The next day began strangely ordinarily.
I opened my eyes before the wake-up bell rang.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t slept.
But it was hard to say I’d slept well, either.
The note that had been slipped under the door was still sitting on my desk.
A single folded sheet of paper.
Two short lines.
Tomorrow night. Come alone.
There is something I need to confirm.
That was it.
How utterly perfunctory.
No location, no explanation.
If you’re going to summon someone, shouldn’t you at least write down where they’re supposed to come? I thought, but on second thought, there was no need.
The places she would choose were obvious anyway.
There was no way someone who called people out like that would dislike quiet places, and she wouldn’t pick somewhere blatantly conspicuous, either.
Somewhere suitably within the school, suitably out of sight, and convenient for spreading out records and calculations.
Nice.
Her personality was awful in a truly easy-to-understand way.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at the note for a while.
At this point, pretending I hadn’t seen it would be a talent in itself, but unfortunately, I seemed to have left that particular talent behind in my previous life.
In the end, I folded the note, tucked it into my coat, and got up.
I washed my face and looked in the mirror.
The shadows under my eyes had sunk a little lower than yesterday, and the corners of my mouth showed no sign of reviving.
I looked wonderfully exhausted.
I buttoned my uniform and left the room. The hallway was quiet, no different from usual.
Someone, perhaps having overslept, was hurrying along in a panic, while someone else walked toward the washroom with a half-asleep face.
They all wore the faces of people living their own day.
When I see faces like that, I sometimes feel strange.
Like I’m the only one looking at something pointless and different.
But then again, it’s hard to say that isn’t true.
Because I really am looking at something different.
Morning classes passed without incident.
My body was sitting in the chair, and my mind followed one beat behind, but the sentences on the blackboard sank into my head strangely well.
The problem was that, even as I listened, one corner of my mind was turning on its own.
Tonight.
Erka.
The first class ended, the second class passed, and lunchtime came.
On the way to the dining hall, I glanced absentmindedly down the corridor toward the main building.
It wasn’t as if I was looking for anyone in particular.
Erka wasn’t there.
I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.
If she had been clinging to another professor like yesterday, that would have been exhausting in its own way.
I took a tray and sat in a corner seat.
I took one spoonful of soup and immediately regretted it.
It was lukewarm.
If it was going to be like this, they could at least have shown the sincerity of serving it before it went cold.
Lukewarm soup feels like a preview of a vaguely failed day, so it only drags your mood down further.
I tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in the soup, and stared blankly at the people around me.
Some were chatting, some were eating while looking through their notes, and some were talking about the ranking matches.
“Senior.”
I lifted my head.
Mia was standing in front of me.
There wasn’t much food on her tray.
Seeing that she had barely touched the meat and had only taken bread and soup, it seemed the smell wasn’t great today either.
“Sit.”
Mia silently sat across from me.
Then she sniffed the soup once and immediately frowned a little.
“What.”
“It’s bad.”
“I know that too.”
“It’s worse today.”
I put down my spoon.
“Did you smell something again today?”
“Yeah.”
Mia looked down at the soup once more, then said quietly,
“The school smells a little strange.”
I didn’t answer right away.
That statement was too broad.
If she said the entire school was strange, then too many things became impossible to explain.
But at the same time, I couldn’t dismiss it lightly, because Mia’s senses had rarely been far off so far.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. Something similar to what I smelled behind the main building yesterday is spread thinner now.”
Spread thinner.
I turned those words over in my head.
Yesterday, it had been a single point.
In front of the passage. In front of the iron door. The sensation leading downward.
Today, that had spread.
If that was true, it wasn’t good news.
I tore off another piece of bread and asked,
“Did you go back to the passage yesterday?”
Mia shook her head.
“I didn’t. I pretended not to go.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I wanted to go, but I didn’t.”
A truly excellent expression.
But I understood.
I had been in a similar state.
Mia stirred her soup a couple of times, then added in a small voice,
“You’re going out tonight, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t a question.
I looked at her for a moment.
“Why do you think that?”
“Your face says so, Senior.”
“My face always looks bad.”
“Today it looks worse.”
She was right, so I couldn’t refute it.
I let out a small sigh.
“I have to go alone.”
Mia’s ears moved ever so slightly.
“Because of that person?”
“Yeah.”
“Erka.”
“Yeah.”
Mia closed her mouth for a moment.
She didn’t look displeased, exactly.
But she certainly didn’t look pleased either.
It was exactly the kind of face that said she didn’t like it.
To be honest, I didn’t like it either.
A strange person, and because she seemed useful in proportion to how strange she was, she was the more exhausting kind.
Mia tore off a piece of bread and muttered,
“Can’t I go too?”
“The note said to come alone.”
“Do you have to do what it says just because she wrote it down?”
“She’s the type where you really do have to.”
“Bad personality.”
“I agree.”
Mia looked dissatisfied for a moment, but in the end, she lowered her head and ate a spoonful of soup.
After that, neither of us spoke for a while.
Even without words, the air over the table had become just a little heavy.
The smell Mia had noticed, the iron door we had seen yesterday, tonight, Erka.
Taken one by one, they were nothing much, but when placed together, they made my insides distinctly uneasy.
It felt as if I had stepped onto a perfectly normal floor, only to hear the faint sound of cracks forming under my feet alone.
Lunchtime passed quickly.
Afternoon classes, by contrast, felt long.
There are days when time moves slowly.
Days when the marks are clearly moving, but your body can’t keep up with them.
Today was exactly like that.
There was still a long way to go before sunset, but my mind had already tilted toward night.
The writing on the blackboard entered my eyes, and I could hear the professor’s voice.
But underneath it all, another thought lay thinly and persistently in place.
What would Erka bring?
If she had called me out without bringing anything at all, I might feel like punching her once.
Of course, that wouldn’t happen.
She wasn’t the type to call someone over and wait empty-handed.
If anything, she was closer to the type who would prepare more than necessary and see how far the other person could follow.
Nice.
How very exhaustingly predictable.
By the time the last afternoon class ended, I had already accumulated more than a day’s worth of fatigue.
Students poured into the hallway in a rush.
Laughter, the scrape of chairs, voices calling out to someone. Everyone was moving as usual.
I stared blankly at that flow for a moment, then slowly gathered my things.
The real part starts now.
The moment that thought came to me, my insides sank strangely further.
As I went down the stairs, I glanced out the window.
The sky had not yet turned completely dark, and a few students still remained near the sports field.
It was an oddly ordinary scene.
That made it worse.
The more normal the outside appears, the more the strange things always grow on the inside.
I returned straight to the dormitory.
It was a little early to head directly to the meeting place.
But killing time ambiguously somewhere else was even more bothersome.
It was better to go into my room for a moment and catch my breath.
I closed the door and sat on the bed once, then immediately stood up again.
Sitting made me feel even more tired.
For a moment, the urge to simply lie down rose up, but I went to the sink and splashed cold water on my face.
The effect was minimal.
Still, it was better than doing nothing.
The face in the mirror was still tired.
I was beautifully worn out, and my eyes were half dead.
Nice.
After killing a little more time, I eventually left the dormitory.
The hallway was far quieter than during the day.
The sound of the dormitory supervisor’s footsteps passed once in the distance, and someone peeked out through a crack in their door before closing it again.
I suppressed my footsteps as much as possible and went down the stairs.
When I stepped outside, the night air was colder than I expected.
It was the time of day when you couldn’t let your guard down just because it was spring.
I hunched my shoulders once and walked toward the main building.
There had been no location on the note.
But my feet did not hesitate.
The place most suited for someone like that to call another person.
A place where she could spread out records, lay out papers, make excuses no matter who came by, and yet not be too conspicuous.
The empty reading room beside the north stairs of the main building.
Her personality was so predictable it was convenient.
When I stood in front of the door, a faint light leaked from inside.
Of course.
I caught my breath for a moment.
The thought of turning back crossed my mind very briefly.
If I turned back after coming this far, I would feel even more unsettled.
That’s just how people are.
An uneasiness that has begun only quiets down a little once you see it through to the end.
I pushed the door open.
Inside, the light of a magic lamp flickered very slightly.
Erka was sitting at a table by the window.
Several books.
A thin notebook.
A bundle of old papers.
And a few copies that looked like structural diagrams.
Everything was arranged more neatly than necessary.
A person’s temperament shows in things like that.
The kind who can’t stand even the slightest disorder.
Even after hearing me enter, Erka didn’t speak right away.
Only after she straightened the edge of the paper in her hand did she lift her head.
“I knew you would come.”
That was her first sentence.
I closed the door and answered,
“I thought I’d feel worse if I didn’t.”
“A good judgment.”
“For someone saying that, you don’t look particularly glad to see me.”
Erka jerked her chin toward the chair across from her.
It meant sit.
I stood there for a moment, but eventually pulled out the chair and sat down.
The instant I sat, I understood.
This was not a request for cooperation, but a test.
The fact that she hadn’t written the location on the note must have been intentional too.
If I found my way here, it meant I had at least followed using my own head.
Nice.
I’m already tired enough, and now she’s testing people too.
Erka looked at my face for a while, then put down the paper she had been holding.
“Now, please tell me how you really knew that device was going to explode.”
No superfluous words at all.
I looked at her for a moment.
“Were you not planning to greet me first?”
“Is that necessary?”
“Your personality really is consistent.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Even after saying that, her expression didn’t change at all.
At that point, she might really have taken it as a compliment.
The problem was what came next.
I had to tell her how I had noticed the device would explode.
I could vaguely say that it had looked strange to anyone.
That wouldn’t be wrong.
It had actually been suspicious.
But Erka’s gaze was too serious.
If I tried to gloss over it clumsily, it would only make it more obvious that I was lying.
In the end, I sighed.
Leaning back against the chair, I said briefly,
Leaning back against the chair, I said briefly,
“I knew the problem was somewhere other than the device itself.”
Erka’s eyes moved by the smallest degree.
“Somewhere other than?”
“Beneath that device.”
A brief silence flowed between us.
Erka tapped the table once with the tip of her finger.
“Continue.”
I caught my breath once and went on.
“The reason you brought up the passage to the professor yesterday was because you had picked up something similar, wasn’t it?”
Erka didn’t deny it right away.
Instead, keeping her gaze on me, she said shortly,
“I made a guess.”
“A guess.”
“The device’s reaction was strange. The calculations didn’t match.”
After saying that, she paused for a very brief moment.
“That was why, yesterday, I also tried to check the southeast side.”
I narrowed my eyes slightly.
“Did you go?”
“I tried to.”
Erka straightened the corner of a paper within reach.
“I tried to enter, but someone was guarding it first.”
“Gray uniform.”
Only then did the look in Erka’s eyes change ever so slightly.
“You saw them.”
“We went too. As far as the iron door.”
“And?”
“They said it was under construction. That they were repairing an old drainage structure.”
The corner of Erka’s mouth twisted very slightly.
“What a halfhearted line.”
“It sounded like a lie.”
“There’s a high chance it was.”
I looked at her.
“But you said earlier you only guessed.”
“Yes. I didn’t go inside myself.”
Erka continued calmly.
“But the atmosphere was strange from the entrance of the corridor.
If it had simply been restricted access, there would have been no reason to station people there to that extent.”
I pressed my brow slightly.
That was true.
If they were simply repairing an old drainage structure, there was no reason to block off two students who had only gone as far as the front of it like that.
They had smoothed it over too neatly.
That was what made it even more suspicious.
“That bothered me too.”
“And you saw what was beneath it.”
At those words, I closed my mouth for a moment.
“……Rather than saw it, I’d say it caught on something.”
“That is enough.”
Erka tapped the paper on the table once with her fingertip.
“I felt something off about the device, and you felt something off below.”
“So?”
“It means they don’t feel like separate things.”
I looked at her for a moment.
“You’re saying the experiment building side and the underground side might be connected?”
“I’m saying there is a possibility.”
“Not certainty.”
“Yes. That is why I intend to confirm it.”
Only then did Erka slide an old sheet of paper beside her toward me.
“It’s part of the early layout records for the main building and experiment building.”
I looked down at the paper.
“Layout records?”
“Yes. They’re a little different from the floor plans used now. Especially the underground side.”
The underground side.
At those words, I pulled the paper toward me.
Erka lightly pressed down on the corner of the paper with her fingertips.
“What I saw alone wasn’t enough for certainty.”
“So?”
“I wanted to confirm whether the ‘below’ you saw connects here as well.”
That much, at least, made sense.
This person hadn’t called me here to explain things to me from the beginning.
She had called me more to see if what I had seen could be fit into her own hypothesis.
Nice.
Truly, consistently unpleasant.
Under the lamp light, the lines became a little clearer.
The main building, the experiment building, the connecting corridor, markings indicating closure.
It seemed like a familiar structure, and yet somewhere, something felt subtly misaligned.
And that misalignment did not feel pleasant.
If this were an ordinary building layout, lines would not remain like that.
It looked as if, beneath the visible structure, there was another layer pressed down underneath.
I remembered the “thinly spread smell” Mia said she had noticed during the day.
Not a single point, but a connected line.
Erka asked quietly,
“What do you think?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Instead, I pulled the paper a little closer.