Monday morning.
Kai slid open the classroom door, half-expecting another strange absence—another vanished classmate replaced with silence and shrugs. But instead, he found a new presence.
She stood at the front of the room, hands clasped, posture perfect. Uniform crisp, skirt tailored too precisely. Long black hair fell over her shoulders, not a strand out of place.
Her name was Mira Kurobane.
The teacher introduced her with the usual scripted warmth, but Kai wasn't listening.
Because Mira's eyes were locked on him.
Unblinking.
Too still.
Like she already knew him.
They assigned her the seat right behind Kai. Typical. Almost too convenient.
At lunch, she approached him without hesitation.
"You're Kai Ishida, right?"
"Yeah," he said slowly. "How do you know?"
She tilted her head slightly, the motion robotic, like she was trying to mimic curiosity. "I've read about you. In the margins."
"In the what?"
But she didn't explain.
She handed him a folded paper from her blazer pocket.
A single sentence, handwritten in graphite:
"I remember what they erased."
Kai blinked.
When he looked up, she was already walking away.
Her eyes still hadn't blinked once.
Later, in the library, Kai found her standing by the window.
Books open on the table, none of them touched.
She spoke first. "You've seen it, haven't you?"
"The loops. The disappearances. The reflections," he said.
"No. Not just that." She turned to him. "You've felt the edits. The points where your memory stutters. Where your thoughts… jump tracks."
Kai's breath caught.
"How do you know all this?" he asked.
Mira tapped the side of her head. "Because they tried it on me first."
"And you remember?"
"I remember enough to know forgetting was safer."
She stepped closer. "But I couldn't forget you."
Kai met her after school, under the old sakura tree behind the gym—the one that hadn't bloomed in years.
Mira sat cross-legged on the concrete bench.
"They monitor this area less," she said.
"Monitor?" Kai asked.
She nodded. "Every classroom has two cameras. One you see. One you don't. You're not being watched. You're being curated."
"What does that mean?"
"Your choices, your thoughts… they're being shaped."
"By who?"
Mira looked at him with something like sorrow. "Not who. What."
Kai froze.
"An experiment?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she asked, "Do you dream in first person?"
"What?"
She leaned in. "Because I don't. I dream like I'm watching someone else's life. Someone wearing my face."
That night, Mira gave him instructions:
"Write down your name. Repeat it in the mirror. Then close your eyes. If it still feels real when you open them, you're fine. If not—if something's wrong—don't speak your name aloud again."
Kai did as she asked.
He stood in the bathroom, wrote his name: Kai Ishida.
He repeated it three times into the mirror.
Then closed his eyes.
A pause.
The silence stretched.
He opened them—
And for a moment, his reflection was wearing a different uniform.
Older.
And the eyes in the mirror didn't blink.
The next day, Mira passed him a diagram in class.
A map of the school.
Highlighted: the sealed-off west wing. Sublevel B.
"This is where they keep the backups," she whispered.
"What backups?"
"Versions of us."
Kai stared at her. "You're serious?"
"I've seen mine."
There was silence between them.
Then Mira said, "I know this is insane. But if you want to survive this—you need to stop trusting what's 'normal.'"
Kai swallowed hard. "Why are you helping me?"
Mira hesitated.
Then quietly, she said, "Because I think… you're not from here either."
Later, while reviewing footage from a hidden hallway camera he'd planted near the west wing months ago, Kai noticed something strange.
Mira.
In the background of videos before she transferred.
Watching.
Always in the corners.
Always expressionless.
Kai's heart pounded.
He skipped through clip after clip.
There she was. Weeks ago. Months. Even last year.
She hadn't aged a day.
Had she been part of this all along?
Was she planted?
Was he?
Confronting her after school, Kai demanded, "Why were you in those videos?"
She stared at him. Finally, she blinked—for the first time.
"I didn't know you could see those," she said.
"Answer me!"
"I'm not your enemy," Mira whispered. "But I'm not sure what I am to you yet, Kai."
Then she leaned in, close enough that he could feel her breath.
And softly, she said:
"They're watching this conversation right now."
Kai turned.
No one there.
But the hair on the back of his neck stood up.