Reckless is Just One Word

“So…” Yukino lifted her cold gaze from the note. “Where is this person now?”

Saber shook her head, gently tossing the note back into the trash can. “We’re already on the top floor. And didn’t you say this was the core room of this incident? But we haven’t seen a trace of the homeless man or the imprisoned girl.”

I was also in a bind. “Don’t tell me they’re hiding in one of the locked rooms? There are so many rooms, we can’t possibly check them all…”

The echo of my words was still faintly reverberating in the empty room when my vision was once again filled with that familiar expanse of white light, sending me back to that sunny time.

It was still the same room, only the lilies and small daisies in the pure white vase had withered and wilted. Clearly, some time had passed since the last vision.

The overexposed figure who loved music was still playing a song on their phone, a song filled with beautiful hopes and telling of love.

Bright sunlight poured into the room like a flowing stream. The long-haired girl with the influencer face, for some reason, had gotten into another conflict with the cute, round-faced, short-haired girl and was once again punching and kicking her. This had perhaps become the influencer-faced girl’s free workout routine.

This time, the short-haired girl, after being beaten for who knows how many times, pulled open the door and ran out of the room, curled up and holding her head, crying as she ran. But the influencer-faced girl relentlessly chased after her.

For the first time, our perspective left the room and entered the corridor, which was lit by bright incandescent lights. The doors that were tightly shut in reality were now either open or ajar, and the sound of girls’ silver-bell-like laughter and cheerful chatter could be heard, a scene of peace and harmony.

There were other figures walking in the corridor, but they were all overexposed and their forms were unclear. The short-haired girl, like a mouse being chased by a cat, dodged the figures and ran down the corridor, while the influencer-faced girl playfully chased after her. Not a single overexposed figure paid them much attention.

The panicked and frightened short-haired girl, tears streaming down her face, ran to the other end of the corridor. Seeing the influencer-faced girl still chasing her with tear-filled eyes, she scrambled up the metal ladder built into the wall towards the window leading to the rooftop.

The influencer-faced girl, who was lagging behind, looked up. The way her long hair fell from her shoulders was beautiful, but her face wore the expression of a cat playing with a mouse. She also followed the other girl up to the rooftop.

The white light suddenly retracted, sending me back to the gloomy, abandoned dormitory in reality.

Looking at my roommates, my lips moved, my voice a little hoarse. “I have… an unrefined guess.”

Yukino nodded silently, her slender white fingers running through her waterfall of black hair with a mixture of emotions. She pursed her thin lips. “My guess… is probably the same as yours.”

A wave of anger seemed to be trapped in her flat chest. “The vision just now ended with them going up to the rooftop, right? Let’s hurry up to the rooftop and take a look.” As she spoke, she strode forward with hurried steps like a boy, heading for the corridor outside the room.

I turned and followed her without hesitation.

But the moment we reached the doorway, something lurking stealthily outside the door revealed its rugged and horrifying face.

When Yukino, who had already reached the door, and I saw it in the pale glow of the flashlight, the blood in our veins instantly froze.

Messy hair like withered grass, eyes wide and bulging, a waxy and filthy face, a body so emaciated it was deformed, a moldy, disgusting smell. For a moment, I couldn’t even be sure if it was a person or just something that resembled a human.

It seemed to have been crouching in the darkness outside the door all along, as silent as the darkness itself. It wasn’t until Yukino’s flashlight beam shone on it that the darkness that had fused with it was dispelled, outlining its terrifying silhouette.

This monster, lurking silently in the darkness, made my heart almost stop. I forgot to breathe for a moment, and I couldn’t remember how to blink. I just stared at it dumbly, the sudden fear overwhelming all my senses.

Yukino was also terrified. Like a startled hamster, her bare, slender ankles tensed, and her soft, snow-like body trembled as she jumped back a step, crashing directly into my arms.

The air was filled with a bone-chilling malice. The bright flashlight beam stung the wide-open eyes of the thing—man or whatever it was—making it cover its face with its filthy hands as if a gun were pointed at it. A muffled whimper escaped its throat, and it cowered back, then, to everyone’s surprise, it fled down the corridor, a series of harsh footsteps echoing.

When Yukino crashed into my arms, I subconsciously wrapped my arms around her. Her cool, smooth hair stuck to my cheeks and neck, ticklish but also comfortable. She was wearing a woolen sweater over her shirt in a very artistic style. It felt soft and warm to the touch, and with a little more pressure, I could feel the flat and soft girlish abdomen beneath the sweater.

“After him!”

Yukino was nothing like the pitiful female protagonist who had just seen the final boss of a horror movie. With a ferocious face and her white teeth slightly bared in anger, she looked as if she were the true master of this abandoned dormitory building.

She shot out of my arms like a rabbit, her clean, girlish canvas shoes pounding against the ground as she sprinted in the direction the cowering figure had fled.

Almost at the same time, Saber’s blonde hair flashed past my eyes as she rushed out of the room after Yukino.

Do you guys have to be so reckless?!

“Let’s go after them!”

Worried that the two of them would be at a disadvantage, I called out to Exusiai and also took off, rushing into the darkness outside the room.

The clattering of footsteps echoed in the corridor. The light from Exusiai’s flashlight shone from behind me, illuminating the dusty, footprint-covered tiles in front of me.

I ran at full speed, my heart pounding. The rows of closed doors on either side, like passages to an unknown hell, flew past me.

Saber’s physical fitness was the best among us. I saw her overtake Yukino, leaving her in the dust, but she stopped at the end of the corridor. It was not a dead end. On the left was the staircase leading down, and on the wall directly opposite were protruding metal U-shaped bars—the ladder to the rooftop that we had seen in the vision.

Saber looked up. Directly above the metal ladder was a square skylight, which was now wide open, and the night and the cold wind poured in from outside.

The girl with the long, golden hair tied back at her nape didn’t hesitate. Using both her hands and feet, she scrambled up the ladder like an agile ape. Yukino, with a flick of her long hair, followed closely behind.