The night was deep. Koharu Miura curled up under her covers, the faint glow of her mobile phone screen appearing somewhat piercing in the darkening room.
Koharu lowered the brightness.
Since Arisa Kiyono mentioned she was going to practice, she hadn’t replied at all.
Koharu had sent a few more probing messages afterward, but the interface didn’t even show a “read” status.
‘She probably won’t reply tonight.’
Koharu sighed, feeling somewhat powerless as she placed her phone face down beside her pillow.
Due to the earlier contact from Kanzaki Sou… and the news regarding the “Anonymous Report,” Koharu’s nerves were strained to the limit. Their conversation hadn’t actually made any progress.
It felt like grabbing a lifebuoy in a rushing river only to find it was leaking air, unable to save her from the situation.
This realization caused her anxiety to grow slowly.
She closed her eyes, her mind a chaotic mess as she replayed everything that had happened that day.
The confrontation on the school rooftop, Arisa Kiyono’s shocked expression, and Kanzaki Sou’s pointed reminder.
While she pondered what actions to take tomorrow, she eventually fell into a deep sleep, driven by extreme mental exhaustion.
However, sleep brought no healing. Instead, it dragged her into another wearying hallucination.
……
Energetic electronic music exploded in her ears, the bass vibrating through her chest.
Koharu Miura opened her eyes to find herself standing in the center of a massive, magnificent stage.
All around her were blinding, multicolored spotlights, making it almost impossible to see what was swaying below the stage.
But clearly, judging by the cheers and shouts of support, they were all spectators.
“Eh…?”
Koharu looked down and saw herself wearing that exaggeratedly exquisite idol costume — the very one Arisa Kiyono had sewn by hand.
The delicate lace shimmered like cold moonlight under the lamps, and the embroidery on her chest rose and fell with the rapid thumping of her heart.
Looking around, she could see several girls standing nearby, wearing the same group uniform.
They were dancing in perfect unison to the rhythm, their movements so synchronized they seemed like a single person.
However, when Koharu tried to see their faces, she could only see a thick grey mist obscuring their features.
“Hurry and dance… Keep up with the rhythm.”
A hollow voice echoed in her mind.
Koharu moved instinctively. She didn’t know how to dance at all, yet her body now felt like it was beyond her control, pulled by some invisible force.
She began to fluently swing her arms, spin, and bend her legs.
These weren’t her movements. Koharu felt like a puppet controlled by strings. It was incredibly unsettling.
This awkwardness lasted for one minute. Just as the song reached its climax and the stage lights converged on the center —
Thud!
Without warning, Koharu pitched forward. A massive, malicious force had pushed her from behind.
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through Koharu’s ankle, and she fell hard onto the cold, solid floor of the stage.
The muffled thud of her fall was insignificant amidst the booming music.
The girl lay on the ground and turned around in terror, wanting to see who had pushed her.
But behind her, her teammates whose faces she couldn’t see continued to dance mechanically.
They even stepped over her body as they changed positions, spinning and leaping.
The heels of their dance shoes grazed her fingers as they swept past, as if she, sitting on the floor, were merely an insignificant background character.
…Or perhaps a piece of trash that would be swept away sooner or later, unworthy of concern.
No one stopped. No one reached out a hand.
The sudden feeling of being abandoned by the whole world was more suffocating than the push she had just received.
‘Help me…’
Koharu instinctively called out. But her throat felt as if it were filled with cement; she could only produce faint, broken whimpers.
She wanted to stand up and flee from the blinding light, but her legs were weak and lacked any strength.
Just then, a fair and slender hand reached out from the pitch-black audience at the edge of the stage.
It was a hand wearing a black glove that reached up to the forearm, its gender indistinguishable.
Koharu grabbed it like a lifeline, desperately lifting her head and reaching for the hand with hope.
She thanked the person wildly in her heart, thinking that someone was finally willing to give her a pull.
However, when she followed the hand to look at the person’s face, she froze instantly.
It was a face without any features, with smooth skin like a blank sheet of paper. Except, at the position of the mouth, it suddenly split into a massive, eerie curve.
That smile faced her, emitting a chilling, mocking sound:
“Kiyono — when exactly are you going to leave the group?”
……
“Ah — !”
Koharu Miura bolted upright in bed.
The intense fright left her drenched in cold sweat. Her damp pajamas clung to her back, and her chest heaved unevenly, sending shivers through her body.
The sunlight outside the window was already somewhat piercing. This brightness gave her a sense of extreme, ominous wrongness.
Driven by habit, she hurriedly grabbed the phone by her pillow and checked the time.
[08:42 AM]
‘It’s over… class has started! It’s already the second period!’
Koharu’s brain stalled instantly.
As a “good student” who had always been cautious and perhaps even a bit timid at school, being late or skipping class was a rare occurrence in her life.
What she could least handle was the embarrassment of arriving late, entering the classroom through the back door, and being stared at by the entire class and the teacher.
Koharu scrambled out of bed.
…Furthermore, she currently carried the heavy responsibility of interfering with the plot.
If she were forced to write a self-reflection, accept criticism in the office, or be assigned disciplinary labor because of an absence, she wouldn’t be able to react in time if something went wrong with Kanzaki Sou or Arisa Kiyono.
Ignoring the lingering fear from her dream and having no time to consider why she had such a nightmare, Koharu washed up, changed her clothes, and tied her hair.
Every action was completed at a speed far beyond her usual pace.
Then, without even tearing the page off the calendar by the door, she grabbed her student bag and rushed out of the house.
…Later, when Koharu returned home, she realized that if she had just glanced at the calendar, none of the following events would have happened.
Sometimes destiny is like that, leading you down the most coincidental path through a series of errors.
……
On the way to school, Koharu’s heart was nearly leaping out of her throat.
She didn’t see the usual groups of students heading to school on the surrounding streets.
The occasional pedestrians she passed looked relaxed, walking dogs or carrying shopping bags.
This scene, identical to the few times she had been late before, only increased Koharu’s anxiety.
……
After a mad dash, she was out of breath by the time she finally saw the familiar red-brick gate of Starlight Academy. The school gate was quiet.
“Whew… whew… I’m sorry… I’m late…”
Koharu bent over, hands on her knees, apologizing intermittently to the teacher on duty at the guard post.
The balding, middle-aged man put down his newspaper. Through the glass window, he looked at this girl who was drenched in sweat and wearing a neat school uniform as if she were an alien.
“Um… student.”
The teacher slowly pushed open the window, his tone a bit strange. “Do you… have some urgent business at school?”
“I… I came for class…”
Koharu wiped away her sweat, still worried about getting a demerit.
“…”
The teacher froze for a few seconds. Instead of letting her in, he furrowed his brows and then let out a hearty laugh.
“Class? Haha, student, you’re way too hardworking. Today is Saturday. Our school doesn’t have Saturday classes.”
“Eh…?”
Hearing the teacher’s words, Koharu froze on the spot.
Saturday?
Like a wooden doll, she stiffly and slowly lowered her head. She pulled her phone from her pocket and looked at the date on the screen that she had ignored earlier.
[Saturday]
“…”
A cool breeze blew past, causing the two old trees by the school gate to shake off a few withered leaves, which happened to land on Koharu’s dazed face.
A massive sense of embarrassment, much like the stage in her dream, surrounded her once again.
That was right.
Yesterday… yesterday was Friday. She had searched for Arisa Kiyono for four days and only met her on the last day when she was about to give up.
So, logically, today should be Saturday.
“Ah… um, I’m sorry. I… I forgot.”
Koharu lowered her head, wishing she could find a hole to crawl into.
A few minutes later.
Koharu walked aimlessly along the tree-lined path within the campus.
The early start, the mad dash, and the anxiety over being late had all transformed into a massive sense of emptiness the moment she confirmed it was Saturday.
But since she was already here…
‘Teacher, please open the gate anyway. I’ll go to the library to study by myself.’
With those words, Koharu eventually entered the school. This was because Kanzaki Sou’s LIME messages from yesterday kept surfacing in her mind.
He said he would help her ask the Student Council about the Anonymous Report.
However, Kanzaki Sou hadn’t followed up with any news yesterday.
‘I wonder how his inquiry went.’
It was currently the weekend. If she had to wait until next Monday for Kanzaki, she would surely go crazy from the suspense.
If the person who submitted the report was indeed the one in school who had targeted Arisa Kiyono, they had reported that she and her friend went to a livehouse, but specifically mentioned Arisa was there.
Whether they mentioned her being an idol or just glossed over it, they hadn’t mentioned Arisa’s name directly in a certain way — wait, no, they hadn’t mentioned the friend’s name.
So it was a deliberate “omission”… Koharu always felt the letter itself was aimed at Arisa.
Unless she understood the specific attitude of the reporter, Koharu’s heart would always be hanging in suspense. Therefore, she also wanted to see the original text of the report.
‘I’ll go take a look.’
Koharu stood up and straightened her uniform.
‘I’ll just ask — ‘
She was almost at the side of the room, and Koharu opened her mouth to ask her question. However, something unexpected happened.
“Miura?”
The boy sitting behind the computer turned his head slightly. He pushed up his glasses and looked through the lenses.
That familiar gaze landed right on Koharu, who had instinctively looked over.
Koharu’s breath hitched.
‘Good heavens, why?’
The girl lamented in her heart. Destiny was such a mocking thing.
In this Student Council office where there should have been only one person, the one operating the computer at the very back wasn’t anyone else in the academy.
It was Kanzaki Sou.