The staffroom was a tomb.

Dust veiled the air, thick enough to taste, carrying the musk of paper that had rotted beneath years of silence. The walls, once white, carried the same cigarette-stain yellow of old bones, and the light fixture overhead swung faintly, its orange bulb sputtering on and off as if reluctant to illuminate the scene.

At the center of this grave of forgotten conversations stood Emo. Her back was hunched slightly, the blue metal table before her cold against her palms as she unfolded a once-ordinary object that seemed to hum with an unnatural weight—the class roster.

Her lips parted, and what followed felt more like an invocation than reading.

“Akihiko, Alvia, Asahi, Elicy, Emo, Erano, Harumi, Iwasimi, Jetto, Katsuki, Min, Rena, Rester, Sean, Sora, Stephen, Subaru, Tatsuko, Yu, and Zen.”

Each name left her tongue with deliberate weight, stretching across the staffroom in measured echoes. The cracked walls seemed to drink the names in, twisting the silence between them darker and heavier.

When the final name fell—Zen—the group stirred.

Rester frowned first. His brows pressed so firmly together they almost fused, and his finger jabbed toward the roster as his voice broke the silence like shattering glass.

“Why isn’t Ray’s name here?”

Whispers rippled through the others, low murmurs frayed with unease. Ray had come back just this week, after a long leave he wouldn’t explain. He was real, alive, one of them... and yet, the roster denied him.

Footsteps shuffled from the corner. Ray pushed through the circle of uneasy students, the entire class 9-B, his grin tilted in that casual way of his—like someone who’d just been caught playing a prank too clever for the room. He leaned lazily on the desk beside Emo, his knuckle tapping against one name with rhythmic finality.

“That’s me,” he said softly.

Rester blinked, following his finger downward. His eyes landed on it— Stephen.

“Wait.” His voice bristled with panic. His lips twitched into a humorless laugh. “That’s what you go by? That’s your name?”

Ray didn’t look bashful. Instead, he vaulted suddenly over the desk with eerie ease and dropped into a chair, the cold scraping screech of metal legs echoing around the walls. He kicked his legs forward, swinging them idly like a child, before lifting his eyes back to Rester.

“Yeah,” Ray said simply, smiling in a way that gave no comfort. “I go by that name here.”

The tension snapped thin. Everyone looked between the roster and Ray as though expecting one to vanish.

“Guess I don’t… need everything about him spelled out,” Rester muttered eventually, though his voice cracked, his grip tightening around the edges of the roster until the paper crumpled.

The silence returned, colder now. The walls groaned with the weight of it. Shadows flickered like living murals as if the names on the roster had stirred them awake.

It wasn't what Alvia had thought would give them. When Emo mentioned not being able to check the roaster to find an imposter student or a name that stands out, she assumed that idea would do the trick. But perhaps, this was simply worth a try and nothing more.

Two weeks earlier, Dahlila High had burned.

The fire had started at night, in this very staffroom. No alarms came first—only the violent bloom of fire itself tearing orange scars across the windows. Students woke to the shriek of each other’s voices, their dorm doors trembling from the chaos.

Flames clawed brutally at the room, swallowing curtains, wood, paper, a thousand little whispers of the past reduced to smoke.

When the fire brigades came, sirens howling against the stars, they found the flames raging like something hungry, alive. Water hissed uselessly against it. Hoses writhed violently as firefighters fanned out, some beating back raging pillars of fire while others shoved terrified children out through the gates.

Then came silence—the choking silence of drenched ash, suffocating smoke, and ruin.

In front of the blackened exterior of the building , one broken thing remained.

A body.

Brittle, charred, reduced to something no longer human. Pulled away solemnly by gloved hands.

Forensic voices confirmed its identity.

Ouran.

But they already knew this. They had seen his body fall, they had seen his skull crush in. The news rippled through Dahlila High harder than the fire had. Students trembled against stone walls, teachers whispered out the word “accident” with pale, tight lips. Investigators scrawled the phrase “possible pressure leak” into their notepads.

But no one believed it. At least not 9-B.

Not when silence kept thickening like something toxic. Not when eyes darted away from nighttime halls where shadows squirmed too slow to be tricks of light. Not when grief was followed not by healing, but by whispers of another curse.

And the council club felt it the most. Or perhaps, only they did.

Every one of them could sense it—not a pattern of accidents, but a design.

“It’s not that we don’t want the truth,” Emo muttered now, her voice wrestling with unease. “We all do. But why the class list, Alvia? What’s the purpose?”

For the first time in days, Alvia had spoken up—confident, deliberate, controlled. Yet still she hesitated now, her eyes downcast, her face pale.

Before she could breathe a reply, Katsuki exploded into motion.

His fists clenched. His footsteps thundered as he shoved forward, his hand slamming into her collar and wrenching her forward.

“Listen to me,” he snarled. His voice cracked with venom. “You dragged us out against the rules. You made us sneak around, risk detention—no, risk worse than detention—for this. For shadows. For names. You owe us an explanation.”

The room vibrated with his fury. His face, inches from hers, was alive with terror buried beneath bravado.

Alvia’s eyes—dark, defiant—locked with his. She didn’t flinch.

Then:

“Enough.”

The word came sharp, heavy. Jetto stepped between them, steady as stone, his palm knocking Katsuki’s hand sharply away. A ripple of tension nearly split the air as Katsuki’s chest heaved with frustration, his eyes glaring daggers into Jetto’s calm.

But Jetto’s gaze… it had already shifted, softer, toward Alvia. A silent check—Are you okay? She gave a small nod. He gave one back, turning back to Katsuki with a stare colder than steel.

“She still owes us the truth,” Asahi interjected from the back, her voice cutting, snapping tension in two. “No more circles, Alvia-san. Why drag us here?”

The air folded in on itself, heavy, waiting.

Alvia drew a breath. Her hand trembled as if fighting her own fear, but she forced the words out.

“I have a theory.”

Her voice wavered but climbed into control as she continued.

“Miyasi-sensei’s death—it didn’t fit. Nothing did. And then… our mother.”

The words cracked. For a moment, her voice failed. Rena, arms folded across her chest, eyes heavy with sorrow, nodded slightly: an anchor.

Alvia let it all pour out: the sequence of inexplicable events since her return, the dread that swam at the edges of ordinary life here, the doubts that bruised waking moments like something whispering “curse” into her skull.

“And what about all this?” Tatsuko said finally, his curiosity tangled with unease. “What are you actually trying to say?”

The room froze, spinning around Alvia’s pulse.

She whispered it.

“What if… something paranormal is happening? Just like Emo explained. What if there really is a spirit among us?”

Every breath snapped shallow. The words floated above them like ghosts.

Katsuki was half-ready to laugh it off bitterly until—

Rena answered quietly.

“It’s possible.”

Eyes widened across the room like fireflies at once. Even Alvia faltered, startled.

“What?”

Rena’s expression stayed grim. “Dahlila High has a history. Ghosts don’t appear from nowhere… they carry forward. If her fears are real… it aligns with this place’s shadows. When all this first began in our school, it was after someone's death after all.”

Alvia turned, compelled to confess the trigger.

“I saw the roster once. On the podium before all this burned. And I counted. Nineteen out of twenty. Everyone that I knew of. Bu the twentieth. Was. An extra. ‘Stephen.’ Stuck in my head—because there was no Stephen with us. I thought…”

Her throat tightened.

“I thought Stephen… was something else. Not real. A trick. But it’s Ray-kun,” she said, eyes flicking to him. “It’s just Ray-kun.”

“Oh,” Katsuki fired back, tone jagged with his disbelieving grin, “you thought it meant there was some ghost child haunting us whose name you might find in the register.”

“…Yeah,” Alvia whispered.

The silence that followed was heavier than denial. The thought had been said. And once spoken, it gnawed. Katsuki wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her about how he had dismissed this idea when it had come from Emo's lips, but he remained still, silent, looking.

Alvia lay in bed in her dorm room, her mind crawling with echoes of hallucinations she thought she’d outgrown. Things she saw as a child… shadows where no light fell, whispers beyond the edge of her breath.

The stars outside felt too far away, offering no protection.

By sunrise, her exhaustion was a mask she couldn’t remove.

But a knock came before she could bury herself deeper into solitude. She trudged towards it, undoing the rusted latch.

The door inched open.

“Alvia.”

It was Rena. Standing pale and calm, her voice wrapped heavy with concern. Alvia stepped aside silently, letting her in.

They sat low on the tatami mat. Silence pressed close until Rena spoke again in a voice that trembled but refused to break.

“Dahlila High has a history you don’t know. After Leika’s death… our class changed. 9-B has always been cursed. Students don’t simply vanish here, Alvia. They die. I know it. I’ve seen the traces left behind.”

She leaned forward sharply, eyes boring into Alvia’s. “And we’re next.”

The room shivered with her words. Why didn't she mention this before? Emo had told them most of the story, but Emo didn't say everyone would die. She simply told them that five people will be taken away. Perhaps alive, perhaps dead. Then what was this new truth?

Before anything more could be said—the windows screamed against a sudden gust. The curtains ripped upward, crimson light pooling into the room like blood spilled across every wall.

Alvia and Rena shielded their eyes against its brilliance. Papers scattered violently into the air. The air itself howled.

Then it died.

Alvia blinked…

…and horror crushed her.

Rena stood frozen like a grotesque statue. Her body impaled with jagged shards of glass, protruding at impossible angles, dripping unnatural rivers of scarlet. She opened her mouth—but only a gargle, a final choking whisper, seeped out.

“No,” Alvia breathed, voice splintered into fragments.

Rena’s body convulsed. Her hands curled, then fell loose. Her blood painted the tatami black as she collapsed forward with a sickening thud.

“RENA!” Alvia shrieked, voice tearing like her soul had been split.

The scream hung and stretched and tore down the dorm corridors.

The door burst open with force.

Sora stood there, breathless. Her eyes widened until they seemed carved with horror. She looked from Alvia, trembling amidst chaos—to Rena’s body, strewn lifeless, glass still jutting, eyes glassy and hollow.

Sora’s voice cracked.

“What… what happened here?”

Her words were nothing but fear.

But the shadows behind her whispered the real answer.