BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
By now, the sound is less a surprise and more a sentence.
I lie there listening to it for a few seconds, letting the weight of it settle on my chest. Then I roll over and kill the alarm, staring at the red digits.
7:00 a.m.
TUE 17
"Good morning, save point," I mutter.
My throat feels dry. My ribs don't hurt, but my mind still remembers the moment they stopped working. The world shrinking to a tunnel. The weight coming down.
And after that—
I close my eyes.
I can't hear Mom's real laugh anymore. The one from that… whatever it was. Festival? Movie night? Holiday? There's just an empty outline where the sound used to be.
Every time I die, something gets cut out.
I sit up and reach automatically for the notebook on my desk.
The page labeled TUESDAY RULES is right where I left it. My handwriting looks worse than I remember.
I scan the list, then press the pen down and add:
If I avoid the school, something else nearby burns instead.
(The disaster follows me.)
I stare at the words.
Running didn't save anyone. It just moved the fire two blocks to the left.
The corner store is gone now, in some version of today I'm the only one who remembers. The apartments above it. The people inside. A woman and a kid on the curb. The shape in the window.
I flip to the next page—LOOP 3 PLAN—and scribble a big X through the only item.
DON'T GO TO SCHOOL.
"Well. That was a great plan," I tell myself.
From the kitchen: "Satoru! You're going to be late again! Get up already!"
Her voice sounds a little flatter now. Or maybe that's just me, listening harder because I know what I'm losing.
I close the notebook slowly.
"New plan," I say.
Survive isn't enough. "Survive and pretend" just gets other people killed somewhere else. If the loop wants a show, it's going to get one whether I'm there or not.
So I might as well be on stage.
Mom's lines are the same as always. Threatening water, complaining about my sleep habits, worrying about tests. I go through the motions: "Yeah, yeah." "I'll be fine." "Headache's better."
I don't ask about my favorite snack this time. I already know the answer and the hole where the taste should be.
I just watch her a little closer as she moves around the tiny kitchen. The way she pushes her hair back with her wrist when both hands are busy. The way she hums off‑key with the weather jingle without realizing.
I try to press every detail into my brain, like taking a mental photo.
Because next time I die, something else is going to be missing. I can feel it, like a draft under a door.
On the way out, she ruffles my hair. I let her.
"Don't fall asleep in class," she says.
"No promises," I say.
We share a faint smile. Then she's gone.
The door clicks.
I lock it. Pocket my keys. Grab my bag.
And for the first time since this started, I walk toward school on purpose.
The world insists on being normal.
The vending machine buzzes. The alley cat gives me a contemptuous look, tail flicking. The old man sweeps. The delivery truck is two seconds early this time, but everything else hits its marks.
I could walk with my eyes closed and hit every beat.
By the time I reach the school gate, my skin is crawling. The building looms over me, gray and solid and oblivious.
I step through.
Nothing explodes.
Yet.
"Yo! He lives!" Yuta slams into my side, hooking an arm around my neck. "You look like crap again. That cold still wrecking you?"
"Something like that," I manage.
He leans back, squinting. "You sure you should be here? You look like you saw a ghost or… I dunno. A tax bill."
"This place is haunted enough," I say.
He laughs. "True. Anyway, we've got English first. Good opportunity to catch up on that 'sleep' you missed."
I let him drag me up the stairs, every step familiar and wrong at the same time.
The third‑floor hallway is bright and empty, early‑morning quiet. No gas smell yet. No barricades. Just lockers and posters and that storage room door sitting there, innocent.
I glance at it as we pass.
"Hey," Yuta says, nudging me. "You checking for ghosts now too?"
"Just making sure nothing leaks," I say.
He snorts. "What are you, the plumbing police?"
"If I was, I'd arrest this whole building."
"Fair."
We duck into Class 2‑B.
Chairs. Bags. Chatter. The whole script cues up again: the dropped book, the pigeon hitting the window, Takeda's announcement about hallway safety.
I sit through it with my notebook open but my mind somewhere else.
"Running away doesn't work," I write, underlining it three times.
"Neither does telling teachers the truth."
"Loop wants a fire + casualties near me. Gas is part of it, but not the whole story."
I tap the pen against my lips.
What do games and puzzles have that this doesn't?
Tutorials. Hints. Systems.
I have a cursed Continue button, but no menu.
Fine.
If nobody's going to give me the rules, I'll make some of my own.
Lunchtime comes again, curry smell washing through the room. Yuta tries to show me the same meme. I pretend to laugh. It's easier than explaining why it just makes me want to cry.
I glance at the clock.
12:38.
In my first run, I did nothing.
Second, I died on the stairs.
Third, I watched the corner store burn.
Now I have a little piece of information from each.
Gas in storage room. Stairs collapse under panic load. Disaster radius follows me even if I'm not in the building.
If I can't stop the fire from happening somewhere…
Maybe I can at least make sure as few people as possible are inside when it does.
"Hey," I say.
Yuta looks up from his bento. "Hm?"
"What would happen," I ask slowly, "if someone pulled the fire alarm for no reason?"
He grins immediately. "We'd get out of class. Whoever did it would be a hero. For like five minutes. Then Takeda would murder them."
"I'm serious."
He shrugs. "Dunno. We'd all file out, complain, stand in the yard while they check the building. If they don't find anything, they lecture us and we go back in."
If they don't find anything.
What if they do?
I picture it: siren blaring, kids pouring into the courtyard. Confused, annoyed, alive. Fire department showing up "just in case," only to find gas pooling where it shouldn't. Fixing it before 3:17 rolls around.
Maybe they yell at us.
Maybe they don't.
Either way, fewer corpses.
Yuta squints at me. "Why are you asking? You look like you're about to confess to a crime."
"I'm just… curious," I say.
Lie.
His grin widens. "You thinking of doing it? Ishikawa, secret rebel?"
"I'm thinking of not dying," I say, which is as close to truth as I can get without choking on it.
"Same thing, right?"
He goes back to his food.
I stare at the red fire alarm mounted near the classroom door.
It's just a box. Plastic and metal and a little lever that says PULL in faded letters.
In movies, pulling it is dramatic. A big moment. In reality, it would probably just be noisy and annoying.
And if I'm wrong—if I misjudge this, if I send hundreds of kids into stairwells that are about to break, if I cause the panic I'm trying to avoid—
I press the pen harder into the page.
"This isn't a movie," I write in the margin.
"It's a rigged game."
And in a rigged game, you don't win by playing nice.
I don't go to the storage room this time.
I don't tell Mr. Takeda.
The gas is still going to leak. The fire is still going to start somewhere. But if I get everyone out early enough, if the building is already empty when something sparks—
I swallow.
"Hey, Tanaka."
Miyu looks up, surprised. Her eyes always look a little surprised, like she expected the world to pass straight through her.
"Ishikawa‑kun?" she says.
She's holding her chopsticks halfway to her mouth, pausing mid‑bite at the sound of her name. Her bento is neatly arranged. She eats slowly, like she doesn't want to take up too much space even there.
"Do you… have a minute?" I ask.
Her gaze flicks past me, to the group of girls by the door. They're already watching. One whispers. The others giggle.
Miyu's shoulders tense.
"…What is it?" she asks.
I sit down on the edge of the neighboring desk, putting my back to the doorway to block the others' line of sight.
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry," I say.
Her chopsticks still.
"For… what?" she asks.
"For yesterday." I stare at my hands. "In the hallway. When they took your bag and I pretended I didn't see. I should've said something. I didn't. That was shitty."
Her eyes widen.
"I—I… It's fine," she stammers. "It's… not a big—"
"It is," I cut in. My voice comes out sharper than I mean. "It is a big deal. Even if you're used to it. That doesn't make it okay."
The room goes quieter around us. A couple of nearby students are definitely listening now.
One of the girls at the door speaks up, too loud to be "accidental."
"Aww, Ishikawa's being a white knight now," she says. "So cool. So heroic."
"Maybe he's into her," another snickers. "That's kind of gross, honestly."
Heat floods my face.
Normally, I'd shut down. Shrink. Pretend I didn't hear.
Today, a very specific image is burned into my brain: Miyu under a broken desk, reaching for me while the ceiling came down. Her voice, hoarse: Don't leave me.
I turn my head and look straight at them.
"If you've got energy to talk trash, you've got energy to mind your own business," I say. My voice shakes, but it's loud enough.
Their smiles freeze.
"Excuse me?" the ringleader says, eyebrows jumping.
"You heard me."
A few students actually snort laughs. Someone mutters, "Damn."
The girl's face goes pink. "Wow. Guess we hit a nerve. Touchy much?"
"Yeah," I say. "I'm touchy about people acting like middle schoolers."
Her mouth opens, then snaps shut. She grabs her bag.
"Let's go," she hisses to her friends, and stalks out.
The tension drains out of the room in a sigh. Conversations pick back up, louder than before, rushing to fill the awkward space.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. My palms are sweaty. I feel like I just ran a marathon.
"You… didn't have to do that," Miyu says quietly.
"Yes," I say. My throat is tight. "I did."
She looks down at her lunch.
"Thank you," she says, so soft I almost miss it.
I want to say I'll do more than that. That I've seen her die three times in three different ways and I'm not interested in watching version four.
The shadow under my ribs stirs warningly.
I settle for, "You're welcome."
The clock ticks.
12:56.
Less than three hours to curtain.
Afternoon classes grind by.
Every time the second hand crawls past another twelve, my spine tightens.
I watch the teachers. The students. The way light falls through the windows. I try to imagine where everyone will be when things start.
If the stairs are the most dangerous place, then the goal is simple: don't send them there all at once.
You can't tell two hundred teenagers "Don't panic." You can put them already outside before they have a chance to.
At 2:05, I make up my mind.
At 2:30, when the teacher turns to write something on the board, I stand up.
My legs feel like they're full of sand.
"Ishikawa?" the teacher says, chalk squeaking to a stop. "Where do you think you're—"
"Bathroom," I say automatically.
He starts to frown, then thinks better of it and waves me off.
I step into the hallway.
The fire alarm box is a few meters away, mounted on the wall between classroom doors. The plastic cover is slightly yellowed with age. The little lever behind it sits there, harmless.
All it takes is one pull.
I picture the chain of events.
Alarm screaming. Students pouring into the hallways. Teachers shouting for order. Stairs filling. Doors opening to the yard. Confusion, annoyance, but mostly people alive and out.
Maybe there's still a gas pocket somewhere waiting to blow. Maybe a spark's already crawling through a wire.
If they're already outside when it hits—
My hand hovers over the plastic.
"What if you're early?" a whisper in my head says. "What if nothing's ready to go wrong yet? They get dismissed, they file out, and then Takeda sends them all back in. Back into the building you know tries to kill them at 3:17."
I grit my teeth.
"What if you're late?" another voice adds. "What if you miss it by thirty seconds?"
My fingers curl into a fist.
There's no perfect moment.
Just like there's no perfect way to stand by and let it happen.
I flip up the cover.
Cold air brushes my knuckles.
Somewhere deeper in the building, something unseen stirs. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. For a moment it feels like someone is leaning over my shoulder, watching.
"If you're there," I whisper under my breath, "enjoy the show."
I wrap my hand around the lever.
And pull.