Sakiko's gaze swept quickly over the facility description. Her mind stayed cool and analytical, and she reached a conclusion almost immediately.
"Not too dangerous."
Whether she succeeded or failed, the stairway wouldn't imprison her forever. At worst, she'd simply be kicked out.
Then her eyes locked precisely onto two distinct words on the interface—[Palace]—colored a pale blue unlike the rest, clearly indicating an interactive hyperlink.
Without hesitation, she tapped it.
Instantly, a large block of detailed explanation about "Palaces" popped up, far denser than the earlier description.
Sakiko skimmed at a glance, absorbing and processing at high speed, then distilled the core takeaway:
"Simply put, a Palace is a mental space belonging to someone whose distorted desires are extremely intense. Within that space exists a Shadow—an avatar projected from that person's psyche. If you affect the Shadow inside the Palace, you can directly interfere with the person's subconscious in the real world."
She returned to the previous screen.
[Palace Lord: Toyokawa Kiyoteru] leapt into her eyes again.
Toyokawa Kiyoteru…
Her father's name.
Sakiko lifted her gaze from the screen to the staircase before her—stretching upward, seemingly endless.
She drew a deep breath. Complex emotions churned in her chest, but in the end, all of them were forced back down by sheer willpower.
She took her first step.
The instant her shoe sole touched the freezing stair, she was dragged into a past cold enough to pierce the bone.
[Sakiko—working multiple part-time jobs—had finally cleared time today for band practice, only to be told by the police that her father had caused trouble while drunk.
She stood at the entrance of the police station. Ahead of her was her father's slumped, ruined back.
Her phone vibrated. Soyo sent a message: "Can you come today?"
In the input box was the sentence she'd almost sent earlier: "Sorry I haven't come to practice. I can come today."
Her gaze flickered back and forth between her father's wretched silhouette and the phone screen.
Her finger hovered over "send" again and again—then froze every time.
In that moment, an overwhelming helplessness and despair crushed her.
She realized she had to choose: her father sinking into ruin, or CRYCHIC, the band she had built with her own hands and treasured as something priceless.
Her pride wouldn't allow her to show her bandmates the collapse of her family—or her father's disgrace.
So, on that rainstorm night, she chose to sever the past, and broke down alone in the icy downpour.]
On the stairway, Toyokawa Sakiko's face was calm and blank, as if she'd been watching someone else's story.
That failure—and the desperate girl in the rain—had long since been thrown far behind her.
Her pace didn't stall for even a heartbeat. She stepped firmly onto the second stair.
A more bitter tide of memories swallowed her whole.
[Even though she tried to run, the past wouldn't let go. Soyo obsessively pursued the idea of rebuilding CRYCHIC.
On stage, Takamatsu Tomori stood beneath the spotlight, eyes burning as she looked straight through the crowd to Sakiko—and then she reached out her hand.
That silent invitation shattered every mask Sakiko had.
She realized she couldn't forget CRYCHIC. She couldn't forget the tremor music gave her.
She truly wanted to be in a band with them—for a lifetime.
She wavered. She even prepared to accept Soyo's request to reunite.
But then the familiar melody—"Haruhikage"—rang out on stage. And when she saw her former companions immersed in it, she realized her place had already been taken by someone else…
That song, the one forged from countless hours of their sweat and heart—"Haruhikage"—should have been performed by the five of them together.
The crushing sense of betrayal, the despair of being abandoned, made her break down completely for the second time.
This time, what dragged her out of the abyss was a roaring fire of revenge.]
Sakiko's steps paused—just barely, almost imperceptibly.
Ave Mujica had been born from that fire of revenge.
Something complicated flickered through her eyes, but she steadied herself immediately. She inhaled once, then took the third step without hesitation.
She had already foreseen what waited on the third stair.
[She poured everything she had into it—mobilizing every resource and connection within reach—to build a commercial band that could be called a galactic battleship:
Ave Mujica.
She thought she could control everything—armor herself with dazzling commercial success, and use material victory to reclaim her dignity.
But every member carried their own demands. The audience had expectations. Investors had requirements…
Countless invisible ropes pulled the team in different directions, nearly tearing it apart.
More ironically still, the very words she'd once hurled at the members of CRYCHIC became boomerangs—each sentence returning to stab her with pinpoint precision.
She became the person she had once hated most.
In the end, under the crushing pressure she imposed, Mortis completely replaced Mutsumi's core personality, and the band fell apart because of it.]
This time, Sakiko finally stopped.
She stood there, her hand at her side tightening slightly.
This failure—she hadn't truly crossed it.
She had merely accepted it.
She'd only buried herself in books and study, stockpiling power so small it was meaningless before capital and reality—numbing herself with fantasies of a comeback that barely existed.
After a long time, she clenched her teeth. With the savage willpower the glasses granted her, she forced her heavy body to move like a puppet on strings, and took the fourth step.
[In the back seat of the Maybach, her grandfather said the compensation for canceling the tour had already been paid for her.
No scolding. No anger.
Only a calm: "You should recognize reality."
Before her grandfather, the last scraps of dignity and stubborn pride were peeled away, ground to dust, and trampled underfoot.
She lowered the head that had once been so proud, fully accepting the ending reserved for a loser.]
A fierce humiliation made her feel like she couldn't breathe.
But fortunately, with the help of the Willpower Glasses, she had already found a way to break through—and had crossed this defeat.
She fixed her gaze on the fifth step.
If she cleared it, she would surpass the Loser's Stairway, meet her father's Shadow within the Palace, and maybe—just maybe—make him stand up again!
Hope was right in front of her.
Sakiko stepped onto the fifth stair without hesitation.
But…
The stairway did not vanish as she expected.
No new shards of memory surged into her mind.
Instead, deep in her consciousness, a voice echoed—familiar beyond words, dripping with mockery.
It was her own voice…
[Using borrowed willpower to pretend you've crossed failure?]
[Toyokawa Sakiko…]
[Do you really dare to take off those glasses?]
A fifth failure.
Not the reenactment of a memory—
But an interrogation of her current state.
A total denial of whether she had truly crossed the final gulf of defeat.
Toyokawa Sakiko's body locked in place.
She stood there, silent for a long time.
Borrowed strength was still borrowed.
The Willpower Glasses had carried her this far…
And now they had become the greatest obstacle preventing her from genuinely crossing the last failure.
Click.
A tiny, brittle sound—yet so clear it detonated in the silence.
A winding crack appeared across the lens of the Willpower Glasses.
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