Kai didn't go straight home.
After school, he rode the train three stations past his stop. Then walked in the opposite direction from his apartment. He changed directions twice, entered a bookstore, exited through the back, and took an alley shortcut he hadn't used since elementary school.
Just to make sure he wasn't being followed.
But the paranoia wasn't paranoia anymore.
Not after the spiral folder.
Not after Emi disappeared.
Not after the cameras had shown him standing in hallways he didn't remember ever visiting.
He clutched the flash drive inside his pocket like a lifeline.
The school library was closed after hours, but Kai had swiped a key from a cleaning cart weeks ago.
Inside, he navigated to the darkest corner—beyond the Japanese literature shelves, where no one went.
He slid the flash drive into a public terminal and began copying its contents to a cloud backup.
Halfway through, the screen flickered.
ACCESS DENIED.
He tried again.
"File ownership revoked."
A red prompt blinked: REMOTE OVERRIDE DETECTED
And then a soft click behind him.
Not a door. Not a shelf.
The quietest kind of sound: cloth against cloth. A breath held too long.
He turned.
Someone was there.
A figure—not a student. Not a teacher. Dressed in gray. No ID badge. No face visible under the hood.
Kai didn't wait.
He bolted from the seat, knocking over the chair. The figure lunged, but Kai ducked under the extended arm and ran for the side exit.
A hand grazed his jacket.
He burst into the hallway, feet slamming against tile. Past the faculty office. Past the stairs.
Behind him: footsteps too light to be adult, too fast to be normal.
He reached the art wing and flung open a storage room door.
Inside: canvas racks, dust, and a broken window leading to the outer scaffolding.
He didn't think. He climbed.
Now outside, wind whipped at his hair. The sky had darkened into a bruised purple, with the last gold of evening barely lingering.
He crawled across the scaffolding—careful, fast, heart pounding.
Below, the figure exited the same room. Looked up. Still no face. Just shadow under the hood.
They didn't shout.
Didn't speak.
They followed.
But Kai was already at the rooftop's edge, where the fire escape ladder hung halfway down.
He jumped.
Fell six feet, hard, scraped his elbow—but got up.
Ran.
Didn't stop until he hit the convenience store three blocks away, slumped against a rack of instant noodles, and let himself shake for the first time.
Back home, he opened his bag to find the flash drive missing.
It had been switched.
In its place: a small slip of paper, folded with surgical precision.
Unfolded, it read:
"YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE CURRICULUM."
And beneath that, a spiral drawn in something red.
It smelled like rust.