The cafeteria after school was a graveyard of dreams and spilled mystery stew. The chairs were flipped onto the tables like rows of wooden corpses, and the air smelled faintly of lemon scented bleach and industrial grade despair.
Ichikawa stood in the center of the room, holding a bucket of gray, lukewarm water and a single, rusted metal spatula that looked like it had been used to dig a trench in a previous war.
"This is it," Ichikawa muttered, his voice echoing in the empty hall. "This is my divine destiny. I survived a forty year life of misery, got reincarnated as a literal god, and now I'm about to fight a piece of strawberry flavored resin from ancestors era."
"Don't be so gloomy, Ichikawa-kun! Look at the bright side!"
Ruleus's voice chirped from somewhere beneath Table Four. A second later, his silver haired head popped up, his eyes sparkling with a terrifying amount of energy for someone whose nose was currently three inches away from a dried-up wad of peppermint.
"What bright side, Ruleus? We're scraping DNA off furniture."
"The side where we find the Forbidden Flavor!" Ruleus cheered, crawling out from under the table with a triumphant grin. He was holding a small, blackened lump on the tip of his finger. "I found this one near the back. It's so hard I think I could use it as a projectile weapon! If I infuse it with my silver mana, do you think it would explode?"
"Do not weaponize the gum, Ruleus," Ichikawa sighed, kneeling down and jamming his spatula under a particularly stubborn wad of blue bubblegum. "Just scrape it. If we finish before sunset, maybe I can go home and pretend this day never happened."
"Aww, you're no fun! You've got all that zero mana and you won't even use it to vaporize the stickiness?" Ruleus pouted, sitting cross legged on the floor. He picked up his own spatula, which he had already bent into the shape of a hook for better leverage and started poking at a table leg. "Hey, did you know that if you heat up gum with a localized heat-aura, it turns back into a liquid? Watch!"
"Ruleus, wait—"
Before Ichikawa could move, Ruleus's eyes flared with a sudden, intense silver light. A wave of heat rolled off his body, the air around him shimmering like a desert road. The dried up gum on the table leg shrieked.
The ancient, mana infused saliva inside the gum reacted to Ruleus's high level aura. Instead of liquefying, the wad of gum expanded like a pink balloon, stretching and bubbling until it was the size of a basketball.
"Uh oh," Ruleus whispered, his melodic voice jumping an octave. "It's... it's gaining sentience, isn't it?"
"It's not gaining sentience, it's a gas pocket! Stop heating it!" Ichikawa scrambled backward, his spatula held up like a shield.
POP.
The gum didn't just burst, it detonated. A spray of sticky, pink shrapnel coated the underside of the table, Ruleus's face, and a significant portion of Ichikawa's left sleeve.
Ruleus sat there, a long string of pink goo hanging from his silver fringe down to his chin. He blinked slowly, then stuck out his tongue and licked a bit of the goo off his lip.
"Hmm. Grape. Definitely grape."
"I hate you," Ichikawa said, staring at his ruined blazer. "I hate this school. I hate the floor. I hate the concept of chewing."
"Hah! We're super smash bros!" Ruleus laughed, wiping a glob of gum off his nose and flicking it into the bucket. "Look on the bright side, Ichikawa-kun! At least it's not stinky underwear this time! That would be a much harder cleanup!"
"Do not ever mention the underwear again," Ichikawa growled, jamming his spatula into the floor with a satisfying clink. If you say that word one more time, I'm taking off the ring. I don't care if the planet survives or not. Ichikawa thought.
Just then, the cafeteria doors creaked open. Yoshiro-sensei poked his head in, looking around cautiously as if expecting another pencil to jump out and attack him. He saw the pink slime dripping from the ceiling and Ruleus covered in grape scented goo.
"What in the... did you two have a food fight with yourself?" Yoshiro barked, stepping into the room and immediately slipping on a stray glob of Ruleus's melted gum.
"GYAH!"
Yoshiro's feet went north, his head went south, and he slammed into the floor with a sound that suggested several ribs were currently reconsidering their life choices. He laid there, stuck to the floor by Ruleus's tactical grape bomb.
"I'm stuck," Yoshiro's muffled voice came from the floor. "The floor has claimed me. Go on without me, students. Tell my figurine collection... I loved them."
Ichikawa looked at the teacher stuck to the floor, then at Ruleus who was currently trying to use a fork to peel the gum off his own eyebrows.
"Mom," Ichikawa whispered to the ceiling, "please. Just let a meteor hit the building. I'll even help it aim."
Two hours later, the cafeteria looked... UH WELL, it didn't look clean, but it looked significantly less like a biological hazard. Ichikawa stood over a massive, overflowing bucket filled with thousands of multi colored, ossified lumps of gum. It looked like a cursed bowl of giant, dusty cereal.
Ichikawa wiped a streak of pink slime from his forehead, his breath hitching in a sigh of pure, unadulterated defeat.
"It's over," he whispered, staring into the bucket. "The war is won. I have defeated the Strawberry Mint Legion. My soul is charred, my blazer is a loss, and I think I've lost feeling in my thumb, but I am free."
"Free? We're not free, Ichikawa-kun! We're champions!" Ruleus chirped, popping up from behind a trash can. He had somehow managed to get a piece of gum stuck to the back of his head, making his silver hair stick out like a unicorn horn. He was holding a spatula in one hand and a half eaten sandwich he'd found in the other. "Look at this haul! If we melted this all down, we could probably build a bridge! Or a very sticky golem!"
"Do not build a golem, Ruleus. Don't even think the word golem."
Just then, the double doors of the cafeteria creaked open. Yoshiro sensei limped in, a large bandage now taped across his nose from his earlier encounter with the floor. He was clutching a clipboard and looking unusually focused... which, for him, was a massive red flag.
"Alright, you two lollygaggers," Yoshiro barked, his voice echoing off the sterile walls. "Is the perimeter secured? Is the desk biota neutralized?"
"It's done, sensei," Ichikawa said, kicking the bucket of gum toward him. "Every single piece. Can we go now? I need to go home and rethink my entire reincarnation." He muttered the last sentence under his breath.
Yoshiro adjusted his glasses, squinting at the bucket. Suddenly, his face went from strict teacher to absolute, soul-shattering terror in approximately 0.4 seconds. His clipboard clattered to the floor.
"Wait," Yoshiro wheezed, his voice jumping three octaves. "Where... where did you get these?"
"From under the tables, sensei," Ichikawa said, narrowing his eyes. "Like you told us to."
"Not all the tables!" Yoshiro shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at a specific, circular table in the far corner that was now shining with a suspicious, polished gleam. "Not the Table of Eternal Silence!"
"The what now?" Ichikawa asked.
"The Table of Eternal Silence!" Yoshiro wailed, clutching his head. "That wasn't gum, you idiots! Those were the Sealing Wards of the Great Cafeteria Wraith! The school's founding headmaster stuck those gum pieces there three hundred years ago to keep the Spirit of the Mystery Stew from devouring the student body!"
The cafeteria lights suddenly flickered. A low, wet, bubbling sound began to rise from the floorboards.
"You mean..." Ichikawa stared at the bucket of gum. The lumps were starting to glow with a sickly, greenish purple light. They weren't pieces of hubba-dih. They were ancient, soul binding runes that happened to look like chewed up peppermint.
"Whoopsie!" Ruleus laughed, clapping his hands together. "So that's why that blue piece tasted like ancient curses and wet socks! I thought it was just expired!"
"WHOOPSIE!?" Yoshiro screamed, backing away toward the door. "The seal is broken! The Stew Wraith is free! And it hasn't had a fresh soul to marinate in since the Meiji era!"
A massive, pulsating mass of grey, lumpy sludge began to ooze out from under the Table of Eternal Silence. It smelled of overcooked carrots and forgotten leftovers. It let out a gurgling roar that sounded like a clogged drain.
Ichikawa looked at the bucket of runes, then at the rising food monster, then at his clumsy teacher who was currently trying to open the cafeteria door but was pulling instead of pushing.
"Mom," Ichikawa whispered to himself, his face going blank. "I want to go back to the train tracks. Please. Just put me back on the tracks. I'll take the train. I'll take the train any day over this."
"Don't worry, Ichikawa-kun!" Ruleus shouted, brandishing his rusted spatula like a legendary holy sword. "I'll protect you! I'll just use my Silver Nova blast to—"
"OH HELL NO!" Ichikawa and Yoshiro screamed in unison.
Ruleus paused, his hand already glowing with enough power to level the wing of the building. "Fine! Then I'll just use the bucket!"
Ruleus grabbed the bucket of ancient gum runes and, with a cheerful "Heave ho!", dumped the entire contents directly into the center of the Stew Wraith's lumpy, oozing body.
The monster froze. The green light of the runes clashed with the purple sludge of the stew. For a second, there was a beautiful, shimmering silence.
Then, the monster let out a sound like a giant balloon deflating.
SPLURT.
The Wraith didn't explode. It simply turned into a massive, room filling wave of lukewarm, gray gravy that swept across the floor, knocking Yoshiro off his feet and burying Ichikawa and Ruleus up to their waists in thickened starch and peas.
Yoshiro floated past them on his back, looking up at the ceiling with dead eyes. "I'm retiring," he whispered. "I'm going to become a monk. A monk in a place with no gum and no gravy."
Ichikawa stood in the middle of the gravy covered cafeteria, a single soggy carrot resting on his head. He looked at Ruleus, who was currently trying to make a gravy angel on the floor.
"We have to clean this up too, don't we?" Ichikawa asked.
"Probably!" Ruleus chirped.
Ichikawa didn't even scream. He just let out a long, pathetic squeak and let his head fall forward into the sludge.
Yoshiro sensei, who was still floating on his back in the shallow pool of gravy, suddenly let out a sharp, terrified gasp. He scrambled to his feet, slipping three times before finally gaining enough traction to point a trembling finger at the corner of the room.
"The table!" Yoshiro shrieked. "The Table of Eternal Silence! It's... it's hungry!"
Ichikawa turned his head slowly. The circular table in the corner wasn't just shining anymore. It was vibrating so fast it had become a blur. A low, bass heavy hum began to shake the very foundations of the realm. The gravy on the floor started spiraling toward the center of the table like a massive, lukewarm drain.
"Uh, sensei?" Ichikawa said, his eyes widening. "Is the furniture supposed to be glowing with the light of a dying star?"
"Of course not, you brat!" Yoshiro wailed, trying to run toward the exit but only succeeding in jogging in place on the slippery floor. "The gum was the only thing keeping the space-time coordinates of this cafeteria anchored to reality! Without the seal, the table is reverting back to its true form!"
Before Ruleus could even make a joke about the table's true form, the center of the wood ripped open. It didn't break, it folded into itself, creating a swirling vortex of neon purple hyperspace.
"Whoa! It's a giant glowing donut!" Ruleus cheered, leaning forward with intense curiosity. "I wonder if it tastes like—"
WHOOMP.
The vacuum didn't give them a chance to react. It was like the universe had suddenly decided to inhale the entire room. Ichikawa felt a massive, invisible hand grab him by the collar. He didn't even have time to scream before he, Ruleus, and a very loudly sobbing Yoshiro sensei were sucked into the spinning purple void.
Everything went white. Then black. Then a color that Ichikawa's human brain couldn't even name (even tho he isn't human, but for plot!).
A second later, the three of them slammed into a hard, crystalline floor with a synchronized "OOF."
Ichikawa groaned, peeling his face off the ground. He looked around and felt his soul leave his body for the third time that day. They weren't in the cafeteria anymore. They were standing on a floating platform of translucent glass. Above them, there was no ceiling. just a swirling, silent nebula of stars and floating school supplies.
Rulers, desks, and half-eaten lunches drifted through the air like lazy fish. There was no sound. No wind. Just a heavy, ringing silence that made Ichikawa's ears ache.
"Where... where the hell are we?" Ichikawa wheezed, sitting up and checking his red ring. It was glowing faintly... For no reason.
Yoshiro sensei sat up, patting his messy brown hair and adjusting his cracked glasses. He looked around with a somber, unusually serious expression that lasted for about five seconds before he sneezed so hard he almost fell off the platform.
"Welcome," Yoshiro said, his voice echoing strangely as if he were speaking through a long tube. "To the Realm of Eternal Silence. Or as the school board calls it... the Infinite Detention Zone."
"Infinite what?" Ichikawa asked, his eye twitching.
"It's a pocket dimension, Ichikawa," Yoshiro explained, standing up and dusting off his gravy-stained coat. "It exists outside of time, space, and most importantly, the laws of the Ministry of Education. This is where the founding headmaster sent everything the school couldn't fix. Cursed stew, sentient chalk, students who forgot their homework... and us."
Ruleus jumped up, his eyes sparkling as he watched a giant floating pencil drift past. "Outside of time and space?! Does that mean lunch never ends? Can I eat the stars?!"
"It means we're stuck in a place where nothing ever changes, Ruleus!" Yoshiro shouted, his voice cracking. "There is no tomorrow here! There is only *now*! We could stay here for a thousand years and when we get back to the cafeteria, the gravy would still be warm!"
Ichikawa stared at the endless void. He thought about his past life as Kyotaru, the man who just wanted peace. He thought about his new life as a god with 99 percent of his power sealed away.
"So let me get this straight," Ichikawa said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and despair. "Because you were too clumsy to hold a clipboard, and because Ruleus is a biological disaster, I am now trapped in a trash bin dimension outside of reality?"
"In a nutshell, yes!" Yoshiro chirped, giving him a thumbs up. "But look on the bright side! Since time doesn't exist here, I don't technically have to pay you back for that tea you bought me!"
Ichikawa looked at Ruleus, who was currently trying to ride a floating desk like a surfboard. He looked at Yoshiro, who was now trying to see if he could make a bridge out of floating rulers.
"Mom," Ichikawa whispered to the silent stars, "I'm taking the ring off. I'm doing it. I'm burying this entire dimension."