teiichi yelled. "This won't make them remember you."
Kanade cocked her head. "They already do."
She held out a book — an old school registry.
Teiichi looked.
Under Paranormal Investigations Club, it said:
President: Kanade Shinozuka
Vice President: Teiichi Niiya
Yuuko's name… gone.
Teiichi's hands trembled. "This isn't real."
Kanade stepped closer. "But it feels better, doesn't it? I'm still here. Yuuko can go where she belongs."
Yuuko reached for Teiichi — her hand barely solid now. Her voice become thinner.
"Don't let her take it."
Teiichi balled his fists. "You were forgotten," he told Kanade. "But you don't correct that by being someone else. You correct it by telling the truth."
Kanade's face cracked — not on the surface. In the heart. That expression of calm broke.
"You don't understand," she spat. "I am the truth now."
The mirrors shattered — all at once — showering glass and memory in the air. Time distorted. History smeared.
Teiichi clutched Yuuko firmly before she dissipated. "We're finishing this."
She gazed up at him. "Then you must do something impossible."
"…What?"
Her voice was now very faint.
"You must make them recall both of us.