Sota's school gymnasium had that specific acoustics of large spaces with high ceilings where all sounds are amplified and mixed together — footsteps, voices, the bounce of the red rubber ball against the wooden floor.
Sota Miyazaki was on the left side of the court with the three classmates on his team, the ball already in play and the specific concentration of someone who in that moment was not thinking about alleys or figures with white eyes but about the space between him and the opposing team and how to cross it without taking the ball in the face.
"Sota, left!" shouted Toma from the far end.
Sota moved to the left.
The ball passed where his right shoulder had been and found the opposing team member who was not expecting it from that angle. Out.
Teacher Okazaki — somewhere in her forties, short hair, the specific patience of someone who has refereed enough dodgeball games that nothing surprises her anymore — marked the point with a brief whistle.
"Well done, Miyazaki!" she said, in the tone of someone giving credit where it is due without overdoing it.
The game went on. Sota moved more naturally than he had expected — not because the weight of recent days had disappeared but because there was something in physical movement, in having to read the space and respond in real time, that left less room for the other part of his mind to occupy all available space.
When the game finished — Sota's team with a two-point advantage, the opposing team protesting with the energy of people who know they lost but are not completely in agreement with that — Toma appeared beside him with his usual enthusiasm.
"That was incredible!" he said. "That move at the end — how did you see it?"
"I didn't," said Sota. "I just moved."
"That's even more incredible."
Masa arrived a step behind, with his usual economy of movement.
"That was good," he said, which in Masa was equivalent to a standing ovation.
Sota smiled.
"Thanks."
"Sota."
The voice came from the left. Sota turned.
Hana Mizuki — long hair pulled back in a braid, a smile that had something slightly nervous about the edges — was standing a metre and a half away with her hands clasped in front of her.
"That was really good," she said. "You're very talented."
Sota opened his mouth.
Then he closed it.
Then he went red in a way he had no control over and put both hands on his head as though that was going to help in some way.
"Th... thank you," he said. "It's not that big a deal."
Hana Mizuki smiled — less nervous this time — and went off with her classmates.
Sota remained standing in the same spot with his hands still on his head.
Toma was watching him with the expression of someone who has seen something they are going to save for later use.
Sota looked at him.
"Don't say anything," he said.
"I didn't say anything," said Toma.
"Don't even think it."
"I can't control what I think."
Sota raised his hand towards Teacher Okazaki.
"Miss, can I go to the bathroom?"
"Yes, Miyazaki," said the teacher. "Be back before we start the closing exercises."
Sota went out through the gymnasium's double doors before Toma could finish what he was clearly about to say.
The corridor between the gymnasium and the bathrooms had that quiet of school corridors in the middle of a lesson when all the classes are in their rooms and nobody is moving about. The lockers lined up on one side, the windows on the other with the afternoon light coming in at an angle.
Sota walked slowly.
It's going better, he thought. It really is going better.
Not perfectly — there were still moments when the image of the alley arrived without warning, still nights when sleep was slow in coming because something in his mind kept reviewing things he would rather not review. But there was something different about the last few days that had not been there before.
Someone who believed him.
Someone who knew what he knew and did not tell him his brain had played a trick on him.
Maybe — maybe — the psychologists had a point, he thought, pushing open the bathroom door. Maybe what I saw was... not exactly a hallucination, but something my brain processed in a way that did not quite correspond to reality.
He did not entirely believe it. But thinking that it might be the case was less exhausting than the alternative.
He washed his face with cold water. The mirror gave him back an image that looked more like the one from before that afternoon in the alley than the one from recent days.
He looked up.
There was a figure behind him.
Sota turned with a half-formed shout that cut off when he recognised the face.
Masa Shirai was looking at him with his usual neutral expression, with the air of someone who does not entirely understand why the other person is reacting like this.
"You frightened me," said Sota, hand on his chest.
"Sorry," said Masa.
"What are you doing here?" asked Sota.
"Same as you," said Masa. "Going to the bathroom."
Sota breathed.
The two of them were silent for a moment with the sound of the tap still dripping.
"Hana Mizuki spoke to you," said Masa.
Sota looked at him.
"Yes."
"She's the prettiest girl in the school."
"It's not that — that has nothing to do with—"
"You're red."
"I'm not red."
"You're fairly red."
"Stop talking nonsense," said Sota. "We should go back to the gymnasium."
Masa said nothing more but his expression said everything he had decided not to say aloud, which was probably quite a lot.
They walked back along the corridor. Sota pushed the gymnasium's double doors.
Both of them stopped.
Amane Yūta walked along the pavement that led to Sota's school with his hands in his pockets and a thought that was not entirely fair but was there all the same.
I'm always the one who comes to get him, he thought. Kagami could come sometimes — I'd like a bit more time to investigate too.
Then he thought about Kagami and the specific expression he would have if someone suggested he go and collect a fourteen-year-old from school, and decided it was probably better this way.
At least he let me stay, he thought. He didn't send me back to headquarters with the others.
Which was true and was enough.
He turned the last corner.
The school gate was closed.
Not locked — simply closed, the way it was at the end of the day, except that according to Yūta's calculations he had arrived just in time for Sota's dismissal. Yūta looked at the gate. Then he looked at the yard on the other side — empty, without the movement of people going between buildings that there should have been at this hour.
He took out his phone.
He checked the time, processing that he had arrived just in time for Sota's dismissal.
He looked at it for a second with the expression of someone processing several things at once and trying to put them in order.
He waited. Two minutes. Five. Without anyone coming out, without any movement appearing behind the windows he could see from where he was standing.
Something is wrong.
He pushed the gate. Open. He crossed the yard and walked towards the main door of the building.
When he was about to go in, he thought: maybe it's better to ask Sota what's going on first. When he took out his phone he realised there was no signal. "That's strange — I had signal a moment ago," said Amane.
When Amane tried to leave the place to call Sota, his hand found something that was not there visually — a resistance, firm and completely invisible, that did not yield when Yūta pushed with more force and which had that specific texture of something made of mana, but of a different kind from what he had learned to generate.
He went still.
The temple, he thought. When the remnant trapped us inside. The door that disappeared. The darkness that was not ordinary darkness.
This is the same as that.
Which meant there was a remnant inside the building. Which meant Kagami could not enter because the dome separated them. Which meant whatever was inside — whatever it was — was his problem right now.
He looked at the building.
Then he looked at his hands.
He remembered the four days in Kaito's room. The flow. The thirty seconds. The strikes to the stomach until he could take no more, and the right shoulder that still remembered it.
He sighed.
"At least I had to practise for something," he said, quietly.
And he headed for the main door.
When they opened the gymnasium door, they saw something completely different from what they had expected. Three strange figures were in the room — remnants, different from the others, larger, with that specific deformity of something that has grown with too much of something and does not know what to do with it. They moved with the basic coordination of remnants that do not think but that respond to something that does.
The students and Teacher Okazaki were in the right-hand corner of the gymnasium — not bound, not hurt, simply contained by the presence of the three figures and by the correct instinct of people who have understood that moving is not a good idea right now.
Teacher Okazaki — trying to maintain the specific calm of someone who is terrified but has decided she cannot allow herself to show it fully because there are younger people watching her — saw Sota and Masa at the door.
"Get out," Teacher Okazaki cried. "Now."
One of the three misshapen remnants repositioned itself in front of the door before Sota or Masa could process the instruction. Not running — simply repositioning, blocking the exit with the solidity of something that does not need to hurry because it is already where it needs to be.
The third took them — Sota and Masa — and brought them to the group with the minimum care of something that has instructions not to harm, but has no instructions to be gentle.
Sota stood frozen in the corner with the others.
The gymnasium was silent except for the breathing of twenty people who were trying not to do anything that might change the situation in ways they would prefer not to discover.
And then he heard the voice.
"How interesting."
It came from the centre of the gymnasium, with that off cadence that did not entirely belong to the language, even though it used it fluently.
The green remnant walked from the centre towards where the group was — slowly, with its usual unhurried pace, with the greenish skin and the yellow hair and the completely white eyes that in the gymnasium under artificial light were even more wrong than they had been in the alley.
It stopped about three metres from the group.
It looked at the students one by one with that calculating attention.
It stopped at Sota.
"You remind me of someone," it said.
Sota did not respond. Not because he had chosen not to — but because his body had made that decision for him, in the same way as in the alley, with the same nameless emergency signal that the nervous system treated as the most urgent of all.
"The alley," said the green remnant, with something that on a human face would have been satisfied recognition. "You're the boy who was watching. The one I couldn't kill because my phone rang."
Teacher Okazaki stepped forward.
"Let my students go," she said, in the voice she used when something was non-negotiable.
One of the three misshapen remnants repositioned itself in front of her without anyone ordering it to.
The green one did not even look at her.
"You should have stayed at home," it said to Sota, in that tone of its. "It would be simpler for everyone."
Sota was looking at it.
Or trying to — because every time those white pupil-less eyes found his, something in his mind tried to shut down, like a protective mechanism that preferred darkness to continuing to process what it was seeing.
Amane, he thought, unable to say it aloud. Please.
The green remnant smiled.
And in the corridor on the other side of the gymnasium's double doors, footsteps were heard.
Fast.
Yūta Amane ran through the corridors of Misato's school with the dagger in his right hand and the mana seeking the flow before he knew exactly what he was going to find.
But he was going to find it.
And he would be there when he did.