She couldn't recall how she had ended up in such a place.
Her last memory was of an utterly ordinary school day. Yet the next time she opened her eyes, she found herself lying inside a filthy, decrepit house—on a bed that looked like it hadn't been washed in who knew how long, caked with dust, grimy, and reeking of foul odors.
Kidnapping? Blackmail? Imprisonment?
A flood of possibilities rushed through her mind.
No matter what, this was an unprecedented emergency—one she had to face with her full vigilance.
Kaguya Shinomiya instantly shifted into battle-ready mode.
For someone to snatch her straight from school, to bring her—the eldest daughter of the Shinomiya family—out of Shuchiin Academy and into a place like this, it was impossible for an ordinary criminal to have managed.
Extreme caution was necessary. First, she needed to assess the situation. Any rash move could lead to unpredictable consequences.
She ran through all these thoughts in an instant, without the slightest hesitation, and quickly devised a course of action.
She cracked her eyes open just a sliver, her body motionless, swiftly taking stock of her surroundings. She then noticed the man lying beside her. He seemed to be asleep, but his head made faint movements, betraying that he too was quietly surveying the room.
From this angle, it was difficult to pin down his exact age. But he was clearly a young man, likely between eighteen and twenty-two. His clothes looked average in quality, but bore suspicious red-and-white stains. He was tall—about 1.83 m, roughly 25 cm taller than her—with a physique that was not at all frail. Considering he might be a trained operative, a head-on clash would be dangerous. It would be hard to subdue him immediately, so recklessness was not an option.
To be in such close proximity to an unfamiliar man—for Kaguya Shinomiya, eldest daughter of the Shinomiya Group, one of Japan's four great conglomerates, raised like a girl kept in a gilded box and sheltered from the mundane world—was unbearable in itself.
However, her strict upbringing and the rationality she had cultivated made her fully aware that she was now isolated in an unfamiliar environment. When everything is unknown, acting with caution is indispensable.
The person beside her might be someone trapped just like she was, or a figure planted by the mastermind. Either way, from the way he pretended to sleep while secretly observing the room, it was clear he was just as careful and wary. In that case, he had likely already realized she was only feigning sleep. If so, he would already be on guard against any move she made, and the chance of taking him by surprise and subduing him was slim. The best next step was to find a way to open some distance between them first.
If Hayasaka were here—given her skill… No. As the Shinomiya family's eldest daughter, she should not waste thought on things that do nothing to improve the present situation. In any case, she could not keep waiting. One way or another, she had to act now.
As Kaguya Shinomiya's mind sped through possible strategies, her body had tensed without her noticing.
Only, before she could put any plan into motion, a piercing sound struck—and she lost control of her body. Then the same eerie voice Takumi had heard rang clearly in her ears.
[…Player Kaguya Shinomiya, this is the first game you will participate in. Game level: Dusk]
[Your condition for clearing the game: Escape from Shirakawa Apartments]
[The time limit for this game: seven days]
[Now issuing—]
The specifics matched what Takumi had heard, differing only in the name.
Unlike Takumi, however, Kaguya—who had no idea what this thing was—was for a moment shaken to her core. If not for some inexplicable force holding her still, her face would surely have undergone drastic change by now.
What on earth was going on?
Her body would not move.
It felt as if even her breathing had stopped—no, when the voice sounded, she truly could not breathe.
From hair to toes, not a single part of her would budge, like the remains of an explorer who had slipped into an ice cavern and been found later, sealed in ice. Unless extracted, there would never again be the possibility of the slightest movement.
But that was not what shocked the girl most.
When the voice arose, it wasn't merely that she couldn't move—she could not feel her body at all. If not for her strong will forcing her to focus at once on her own breathing and heartbeat, then while listening to that voice she would never have noticed that she had already stopped breathing, and her heartbeat had ceased as well. It was as though every sense of the body had left her—as though her soul had slipped free.
This was already beyond anything a kidnapper could accomplish.
It defied all common sense—an inexplicable, fundamentally unreal thing, something that should not exist.
What kind of situation had she fallen into?
No—this was not the time to panic. Fear would not help her escape the present predicament. What she needed to know was what to do next.
As the Shinomiya family's eldest daughter, raised within a cold and merciless conglomerate household, Kaguya Shinomiya's mind had long been tempered. Even faced with a circumstance that utterly exceeded common sense, she forced herself to calm down and listened carefully to the content of that eerie voice.
Sacrifice Game? Escape from Shirakawa Apartments? A seven-day time limit?
Those three hints sounded like meaningless wordplay, yet since the voice had given them, they had to hold some significance.
In that moment, Kaguya Shinomiya's mind raced with possibilities, but with so little information at hand, there was no way to draw any useful conclusions.
Soon, as the voice faded, she regained control of her body. Kaguya sat up quickly, flexing her hands and feet with movements so small as to be almost unnoticeable, her gaze instantly locking on the person beside her.
"Damn it…"
By contrast, Takumi's reaction was far more dramatic.
The abrupt loss and sudden return of control over his body left him extremely uncomfortable. He rolled straight off the bed. Even so, his hand instinctively grabbed the sheet of paper lying on the nightstand, clutching it to his chest as he scrambled to his feet and backed away two steps before lifting his head.
Their eyes met.
"Ahem, uh, konnichiwa? Nice weather today, huh."
He had no idea what would be best to say in this moment, but figured he might as well start with a greeting.
With that thought, Takumi raised his hand toward the girl sitting on the bed, putting on the most harmless smile he could muster.
Glancing at the paper Takumi held, Kaguya stepped down from the bed. She stopped by its edge, keeping a distance of roughly three meters from him, and spoke. "…That voice just now—you heard it too?"
Based on earlier observations, the chance that this man had been kidnapped and thrown into this place just as she had was high. Though she could not yet rule out other possibilities, conversation was still necessary. After a moment's thought, she decided to probe him with words.
"If you mean that voice telling me I was now a player in the Sacrifice Game, the one that froze my body in place—then yes, I heard it. So you, like me, were inexplicably brought here?" Takumi answered while edging back another step, putting more space between them so both could feel safer.
"I see. My name is Kaguya Shinomiya. May I ask yours?"
From that indifferent face, Takumi could read nothing of her feelings. Her voice, nearly flat, betrayed nothing either.
This black-haired girl in a Shuchiin uniform might still carry a trace of youthful immaturity, not yet fully grown, but the icy aura surrounding her was another matter entirely. Compared to her portrayal in anime, the difference was like night and day. Takumi suspected that even a man in his twenties or thirties, inexperienced and untested by hardship, would struggle to remain calm under that piercing gaze, sharp as a blade.
Still, as someone who had lost his parents early and been forced to weather society's hardships on his own, Takumi was not so easily shaken. He calmed down swiftly and spoke at once: "My name is Takumi."
"Shinomiya-san, if I'm not mistaken, you suddenly lost consciousness, and when you woke, you found yourself here—am I right?"
"That's how it was for me. I was at home packing when all of a sudden, I ended up here. In any case, I think we've been caught up in something extremely serious. Do you have any experience with this sort of thing?"
"Also, this sheet of printer paper caught my attention earlier. It feels out of place in this rundown house. I think something might be written on it—whether by the mastermind behind all this or someone else. Either way, I believe it holds some value. Do you want to take a look?"
Takumi organized his words carefully, speaking at a steady, unhurried pace as he lifted the paper in his hand.
Though he hadn't examined its contents in detail—too focused on watching her movements—he had still caught a glance at the words Rules of Life in Shirakawa Apartments written across the top.
Even so, Takumi maintained a cautious distance from her.
For one thing, there were still far too many unknowns in their situation. For another, he remembered clearly: in the original story Kaguya Shinomiya came from, this girl—who didn't even look 1.60 m tall—actually had formidable fighting ability. She had once overpowered an ordinary 1.75 m tall high school boy with sheer strength, throwing him to the ground and knocking him out cold with her bare hands. On top of that, she had systematically trained in archery, swordsmanship, and martial arts.
And now, with her clearly on high alert and just as unsure of the situation as he was, if he rashly approached her, he might very well end up like Ip Man's wooden dummy—pounded into the ground by a full set of strikes, maybe even knocked unconscious on the spot.