Something makes Kaminari and Jiro realise it at the same time — a shift in instinct, the particular feeling of a presence that isn't in front of them or behind them or to either side.
Slowly, as if by the same thought, they tilt their heads upward.
And freeze.
Ayaka Adachi looks back down at them from the ceiling.
She stands on it the way a person stands on a floor — weight settled, posture easy, as if the concept of gravity has simply decided not to apply to her. Her hair hangs perfectly still. Her clothes sit undisturbed. Not a single thing about her acknowledges that she is inverted above them, and that quiet wrongness makes it worse somehow than if she'd been dramatic about it.
The faint light from Kaminari's electricity catches her from below — illuminating the lines of her face in pale, shifting light, the dark of the corridor making the contrast sharp and strange. She is, objectively, looking down at them with the calm expression of someone who has been waiting patiently and is mildly entertained by how long it has taken.
She is also, it has to be said, extremely pretty, and the combination of all of these factors is deeply unnerving and unsettling in a way neither of them has the words for in that moment.
Kaminari screams.
"OH COME ON—"
They run.
There is no discussion. No decision. Just the immediate collective agreement of two human beings that they need to be somewhere else, expressed at full volume.
Both of them reach for the other at the same time — hands finding hands somewhere in the scramble, neither of them registering it, neither of them caring — and they tear down the corridor with what can only be described as total commitment to not being where they just were.
Kaminari glances up mid-run in panic.
His stomach drops.
She is still there.
Moving with them. Perfectly in sync, tracking them across the ceiling like a reflection in a very cursed mirror, expression unchanged, not even slightly hurrying.
He makes a noise and runs faster.
Jiro makes the same noise and also runs faster.
"STOP DOING THAT!" Kaminari shouts at the ceiling, which is an objectively strange sentence and also completely reasonable given the circumstances.
"What he said!" Jiro shouts breathlessly. "Knock it off!"
They keep running.
They run for a few more seconds without looking up, until their lungs start arguing with them and their legs file a formal complaint, and gradually — breathlessly — they slow to a stop.
Jiro looks up, chest heaving.
The ceiling is empty.
She lets out a breath. "She's gone."
Kaminari bends forward, hand on his knees. "Thank god." He stays like that for a few seconds, breathing. "Okay. Okay. I'm fine. We're fine. Everything is fine."
They stand there panting, slowly returning to normal, until they are upright again and the hallway is just a hallway.
That is when they both notice their hands.
They look down at their interlocked hands.
Still locked together against their wishes.
Then up at each other.
They separate immediately — both stepping back at the same time, both finding somewhere else to look.
Both of them turn bright red.
"That was —" Jiro starts. Then stops. Then crosses her arms. "Reflex," she says firmly. "Obviously."
"I — uh —" Kaminari opens his mouth, closes it, and tries again. "Yeah, no, same. Same thing."
"Yeah, no, I know, you grabbed my hand and then obviously when you're running —"
"Right, exactly, it was just — coordination —"
"Exactly. Coordination."
"Totally."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
A brief silence.
"It doesn't — I mean it wasn't —"
"Obviously not —"
"Right."
Kaminari, scratching the back of his head nervously. "Uh… sorry. I—I panicked."
Jiro's arms tighten across her chest, her cheeks pink. "You panicked first, actually."
Kaminari gulps. "Well… I mean, you were holding onto me, too…"
Jiro's eyebrows knit. "…I was? For… tactical reasons. Yeah, tactical."
"For… tactical reasons," Jiro says, "Yeah, tactical." Her eyes not quite meeting his eyes. "So you wouldn't run off on your own."
Kaminari blinks. "Tactical?"
"Yes."
"…Right." He nods slowly, face still red. "Totally makes sense. Tactical."
A beat.
"Very tactical," Jiro adds, with the conviction of someone who has committed to a position and intends to die on it.
They both fumble with excuses, awkwardly trying to explain their actions while glancing away. Their hearts are still racing, but the momentary embarrassment forces them into a shared, tense quiet.
Kaminari opens his mouth to add something further to this very convincing and coherent exchange—
Then he suddenly stops.
He looks around the corridor — slowly this time, not with panic, but with the particular stillness of someone who has just noticed something is missing.
The colour drains from his face.
Jiro stops talking as she immediately registers the change in him.
"What is it?"
Kaminari doesn't answer right away.
He scans the corridor again.
Then he whispers quietly.
"…Jiro."
She stiffens.
"Yeah?"
He turns to her slowly, "Hey… isn't this the same hallway we were just in?"
Jiro looks around. Her jack finds the wall automatically — pressing in before she's fully decided to do it — and she listens for a few seconds.
Same electrical hum. Same dead silence. Same air sitting heavy and still.
She pulls the jack free.
"…Yeah," she says quietly. "It is."
A shiver runs down both their spines.
Neither of them says anything for a moment.
They drift slightly closer together — not noticeably, not intentionally — just the natural physics of two people standing in a corridor that has already proven itself untrustworthy.
For a fleeting second, their eyes meet before both glance down the hallway ahead.
The corridor stretches long and silent before them. Dust turns lazily through the dim light. Nothing moves.
They both go still.
Then —
Between them — right in the narrow space between their shoulders — a calm, curious voice cuts the silence.
"What are you looking at?"
A head pops into view directly between theirs.
Calm expression. Mildly curious. Completely unbothered by proximity.
Ayaka Adachi looks at the hallway ahead with the patient expression of someone who has asked a perfectly reasonable question.
The cold shock hits both of them at the same time.
They whip toward her simultaneously —
CLACK.
Their heads connect with a sound that echoes down the corridor.
"OW —"
"The hell —"
They lurch apart, both clutching their heads, stumbling in opposite directions.
Kaminari groans. "That hurt —"
Jiro rubs the side of her forehead, teeth gritted. "What the hell was that?!"
Kaminari winces. "That was definitely… Ada —"
He stops mid-sentence.
His head comes up slowly.
The space beside him is empty.
He looks left. Right.
"…Jiro?"
Silence.
He turns around. The hallway behind him stretches out long and still, the shadows at the far end dissolving into nothing.
"…Jiro?"
She is gone.
The silence presses in from every direction. A cold prickle moves up his arms, raising the hair on his skin.
"…Jiro?"
Small sparks jump from his fingertips without permission.
He turns once, twice, scanning the corridor. It seems longer than before — longer than it should be — the far end retreating somewhere past where logic says the building ends.
His throat tightens.
"…This is not cool," he says to no one.
The sparks around his fingers flicker. He lifts his hand slowly, bracing himself for something — he isn't sure what —
"Where the hell did you disappear to, you idiot?!"
"AAAAAAH —"
He launches sideways, heart in his throat, every nerve firing at once —
And then collapses forward and grabs Jiro around the legs.
"I WAS SO SCARED —"
Jiro looks down at him. Her expression is flat in the specific way of someone who has just been through their own version of the last thirty seconds and has no remaining patience for anything.
"…Seriously?"
She pats his head once. Then nudges him firmly with her foot.
"Alright. Get off."
He clings harder. "No."
She grabs the back of his collar with one hand and hauls him upright. "Let go —"
He wobbles, finds his footing, and stands — unsteady but vertical.
They both look around the hallway uneasily.
"…Okay," Kaminari mutters. "…That was weird."
Jiro nods slowly. "…Very weird."
A short silence settles.
Then Jiro exhales and rolls her shoulders.
"We should finish this quickly." She glances down the corridor, jaw set. "I want to get out of this building."
"Same." He straightens his jacket with as much dignity as the situation allows. "That girl is seriously creeping me out."
They steady themselves. Look at the corridor ahead. Take one step forward together.
Then another.
Then—
Ayaka's head suddenly pops into existence again.
They freeze.
Neither of them moves.
Neither of them breathes.
Ayaka's head remains perfectly still, floating in the space between their shoulders. She looks down the hallway ahead of them, then back at them with an expression of quiet helpfulness.
"…That's the direction you came from."
"AAAAAAAAH —"
Kaminari and Jiro scream in unison.
They bolt.
No discussion. No decision. Just two people moving at maximum speed in the same direction with matching volume, abandoning every aspect of the plan in favour of being somewhere — anywhere — that is not here.
Behind them, Ayaka takes a step out of the shadows.
Most of her body remains shrouded in darkness.
She watches them go — their footsteps hammering down the corridor, their screaming bouncing off every surface — with the patient expression of someone observing something small and frantic from a comfortable distance.
After a moment, she speaks softly into the empty hallway.
"They're coming your way, Momo."
The shadows around her shift.
And she disappears.
The corridor settles back into silence. Still and heavy, as if nothing has disturbed it.
As if it has always been empty.
Far ahead, growing fainter with distance, the echoes of Kaminari and Jiro continue through the building — their footsteps frantic, their voices overlapping —
"Adachi is absolutely giving me the creeps!" Jiro shouts.
"YOU THINK?!" Kaminari yells back.
They keep running.
And running.
And running.
Down the corridor, through the dim light, past every door they've should have checked and every shadow they've already decided not to think about.
They run until their lungs are burning and their footsteps are the loudest thing in the world, and the floor is just a blur beneath them.
And then —
At the far end of the hallway —
A door.
Both of them slow.
"That's it!" Kaminari gasps, pointing. "That has to be the room!"
Jiro nods quickly, not slowing down. "Yeah. Let's just get this over with —"
But just before they reach it—
Ayaka steps through the closed door.
Not through the doorway. Not around it. Through the solid surface itself, emerging from the wood as if it were fog, completely unhurried, brushing nothing off her shoulder.
"WILL YOU STOP DOING THAT —" Kaminari jabs a finger at her.
"Every time —" Jiro adds.
"Every single time —"
Ayaka raises one hand, palm out, the picture of innocence.
"I haven't done anything."
"YOU CAME THROUGH A DOOR —"
"I used a door, yes."
"THAT IS NOT WHAT USING A DOOR MEANS —"
She tilts her head slightly. "Are you certain? Because from where I'm standing —"
She vanishes.
Mid-sentence, between one word and the next — gone, as if she had simply decided to stop existing in that particular location. No sound. No shimmer. Nothing left behind but the two of them standing in the hallway staring at the spot where she'd been.
The silence that follows has a very specific quality.
Jiro stares at the empty space for a moment.
Then she exhales through her nose — the slow, deliberate kind that means she is actively choosing not to say several things.
"Right." She turns to the wall beside the door and drives her jack into the concrete. "Let me check what we're walking into before we go in."
She closes her eyes. Kaminari stands a few steps back, watching her work, the corridor quiet around them.
Suddenly —
Two hands emerge from the walls.