They didn't run this time.
Yuuko walked with determination — not like a ghost drifting, but like a person walking back through the path of a memory that she didn't ask for.
Teiichi trailed behind, heart beating quicker than his paces. The air was thick, as though the school itself was attempting to keep them away.
They moved through the back corridors, further into Seikyou Academy's abandoned wings — by long-abandoned classrooms, rot-twisted storage rooms, and doors that had not been touched since prior even to Yuuko's days.
And then… they paused.
One door that was not the rest. Wood, not metal. Old, but unblemished by time. No sign. Just stillness.
Yuuko gazed at it. "This place… no one else is aware that it exists. It shouldn't."
Teiichi reached out to touch the knob. "What is it?"
Her voice was empty. "It's where they kept me hidden."
The words fell like a stone dropped into a well.
Teiichi pushed the door open — and the world beyond it was not a room.
It was a stairway.
Down.
Illuminated by nothing, bordered in stone, chiseled like something pre-school. Old.
Yuuko went first. Her glow dimmed as they descended, until even that felt swallowed by the dark. The further they went, the more the air changed — dry, old, untouched. As if no one had dared breathe here in decades.
Then: the bottom.
A single room. Round. Bare.
And in the center: a slab. Like a forgotten altar.
On it: a nameplate. Covered in dust and time.
Amane Yuuko
1980 – 1990
Teiichi's breath caught. "Yuuko…"
She didn't talk. She just stood there — gazing at the marker, reading her own death like it was a shopping list.
"It was here," she whispered. "After the accident. After everything. They buried me here so the scandal wouldn't get out. So no one would ask questions."
He glanced around. "Why?"
"Because I didn't die quietly," she breathed. "Because the school was afraid of truth. Of shame."
She faced him — and for the first time, anger shone in her eyes.
"I wasn't haunting this school because I hated it. I was haunting it because it pretended I never existed."
A silence fell that wasn't holy — it was complicit.
And then the walls cracked.
Hairline at first. Then crawling.
Teiichi whirled around. "What's happening?"
Yuuko's eyes were wide. "She found it."
The wall to their left cleft, not broke. As if it were looking open.
And through the gap… Kanade entered.
No echo. No beast. Just her.
"You didn't tell him everything," she said.
Yuuko stiffened. "Leave."
"No," Kanade replied. "He has a right to know why the school selected you."
Teiichi gazed at them both. "Yuuko…?"
Kanade moved forward. "She was the first. But not the last. The school was nourished by guilt, shame, silence. Yuuko was the beginning. I was the result. But there were more."
She faced Teiichi.
"You opened the door," she said. "You remembered too much. Now the school remembers everything. And it wants to keep us all."
The room trembled. The slab cracked in half.
Yuuko yelled, taking Teiichi's hand. "We have to go!"
But Kanade didn't budge. She remained at the side of the grave.
"You always left me behind," she whispered. "Not this time."
While the world shook, while dust and time rained like ash from the ceiling, Teiichi and Yuuko fled back toward the stairs — toward the light above.
Kanade remained.
Her final words clung to them up above.
"I hope you remember me better this time…"