The train ride home felt shorter than it should have. The city slid past in a blur of glass and neon, but my head was full of the shuttle of that classroom the way they moved, the way sound stuck to the air like damp cloth. If I had been the boy I used to be, I would've collapsed simply from replaying it. My hands would have trembled, my throat would have closed. I would've let the anger swallow me whole.
I am not him anymore.
I walked up the path to our house with the same quiet I always used to carry, tapping my shoes against the steps until Kaori opened the door. Her face softened when she saw me brief surprise, then that tired, protective smile she always wears.
"You're back," she said.
"Yeah," I answered. It came out flat, steady.
She fussed with my bag for a second, telling me to wash up and put my things away before dinner. I nodded and went straight to my room. The house had its small sounds: the kettle in the kitchen, my father's low voice in the next room, the soft clicking of the clock on the wall. Ordinary things. Safe things. For a minute I let the ordinary fold around me.
I set the old phone on my desk and opened the laptop my grandmother had bought me. The video file blinked on the screen, small and black and heavy with everything they had given me. I moved the cursor, clicked, and dragged it into a hidden folder beneath layers of nested folders with names no one would think to open. A simple password I'd written in a corner of the notebook. The file copied slowly, a small bar inching across the screen like a heartbeat.
There it was stored, backed up, hidden. Enough to make them tremble. Enough to change the way they walked through the world.
But enough isn't what I wanted. I shut the laptop and leaned my forehead on the cool edge of the desk. Proof could start things. Proof could destabilize people. Proof could make them lose trust, friends, position. Proof could ruin them.
What I wanted wasn't just ruin. It was the complete destruction of what they had built the careless smiles, the assumed immunity, the belief that they could do what they liked and nobody would ever know. I wanted everything to collapse around Souta and Miyuki so that nothing could be rebuilt in the same way.
I left the laptop closed and lay back on the bed. Late summer pressed against the window. Somewhere outside a dog barked twice, then nothing. My eyes slid shut. I didn't mean to sleep, but sleep came in a shallow way that uncommon nights do, the kind that lives halfway in dreams and halfway awake.
It was just past three in the morning when the vision hit.
I was falling, or maybe I was standing perfectly still and the world simply shifted around me. There was a forest thick, damp, moonlight threading through the leaves. I could smell moss and wet earth as if the dream had a smell of its own. Between two trees, Miyuki and Souta moved like anyone caught in private heat: close, hands touching, faces angled like two people who feared an audience. The scene was quiet, private, outrageously intimate in the way a kiss is private.
They pressed together like two halves of something that wanted to be whole. Miyuki's hair spilled over Souta's shoulder; his hand cupped her face. They didn't notice me watching. They didn't know I was there. The world hummed and then just as quickly the image folded in on itself and was gone.
I woke with the taste of metal in my mouth and my palms damp. The room was the same: the faint light of the streetlamp slanting across the wall, the hum of the refrigerator below, the clock ticking. For a moment I closed my eyes and let the afterimage dissolve, forcing the fragments back in order like a drawer I was trying to close perfectly.
What kind of scene had I just witnessed? Had Valkyrie shown me a truth, or a possibility? Dreams and visions had always felt like knives with soft edges sharp enough to hurt, vague enough to be denied. I rolled onto my side and sat up, throat dry, and told myself that either way, it was more to add to the ledger.
Morning came with ordinary motion. I greeted my parents in the kitchen Dad grinning, mother fussing and ate the same rice and fish, trying to appear more ordinary than I felt. I tied my shoes slowly, sliding my notebook into my bag. The pocket that held the old phone felt heavier than it should.
School was a string of minutes I had to pass through. Homeroom started like any other: yawns, the teacher's chalk squeaking, the list of absent names. Then he cleared his throat.
"There will be a school camp in one week," he said, looking up and over the students. "It's a good chance for the class to bond. We'll need a few students to act as supervisors for the activities and to help with planning. I want names."
The usual ripple of excitement followed. Camp. Outdoors. A week away from parents, permissions, the small lenses of daily life.
A dozen hands shot up immediately. Then voices.
"Pick Miyuki!" someone called from the back.
"Miyuki's always organized she'll be perfect!"
"Yeah, she's good at planning events."
The chorus swelled until my ears hummed. One by one, the class nominated her without hesitation. Even before she could respond, the teacher nodded and said, "Miyuki is a good choice who else do you think could help her?"
I sat still. Every nomination felt like a button being pressed on some machine I could not see. My jaw tightened. I watched Miyuki, who had kept her hand folded in her lap, eyes flicking with a mix of pride and something more complicated. A smile seemed to form on her face, nervous and pleased. She answered politely when the teacher called, "I'll help. I'll do my best."
Everything connected in my head with cold precision. Teachers trusted her; classmates liked her; camp meant less supervision in the long stretches of night, long paths through the woods, cabins with thin walls. A place where two people could slip away from the planned schedule and make their own time. A place where a kiss beneath trees could be framed as a moment between friends.
My pulse moved oddly then fast, yes, but keyed by the same calm calculation that had become my trademark. If they wanted to play in the forest, I would make sure the forest had a witness.
I let a small, cold smile creep across my face. Not the wild grin of someone unhinged, but the quiet one used by men who have read all the chess moves ahead. My eyes found Souta across the room. He was leaning back, pretending indifference, but I caught how his attention sharpened as Miyuki returned the teacher's thanks.
When our gazes met, his casual smile didn't reach his eyes. He thought he had the lead. He thought that tonight's small victory the secret meeting, the locked door had changed the score.
Let him think that. Let him believe it for as long as he can.
I closed my eyes for a second and felt the blade in my pocket no, not a blade, but a file and a photograph could be a blade if wielded properly. The vision, the video, the hidden folder: these were my sharpeners. Camp would give me more threads to pull. The forest would be a stage I could use against them.
The teacher called on more students; the morning moved on. Laughter began to rise again. Miyuki nudged me with her elbow and whispered something about the new school year and someone's bad haircut. The noise tried, clumsily, to fill the spaces that worry had hollowed out.
I turned my head back to the front, and Souta caught my eyes once more. I did not smile at him this time. I simply watched, cold and patient.
There was still a week before the camp. A week for them to relax and assume safety. A week for me to weave small doubts into their steady steps. A week for secrets to multiply in ordinary places.
The bell rang; class shifted. People rose, conversations flowed like quick streams. I kept walking with the others, but the thought of the forest moonlight on leaves, two silhouettes pressed together followed me like an echo I intended to answer.