CHAPTER XII
~Who Are You?~
The ink pooled at the dolls’ feet, forming abstract, shifting patterns on the concrete. The rooftop, once a place of hope, now felt charged with a sinister energy, as if the ink itself was alive—watching, waiting, and warning them that the mystery was far from over.
The ink didn’t stop at the dolls. It began to spill faster, spreading across the rooftop in thick, black rivulets. Within seconds, it pooled around Yuzuki, Kaito, Himari, and Reina’s feet, cold and sticky.
Kaito tried to step back, but his foot wouldn’t budge. “It’s… it’s like glue!” he shouted, panic rising in his voice.
Himari struggled, too, but the ink only tightened its grip. “I can’t move! It’s pulling me in!”
Reina’s eyes darted around desperately as the ink crept up her ankles. “It’s like quicksand—don’t struggle, or it’ll pull you faster!”
Yuzuki gritted her teeth, feeling the inky coldness climbing higher, her shoes now completely submerged. “Stay calm! There has to be a way out—don’t panic!”
But the ink was relentless, tugging at their legs with a strange, unnatural force. Inch by inch, it pulled them downward, the rooftop fading away above as the world around them seemed to dissolve into swirling darkness. The last thing they saw was the moonlight reflecting off the ink’s surface before it swallowed them whole.
A heavy silence settled over the school corridors as the remaining group stood frozen, unease creeping into their minds like a slow poison.
Haruki’s voice broke the quiet, shaky and uncertain. “Ren… why are we even here? It’s… the middle of the night. We should’ve left hours ago.”
Ren’s eyes darted around, pupils dilated. “I don’t remember how we got here. Why can’t I leave? Why does everything feel… wrong?”
Yakumo-sensei’s calm demeanor cracked as he glanced at his watch, the hands seeming to move backward. “This isn’t right. Time… it’s slipping away. We should be home.”
In the headmaster’s office, Kanzaki Ryouma stared blankly at the clock, its ticking unnaturally loud in the suffocating stillness. Parents huddled nearby, their faces pale, eyes hollow.
One mother whispered, voice trembling, “Why are we still here? It’s so late… we should go home.”
But as they turned to leave, their footsteps echoed hollowly, fading into a silence that swallowed sound itself. The walls seemed to pulse, shadows stretching and twisting unnaturally.
Some parents stopped mid-step, their bodies stiffening as if invisible hands gripped their limbs. Their eyes glazed over, mouths opening in silent screams that no one else could hear.
One by one, they began to dissolve into the darkness, vanishing like smoke, leaving behind only faint, lingering echoes of despair.
The students and staff, gripped by an inexplicable dread, found themselves unable to move forward, trapped in a limbo where time and space warped.
No one noticed the absence of Yuzuki, Kaito, Himari, and Reina—four souls already swallowed by the ink-black void, lost to a world beyond comprehension.
The silence was absolute—then, a single, hollow drip echoed through the darkness. The sound of a droplet of ink falling into a fathomless pool sent ripples through the void.
Yuzuki stirred, her eyelids heavy and sluggish. As she forced them open, her senses were assaulted by a world that seemed both familiar and utterly alien. She found herself half-submerged in a pool of viscous, black ink that served as the floor, its surface shifting and writhing as if alive. Everything in the room—the desk, the shelves, even the walls—appeared to be sculpted from hardened ink, their edges blurred and shimmering, as if they might melt away at any moment.
A chill crept up her spine as she realized she was alone. Shadows twisted in the corners, and the air was thick with the scent of iron and old paper. She called out for her friends, her voice muffled and distorted, swallowed by the inky gloom. No answer came. The silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating.
The room itself seemed unreal, like a manga panel drawn in nothing but shades of black, the lines running and bleeding as if the artist had lost control of the ink. Every object was warped, their forms flickering between solid and liquid, as though the world itself was undecided about its own existence.
Drawn by a strange compulsion, Yuzuki waded through the ink, each step sending ripples across the floor. She reached the desk at the center of the room. There, illuminated by a faint, unnatural glow, she saw her name written in bold, calligraphic strokes—letters that seemed to shimmer and twitch, as if they might leap from the page and wrap themselves around her.
A cold dread settled in her chest. This was no ordinary writing room. This was a place where reality was rewritten in ink, and she was now part of the story—alone, and watched by something unseen, lurking just beyond the edge of the page.
A single, resonant drip echoed through the ink-black silence. Yuzuki’s eyes fluttered open, her senses slow to adjust to the warped, monochrome world around her. She was half-submerged in a thick, oily pool of ink, the floor itself shifting beneath her as if it were alive. The writing room she found herself in was uncanny—every object, every surface, seemed sculpted from congealed black ink, their outlines blurred and trembling, as if the world itself was being redrawn with every heartbeat.
As Yuzuki pushed herself upright, the air grew colder, heavy with the scent of old paper and something rotten. She scanned the room—empty, silent, her friends nowhere to be seen. Shadows clung to the corners, pulsing with a life of their own.
She moved toward the desk at the center, her footsteps sending ripples through the ink. On its surface, the name—Hazuki Riko—was written in trembling, inky strokes.
Then, a chill crawled up her spine. The temperature dropped further, and the shadows behind her thickened, coalescing into a grotesque form. A figure emerged—its long, filthy black hair hung like wet seaweed over a face she could not see. Its arms were impossibly thin, stretching toward her with a sickly, boneless grace. It wore a tattered, white garment stained with ink, the fabric clinging to its skeletal frame.
Before Yuzuki could turn, the specter’s icy, claw-like fingers seized her head, holding her in place. Its breath was cold and damp against her ear. In a voice that sounded like ink pouring over gravel, it whispered:
“Mikazuki Yuzuki…”
The name echoed, reverberating through the room, each syllable sinking into her mind like a curse. The shadow’s grip tightened, and the world seemed to bleed at the edges, the ink swirling faster, as if the room itself was being rewritten around her.
Voices—soft at first, then swelling into a cacophony—began to ring inside Yuzuki’s head, echoing through the ink-soaked silence.
A storm of voices surged into Yuzuki’s mind, each one painfully vivid, overlapping until they became almost indistinguishable.
Her mother’s voice, bright and warm:
“Yuzuki, you did so well today! I’m so proud of you, sweetheart!”
Her older sister’s sharp tone:
“Yuzuki, how many times do I have to tell you? Don’t leave the house without breakfast!”
Her second sister’s endless rambling:
“And then, you won’t believe what happened at club today, Yuzuki! I mean, honestly, who puts wasabi in the pudding—can you imagine?”
Reina’s cheerful chatter, rapid and familiar:
“Yuzuki, you have to try this new café with me! Oh, and did you see the group chat? A girl sent the weirdest meme—”
Kaito’s voice, soft and trembling, echoing with confession:
“Yuzuki… I—I like you!”
Her neighbor’s gentle greeting:
“Good morning, Yuzuki-chan! Did you sleep well? If you need anything, just knock, okay?”
And then, her own voice, uncertain and raw, rising above the rest:
“Am I really doing the right thing? What if I mess it all up? I wish I could just disappear sometimes…”
The voices tangled, growing louder, faster—her mother’s laughter mixing with her own doubts, Reina’s excitement clashing with Kaito’s trembling confession. The words spun in a dizzying spiral, as if the ink itself was pulling her memories apart, rewriting who she was with every echoing phrase.
“That’s enough,” came a rough, commanding voice that sliced through the chaos in Yuzuki’s mind.
From the wall in front of her, a figure burst forth—its presence sudden and violent. In a blur of motion, a blade flashed, slashing through the shadowy ghost that had gripped Yuzuki. The specter shrieked, its long, filthy black hair whipping through the air, arms flailing as it was cut down. Ink gushed from its form, pooling around its crumpled, twitching body, staining the already blackened floor.
Yuzuki remained frozen, staring wide-eyed into the abyss, her mouth agape. She didn’t move, didn’t even blink. The world around her seemed to flicker, the ink rippling with each breath she took. Voices continued to swirl violently in her head, overlapping and distorting.
The boy who had slain the shadow burst through the inky wall, his presence sharp and jarring in the warped silence. He rushed to Yuzuki, his blade still dripping with black, and gripped her head with the same cold firmness the ghost had used moments before.
His eyes, wild and searching, bored into hers.
“WHO ARE YOU?” he demanded, his voice rough, echoing off the slick, ink-stained walls.
Yuzuki’s mouth hung open, her gaze unfocused, pupils wide and lost. The question seemed to echo through the hollow spaces in her mind, each word scraping against what little sense of self she had left.
“Who… am… I?” Yuzuki breathed, each syllable trembling and faint, as if she were trying to remember how to speak at all. Her body was limp, her senses slipping away, the world around her dissolving into shadow and ink.
“ANSWER ME!” the boy demanded, his grip tightening as desperation flickered in his eyes. “YOU ARE MIKAZUKI YUZUKI! REPEAT AFTER ME! ‘I AM MIKAZUKI YUZUKI!’”
Yuzuki’s lips trembled. She tried to speak, to force the words out, but they felt foreign, slippery, as if the ink itself was erasing them from her memory.
“I… am… Mi…ka…zu…” Her voice faltered, the syllables dissolving on her tongue.
She blinked, confusion clouding her gaze. “Mi…ka…zu…ki… Yu…zu…”
The name tangled in her throat, fading away. Her eyes darted, searching the boy’s face for help, for something to anchor her to the world.
“I… am… Mi…ka…”
The rest slipped from her mind, swallowed by the shifting ink and the emptiness growing inside her. Her identity, her self, seemed to unravel with each failed attempt, leaving her suspended between memory and oblivion.
DAMN IT! It isn’t working, the boy thought, frustration tightening his jaw as Yuzuki’s identity slipped further away.
His mind raced back to old exorcist lore—an era when talismans and spell scrolls were more common than textbooks, and the art of forbidden calligraphy was whispered about in fearful tones. He remembered the legend of shōmetsu-sumi (消滅墨)—“vanishing ink.” This ink, crafted from the ashes of spirit-sealing paper and mixed with blood, was a tool of immense power: it could bind spirits, but also trap the souls of the living.
If someone unknowingly wrote their own name with shōmetsu-sumi, believing it was harmless, the ink would begin to erase their very existence—first from the world of the living, then even from the realm of the dead. The ink would become sentient, latching onto the writer and dragging them into a memory void, a dimension of forgotten names known as the Ink Realm.
His eyes fell on a crumpled piece of paper nearby, where the name Hazuki Riko was scrawled in trembling, black strokes. Someone—Hazuki Riko herself—must have written her name with this cursed ink, sealing her fate.
Now, her body lay dead in the human world, and in her place, others like Yuzuki were being pulled into the Ink Realm, trapped to fulfill the ink’s sinister design.
He turned Yuzuki to face him, his hands firm but desperate as he searched her inky black eyes. “Mikazuki Yuzuki! PLEASE. Wake up! This isn’t the time to think about those voices. I know they’re pretty, but yours are the ones that are eating you up. You have to defy them and state your name. That’s all you have to do to break out of this curse,” he blurted, urgency cracking his voice.
He shook her gently, his grip tightening. “Think! Think about your name. Who must’ve decided it? Think! Think about your name! Mikazuki Yuzuki! That’s your name. Think about it!”
“My… my… name?” Yuzuki whispered, the words barely forming as she struggled to remember.
“YES! YES! Your name—Mikazuki Yuzuki!” he pressed, hope flickering in his eyes.
“Mika? Mika?” she echoed, lost and wavering.
“YES! Say the rest!” he urged, almost pleading.
“Mika…zuki… Mikazuki… Yuzuk… Yuzuki…” Her voice grew stronger, the color in her eyes slowly returning, blue bleeding back into the black. Suddenly, she lurched forward, clarity striking her. “MIKAZUKI YUZUKI!” she shouted, breathless. “I’m Mikazuki Yuzuki!” she repeated, her beautiful blue eyes fully restored.
The boy’s tense expression melted into a relieved smile. “Mikazuki Yuzuki. That’s right.”
Yuzuki stared at the boy, her breath unsteady, the world still trembling at the edges. She blinked hard, then squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing them with the heel of her hand as if she could clear away the lingering fog and the memory of darkness.
When she opened her eyes, ready to speak, realization struck her all at once. “HUH? WAIT! You’re the boy from the thunderstorm—!”
But the space in front of her was empty.
He was gone. No trace, not even a ripple in the ink where he’d stood. Only the echo of her own voice, hanging in the air, and the unsettling silence of the ink realm pressing in around her.
Yuzuki blinked as a door materialized in the ink-stained wall. Without hesitation, she rushed toward it, flinging it open. On the other side, she found Reina, standing motionless at a desk, her eyes fixed on a piece of paper. Written in bold, black strokes on the page was the name: Yura Nanami.
Yuzuki’s heart lurched. She ran to Reina, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Your name is Tachibana Reina! TACHIBANA REINA!” Yuzuki shouted, her voice echoing in the strange, ink-drenched room.
Reina didn’t respond at first, her gaze empty, lips barely moving.
Yuzuki shook her, repeating, “Tachibana Reina! Tachibana Reina! That’s your name!”
On the third try, Reina’s eyes fluttered, confusion giving way to a spark of recognition.
“My… my name?” she whispered, voice trembling.
“Yes! Say it!” Yuzuki urged, gripping her tighter.
Reina swallowed, her voice shaky but growing stronger with each word.
“Ta…chi…bana… Reina… Tachibana Reina…”
The color began to return to her cheeks, her eyes clearing as she straightened.
“Tachibana Reina!” she declared, the words ringing out, anchoring her back to herself.
Yuzuki let out a breath of relief, her own hands trembling.
“That’s right. You’re Tachibana Reina.”
To be Continued...
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