Darkness.
An endless darkness, as if it were about to swallow everything.
Muddled voices, as though transmitted through a thick curtain.
Are they Maki and the others' voices?
There was no way to hear the content clearly.
His consciousness was blurred, his senses were blurred—everything was blurred.
Only the low laughter could be heard.
He did not know who it was.
It was like someone standing not far away, staring at him, laughing at him.
Struggling.
Trying to break free from this heavy darkness.
Yet he could not even accomplish something as basic as opening his eyes.
Falling.
Uncontrollably falling toward a deeper place.
All perception finally dissipated completely.
Only the sensation of continuously falling within that boundless darkness remained.
And, at a certain moment, the sudden, violent impact of hitting the ground.
"…"
Takumi opened his eyes.
From grogginess to gradual clarity, it took about two or three seconds.
Slowly, Takumi raised his head. From the desk he had just been lying on, he straightened up, looking at the swaying candle placed on his desk.
The candlelight illuminated the desk and chair he was sitting at, illuminating the words carved into them—"Go die," "Trash," "Idiot"—as well as the dried, dark-red bloodstains on both sides of the desktop, as if gouged out by fingernails.
He smelled blood.
A nauseating, dense stench of blood, as if his entire nasal cavity had been directly filled with it.
There was no opening prompt.
No game-clearing objective.
He had simply been pulled into this place.
This tattered classroom that appeared to have been abandoned for a long time.
This horror amusement park, located within a stretch of darkness, where one did not know what kind of terrifying Aberrations might be wandering.
He looked at his right hand.
At this moment, beneath his right hand resting on the desk, there was a sheet of paper torn from a notebook, its edge still showing uneven serrations.
Turning the paper over, Takumi saw the words written on it.
[Alice's Grand Adventure Game!]
As expected, it was the same rule sheet he had previously looked up on the forum—the set of rules about how to play games with "Alice."
Extinguishing the candle would attract the [Big Bad Wolf]. The [Bad Kid] would blow out candles, but one could directly shine the candlelight on them. Running around in the corridor would attract [Sheep Mom]. Making noise would attract [Teacher Duck]. [Uncle Statue] liked running around and would "hug" people upon seeing them. At the stairway there was [Teacher Turtle]. In the corridor, [Sister Flashlight] patrolled—if encountered, one had to run. During class time, [Sheep Mom] seemed to conduct inspection patrols. Getting the timing wrong when turning the lights on or off would attract [Principal Elephant] and [Inspector Giraffe]. And only by finding [Alice's belongings] could one leave the Teaching Building…
Takumi looked over this rule sheet, which he had in fact already memorized. After confirming that the text recorded on it was no different from the version circulating on the players' forum, he went over the key points once more in his mind. Then he set it down and looked around him.
There were five rows of seats in the classroom, and each row had five columns, for a total of 5×5—twenty-five seats. On every seat, someone was lying face down.
All of them were girls, all wearing high school uniforms—specifically, the student uniform of Yotsuya Miko's school. Just like the [Campus Uncanny] Instance had always been, each time it descended upon the real world, it would usually take away an entire class, or the vast majority of one. This time, it seemed that Miko's class had not been taken entirely—perhaps because Miko herself had, to a certain extent, withstood the mental erosion of the Instance and found him, causing the Aberrant power to shift to some degree.
For now, however, these students were still in a state of unconscious sleep, lying motionless on their desks.
On each desk where a student lay face down, there was a burning candle, casting light within the classroom's absolute darkness, where no other lights were present.
On every desk, there was also a rule sheet pressed beneath something, identical to the one in Takumi's hand. The rule sheets were all written on paper torn from notebooks. The contents were entirely handwritten, and each sheet was decorated with various chibi-style little animal drawings, which looked rather cute.
Most of the windows along one side of the classroom were already shattered, broken glass scattered across the floor, reflecting the faint glow of the candlelight.
Outside the window was a murky black night. Faintly, a dark red crescent moon could be seen hanging in midair. There were no stars, no clouds—only that red moon, radiating an unsettling, blood-colored glow that illuminated this lifeless, dark campus.
Takumi turned his head and looked toward the other side of the classroom.
The two classroom doors at the front and back, painted red, were both closed at this moment. Incidentally, on the same wall where the doors were located, there were actually two windows installed as well. One of the windows was completely covered by curtains, making it impossible to see outside. The other was not fully covered, so Takumi could see the dilapidated corridor outside—desks and chairs and bricks scattered about, the walls mostly peeled away—as well as the window of another classroom.
At the front of the classroom stood the teacher's desk and a large lectern, and to one side there was also a standing air-conditioning unit.
Behind the lectern, on the huge blackboard, were rows of words left in chalk by someone unknown.
[Alice's Grand Adventure Game is about to begin!]
[In this game, Alice has hidden a total of five items inside the Teaching Building! As long as you find one of them, you win~]
[These five items are:]
[1. A red gel pen]
[2. A red eraser]
[3. A red homework notebook]
[4. A red straight ruler]
[5. A red compass]
[They're all very, very easy-to-find items, so everyone do your best—let's play the game together!]
[After playing the game, everyone will be Alice's good friend~]
The handwriting was childish, as if written by a little child, and beside the words were doodles of flowers and small animals—made as cute as possible in every way.
If only they were not seeing such text while inside a pseudo–Red Moon-level Horror Story game.
In silence, Takumi roughly memorized the basic layout of the classroom. Then he noticed that some students who had been sleeping on their desks were beginning to stir, as if about to wake up.
These ordinary students had no Blessings and no Obsession Items; they were completely normal people. It was impossible for them to awaken in advance like Takumi. So if they were waking up, it meant that the aberrant power within this Instance had caused them to awaken. In other words… the game was about to begin.
"Mm…"
A faint cry of distress came from the seat beside him.
Takumi tilted his head slightly and saw the girl sitting at his side—Yotsuya Miko. The girl with the peculiar visual ability looked somewhat dazed at the moment, as if she had not yet fully awakened. She sat blankly in her seat for quite a while before suddenly jolting awake, and the look in her eyes as she took in her surroundings quickly turned to fear.
At the same time, the other students in the classroom also began waking up one after another. Each of them sat up, looking around in confusion, bewilderment, or fear.
"W-Where is this place?"
"Wasn't I performing some kind of ritual? Why did I suddenly end up here?"
"Could it be… could it be that Alice's game is real?!"
"What is this place?! I want to go home—I want to go home right now!"
"H-Hey, you're here too? What on earth is going on?"
"Is this some kind of reality show? Is this a performance program?"
"Have we been kidnapped? N-No…"
More than twenty sixteen- or seventeen-year-old high school girls, who had never experienced any Aberration-related incident and were not exceptionally capable or strong-willed like Kaguya or Maki, suddenly found themselves in an unprecedentedly unfamiliar environment—an extremely strange and abnormal place. Their noise almost instantly drowned out Takumi's hearing.
More than half of the girls did not even look at the rules sheet in their hands, nor did they pay any attention to the candle placed on their desks. They simply stood up from their seats and ran to the door, trying to pull it open and get out, only to discover that both the front and back classroom doors were locked and could not be opened.
Some of the more timid girls burst into tears on the spot.
A few others, completely at a loss, quickly huddled together—though after standing together, they did nothing at all, making it impossible to understand what exactly they were trying to accomplish by grouping up.
"Takumi-san, this is…"
Miko remained relatively calm. After noticing the words on the blackboard, she lowered her head to look at the rules sheet pressed beneath her palm. After quickly reading through its contents, she then looked toward Takumi with a pleading expression.
"Unfortunately, we didn't manage to escape. From here on, we'll have to find a way to survive in this place."
Takumi shrugged helplessly as he spoke to Miko, yet inwardly he could not help but sigh.
Was playing the riddler really bound to bring retribution?
Next time he ran into some important character—like the heroine of a certain anime—it would be better not to go up and strike up a conversation. If that ended up triggering some side quest and dragging him into another Instance, that would truly be a situation where he could only swallow his tears in silence.
Still, those lessons would have to wait until he survived the crisis at hand.
"Takumi-san, the students in this classroom, everyone…"
Having already carefully cradled the candle in her arms, Miko looked nervously at the students in the room, each reacting differently. When she realized that they were all her classmates, the girl's expression clearly worsened.
"Most of the people here are already no different from the dead. From here on, follow my instructions. As long as you don't hold me back and can help me, I'll find a way to get you out of this hellish place with me. For now, don't act rashly. Protect your candle."
As Takumi spoke, he picked up the candle from his desk.
Just as he was watching coldly from the sidelines, a sound suddenly came from the broadcast speaker hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the wall beside the blackboard.
[Ding-ding-ling—～]
The first thing to sound was a pleasant melody.
[Alice's game is about to begin right now～]
What followed was the voice of a girl who sounded very young—almost like a middle school student. The voice was lively and cute, as if she were truly playing a game, her tone brimming with excitement and delight. Yet it only made Takumi feel a wave of discomfort.
Was this voice the voice of "Alice"?
"Who would want to play a game with you?! Let us out! Let us leave this place right now!"
A somewhat agitated girl with dyed blonde hair shouted loudly.
But the voice of Alice paid her no attention at all. She simply continued speaking to herself, excitedly introducing the general rules.
[Everyone must protect your candles, and quickly find the items Alice has hidden]
[Alice is really, really looking forward to becoming good friends with you]
[So now the game begins its countdown—5, 4, 3—]
"I told you I don't want to play your stupid game, you bastard!!!"
Before the voice in the broadcast could finish counting down, the blonde girl, furious beyond control, had already raised the candle on her desk high and smashed it hard onto the ground.
Immediately after, she stomped down fiercely, extinguishing the faintly flickering flame atop the red candle in an instant.
Takumi did not see anything unusual.
But Miko, seated beside him, tensed up almost immediately.
In the very next moment, everyone except Miko and Takumi began screaming in terror amid the splattering spray of blood.
And the smiling girl's voice from the broadcast continued unhurriedly through the students' screams.
[3, 2, 1～]
[Alice's game has begun～]
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