The Source of the Dorm’s Sensible Atmosphere

It was the same old dorm room for six people, and the sun was still shining brightly outside the window. The beautiful daylight illuminated everything, as if not even a sliver of shadow was allowed to exist under the bright sun. I could hear someone in the room playing light, soothing music on their phone. The whole dorm was a scene of peaceful years, like the opening credits of a slice-of-life anime.

Four of the six people were still the same overexposed figures, their data corrupted, not only were their faces unclear, but even their forms were hard to make out. The only two who could be seen clearly were the same two girls. The short-haired girl with the cute, round face was sitting at a desk with a book open in front of her, a pen in her small hand, seemingly doing homework. The long-haired girl with the influencer face was still lying on her bed like a lord, legs crossed, playing on her phone.

She seemed to have received a message. After frowning, she turned impatiently to the round-faced girl at the desk and said in a very rude, bossy tone, “Hey, the dorm matron just told me our electricity bill is overdue. You go pay it.”

The round-faced, short-haired girl, who had been writing furiously, paused. She froze for two seconds before looking at the very bossy influencer-faced girl and asking in a small voice, “Why do I have to pay the electricity bill again? I paid it last time and the time before that. And I’m the only one in our dorm without a computer. I shouldn’t be using as much electricity as you guys.”

Someone’s phone was still playing uplifting, inspirational music. The contrast was jarring.

The long-haired influencer-faced girl, as if her authority had been challenged, instantly raised her eyebrows, her voice jumping an octave. “I told you to go, so just go! Why are you being so wishy-washy?! Are you questioning my orders?”

“But…” The round-faced girl at the desk secretly glanced at her other roommates, but the overexposed figures showed no signs of responding. They were like background NPCs with no dialogue. She could only plead timidly, “…Um, you know my family isn’t very well-off. The electricity bill is always so high, I can’t afford it.”

The sun hanging outside the window was bright and warm, filling the entire room with an upward, positive energy that felt completely out of place.

Bang! The influencer-faced girl shot up from her bed as if she had been greatly insulted, roaring like a queen whose power had been questioned. “I’ll say it again, go pay the electricity bill! No money? A person like you, who’s so stingy with a little money, who’s always thinking about how to save and take advantage of small things, of course you wouldn’t think about earning money!!”

The bright sunlight and the light music intertwined, creating a heavenly, yet deeply twisted, atmosphere in the dorm.

In an instant, the white light vanished, and I was back in the deathly silent, abandoned girls’ dormitory at midnight.

I swallowed. The incident in the vision just now, with the influencer-faced girl forcing the round-faced girl to pay the electricity bill, reminded me of something. When we first entered this abandoned dormitory, I had seen a blackboard on a long table against the wall in the front hall. In a corner of the blackboard was a piece of unerased chalk writing:

[1-404 didn’t pay the electricity bill]

If this wasn’t a coincidence, could it be that the vision we saw was something that had happened in this No. 1 dormitory building, in room 404 on the fourth floor?

What I felt was confusion and a slight fear of the unknown, but the others seemed to be filled with different emotions.

I heard Yukino shout in a tone a hundred times more furious than when her butt was poked, “Hey ghost! You have the guts to show me visions here, but you don’t have the guts to come out and explain things clearly?! And that damn homeless man, isn’t this your lair? Where are you?! A bunch of beautiful girls are here, why aren’t you coming out?!”

She was like a knight in an online game who had just used a taunt, her voice echoing back and forth in the dorm and the corridor. It wasn’t her fault. Her girlfriend of so long had given her the NTR tag, and she had been bottling up a lot of anger, her emotions constantly on the verge of breaking. After entering this dormitory, with the cruel discoveries in the trash can and the visions that kept popping up, and the infuriating events in those visions, she finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. Sometimes, it’s good to shout and let it all out.

It was hard for an ordinary person to imagine the usually quiet and gentle Yukinoshita Yukino jumping up and down, her clean canvas shoes stomping on the floor, her slender, pale fingers pointing at the ceiling and cursing angrily. If an uninformed person saw it, they would probably wonder how the ceiling had offended her, maybe it had secretly poked her butt.

Saber displayed an equal amount of anger. The fair muscles on her cheeks were tense, even ferocious. If you can’t imagine what a beautiful girl like Saber looks like when she’s ferocious, you can recall her expression in the anime when she was controlled by Kiritsugu’s command seal and was about to destroy the Holy Grail with her sword.

[Yamero—]

I felt like I could hear such a cry.

Saber was also muttering angrily, “This damn homeless man, there are so few girls in the world, and he ruined one. Doesn’t that lower my chances of getting a girl’s body by ten percent?! And this ghost girl, always showing me visions and teasing me, she’s really… a vexing little minx!!”

Why are the things you’re saying getting weirder and weirder?!

What normal person would use “vexing little minx” to curse someone when they’re angry??

Also, even if you’re a liberal arts student, there are billions of women in the world. Now there’s just one less. How is that a ten percent decrease in your chances?! Your math is broken!

What I was glad about was that Exusiai was still very sensible. She tucked her chin in and said thoughtfully, “That vision just now mentioned paying the electricity bill, right? I remember when we first came in, there was a blackboard in the entrance hall that said [1-404 didn’t pay the electricity bill].”

I was certain that the reason Exusiai was so sensible was because I had transmitted my sensibility to her through the hand we were holding tightly. I was the biggest contributor, the source of the entire dorm’s sensible atmosphere.

I nodded. “Yes, I was just about to say that. So… if it’s not just a coincidence, then the visions we’re seeing probably happened in room 1-404.”

I used a deep tone to transmit my unique sensibility to Yukino and Saber, trying to calm them down. It was very effective, at least Yukino stopped jumping around like a shaman. Her clothes were a little messy, so she first pulled down the slightly rolled-up hems of her shirt and sweater, covering the sliver of pale, delicate skin at her waist, before replying in a calmed, soft voice, “We’re on the second floor now. This dormitory building only has four floors. I think we should go in order, explore the third floor first, and then go check out room 1-404 on the fourth floor.”

After speaking, she said to Saber, who was still muttering angrily, “Please, could you be a little more serious at a time like this?”