The smell of gas hits me in the face like a wet cloth.
It's stronger here than in the hallway. Heavy, chemical, wrong. Not something you should be breathing in a closed space.
For a second my body refuses to move. I just stand there with my hand on the doorknob, the storage room yawned open like a dark mouth, and every survival instinct I have is screaming, Close it. Walk away. Pretend you never smelled anything.
That's what I did last time.
I force my foot forward.
The room is small—just a narrow rectangle crammed with old junk. Metal shelves line the walls. Boxes, cleaning supplies, cracked plastic bins. A broken skeleton model leans at a bad angle in the corner, its skull tilted like it's watching me.
Somewhere in the dark, something hisses softly.
I thumb on my phone's flashlight.
The beam cuts through dust motes and cobwebs. My heart hammers louder with every step I take into the room. The gas smell gets sharper, biting at my eyes and throat.
"Great idea, Satoru," I mutter, voice small in the stale air. "Walk into the death room alone. Genius."
There—on the back wall, behind a half‑collapsed cardboard box.
A metal pipe runs along the base of the wall. Near the corner, there's a valve and an old connector, tarnished and ugly. The hissing is coming from there, a thin, steady leak from a crack around the join, like a snake whispering.
There's no open flame. No sparks. For now.
I crouch down, covering my mouth with my sleeve.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay. This is… fixable. Just… turn it. Turn it off."
My fingers close around the valve.
The metal is slick with something. Grease? Condensation? Sweat? It slides under my grip.
"Come on," I hiss through my teeth, twisting.
The valve gives a fraction. The hiss shifts pitch, louder. The gas stings my eyes. My chest tightens in a new way that has nothing to do with cursed hands.
Panic clamps down on my brain.
If I mess this up, I could blow the whole room now. Or pass out in here and never reach the door. They'd find me on the floor and call it a stupid accident.
And nobody would ever know I already died once.
I let go, stumbling back instead.
"Nope. Nope, I'm not a plumber. I'm not dying here like an idiot."
My vision fuzzes at the edges. My head feels light. I shove the door fully open to let fresh air in and stagger out into the hallway, gulping it like water.
It tastes clean. For now.
My legs feel like jelly as I lean against the wall.
There's no question anymore. Yesterday wasn't a dream. If I hadn't come here, that leak would've kept hissing all day, filling this end of the hallway. One spark in the wrong place, and—
I swallow hard.
I need an adult. A real one. Someone who can shut this off properly.
The idea of walking into the staff room on purpose makes my stomach twist, but I turn anyway and head down the hall.
The staff room smells like coffee, chalk dust, and the faint despair of middle age.
I hover outside for a second, peeking through the glass. Teachers at their desks, shuffling papers, tapping keyboards, complaining quietly. I spot Mr. Takeda near the back, nursing his mug like it's the only thing keeping him alive.
My hand hovers over the door handle.
Talking to him is one thing. Making him take me seriously is another.
In the fire, I remember his face smeared with soot, shouting orders, trying to push students toward exits that didn't exist anymore. I remember thinking, He should've known. Somebody should've known.
Well. I know.
If I walk away again, that's on me.
I open the door.
Heads turn, briefly. Most look away when they see it's just a student. Mr. Takeda squints.
"Ishikawa? What is it? You're supposed to be in class."
I step closer, conscious of every eye on me.
"I—I smelled something weird by the science storage room," I say. My voice comes out thinner than I'd like. "Like gas. Pretty strong."
He frowns. "Gas?"
"Yeah. I checked. It's… I think there's a leak. It's… uh, hissing."
His brows knit. For a second I can see the battle in his head: paperwork and hassle versus maybe‑actual danger. Teachers are human. Tired humans.
"You checked?" he says instead. "You went into the storage room without a teacher? That room is off‑limits, Ishikawa. You know that."
Anger flares, hot and sharp, cutting through my fear.
Yesterday—last loop—he didn't get a chance to lecture anybody about rules. He was pulled out of a pile of students, body limp.
"If it's a leak, isn't that more important than a rule?" I shoot back before I can stop myself.
The room goes a little quieter.
Mr. Takeda's mouth tightens. He sets his mug down, stands, grabs his keys from the desk.
"Show me," he says.
We walk back down the third‑floor hallway together.
Students peek out of classroom doors as we pass. The air feels too thin; every breath feels like it's running on borrowed time.
"What kind of smell was it?" he asks.
"Like… gas. From the stove. Only… more." My words feel stupid, but there's no better way to say it. "It's coming from that room."
We stop outside the storage door.
Even from here, the stink seeps out.
Mr. Takeda's expression changes. His eyes narrow. He covers his nose with his sleeve and unlocks the door, pushing it open just a crack. The hissing sound seeps through, clearer now.
"Shit," he mutters under his breath. That's the first time I've ever heard him swear.
He closes the door again quickly and locks it.
"Stay away from this room," he says to me, voice low but firm. "Don't let anyone near it. I'll call the office. We'll have maintenance shut off the main line and check the whole floor."
"Shouldn't we… evacuate? Or something?" The word feels big in my mouth. Too dramatic. Too late.
He hesitates.
"If we start shouting 'gas leak' in the middle of the day, do you know what happens?" he says. "Panic. Stomping, pushing, tripping. Somebody gets hurt on the stairs. Let me handle it. The valves are in the basement; we'll shut it down from there. Just… go back to class. Don't touch anything."
His hand is already on his phone.
My teeth grind.
I want to grab him and scream that it's not enough. That I've watched the building kill us once already. That "let me handle it" led to his corpse under a beam.
But when I try to form the words, the memory of fingers closing around my heart freezes my tongue.
I settle for glaring instead.
"Yes, sensei," I say.
I turn and walk away, feeling heat crawl up my back even though the hallway is cool.
The rest of the afternoon feels like walking across a cracked sheet of ice.
Mr. Takeda disappears after lunch. Rumors spread in the class: "Gas leak somewhere." "Teacher meeting." "Some idiot set something on fire in the lab."
Windows in the corridor are propped open now. A janitor wheels a big yellow barricade in front of the storage room with a handwritten sign: DO NOT ENTER – MAINTENANCE.
The smell fades to a ghost of itself.
Yuta pokes me in the shoulder. "Hey, hero, was that you? I heard you went to the staff room."
I shrug, trying to look nonchalant. "I just told them it stank. I didn't want to blow up."
He whistles. "Look at you, saving the school. Maybe they'll put your ugly mug on the website."
"Kill me now," I mutter.
He laughs and flops back into his seat.
I should feel better. I did something. I nudged the script. Even if it was just a little.
So why does the clock still make my skin crawl every time I look at it?
2:45 p.m.
3:01 p.m.
Each minute hand twitch feels like a countdown.
The building feels wrong in a way that has nothing to do with gas. Teachers' voices carry weirdly. Footsteps in the hallway echo too long. Every slammed locker door sounds like a distant explosion.
I keep glancing at Miyu.
She goes through the day like a ghost. Taking notes. Answering when called on in a small voice. Packing her books neatly at the end of each period. Her eyes flick to the windows more often than most.
When the group of girls who like to target her "accidentally" knock her pencil case to the floor, she bends to pick it up without a word. They laugh. I stare at my textbook and do nothing, throat tight.
Not this loop, I promise myself. One thing at a time.
The final bell is supposed to ring at 3:10.
When the hands on the clock crawl past 3:05, my heart feels like it's trying to carve an exit through my ribs.
"Man, I can't wait to get out of here," Yuta whispers. "I swear Takeda‑sensei's voice is a sleep spell."
I glance at the ceiling.
No cracks. No smoke. No heat shimmering in the air.
Maybe shutting off the gas really did solve it. Maybe—
The speakers in the ceiling crackle.
Everyone looks up instinctively. We're all expecting the usual tone and the dismissive "Homeroom is now over" announcement. Instead, there's just static for a second.
Then the PA system lets out a sharp, ugly buzz, like a dying insect.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up.
"Technical difficulties?" someone jokes.
The buzz cuts out. The room is too quiet.
Mr. Takeda frowns, glancing at the speaker.
"Maybe they're testing something," he says. "In any case, that's the end of the period. All right, stand, bow—"
"Thank you, sensei," the class drones.
Chairs scrape. Bags rustle. People laugh and talk. The usual end‑of‑day chaos begins.
My eyes flick to the clock.
3:12 p.m.
I can't sit still.
"Hey, you going to the arcade?" Yuta asks, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
"Not today," I say. My voice feels like someone else's. "I… need to ask Tanaka something."
His eyebrows jump. "Oh? Oh? Satoru going for the quiet girl now? I see you, man. I see you."
"Shut up. It's not like that."
"Sure, sure." He grins and winks as he heads for the door. "Don't die of embarrassment."
If only that was my biggest worry.
I take a deep breath and stand.
Miyu is tucking her books into her bag with precise motions, like she's trying to take up as little space as possible.
I walk up to her desk.
My mouth goes dry.
"H‑hey. Tanaka."
She startles, jerking slightly. Big brown eyes look up at me from under her bangs.
"Ishikawa‑kun?" she says. "Um… did you need something?"
I've talked to her maybe five times in two years. "Sorry, your eraser rolled over here," "Can I borrow the textbook," that kind of thing. Nothing that justifies me showing up now.
But I can't say, I watched you die.
"Did you… hear about the gas leak?" I ask instead.
Her fingers pause on the zipper of her bag.
"Gas leak?" she echoes.
"In the science wing. They said something about… safety inspection?" My brain flails. "I just… thought maybe you shouldn't go down that hallway today. Just in case."
Smooth, Satoru. Very smooth.
"Oh." She blinks. "Um. I don't… usually go there after class anyway."
Right. Of course. Why would she? Idiot.
She ducks her head. "B‑but… thank you for worrying."
The corners of her mouth twitch up in a tiny, shy almost‑smile. It hits harder than it should.
Heat crawls up my neck.
"N‑no, I mean, it's not like—I just—" I give up. "Just be careful, okay?"
She nods.
A loud laugh bursts from the doorway. The group of girls is huddled there, watching. One of them whispers something; the others giggle.
"Wow, Ishikawa talking to Tanaka?" one says, not quite quietly enough. "End times really are coming."
Miyu's shoulders hunch. The almost‑smile vanishes like it was never there.
My jaw clenches.
I want to say something. To snap back. To wipe the smirks off their faces. To do… anything.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
"See you," I mumble instead, retreating like a coward.
One thing at a time, I tell myself again.
Stop the fire first. Then you can fix everything else.
The hallway outside is a river of students heading for the stairs. Voices bounce off the walls. Lockers slam. Someone throws a paper ball; someone else yells.
Normal, part of my brain insists. This is what it's always like. You fixed the leak. Go home. Breathe.
Another part remembers heat and smoke and the way the floor dropped.
I hover near the classroom door, watching the flow thin out.
3:15 p.m.
Yuta is long gone, probably halfway to the gate. Teachers start stepping into the hall, calling half‑heartedly for people not to run.
The speakers crackle again.
This time, there's a sound behind the static.
A low, almost inaudible… thump.
My heart stops for a beat.
Nobody else reacts. Conversation continues. Shoes squeak on the floor. A girl laughs.
The thump comes again, a little stronger, pulsing through the walls. Rhythmic. Too slow to be machinery.
Ba-dump.
Then the lights flicker.
For a fraction of a second, the buzzing fluorescent tubes overhead die. The hallway plunges into gray, then brightens again.
People pause, glancing up.
"Eh? Power cut?"
"What was that?"
A teacher frowns. "Everyone, please proceed to the exits calmly. Do not run—"
Ba-dump.
The sound isn't in the walls. It's in my chest.
No—
Not just mine.
The floor itself seems to beat once, like a giant heart is buried under the foundation.
The hairs on my arms stand on end.
I know this rhythm.
It's the last thing I heard before blacking out in the fire. Between the roar and the silence. A slow, heavy heartbeat that wasn't mine.
The air goes still.
Then, from somewhere below—maybe the second floor, maybe the first—there's a sharp, echoing bang.
Not as big as the explosion in my memory. Smaller. Contained. For now.
A wave of hot air rolls up the stairwell.
Someone screams.
"Is that—"
"Fire!"
"Everyone, stay calm!" a teacher yells, voice already cracking. "Don't push! Line up and—"
The crowd surges toward the stairs anyway.
Panic doesn't care about orders.
I'm swept along, shoulder to shoulder with a dozen other bodies. The press of people cuts off my air. Elbows dig into my ribs. Bags smack into my back.
"Don't run!" "Stop pushing!" "Move!"
Alternate reality, same script.
I twist, trying to see over heads. Down the staircase, heat shimmers. Smoke licks up, thin gray fingers feeling their way into the third floor.
The barricade by the storage room. The leak. Shutting off the main valve might have changed where the gas pooled, what room filled first. Maybe it didn't start in our hallway this time.
It doesn't matter.
If enough gas found a spark anywhere…
Ba-dump.
The heartbeat thrums again, this time right behind my ears.
I grab the railing to steady myself.
A hand clamps onto my sleeve.
"Mister! Mister, what's happening?" a first‑year squeaks, eyes huge.
"I—I don't—" My answer dies as a teacher shouts something from below, lost in the chaos.
The crowd bottlenecks at the top of the stairs. Someone stumbles. Another person trips over them. Yelling spikes.
A girl near the edge loses her balance, teeters dangerously over the side.
I lunge, grabbing her bag and yanking her back against the wall.
"Th‑thank you!" she gasps.
My own heart is trying to beat its way out of my throat.
Smoke is thicker now. It crawls up the stairwell like a living shadow.
My eyes sting.
Somewhere down there, something crashes. A deep, heavy sound, like a chunk of the building collapsing.
"Everyone back!" a teacher roars. "The stairs are blocked! Use the other side! Go—"
His words cut off in a cough.
The mass of bodies surges in two directions at once. Half the crowd shoves forward, desperate for the stairs; the other half tries to fight its way back down the hallway.
I'm yanked sideways, slammed into the wall, then thrown forward again.
My feet lose contact with the floor.
For a second, I'm just… floating in a sea of people.
Then the world tilts.
The railing gives a sickening screech. The top section of the stairwell shudders. The boy in front of me grabs for the rail, misses, and vanishes over the edge.
His scream cuts through everything.
My stomach lurches.
I see the gap one moment before I slide into it.
In the space where the stair should be, there is only open air and drifting smoke.
Ba-dump.
The building's heartbeat slams one last time.
I fall.
The impact is fast and not fast enough.
There's the sensation of weightlessness, the blur of beige walls, the flash of frightened faces above. Then pain blossoms all through my side as I hit something hard halfway down—someone else's body? A broken step?—and bounce.
The world spins. My shoulder slams into a railing. Something in my leg gives with a crunch that sends white fire screaming up my spine. I don't hear my own scream; my ears are full of rushing blood and distant roaring.
Then the first floor rushes up to meet me.
There's no dramatic slow motion. No heroic pose. Just a chaotic tangle of limbs and bags and splintered wood and collapsed concrete.
My back hits. The breath is punched out of me. For a second I don't know which way is up. All I know is pain.
Sharp, everywhere, all at once.
My vision shatters into pieces: a cracked ceiling, gray smoke, the flicker of flames somewhere nearby. A face above me, upside‑down and blurred. Someone's mouth moving, soundless.
I try to move my legs.
Nothing happens.
Cold creeps in at the edges of the pain.
Not again, I think wildly. Not like this—
I'd wanted to save someone. Do it right. All I managed was to change the shape of the disaster. New angle, same ending.
Somewhere far away, I hear that other heartbeat. Slow. Amused.
Ba-dump.
My own heart stutters in answer.
My thoughts start slipping.
Mom's voice. Yuta's laugh. Miyu's almost‑smile. The smell of miso in the kitchen. The taste of—
I reach for something familiar—a memory of a snack I used to love, the one I always buy from the corner store, the brightly colored wrapper I've seen a thousand times—
—and there's nothing.
A blank where the taste should be. A hole shaped like something I can't name.
Panic claws at me, weaker than before.
Wait. Wait, what was… what was it called? It was…
The blank spreads. Slow, cold fingers erasing the edges of images in my mind. A trip to the beach as a kid. The face of some elementary school teacher. Details crumble and drift away like ash.
I try to hold onto them. My hands pass through smoke.
My lips move, but no sound comes out.
If there's a next time…
The thought is faint. Worn thin. Like a phrase on a tape played too many times.
The world narrows to a tunnel. At the far end, a dull red light pulses in time with that heavy, alien heartbeat.
Ba-dump.
Everything goes out.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The alarm drills straight into my skull.
I jerk upright, gasping.
My room. Dim curtains. Posters. Morning light.
My chest heaves. My leg doesn't hurt. My back isn't broken. My hands are empty.
The red digits on the clock glare at me.
7:00 a.m.
TUE 17
My heart drops straight through the futon.
Tuesday.
Again.
For a second I just sit there, shaking, listening to my own ragged breathing and the echo of a heartbeat that isn't mine.
Then, faintly, from the kitchen:
"Satoru! You're going to be late again! Get up already!"
Exactly the same.
Except—
For a moment, I reach for the image of my favorite snack.
The name. The taste.
Nothing comes.
The hole in my memory throbs, small but unmistakable.
Something was taken.
Not in the fire.
In the gap between.
I press a hand to my forehead, fingers digging into my skin.
"I… really am going to go insane, aren't I?" I whisper.
The alarm keeps beeping.
Outside my window, Tuesday starts up like a broken record.
And I know, with a sick, cold certainty:
Every time I die, I don't just come back.
I come back a little less.