The morning sunlight bled through the curtains, but it didn't feel like morning. It felt like the lingering aftertaste of a nightmare, the kind that refused to end when you opened your eyes. I lay on my futon, staring at the ceiling cracks, trying to convince myself that everything—the white room, the voice, Mizuki's laughter—was nothing more than a dream stitched together by stress and exhaustion.
But then my eyes drifted to the desk.
The envelope was still there. Open. Waiting.
Its presence was like a second pair of lungs in the room, breathing softly when I wasn't looking.
I dragged myself up, washed my face, and stared at the mirror above the sink. My reflection looked the same—dull, forgettable, hair sticking out in the wrong places. But for a moment, I thought I saw a faint flicker in my pupils, as if someone else were blinking a fraction later than me.
I gripped the sink until my knuckles whitened. Lack of sleep. That's all.
Campus was a blur. The chatter of students felt distant, unreal, as though muffled by glass. The air was thick with humidity and the shrill chorus of cicadas, drilling into my skull.
At first glance, nothing had changed.
But when I looked harder, I saw it.
Shiraishi hurried past me near the economics building. Her posture, usually steady and proper, was hunched forward, almost defensive. Her bag was pressed tight to her side like it contained something fragile.
Morimoto leaned against the vending machine near the courtyard. He wasn't buying anything. He was watching people—his gaze sliding over each passing face, his jaw tight. The kind of look you'd expect from someone trying to measure threats.
Mizuki sat cross-legged beneath the shade of a tree, notebook open. But instead of sketching like yesterday, she was crossing out her own lines, pressing the pen so hard the paper nearly tore. Each stroke looked like an attempt to erase not just words but pieces of herself.
And Kawabata—
Kawabata was different too.
He caught my eye across the courtyard and waved. His grin was the same as ever—lazy, charming, the grin that made people trust him even when they shouldn't. But when our eyes locked, I felt it. The smile was real, but not for me. It was for whoever was watching.
It was a test.
We had all seen the white room.
In seminar, the professor droned on about fiscal policies, but his words barely reached me. The room felt too small, the air too thin.
I couldn't stop watching the others.
Shiraishi's notes were as neat as ever, but she was writing slower, as if her hand was betraying hesitation.
Morimoto tapped his pen relentlessly, the rhythm sharp and jagged. Each tap sounded like a countdown.
Mizuki stared forward, her pen resting motionless above the page. She wasn't listening—she was waiting.
And Kawabata doodled on the edge of his textbook. From where I sat, I saw crude sketches of boxes, of doors, of keys.
I wanted to ask them. To confirm I wasn't insane. To say, Did you dream it too? Did you hear the voice? Did you see me there?
But the words jammed in my throat.
Because what if they hadn't? What if it was only me?
And worse—what if they had, but speaking of it broke some rule we hadn't been told yet?
The voice had said: Secrets cannot remain hidden forever.
That sentence alone sat like a stone in my stomach.
After class, I walked slower than usual, letting the others drift ahead. The sky was overcast, the air heavy, the cicadas screaming like broken machinery.
As I reached the campus gate, Kawabata appeared at my side.
"You're quiet," he said, hands in his pockets.
I shrugged. "Just tired."
"Everyone's tired. Exams, heat, all that." He tilted his head, watching me with that same too-casual smile. "But you—you're distracted. Like you're keeping a secret."
The word hit me like a slap.
My throat dried. "What makes you say that?"
Kawabata's grin widened. "Instinct."
He didn't push further. He just hummed to himself, hands still in his pockets, walking in step with me. But I felt his gaze on me the entire time, weighing me, probing me, as though he already knew the truth.
That night, I couldn't bring myself to open the envelope again. But its presence haunted me anyway.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the white room.
Every time I breathed, I heard Mizuki's brittle laugh echoing in the silence.
The words of the voice wrapped around me like chains:
You have been chosen. Secrets cannot remain hidden forever. Soon, the truth will decide who survives.
I didn't sleep. I only waited.
The next morning felt heavier than the last.
Not because of the heat or the cicadas, but because the silence in my room had changed.
Something was missing.
The envelope.
I tore apart my desk, my drawers, even checked beneath my futon. Nothing. My chest tightened, heart hammering as though the walls were closing in. Had I misplaced it? Had someone entered my apartment while I slept?
But then I saw it.
On my windowsill.
Placed neatly, as if it had always belonged there.
The paper was spread open, the words staring at me without ink or shape—because I didn't need to read them anymore. They were already carved inside my skull.
Congratulations. You have been selected.
Campus didn't feel like campus anymore.
The air buzzed with ordinary noise—students groaning about exams, the smell of curry drifting from the cafeteria, the clatter of vending machine cans. Yet beneath all of it, there was another current, subtle but sharp, like wires stretched just under the surface.
Shiraishi walked past me near the courtyard, her eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second. She didn't look away immediately this time. There was no fear in her gaze. Only recognition. And maybe… warning.
Morimoto leaned against the railing by the economics building, glaring at a pair of first-years who laughed too loudly. His hands were in his pockets, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed something coiled and ready.
Mizuki sat in the shade, notebook closed. She wasn't writing. She wasn't drawing. She was staring at the ground, lips moving soundlessly. Her hands trembled in her lap as though reciting prayers, or curses.
And Kawabata—
He was the only one who seemed unchanged. Laughing with a group, balancing a melon bread on his head like some cheap trick. The others clapped, laughed, shouted at him. And yet when his eyes flicked over the crowd and landed on me, his grin faltered for the barest second.
That second was enough.
We were all watching each other now.
And all of us knew it.
I skipped lunch, retreating into the library instead. It was quieter there, the kind of silence that pressed down on you, demanding obedience. I wandered to the psychology shelves again, my hand drifting along the spines until I found the same book as before: The Mask of Normalcy.
I opened it randomly.
This time, the page read:
"The self is not built on truth, but on the lies we choose to maintain. Remove those lies, and the self collapses."
I slammed it shut, pulse racing.
The words hadn't been on that page before.
Or had they?
The silence of the library suddenly felt hostile. When I glanced around, I saw Shiraishi at a nearby table, neat notes spread out before her. She wasn't looking at me—but her pen hadn't moved in minutes.
Morimoto sat at the far end, tapping his pencil against the edge of his notebook.
Mizuki was in the corner, staring at an unopened book.
And Kawabata… wasn't there.
By evening, the weight of it had grown unbearable. I couldn't take the circling, the silent acknowledgment, the waiting for something none of us dared say aloud.
So when Kawabata finally cornered me outside the convenience store, I almost felt relieved.
"You're avoiding me," he said, leaning casually against the wall. He held a canned coffee, condensation dripping down the side.
"I've just been busy," I muttered.
"Busy?" His grin widened. "Funny. You didn't look busy in the library today."
I froze.
So he had been there. Watching.
Kawabata sipped his coffee and lowered his voice. "We all saw it, didn't we?"
The words were simple. Quiet. But they detonated in my chest.
I said nothing.
He leaned closer, breath carrying the faint bitterness of coffee. "Shiraishi. Morimoto. Mizuki. Me. And you. All of us. That place. That voice."
His grin stretched wider, though his eyes stayed sharp, cutting into me. "The question is… what happens if we admit it?"
The cicadas screamed around us, louder, sharper, almost metallic.
I wanted to deny it. To laugh it off, tell him he was imagining things. But the truth clung to my throat like a blade.
Kawabata tilted his head. "You're thinking the same thing I am, aren't you? That this isn't coincidence. That we've been… selected."
The word echoed, heavy, unshakable.
Before I could respond, he straightened, finishing his coffee in one long gulp.
"Don't worry," he said, smiling again. "I won't tell anyone."
But as he tossed the can into the trash, he added softly:
"Not yet."
That night, I didn't bother pretending to sleep.
I lay in the dark, cicadas shrieking outside, waiting. For the envelope to move again. For another message on my phone. For the voice to return.
Midnight came. One. Two.
And then—
The room flickered.
One blink, and my ceiling was gone. The cracked white plaster dissolved into blinding, endless light.
I was back in the white room.
This time, no one was surprised.
Shiraishi stood straight, her jaw tight, her eyes scanning the corners. Morimoto's fists were clenched, his body coiled. Mizuki was seated cross-legged again, her notebook resting in her lap, her pen scratching furiously even though there was nothing to lean on.
And Kawabata—
He grinned, as if he had been waiting for this.
Then the voice returned.
Crackling. Distorted. Everywhere at once.
"Welcome back, participants."
The white room hummed with silence.
No walls, no doors, no windows. Just light. And us—five silhouettes breathing too loudly.
The cicadas were gone. The world was gone.
And then the crackling began again, filling the air like static bleeding through broken speakers.
"Welcome back, participants."
None of us moved. Not even Kawabata.
The voice was distorted, neither male nor female, stretched thin as though dragged across wires. It vibrated in my chest more than in my ears.
"You have been selected. Your presence here is not chance. Each of you carries a secret."
My stomach clenched.
"A secret is a weight. It binds you, it defines you. But when the weight is shared, it becomes a weapon."
Mizuki let out a small laugh—the same brittle, shivering sound as before. It died quickly in the vast whiteness.
The voice pressed on:
"This is the first round. The Rule is simple: One secret must be revealed."
The words fell heavy, like stones into water.
Shiraishi stiffened, her fingers tightening on her bag's strap. Morimoto muttered under his breath, pacing in a tight circle. Kawabata's grin returned, faint but deliberate, as though he had been waiting for this very moment.
Mizuki scribbled something into her notebook, whispering to herself. I couldn't hear the words.
The voice continued:
"You may choose who reveals their secret. You may choose by vote, or by force. But before the night ends, one truth must be spoken aloud."
A pause. The static deepened, the air vibrating like a low growl.
"If no secret is given… all of you will pay the price."
The silence that followed was unbearable.
No one spoke. No one breathed.
Finally, Morimoto barked out, "This is a joke, right? Some kind of experiment? Surveillance? I'm not playing along with this crap."
He punched the wall—or where a wall should have been. His fist cut through nothing, swallowed by the endless white. His breathing quickened.
Shiraishi's voice broke through, calm but cold. "It isn't a joke. We're here. Together. That means it's real enough."
Morimoto turned on her. "And you're just fine with this? Sitting back and letting some voice dictate your life?"
Shiraishi met his glare without flinching. "I'm not fine with it. But denying it won't change anything."
Mizuki giggled again, clutching her notebook to her chest. "Secrets… you really want to hear mine?" Her eyes glinted in the sterile light, wide and unblinking. "I wonder which one I should give you first."
No one responded.
Kawabata finally stepped forward, clapping his hands once, too loudly, too cheerfully. "Alright, alright. Let's not lose our heads. The voice said one secret, right? Just one. That's not so bad."
His grin widened, sharp and bright. "So who's going to be the brave volunteer?"
His eyes flicked across the group, landing on me last. Holding.
I felt the weight of them all pressing in.
The envelope, the dreams, the words: secrets cannot remain hidden forever.
My throat dried. My chest tightened.
And in that suffocating silence, the truth was clear:
No matter what we did—
Something would break tonight.
No one spoke at first.
The white room swallowed sound, smothered it. Our breathing felt too loud, our silence too sharp. The demand of the voice hung between us like a blade—waiting, daring someone to lean forward and impale themselves first.
"One secret," Kawabata said finally, clapping his hands once as if to break the tension. His grin had returned, playful, but there was calculation in it. "That's easy enough, isn't it? If we pick someone quickly, maybe this whole… dream, or whatever it is, ends."
Morimoto growled. "And you want us to just hand one over? You think I'm giving some stranger ammunition to use against me?"
Shiraishi's eyes narrowed. "The voice didn't say we had to confess to each other. Just… aloud."
"That's the same thing!" Morimoto snapped. "Once it's out, it's out. You think people here won't twist it against you later?"
Mizuki let out a strange laugh, clutching her notebook tighter. "That's the fun part, isn't it? Watching how people squirm when their lies fall apart. I want to hear someone's secret. It doesn't matter whose. Anyone will do."
Her eyes flicked toward me. Too directly.
My skin prickled.
Kawabata stepped closer, tilting his head. "Maybe we vote. That way it's fair."
"Fair?" Morimoto scoffed. "There's nothing fair about this."
Shiraishi's voice cut in, firm, controlled. "If we don't choose, we all pay. That was the rule."
The silence that followed was worse than shouting.
Because we all knew she was right.
Kawabata tapped his chin in exaggerated thought, then looked at me.
"Enomoto. Why don't you start?"
My pulse jumped. "Why me?"
"You're quiet. Always quiet. People like that usually have the juiciest secrets." His grin widened, too sharp. "And besides, you've been acting strange lately. Distracted. Hiding something."
I opened my mouth, but no sound came. The words died in my throat.
Shiraishi studied me, unreadable.
Morimoto's glare burned like fire.
Mizuki's smile stretched, thin and eager.
The room pressed closer. My heart hammered. The envelope in my memory screamed.
"I…" The word scraped out, dry, fragile.
But then—
"I'll do it."
The voice came not from me, but from Shiraishi.
We all turned.
She stood straight, her bag still clutched to her side, her expression calm. Too calm.
Kawabata blinked, then laughed softly. "Well, well. Our model student. Didn't think you'd volunteer."
Shiraishi didn't answer him. She drew in a slow breath, then spoke clearly:
"My secret is that I cheated. On the entrance exams."
The words rang out, cold and precise.
Morimoto froze mid-step. Mizuki's eyes widened with delight. Kawabata let out a low whistle.
I just stared.
Shiraishi's gaze didn't waver. She delivered it like a fact from a textbook—steady, undeniable, without a tremor.
"I bribed someone to leak the test questions. That's how I got into this university."
Silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.
The voice returned, crackling through the air.
"Accepted."
The word vibrated through the room like a gavel striking.
Then—just as suddenly as it had come—the white dissolved.
I blinked, and I was back in my room.
Alone.
The cicadas screamed outside, drilling into the night. My envelope sat neatly on the desk again, its flap closed, as if it had never been opened.
But I couldn't unhear her words.
Shiraishi—the perfect student, the untouchable one professors praised—was a fraud.
And she had just handed us her first weapon.
The next morning, campus looked the same as always.
Students spilling across the quad with coffee cups, bikes rattling over the brick paths, chatter rising and falling in waves. The kind of ordinary noise that usually blurred into the background.
But not today.
Today, every sound seemed sharpened. Every face felt too focused. Every laugh cut through me as if it were hiding something.
I kept looking for them—Shiraishi, Kawabata, Morimoto, Mizuki.
The others.
The only ones who could understand what happened last night.
When I finally spotted Shiraishi, it was during a lecture. She sat near the front, posture perfect, notebook open, pen moving in flawless lines. To anyone else she looked like the model student she'd always been.
But I knew.
Her secret thrummed in my skull: I cheated. I bribed my way here.
It was surreal, watching her nod thoughtfully at the professor's words, hand rising politely to answer a question. She didn't falter once. Her mask didn't even crack.
Yet every time her eyes flicked back—just briefly—I caught it. The tension in her gaze. The smallest shimmer of calculation. She wasn't just listening to the lecture. She was measuring the distance between herself and us, as if already bracing for the fallout.
After class, I lingered in the hallway.
Morimoto was waiting there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, scowl carved deep into his face.
"You heard it too, right?" His voice was low, but urgent.
I hesitated. "…Yeah."
His jaw flexed. "So it wasn't just me. That wasn't a dream."
The relief in his voice was thin, strangled. He needed confirmation as badly as I did.
Before I could reply, Kawabata appeared, strolling down the hall like he owned it. His grin was the same as last night—bright, amused, dangerous.
"Well, well," he said, clapping Morimoto's shoulder as if they were old friends. "The survivors gather."
Morimoto shoved him off. "Don't touch me."
Kawabata only laughed, eyes glinting. "Relax. I'm just happy to see everyone made it back. I was starting to wonder if we'd wake up in little coffins instead of beds."
His gaze slid to me, then further down the hall—where Shiraishi was exiting the lecture hall, bag slung neatly over her shoulder.
For the first time, I saw it: a flicker in his grin. Not amusement, not curiosity, but something closer to hunger.
"She's brave, isn't she?" Kawabata murmured. "Offering up her secret so quickly. Almost like she wanted us to know."
Morimoto swore under his breath. "Don't. Don't start playing games with this."
But Mizuki's voice drifted in from behind us, high and sing-song. "Games are all we have left."
She stood at the edge of the hall, notebook in hand, eyes glittering. Her smile hadn't faded since last night.
"We can pretend all we want," she said, stepping closer. "But it won't stop. You heard the voice. One round down… more to come."
Her words chilled the air between us.
None of us argued. Because deep down, we all knew she was right.
That night, I sat at my desk staring at the envelope again.
The cicadas screamed outside, exactly as before.
And I couldn't help wondering—when would the next rule come?
When would the voice call us back?
And worse—
What would it demand of us next?
I tried to convince myself it wouldn't happen again.
That maybe Shiraishi's confession had satisfied whatever sick joke we'd been trapped in.
But by the third night, the lie was impossible to hold.
The envelope was waiting on my desk again. Not slid under the door, not placed by a hand—just there. As if it had been part of the room all along, invisible until the exact moment it wanted to be seen.
The flap was sealed. My chest tightened.
When I touched it, the world shifted.
The white swallowed me whole.
They were all there again. The same sterile floor, the same endless horizon of blank walls. Shiraishi clutched her bag against her side like armor. Morimoto paced like a caged animal. Kawabata leaned back with his hands behind his head, smiling too easily. Mizuki scribbled in her notebook with a feverish delight.
And then the voice came.
"Round Two."
Its tone was flat, mechanical, but the words themselves felt heavier than before—like iron chains dropping from the ceiling.
"This round requires an offering. One truth is not enough. One must be sacrificed."
We all froze.
"Sacrificed?" Morimoto barked. "The hell does that mean?"
The voice ignored him, unspooling its decree in jagged tones:
"Each of you will choose. The one with the most votes will lose something precious. A memory. A bond. A piece of themselves. The rules will decide what is taken."
The silence afterward was unbearable.
Mizuki broke it first, clapping her notebook shut. "Oh, that's beautiful," she whispered. Her grin split wide. "We get to decide what the game devours. Who it devours."
Shiraishi's knuckles whitened on her bag strap. "This is insane. We can't—"
"We can," Kawabata cut in smoothly, stepping forward. His grin sharpened. "We have to. That's the rule."
Morimoto growled, fists clenched. "You want me to play along with this? To vote someone out like it's some TV show?"
Kawabata's eyes glittered. "Better them than you, right?"
My stomach twisted. This wasn't about secrets anymore. This was about survival.
The voice spoke again:
"You may begin."
We stood in a circle, no ballots, no system—just the weight of our eyes.
Shiraishi was trembling, though she tried to mask it. Morimoto looked like he'd snap at the first provocation. Kawabata's grin didn't falter once. Mizuki practically vibrated with anticipation.
And me—I couldn't even breathe right.
"Fine," Morimoto snarled, pointing at Kawabata. "I vote for him. Smug bastard's been laughing since this started. Let's see how funny it is when the rules chew him up."
Kawabata's smile only widened. "Oh? I'm flattered."
Mizuki clapped her hands together. "I vote for Shiraishi."
Shiraishi flinched. "What?"
"You're already tainted," Mizuki said sweetly. "The perfect girl with her perfect grades and perfect mask… and it was all fake. You should be the one to lose something. It suits you."
Shiraishi's voice cracked. "That's not fair—"
"Nothing about this is fair," Mizuki sang.
The room throbbed with tension. Kawabata finally raised a hand. "My vote? For our dear Enomoto."
My blood iced. "What? Why me?"
"Because you hide the most," Kawabata said, grin cutting like glass. "And the rules love secrets."
Three votes cast. One each.
That left me and Shiraishi.
Shiraishi's gaze darted across the circle, panicked, trapped. She opened her mouth, but no words came.
Then she whispered, almost inaudible: "Mizuki."
Mizuki giggled, delighted. "Ooooh. One for me. How exciting."
Now all eyes turned to me.
The deciding vote.
My throat closed. My heart pounded. Every choice felt like a death sentence.
The voice loomed above us, cold and patient.
"Cast your vote."
My chest felt like it was being crushed from the inside.
Three pairs of eyes burned into me—Morimoto's desperate, Kawabata's hungry, Mizuki's gleeful. And Shiraishi's… trembling, pleading.
"Cast your vote."
The voice didn't shout, but it didn't need to. The words were final, absolute. If I stayed silent, I knew instinctively what would happen: the rules themselves would punish me for refusing.
I swallowed, lips dry. I wanted to scream, to tell them this was insane, that we couldn't turn against each other like this. But the rules didn't care about unity. The rules only cared about obedience.
"...Mizuki."
The word tumbled out before I could stop it.
Mizuki gasped—not in fear, but in delight, as though I had gifted her the most exquisite surprise. "Oh," she breathed, clasping her hands together. "What a thrill."
The vote was sealed.
Two for Mizuki.
One for Kawabata.
One for Shiraishi.
One for me.
The voice descended again, tone flat as stone:
"Choice accepted. Mizuki has been chosen. Commencing sacrifice."
Mizuki tilted her head, smiling, almost giddy. "Yes… yes… show me."
The air thickened. The walls trembled faintly, though nothing moved. Then, without warning, Mizuki froze. Her smile twitched. Her pen slipped from her hand, clattering on the ground.
Her eyes darted left, then right, as if searching for something. Panic rippled across her face for the first time since I'd met her.
"I… wait," she whispered. "What—what did you take?"
The voice answered, implacable:
"The rules decide what is precious."
Mizuki clutched at her chest, fingers digging into her blouse. She sank to her knees, gasping, trembling.
Shiraishi recoiled. "What's happening to her?"
"I don't know," I said, voice breaking.
Mizuki lifted her face to us—and for the first time, her smile was gone. Her eyes were wide, empty, wet with something raw.
"I… I can't remember…" Her voice cracked. "Who… who am I supposed to miss?"
The words chilled my blood.
Her laughter—the manic, delighted giggle that had filled the room just minutes ago—was gone. In its place was confusion. Pain.
She screamed. Not in fear, but in absence. The sound of someone reaching for something that wasn't there.
The white room pulsed once, as though satisfied.
"Round two is complete," the voice declared. "You may return."
And just like that, we were back.
I woke at my desk again, sweat clinging to my skin, heart racing.
But I wasn't alone.
Mizuki sat slumped in the corner of my dorm room, notebook on her lap. Her pen hovered, but the pages were blank.
She stared at me, eyes hollow.
"Why," she whispered, "can't I remember their name?"
The air in my lungs turned to ice. Whoever the rules had taken from her—friend, lover, family—I realized we would never know. Not even Mizuki.
And maybe that was worse than death.
Mizuki didn't leave my room that night.
She just sat there, hunched in the corner, her notebook open to a page she had filled with jagged lines and scribbles. The pen hovered in her hand like she wanted to write, but no words came. Every few minutes, she would whisper the same question, soft as a ghost:
"Why can't I remember their name?"
It was unbearable. Her voice wasn't panicked anymore, just… hollow. Like a broken clock still ticking, but without time to keep.
I couldn't answer her. I didn't even know if I wanted to.
Because if I looked at her too long, if I thought about what she had lost, I'd have to face what we all would lose in the end.
The next day on campus, it was worse.
Shiraishi didn't look at me once. She walked beside me, but always a step ahead, clutching her bag as if it were a shield. When we passed through the library doors, she muttered under her breath—just loud enough for me to hear.
"You chose her."
I froze. "What?"
Shiraishi turned, eyes flashing. For a second, I thought she was going to scream at me, but instead her voice dropped to a hiss.
"You said Mizuki's name. If you'd chosen someone else, maybe…" She trailed off, but the accusation was there, sharp and undeniable.
I wanted to defend myself, to explain that it wasn't really my choice, that the rules had forced it—but deep down I knew the truth. My voice had sealed it.
Mizuki's laughter—or the absence of it—was my fault.
Shiraishi's stare lingered on me for another heartbeat before she turned away. Her footsteps echoed against the library floor, quick and sharp.
Morimoto was waiting inside, leaning against the stacks. He looked worse than before: paler, eyes shadowed, hands fidgeting like he couldn't keep them still.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he whispered, glancing around to make sure no one else was listening.
"Feel what?"
He stepped closer. His breath was sour, his words uneven. "The cracks. The rules—they're not just in the room anymore. They're bleeding into everything."
I stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
Morimoto shook his head violently, gripping his hair. "I tried to call my brother this morning. I dialed his number, but when the phone rang, I couldn't remember if he even existed. Do you understand? It's spreading."
My stomach dropped.
Mizuki had lost someone completely. But Morimoto—was he starting to lose pieces too? Or was paranoia just eating him alive?
I couldn't tell.
By evening, the four of us gathered again. Not in the white room—the rules hadn't summoned us yet. But here, in the real world, we found each other like fragments pulled back to the same magnet.
Kawabata was the last to arrive, sliding into the seat across from me in the quiet cafeteria. His smile was faint, almost lazy, but his eyes were sharp.
"Looks like our little circle's already cracking," he said. He gestured at Mizuki, who was staring at her untouched tray, and then at Shiraishi, who wouldn't meet my gaze. "I'd say round two left its mark."
I hated him for sounding so calm.
"What do you want, Kawabata?" I asked.
He tilted his head, smirk curving. "The same thing you want. To survive. But the rules don't reward hesitation. Remember that."
His words hung in the air like poison.
And for the first time, I wondered if Kawabata wasn't just trying to survive. Maybe he was enjoying this. Maybe he wanted the game to continue.
That night, when I finally lay in bed, the room felt wrong.
The shadows stretched too far. The silence pressed in too close.
And then—faintly, from the corner where Mizuki had sat the night before—I heard it.
Not laughter. Not words.
Just the scratch of a pen on paper.
I turned, heart hammering.
The corner was empty.
But on my desk, my own notebook was open—its page filled with words I hadn't written.
"Round three begins soon."
Morning came, but it didn't feel like morning. The sun pushed through the curtains, pale and weak, as if it had lost the will to burn. My alarm rang at 6:30, the same shrill tone as always, but I didn't need it. I'd been awake all night, staring at that single line etched across my notebook:
Round three begins soon.
I hadn't written it. Yet there it was, the letters still sharp and wet-looking, as if the ink had only dried moments ago.
When I touched the page, my fingertips came away black.
At school, the others were already on edge.
Mizuki didn't speak at all. She walked like a ghost through the halls, her notebook clutched to her chest. Whatever she was losing, it was bleeding into every part of her—her voice, her smile, her presence. She was fading even when she stood right in front of us.
Shiraishi sat apart from everyone in class, eyes darting to me whenever she thought I wasn't looking. Her suspicion had hardened into something heavier, something dangerous. She wasn't just blaming me anymore—she was watching me, waiting for me to slip.
Morimoto kept chewing his fingernails until his hands bled. He scribbled nonsense equations in his notebook margin during lectures, as though numbers could shield him from forgetting.
And Kawabata—always Kawabata—watched us all with that faint, knowing smile.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said to me during lunch, his voice too low for the others to hear. "The space between the rules. That's where the real danger lives."
I stared at him, waiting for more, but he only grinned wider. "Don't worry. Round three will explain everything."
That night, I dreamed of the white room again.
Only this time, I wasn't sitting at the table. I was standing outside it, pressed against the glass like a trapped animal. Inside, the four of them sat in their chairs, heads bowed, notebooks spread open in front of them.
Each one of them wrote the same word, over and over, filling page after page.
MY NAME.
I tried to scream, to beat on the glass, but the sound died in my throat. My reflection stared back at me with hollow eyes.
And then, the voice came—not from the room, not from the reflection, but from everywhere at once.
"Three demands three. Prepare yourselves."
I woke to silence.
The air in my room was heavy, pressed down like the ceiling had lowered overnight. My chest ached with the weight of it.
On my desk, the notebook lay open again.
A fresh line had been scrawled across the page.
"Tomorrow, the table calls."
The words burned like fire in my skull.
Because I realized something then—something I hadn't dared to think before.
The rules weren't just testing us.
They were waiting. Watching.
And round three wasn't coming.
It was already here.