Parallel Encounter

Prologue: The Eve of a Certain School Festival

“Why…?”

Screams and cries resounded throughout the school compound, as people scrambled with desperation in their eyes.

Not a single soul trapped in the area could find respite; not with the predators encircling them like birds in a cage.

“Why are you doing this…?”

Once an orderly environment where learning took place, an iron stench permeated throughout the classroom. The festive decorations, props, and toppled furniture… everything had been tainted with the thick red liquid commonly spotted in a homicide scene.

Except for Sugisata Nariaki who backed himself into a corner, time had stopped for his classmates.

Sweat trickled down his brown layered hair and drenched his uniform. His chest tightened, and his breathing grew heavier. Throughout the entire ordeal, his obsidian irises never strayed from the assailant clothed in dark cloak.

“What difference would it make if I answer?”

Her voice remained nonchalant even as she pulled her dagger from a corpse. Blood splattered across the room when she flicked her wrist.

It can’t be… An epiphany hit the panic-stricken teenager as his eyes widened. “Is that you, Ayase?”

Withdrawing her hood, the assailant revealed a pale complexion and bob-haircut stained with specks of blood from her victims.

“Yes, and no.”

Her gentle tone however, contrasted her hostile aura and posture as her ruby eyes scanned the perimeter of the classroom piled with dead students.

“We had separated at the hectic corridor just minutes ago… what happened?”

From the school yard and hallways, shrieks continued to resound in the background. Even if Nariaki could shake off the numbness in his legs, he did not favour his chances of surviving this nightmare.

Biting her lower lips, the assailant—or his friend “Minami Ayase”— strode towards him. Her voice quivered as she murmured.

Why do you-

“None of your lives matter at all,”

looked like-

“for there is neither heaven”

you are in-

“nor hell”

so much pain?

“in this false world.”

The shrilling sound of clashing blades reverberated, and a streak of purple flashed before Nariaki’s eyes in his fading vision.