First Person: The White Room of Humiliation
Waking up was worse than the hangover. At least the hangover was a familiar ache, a known old enemy. This was different.
I opened my eyes to a world of relentless white. The ceiling was white, the walls were white, the floor was white. There were no corners; the walls curved smoothly into the floor, giving the room the appearance of the inside of an egg or a designer asylum. The light was bright but diffused, eliminating all shadows and with them, any place where hope could hide.
I was seated in a chair, also white, that seemed to have been molded from a single piece of advanced polymer. My wrists were fastened to the armrests with cuffs that emitted a soft hum, reminding me these weren't simple metal shackles. This was technology. Technology designed to hold people far stronger than me.
My head throbbed to the beat of a war drum. The taste in my mouth was an abomination. And the memory of my "triumphant exit" from the party hall—the run, the tackle, the vomit—repeated in my mind on a loop of shame.
The room's only door, a handle-less line in the curved wall, slid silently open. Through it walked Chifuyu Orimura.
She was dressed in her instructor's uniform, and her mere presence seemed to drop the room temperature several degrees. She moved with an economy of motion that screamed lethal efficiency. She brought no chair for herself. She stood in front of me, arms crossed, a statue of authority and judgment.
"You've caused quite a bit of trouble," she said. It wasn't an accusation; it was a statement of fact, as indisputable as gravity.
My agent brain, bruised and battered, tried to kick into gear. Interrogation protocol. Offer no information. Be vague. Construct a plausible narrative. Remain calm.
"It wasn't my intention," I replied, my voice sounding raspy. "I have a knack for that."
The System, which had been suspiciously silent, decided to make an appearance.
[Situation Analysis: Interrogation (Level: Expert).]
Primary Interrogator: ORIMURA-CHIFUYU (Deception probability: Extremely low). Physical Escape Probability: 0%. Host Dignity Level: -45 (And dropping). System Suggestion: Try not to drool.
Shut up, I mentally ordered it.
The door slid open again. And my heart sank further. One by one, they all entered. Houki, Cecilia, Lingyin, Laura, and Charlotte. And Ichika. They looked like a jury of confused, dangerous teenagers, assembled to decide my fate. They stood against the back wall, a gallery of spectators for my final humiliation. Laura gave me a look that promised immense pain. Cecilia looked like she had just smelled something unpleasant (probably me). Houki just looked lost.
"Let's start over," Chifuyu said, her voice cutting through the silence. "Who are you?"
I took a deep breath. It was showtime.
"I don't know," I said, trying to inject just the right amount of confusion into my voice. "Last thing I remember is a bright light, an incredible headache, and then waking up on your rooftop. The rest... it's a blank slate." The classic amnesia defense. It was weak, clichéd, but it was all I had.
Chifuyu didn't blink. "And your disc jockey performance? Was that also an amnesiac impulse?"
"Music... Music is the only thing that seems... familiar," I improvised. "It was like an instinct."
She studied me for a long, tense silence. She knew I wasn't telling the truth. But she couldn't prove I was lying. Or so I thought.
"We searched your clothes while you were unconscious," she said, gesturing to a white table where my jeans, t-shirt, and the DJ's hideous Hawaiian shirt lay. "We found this."
One of the guards flanking the door stepped forward and placed a small object in Chifuyu's hand. It was dark, about the size of a matchbox, with a tiny lens on one side.
My blood ran cold. It was a camera. Where the hell did that come from?
The System sprang to life to clarify things for me, the little bastard.
[Object from "Welcome Pack" identified: Tactical Body Camera (Low Resolution Model). Automatic activation upon Host arrival. Continuously recording since Awakening.][Congratulations. You have documented your own stupidity.]
Oh, no.
Third Person: The Digital Pandora's Box
Chifuyu examined the small device. It was a strange piece of technology to them, compact and lacking the identifiers of any of the corporations that manufactured equipment for the academy. One of the technicians present in the room, a nervous man in a lab coat, stepped forward.
"Orimura-sensei, it appears to be a solid-state recording device. I've found a universal interface port. We can connect it to the main display."
"Do it," Chifuyu ordered, not taking her eyes off Leo.
Leo sank into his chair. His plan, his alibi, everything was about to be destroyed by an unsolicited welcome gift from a cosmic system with a sadistic sense of humor.
The technician connected the camera to a port on the wall. The large white wall in front of Leo sprang to life, becoming a high-definition screen. For a moment, it showed static, and then, an image stabilized.
It was a first-person view. The concrete of the rooftop, blurry at first, then slowly focusing. A groan was heard, the sound of someone waking up with the worst hangover in human history. The camera moved, showing the sky, the bright morning sun, and then lowered to show a pair of worn jeans.
The girls in the back of the room exchanged confused glances.
"This... is from his point of view," Charlotte whispered, fascinated.
They saw on the screen what he saw: the awakening on the rooftop, the confusion, the view of the academy, the discovery that his pockets were empty. They heard his breathing, his muffled curses. They saw him approach the edge and look down, and the screen showed a bird's-eye view of the courtyard, where they themselves had been that morning.
"Impossible..." Houki murmured. "This... confirms what he said."
Cecilia looked skeptical. "It could be a setup! A very elaborate fake!"
Laura, however, was silent. She saw on the screen the moment he discovered the ventilation grille and his abandoned shoe. She saw the door open and her own figure enter the frame. The recording showed his exact point of view, hidden behind the AC unit, the palpable panic in his held breath.
Chifuyu raised a hand, and the technician paused the recording. The image of Laura scrutinizing the rooftop remained frozen on the screen.
"Part of your story, incredible as it seems, appears to be true," Chifuyu admitted, though her tone hadn't softened. "You did wake up on that rooftop. But that only deepens the mystery. How did you get there?"
Leo saw a small opportunity, a crack in their armor of disbelief.
"I'm telling you, I don't know," he insisted. "That recording is all there is. The rest must be corrupted. It's just static. There's no point in continuing to watch. You should stop there."
His voice had a hint of urgency, a sincerity it hadn't had before. It was the plea of a man desperately trying to salvage his last shred of dignity.
And, of course, it was the worst thing he could have said.
His plea only served to ignite suspicion and curiosity. Lingyin leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. "Why doesn't he want us to watch? What is he hiding?"
Chifuyu gave him a piercing look. "If it's just static, you have nothing to fear. Continue," she ordered the technician.
Leo closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair, resigned. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The technician pressed "play."
Second Person: Welcome to the Party, Savages
The image doesn't cut to static. It cuts to darkness, noise, and chaos.
You, the disciplined and refined students of the world's most prestigious elite academy, are plunged into the heart of a beast you have never known: an out-of-control 21st-century house party.
The camera, from your point of view, swings wildly. Strobe lights flash, red, blue, green, painting sweaty, grinning faces in the darkness. The music is an assault, a heavy, aggressive beat unlike anything you've ever heard. It's primitive, visceral.
"What... what is this ritual?" Houki asks, her voice barely a whisper of awe and horror.
The screen shows hundreds of young people, dressed in strange, colorful clothes, packed into a house. They dance in a way that defies description. There's no choreography, no grace. It's a chaos of flailing limbs, colliding bodies, people screaming the lyrics to the song.
You see someone, the one recording, accept a red plastic cup, the standard vessel for this kind of poison, and drink its contents in one gulp.
Cecilia brings a hand to her mouth. "It's indecent! Look how they behave! Like animals!"
The camera pushes its way through the crowd. It passes a couple kissing passionately against a wall. Lingyin blushes and looks away, only to look back a second later, fascinated.
Then, the scene turns even stranger. The camera focuses on a group cheering on a garden gnome hanging from the ceiling. A boy with a baseball bat hits it, and the gnome explodes, spilling not candy, but dozens of small white pills onto the cheering crowd.
Laura Bodewig frowns. "Unregulated narcotics, distributed without control. A recipe for tactical disaster."
The recording continues, a montage of madness. Someone tries to crowd surf and falls spectacularly. The camera focuses on a pool filled with people and foam. And all the while, the thundering music is the soundtrack.
Ichika, who has remained silent all this time, finally speaks, his face a mask of pure perplexity. "So... this is a party... in his world?"
Finally, the camera pushes its way to the center of the maelstrom. It focuses on a girl with electric blue hair and a face full of piercings. You hear your own voice, the voice of the man in the chair, say with a sarcasm you now recognize: "Particle Accelerator? Sounds like it'll give me superpowers or fulminant pancreatic cancer."
You see the girl smile. You see her hand you a glass containing a liquid with an unnatural glow. You see your own trembling hand take the glass.
"Don't do it, you idiot!" Lingyin yells at the screen, completely absorbed in the narrative.
But you do it.
The camera tilts back as you drink the contents in a single gulp. The world on the screen becomes a tunnel of light and color. The sound distorts, becoming a deafening roar. The image spins, wobbles, and then... total darkness.
The recording cuts out.
For a long moment, the screen remains black, reflecting the stunned faces of everyone in the interrogation room. The only sound is the soft hum of the energy cuffs.
The recording has answered the question of "how" he got to the rooftop. He drank an absurd amount of an unknown concoction at a demented party and, somehow, woke up in their world. It's the stupidest, most unbelievable explanation, and yet the only one that fits all the evidence.
You have seen his world. Or at least, the worst part of it. A world of chaos, irresponsibility, and rampant hedonism.
Finally, the screen returns to normal, showing the white wall. The show is over.
Everyone in the room slowly turns to look at the man in the chair.
Leo has his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He says nothing. There's nothing to say. His past, his arrival, his complete and utter lack of dignity—all of it has been projected in high definition for his captors' enjoyment.
The silence is heavy, dense, charged with a million new questions. He's no longer a mysterious spy. He's not a terrorist. He's not a soldier from an enemy faction.
He's a party animal from another world. An idiot who drank too much.
Chifuyu Orimura clears her throat, her calmness somehow more intimidating than any shout. She takes a step forward, her shadow falling over him.
"Alright," she says, her voice dangerously soft.
"Explain yourself."