The days after Tsubaki's death had settled into a heavy, rain-soaked quiet at Seika High. By the beginning of the following week, Vey and Sorine finally returned to school. The corridors felt damp and muted, the constant drumming of rain against the windows creating a steady, oppressive backdrop that made every footstep echo a little too loudly. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a flat, yellowish glow that drained color from everything. Lockers lined the walls in faded blue rows, some still bearing small stickers or handwritten notes from happier times that now felt distant and unreal. The air carried the damp scent of wet uniforms and floor polish, a chill that clung to skin and made every breath feel slightly heavier.
Vey walked with renewed determination, their hood half-up and posture tense with quiet rage that had only sharpened during their absence. During the first break, the Vey and Sorine gathered in their usual quiet corner of the hallway, away from the main flow of students. The rain pattered steadily against the windows, creating a constant hiss that filled the silences between their words. Both Kairo and Mimo had gone MIA. They had already decided to visit their homes after classes that day.
Vey spoke plainly, voice low but firm. "I'm doing it. I'm going to report Ren to the police today after school. The alley, the warnings, Tsubaki being with him that day… it's too much. We can't keep pretending nothing is wrong."
Sorine, who still carried pure, genuine sadness over Tsubaki, gently placed a hand on Vey's arm. Her eyes were tired, the grief making her movements slower and more deliberate. She had spent the days at home replaying memories of Tsubaki's laughter, the way she used to light up the group even on the rainiest afternoons. The ache was simple and deep, without anger or suspicion mixed in yet—just raw loss that made her want to hold onto the remaining friends as tightly as possible. "Wait," she said softly. "Please don't rush this, Vey. We don't have real proof yet. If we accuse a teacher without anything solid, it could make everything worse for all of us. Let me check something first."
Before anyone could argue, Sorine turned and walked away down the corridor. She had decided on her own—she needed to confirm Vey's claim about the old science lab. The hallway felt longer than usual, each step echoing softly as rain pattered steadily against the windows. The fluorescent lights hummed faintly overhead, and the damp chill in the air made her uniform feel slightly sticky against her skin. She pushed open the door to the old science lab, the hinges creaking in the quiet space.
The room looked exactly as Vey had described it: dusty workbenches lined the walls, their surfaces scarred with old burns and scratches. Faded posters of the periodic table and chemical diagrams peeled at the edges, their colors dulled by time. Glass beakers and test tubes stood in neat but forgotten rows inside wooden cabinets with cloudy glass doors. The large chalkboard at the front still carried faint white smudges from lessons long past. The air carried that familiar stale chemical scent mixed with aged wood, cool and still. Sorine stepped inside, her shoes making soft sounds on the tiled floor. She walked slowly toward the center of the room, heart beating a little faster as she tried to imagine what Vey had experienced.
At first, nothing happened. The room remained ordinary and quiet. Then the change began, smooth and gradual, so gentle she almost didn't notice it starting.
The dust in the air thickened into a soft haze that softened every sharp edge. The overhead lights dimmed slightly, taking on a warmer, yellowish tone that made the space feel less clinical and more intimate. The workbenches seemed to stretch, their scarred surfaces blurring at the corners. When Sorine turned around, the doorway she had entered through was no longer there. Instead, she stood at the beginning of a long, repeating hallway.
The corridor stretched endlessly in both directions, identical doors lining the walls at perfectly regular intervals. The floor was the same scuffed linoleum as the school hallways, the walls painted the same off-white. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead in a perfect, repeating pattern, each fixture exactly like the last, casting the same flat glow. Sorine took a few hesitant steps forward, then turned back. The hallway continued identically behind her, the same doors, the same lights, the same faint scuff marks on the floor. She walked faster, passing door after door, but every turn brought her back to the same stretch of corridor. Time began to lose all meaning. Minutes stretched, folded in on themselves, and repeated without end.
The psychological pressure built slowly but relentlessly, like water rising in a sealed room with no outlet.
At first it felt almost soothing. The repetition removed every difficult choice. No decisions about which path to take, no fresh grief waiting around the next corner, no painful forward movement through the loss of Tsubaki or the memory of her mother's wave. The hallway offered a terrible kind of peace: everything stayed exactly the same. The lights hummed their steady rhythm. The doors never changed. Nothing new could hurt her here. No more empty desks. No more sudden absences. Just this familiar, endless stretch where nothing ever had to end or begin again.
But the comfort quickly turned cruel.
Sorine's mind began to fracture under the weight of endless sameness. She tried to push forward, telling herself there had to be a way out, a path even if it hurt. She pictured Tsubaki's bright laugh, the real cold grief she carried every day, her stubborn belief that life required movement no matter how painful. But every time she walked, the hallway simply reset. The same doors appeared again. The same lights hummed above her. Her own footsteps echoed back in faint, overlapping layers, mocking her efforts.
She shouted until her throat burned raw. She sat against the wall and refused to move, curling into herself as tears streamed silently down her face. Still the hallway waited, patient and unchanging. It whispered through the humming lights and the faint echo of her own breathing: "Stay here. You don't have to keep walking into more loss. The path forward only brings new pain. Rest in the loop. Everything can stay exactly as it is. No more goodbyes. No more hollow spaces where friends used to be. Just this. Safe. Familiar. Eternal."
The visions grew stronger and more vivid with each cycle. Brief, perfect glimpses flickered at the edges of her sight — Tsubaki laughing and elbowing Kairo with that playful grin, her mother smiling on a sunny day before the wave took her, the whole group together without any distance or grief or empty desks. Each time the images appeared, they felt warmer, more solid, more tempting. Sorine's resolve weakened with every repetition. The endless sameness ground against her sense of self like sandpaper on raw skin. She began to doubt her own memories. Had Tsubaki really existed outside this loop? Was the pain of moving forward worth it when staying still felt so mercifully numb?
She cried until there were no tears left. She screamed until her voice cracked into hoarse whispers. She walked until her legs trembled and gave out beneath her. The hallway offered no judgment, no urgency, only the gentle, crushing promise that she never had to feel anything new or painful again. The psychological damage sank deep — a quiet erosion of her core belief that there was always a path forward, even when it hurt. In this repeating space, forward and backward had lost all meaning. There was only the loop, and the loop was kind. The loop was safe. The loop was everything she secretly feared she wanted when the grief became too heavy to carry.
She lost all track of time. The hallway simply continued, door after door, light after light, offering the seductive mercy of never having to face another ending.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity trapped in the same repeating stretch, the door at the far end finally opened with a soft creak.
Ren Fushiwara stepped into the repeating corridor, his expression calm and composed. He walked straight to Sorine, who was slumped against the wall, eyes hollow and unfocused from the unrelenting mental strain. Without a word, he knelt, slid one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, and lifted her gently. Sorine was too exhausted to resist or speak. Her body felt heavy, her mind still half-trapped in the endless repetition. Ren carried her out of the lab as if she weighed nothing, stepping back into the normal school hallway where the air felt cooler and the lights harsher.