Doors breathe when no one stands near.
Shadows bend, but not with the light there.
Laughter drips from cracks in the stone,
long after every mouth has gone silent all along.
Steps count themselves,
yet leave no dust left behind.
Even the walls know our names.
The halls know where we end.
And still…
we walk.
The library was supposed to be left, then right, then another left.
At least, that's what the sign claimed.
Instead, Parmiss was alone in a hallway that looked like it had been carved for giants: ceilings too high, windows too narrow, and walls that threw her footsteps back at her like mockery. The place reeked of old stone and a silence that pressed on her ears until it rang.
Worse — the crowd she'd been walking with… was gone. Not drifted away. Not turned down another path. Just… gone. Like the flickering-out of background characters in a cheap game.
She exhaled sharply through her nose. "Of course. First day, and the school itself wants me dead."
A blur of sound cut the stillness. Arguing. Voices she, unfortunately, recognized.
She turned the corner and there they were: Marv waving his arms like a windmill, Shinigami glaring with the kind of joy only murder could bring, and Kazuto in the back, glued to his phone as if apocalypse could wait until his next level-up.
"Parmiss!" Marv spotted her first, sprinting over like a dog who'd finally found its owner. "Thank god, you're here! Shinigami's trying to make soup out of my brain juice!"
Parmiss looked at him, unimpressed. "You don't use it anyway. Might as well recycle."
Shinigami smirked. "See? She gets it."
Marv made a noise somewhere between betrayal and squeak. Parmiss didn't care enough to classify it.
"Don't worry, Parmiss," Marv added quickly, recovering with a crooked grin. "If we die here, at least you'll have my good looks to remember."
"Please," Parmiss muttered. "If you were a memory, I'd scrub you out with bleach."
Parmiss rubbed her temples. "Well, can anyone tell me what is happening here???"
Shinigami gave a playful shrug, twirling her pen like a dagger. "What's happening? You stepped into a circus, Parmiss. And Marv's the clown who won't stop juggling his own stupidity."
Marv clutched his chest, faking a wound. "Ouch. Straight through the heart. And here I thought we had chemistry."
That's when Kazuto finally spoke — without looking up, his thumbs still flicking across the screen. "We're lost. My map bugged out. I was heading to the playground, then found Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-stab-happy here trying to kill each other."
Parmiss pinched the bridge of her nose. "Wonderful. Out of the entire Academy, I had to end up with you three. Fate clearly hates me."
"By the way, where even are we?" Marv scratched his head, turning in circles.
"Lost," Shinigami answered flatly.
"No, really? I thought we were on a guided tour." Marv pointed ahead. "Oh look, salvation. Creepy janitor guy."
An old man stood in the corridor, hunched over a broom, sweeping the same three tiles over and over. His broom barely brushed the floor, but the rasp of bristles echoed down the entire hall. He didn't look up when they approached.
"I didn't even notice someone was just standing there!!!" Parmiss groaned
"Hello, uncle?" Marv asked, his tone hovering between polite and sarcastic. "Any chance you know where normal humans gather around here? Cafeteria? Playground? Exit from this purgatory?"
The broom slowed. Without lifting his head, the janitor raised a hand and pointed — not to one door, but two identical one's side by side.
"Helpful," Marv muttered, already dragging the group forward. "Thanks, uncle! You've been sweeping up my nightmares since 1846."
They pushed through one of the doors.
Silence hit like water pressing on their ears. Even their breaths came back to them, warped and delayed, as though someone else was exhaling behind them. It was a huge empty hall, filled with dust and old broken chairs and desks.
As they walked through the empty place that felt like it was going to swallow them alive, another door waited at the end of the hall. They opened it—
—and stepped out into the same hallway.
Only this time, the broom was leaning against the wall.
The janitor was gone.
They blinked and the hall had spit them back out at the same place they'd started.
"Why are we back here?" Marv said, confusion wobbling his grin. "And where's the old dude?"
"NPC despawned?" Kazuto offered, still half-lidded, like this was a bug report and not the beginning of a bad dream.
Parmiss looked up, and for a single breath all the jokes died. The janitor's body was gone — but his shadow clung to the wall, sweeping the floor in slow, patient arcs exactly where the broom had been. It moved like a hand without a wrist.
"Guys," Parmiss said. Her voice was low because saying it any louder seemed obscene. "Something's wrong."
"Like hell anything is right here!" Marv said, trying to force the sound of a joke into it, but it came out thin.
Shinigami, quiet until then, pointed above them. Without taking their eyes off the strip of shadow on the plaster, the four followed the finger; the old man — if that was what he had been — hung sixteen feet off the floor, arms limp, lifted by something they could not see.
"Wow free magic show," Marv chirped, voice too bright. "Hope the popcorn's included." He laughed to prove he wasn't afraid. The laugh cracked on the third repeat.
"Hello?" Parmiss tried, though the name felt small when it met the hallway's false acoustics. The voice slid off the stones and returned to them, thinner and older and full of dust.
Shinigami's smile was a sharper thing now. "He looks… off," she said. "Like someone stitched him from the wrong cloth."
"Now, now," Marv said, offended on behalf of the dead. "You shouldn't mock a gentleman's skincare routine."
The suspended man's skin began to move as if something crawled beneath it. At first it was a ripple, like water under a sheet. Then the skin stretched, tearing along a seam that hadn't been there a heartbeat before. A smell — iron and rot and something wet — hit them a second later.
Something like a bug pushed itself free and then another, and then a mass of chitin and too-many legs spilled out of the hollow where the janitor had been. With every second it grew: first the size of a hand, then a torso, then something vast and arthritic, each segment sloughing away more of that false flesh.
Marv's mouth went slack. "Okay. Not a skin suit. That's… that's a bad look."
"Everyone run!" Kazuto snapped, finally serious. He grabbed Marv and Shinigami by the arms and launched into a sprint. Parmiss moved with them, not because she wanted to, but because the hall itself seemed to be nudging her feet forward.
Shinigami wrenched free, eyes bright. "Let me kill it. Let me rip it open—" Her hand flicked to the small blade at her sleeve, the movement casual and hungry. "Let me see what's inside."
Kazuto's fingers tightened. "Not a fight. Not now." He pushed her back — not roughly, but with the firm care of someone stopping a reckless dog from running into traffic.
"We get out, we live. We fight another day."
He didn't sound dramatic. He sounded certain — like a man performing a procedure that couldn't fail.
For one breath, they all froze — four students standing together while something behind them, something that used to wear a man's face, unfolded into its true, impossible shape.
Then the corridor changed.
Doors that had been closed shimmered, turning to glass — and vanished. A light flickered and died. The sound of their own heartbeats split, echoing into a dozen mismatched rhythms.
The world narrowed to the floor beneath their feet, to a single instinct that screamed inside them all: run.
They fled.
Not with courage. Not with formation.
Just four terrified souls sprinting through a hall that betrayed them with every step.
Behind them, the thing followed — its limbs scraping in a wet, uneven rhythm — and somewhere in the dark, halfway between them and the vanished janitor, came a sound like a broom falling.
They didn't stop until they crashed into another corridor — one that looked, impossibly, familiar. A plaque they could swear they'd seen before now bore a name they didn't recognize. The lights were wrong. Their breaths staggered.
No one laughed.
Parmiss pressed her back against a cold pillar, tasted the iron in her mouth, and heard Shinigami whimper an animal sound she'd never thought she'd hear from her.
"We need to go back," Marv managed, voice small.
"No," Parmiss said, and she surprised herself with the quiet. "We need to remember this. Exactly."
"What the hell is that thing?" Marv's voice trembled, though he tried to make it sound casual. "And how exactly are we supposed to get out of here?"
"How should I know?" Parmiss snapped, looking pale enough to faint.
The air grew tighter with every breath, their lungs fighting for space. The creature's steps scraped closer, mandibles clicking like knives on stone.
Marv threw his arms up dramatically. "Great. I always imagined dying at the hands of a beautiful woman. Instead, fate hands me… this."
The bug hissed, slime dripping from its mandibles.
Marv added under his breath, "Doesn't even have the decency to buy me dinner first."
"We can kill it." Shinigami's voice cut through, steady and arrogant. She dug into her bag and pulled out dusty bottles with peeling labels — bleach, ammonia, something unholy in between.
"While you were whining about directions, I borrowed a few souvenirs from our janitor friend."
Marv stared. "You shoplifted from a mop bucket? That's your grand plan?"
"It's called foresight, idiot. You're welcome." She flashed a half-smirk, bottle dangling in her hand.
The bug's spiracles pulsed wetly, hissing.
Kazuto finally pocketed his phone, eyes sharp. "Wait. Those are its lungs. On the outside. Hit them!"
"…The what now?" Marv blinked.
"The breathing holes!" Kazuto barked. "Throw it, before we all end up being a soup!"
Shinigami didn't hesitate. She smashed a bottle against the wall, glass bursting like gunfire, and hurled the fizzing liquid into its spiracles.
The thing shrieked — a screech that rattled bone. Its skin bubbled and tore, limbs convulsing. The hallway tilted, walls groaning as if the school itself was trying to spit the monster back out.
The bug convulses, its spiracles bubbling with fumes, shrieks echoing through the tilting hall. But instead of dying cleanly—
its exoskeleton starts to peel apart like wet paper, slabs of chitin folding outward with the sound of tearing wood.
Behind the armor isn't flesh.
It's architecture.
The monster's hollow thorax blooms into a corridor lined with twitching organs, pulsating in rhythm like a heartbeat trying to drag them in. The walls are slick but structured, like the insect's body has rewritten itself into a passage.
Marv, barely holding himself together, blurts "...Okay, I'm not walking into BugKEA."
Parmiss, shaking "It's… it's not a door. It's trying to eat us."
Kazuto, gripping Shinigami's wrist before she charges "No… this thing isn't blocking us. It's offering a way out."
The hall around them melts, walls drooping like wax, lights dangling as if gravity is folding sideways. The hall twisted. The walls dripped like acid, eating through anything that touched them. The only "stable" path is through the monster's body-door.
Shinigami, smirking even in panic:
"Either we go through Creepy-Crawler's intestines, or we stay here and become protein bars. Pick your poison."
Others analyzing the situation they were in and finally followed Shinigami's lead. They all step inside.
The moment they step into the insect's body-corridor, the sound changes first. No more footsteps, no more echoes — just a low, synthetic hum that vibrates in their bones, like an empty radio channel transmitting through marrow.
The air feels thick, syrupy, every breath dragged out like it has to climb uphill. Shadows don't fall right; they curve, bend, and sometimes move when no one moves.
The walls? Not human memories now — but indistinct silhouettes trapped in the chitin, like moths pressed into amber. The shapes twitch every now and then, but never clearly enough to be people.
Parmiss whispers:
"Are… are they watching us?"
Kazuto, tightening his fists:
"No. They're waiting."
Marv mutters under his breath, tone sharp but quivering "Fantastic. We're in the guts of a bug, the walls are breathing, and now the air's judging me. Exactly how I pictured my first week here."
The echo comes back wrong. Not his voice — something older, rasping "…first week here…"
He freezes, all humor draining from his face. For once, no follow-up quip comes.
Shinigami tilts her head, almost smiling "Guess even the echoes think you're replaceable."
"What? I am not that bad, am I?" Marv trying to maintain himself.
Every step forward feels like being pulled deeper underwater.
Shinigami, of course, just smirks and says "Cool. It's like a haunted rave. All we need is glowsticks."
"I didn't know that we were going to be the pest control on the first day!" Said Marv in an annoyed voice.
The gross smell and terrifying place made it hard to even walk correctly. They all walked until they came to the end of that gross tunnel. There were all types of weird sharp objects. It looked as the bug is a part of the school, just a gross one.
The wall at the end of the tunnel appeared to be pulsing and looking down from the tunnel, it appeared to be the heart of the bug.
Parmiss pressed a hand against the pulsing wall, her tone sharp and cold "This isn't circulation… it's a pump. If we overload it, the pressure will tear the body apart."
Kazuto blinked, pulling back like she'd just said they were in a washing machine "Wait, overload it? That sounds like a great way to get us shredded too."
Marv chuckled, low and offbeat, like he was enjoying this a little too much "Or… it's the only way. Bugs don't build ribcages. They're hollow pressure chambers. You crack the right seam; the whole thing blows. Like kicking a balloon full of acid." But while he joked, his hand had already found a trembling nerve cluster, thinner than the rest. His eyes sharpened, and his tone dropped "There. Weak point. Hit it with enough force, the pressure does the rest."
Shinigami was already crouched; hand wrapped around a jagged shard of chitin like a sword. Her eyes glowed with feral resolve "Say less. Finally, something worth stabbing..."
Kazuto groaned, throwing his head back "Why is it always stabbing with you people…"
Parmiss ignored him, voice steady "The weak point's near the spiracles. Time it with the pulse. If we miss—"
Marv cut in, still grinning like he was joking, but his eyes focused, razor-sharp "Spiracles, balloons, same thing. If anyone's going to pop this bastard, it's gonna be me!"
Kazuto, muttering as he braced himself against the heaving chamber "And people say I play too many games…"
On Parmiss's count, the group lunged. Shinigami drove the shard deep into the pulsing seam — and the entire chamber convulsed, shrieking as if the creature itself was tearing reality apart.
Pressure built fast inside the creature and the walls started to break with it.
Marv, voice cracking but grin still plastered on "Alright, confession time — if we die in here, just know I was always the prettiest one."
Kazuto, deadpan, bracing against the wall "Then die pretty. Just hit the weak point."
As the chamber burst apart, time seemed to unravel. The air thickened into a pale fog, swallowing sound and color alike. It felt like drifting through a dream that wasn't theirs to dream. Then came the whisper — distant, layered, as if spoken by a thousand voices breathing as one. Shapes moved within the mist, blurred and trembling. From the haze, a shadow took form — a figure half-seen, half-imagined — its hand extended as if offering help… or remembrance. And just as their fingers might have touched, the fog folded in on itself. Then there was nothing... just emptiness of the shattered reality or perhaps theillusion.