Chapter Text
Everything changes in the blink of an eye, like a meteor passing across the sky.
At least that’s what Ichika is going to learn on a Monday morning.
Everything is normal for the most part, and Ichika doesn't have any second thoughts. There is a bit more gossip in the halls than normal, but Ichika is familiar with the sounds of other girls chit chatting.
Ichika gets to her classroom, and instantly notices something is off. Where's Honami? Kohane isn't here either…
It’s not like either of them to suddenly ditch. But when the teacher comes in, a solemn expression on her face, Ichika finds a possible explanation.
“Students, there’s an emergency. I’m going to require all of you stay in this room. We were just informed that there were a series of kidnappings overnight. In total, 18, maybe 19 kids were kidnapped. Please, stay calm, and remain in your seats while I go get more information.”
And then the teacher leaves. She walks out of the room, leaving the hearts of every kid in the classroom racing.
Ichika can't help but wonder who they are, and she hopes, prays as hard as she possibly can that the missing kids aren't who she thinks they could be.
Ichika’s prayers get crushed as the teacher re-enters the classroom. “10 of those students kidnapped were students here. Therefore, we’re going to be placing the school on lockdown and keeping a watchful eye on everyone to prevent anyone from being hurt.”
Ichika needs an answer. Desperately. She stands from her chair, walking over to the teacher to speak to her in a quiet voice “Could you… tell me some of the students who're missing?”
The teacher turns her head to look at Ichika, and takes a moment to think. Then she lets out a sigh, followed by her whispering in Ichika’s ear “Mochizuki Honami, Azusawa Kohane, Hanasato Minori are just a few…”
Ichika feels a shiver run down her spine.
No.
She knows all of them.
This isn't real.
Ichika feels something in her stomach shift, and she covers her mouth to prevent herself from vomiting. The teacher notices, and immediately goes to the door and waves for someone. Another teacher comes by, placing a hand on Ichika’s shoulder “Hey, need to get to the bathroom”
Ichika frantically nods her head, and is guided by the kind teacher out of the classroom, and down the hall towards the bathroom. He stands by the door, holding it open for Ichika.
Ichika stumbles inside, and immediately goes to one of the stalls, getting there just in time to empty the contents of her stomach. She kneels in front of the toilet, coughing on her own acidic bile still stuck in her mouth. She forces herself to spit it out.
Ichika’s mind goes back to the thought. Honami, kidnapped. Kohane, kidnapped. Minori, kidnapped. None of it was real, right?
Ichika doesn’t know what to do. She needs help, someone to talk to, someone to help her understand what she could possibly do to make things better.
Ichika pulls out her phone, and plays needLe.
She is transported to the School Sekai in a matter of moments, right in the classroom. Everything feels… silent. No one is there. Ichika pushes herself up, walking around the classroom, looking for a sign that anyone is there. But there's nothing.
“Miku? KAITO? E-Everyone?”
Ichika's voice trembles on the final word. She pushes open the classroom door and steps into the hallway. She continues walking, but it feels hollow. Her legs simply carry her, and she doesn’t know why she is walking anymore.
Ichika eventually makes it to the train station. She falls to her knees, looking at the sapling. It’s struggling. It looks pained, withering. Ichika can’t hold herself back anymore.
She curls in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest and pressing her forehead to her knees. She cries, loud, ugly, and completely unrestrained.
But no matter how long she stays there, crying, begging for it not to be real, nothing changes. The sprout doesn’t change, or move, or get better. It only looks as if it was crying with Ichika.
She doesn’t know how long she spends lying there. She doesn’t really care. She just knows that everything and everyone she dedicated her life to, everything and everyone that she loves was just taken away from her.
She doesn’t even know how or why or who, all she knows is that she was robbed, and she doesn’t know if she’s going to ever get them back.
Finally, Ichika decides to push herself up, looking around the station. She rubs at her eyes, clearing the remainder of her tears, and chooses to exit the Sekai.
Ichika is put back into the bathroom, exactly where she was before. Her vomit is still a mix of slurry in the toilet bowl, but she refuses to flush it.
She needs to make it out of the school, right at this moment.
The door to the bathroom creaks as Ichika pushes it open, causing her to hesitate. She peeks into the hallway, seeing a few adults scrambling while desperately looking around the campus. They are definitely looking for her, and it would be a mess if a student went missing under their watch.
Ichika doesn’t care that it would be a mess for them, she needs answers right now. So, she slips into the hallway, moving slowly and keeping herself low so she could avoid being seen from any of the classroom windows.
The back of the school is definitely the safest way to escape unseen, and that’s where she goes. She is on the second floor, and the stairs are definitely being monitored, so she pushes one of the windows open and lowers herself to the bottom.
She moves from bush to bush, making sure that she is hidden behind them as staff members wander past. Each movement is calculated, avoiding potential places people could be patrolling.
Ichika has never seen a more coordinated search set up by the school faculty.
It doesn’t help them in the end, as Ichika slips into a nearby alleyway, grabbing a hoodie from a nearby rack as she passes by, slipping it on to try her best to conceal her appearance.
The hood is pulled up over her head, so Ichika keeps her eyes locked onto her feet and the few meters she can see ahead of her. It was plenty to avoid being seen, but enough to guide her home, which is exactly where she needs to be right now.
She’s finally on her home street, and she’s already breathing a little easier knowing that. She bumps shoulders with someone, and mumbles a quiet apology before walking up to her door and opening it with the key.
The hoodie is pulled off and discarded quickly, and Ichika immediately sets her sights on making sense of the situation. She grabs her notebook and laptop, and then settles at her desk.
Ichika looks up any articles on the current situation happening, and finds quite a lot. It shakes her, seeing the names of the 19 people missing. She writes them all down.
Akiyama Mizuki, Aoyagi Toya, Asahina Mafuyu, Azusawa Kohane, Hanasato Minori, Hinomori Shiho, Hinomori Shizuku, Kamishiro Rui, Kiritani Haruka, Kusanagi Nene, Mochizuki Honami, Momoi Airi, Otori Emu, Shinonome Akito, Shinonome Ena, Shiraishi An, Tenma Saki, Tenma Tsukasa, and Yoisaki Kanade.
Ichika forces herself to take deep breaths, to stay focused on finding out what’s going on. She finds a second article, one that brings into light something way worse.
“Discovery of… Sekai…?”
Ichika’s heart stops, but she can’t stop herself from reading. The article goes into more detail about the mystical properties, and more importantly, the energy and materials that could be extracted from Sekai.
All the people who have been kidnapped have connections to a Sekai of their own. And if that is the case, Ichika is going to be next---
A window shatters somewhere in the house. Ichika can only guess it's from the living room. Then, there are footsteps, spreading out to search the house.
Ichika knows she can’t get caught, especially not with her friends caught as well. She hears the rattling of her doorknob, and she launches herself up quickly to grab her guitar from its stand. The moment the armored, masked man enters the room, Ichika SLAMS the guitar over his head, followed by the discordant sound of the unpleased guitar.
The sound alerts the other two people, looking nearly identical to the first. One of them has a pistol, the other brandishing a knife. They both rush over to the room, looking inside, and locking eyes on Ichika. The one with the pistol aims at her while the other takes a couple steps forward, silently.
Ichika takes a couple steps back, but her back bumps against the far wall of her room. There’s nothing she can do, either she gets taken, fights and dies, or fights and lives.
She chooses to swing the guitar again, thunking it against the side of the man with the knife. He audibly hisses from the impact, but isn’t incapacitated. He takes a slow step forward and swings the knife, which Ichika barely manages to get out of the way off, though she stumbles and falls to the ground.
Under her bed, Ichika spots a hefty looking flashlight. She doesn’t hesitate to grab it and shine it into the eyes of the man above her with the knife. She pushes herself up as quick as she can go, followed by her bashing the flashlight into the head of the attacker.
He tumbles to the ground, but Ichika knows that’s not the end. The man with the gun aims, and Ichika’s desperate action is to toss the flashlight at him.
The gun goes off anyway.
Ichika’s ears are ringing, and she can’t feel any pain, so she leans down and grabs the knife from the unconscious assailant below her, and charges towards the door. The intruder with the gun is still reeling from the heavy flashlight being thrown at him, and doesn’t have time to react as Ichika plunges the knife into his neck.
It’s something Ichika will never be able to forget. It’s nothing like the others, the bashes that seemed non-lethal. She can feel the blood pouring out of his neck, soaking her hand and pooling on the floor. The gurgles of the man choking on his own blood echo in her ears. And there’s so much blood, pulsing and oozing from his neck.
He collapses to the ground a second later, desperately grabbing at his neck for 10 or so, before he goes limp. Ichika stands there, staring at his now lifeless body. She knows she can’t stay here, can’t get caught up over a corpse when her friends might already be corpses themselves. She kneels down, picking up the gun, and retreats into her room. She grabs her laptop and notebook, and sneaks out the back window.
Ichika spends hours searching for a small place she can settle down in. She does find it, a derelict building that looks like it might crumble, but is uninhabited, and has running water. She sets up everything, and washes the blood off herself. She settles down in a room on the second floor, sitting at an old and dusty desk.
The setting sun paints beautiful hues of orange and purple over the sky, illuminating the room Ichika is staying in. She’s looking into frequent criminal activity around the area she’s in. She notices something a little strange. There’s a small house several blocks down that had some complaints come in, because of the legion of unmarked black cars parked outside. These weren’t investigated. Ichika takes it upon herself to do that job.