Out in the corridor, Natsume's suggestion of "Why not go and ask him directly right now" hit Kaguya like a challenge.
Her ruby eyes locked onto him, blazing with irritation. Did this fraud just challenge me?
Before she could snap back, Ishigami by her side seemed to lose the last of his strength.His voice trembled. He added even more shocking information.
"Vice President… it… it might be worse than we thought…"
His body trembled uncontrollably. The face usually hidden under his bangs, already pale, had turned completely bloodless.
"Based on… what I found… from some special sources… in the two weeks since the Midnight Game started spreading… at our school… there have already been five students and two teachers who went missing…"
"What?!"
The word burst out of both Kaguya and Ai at the same time.
"That is not all…" Ishigami's voice grew smaller and smaller, like every word was hard to force out. "There are… another eight people who took extended leave for 'health reasons' and have not returned yet. That includes most of Class A's class officers…"
The impact of those words crashed into Kaguya's mind like a lightning strike.
Seven missing, eight on long term leave.
At Shuchiin Academy, the school with supposedly the strictest security and best management in the whole country, this should have been impossible, a major incident that could shake the very foundation of the academy.
And yet, as student council vice president, she had heard nothing about it.
Humiliation and anger surged through her.
The board and administration had concealed all this to preserve the academy's reputation.
They had turned her, the vice president of the student council, into a figurehead who only needed to handle day to day chores and give speeches at ceremonies, a convenient fool kept completely in the dark.
Unforgivable.
Absolutely unforgivable.
At that moment, her belief in logic and reason was swept away, drowned completely by the anger of someone who was supposed to be in control.
She snapped her head around, her ruby eyes blazing like a roaring fire as they fixed on Ishigami.
"Where does Class A's homeroom teacher, Murata, live?"
Her voice turned ice cold.
"I, it is… Murata-sensei," Ishigami stammered, almost dropping to his knees under the force of her aura. "He… he's our first-year classical literature teacher. Since he was hired from outside, he lives in the staff dormitory on campus…"
"Lead the way."
Kaguya did not hesitate for an instant. Her tone left no room for argument.
Whether it was to uncover the truth or to reclaim the dignity that had been trampled, she was going to drag this matter into the light today, no matter what.
...
Shuchiin Academy's staff dormitory stood in a quiet corner of campus.
Perhaps because it was the weekend, the whole building felt unusually quiet.
The group walked down the hall without speaking, the air so heavy it was hard to breathe.
The moment they stepped onto the stairs to the fourth floor, a bone-deep chill rolled toward them from the far end of the corridor.
"…"
Still half in a daze, Ai let out a pained whimper as the chill hit her. Her legs gave out and she nearly collapsed, only staying upright because Kaguya caught her in time.
"S… so cold…"
Kaguya instinctively hugged her arms around herself, frowning.
This was not physical cold.
It was a chill that seeped straight into bone, a gloom soaked with hostile intent that made the soul itself shiver.
What felt to them like nothing more than "cold" was, in the senses of Natsume and Yashiro, a scene of pure horror.
"…Such dense malice."
Yashiro tilted her head back, the twin pupils of her strange eyes reflecting something only she could see.
The entire fourth floor corridor had been soaked through in a vast sea of resentment, so thick it was almost solid, pitch black.
Walls, ceiling, floor…
Everything seemed submerged in a dark ocean made of hatred and despair.
In Natsume's Six Eyes, the picture was even clearer.
He could see that all of this hatred had a single point of origin, converging precisely on the door at the end of the corridor.
Room 401.
In his vision, that door was no longer just a door.
It looked like a wound in reality itself, leaking cursed energy into the hallway.
The group finally stopped in front of Room 401.
Kaguya took a moment to steady her breathing, raised her hand, and raised her hand to knock.