Haruka stayed in the washroom.
He stared at the mirror.
His forehead was still bleeding.
The headband Yume gave him was stained, so he took it off and placed it beside the sink.
"...Great."
He rubbed his forehead with his hand.
It hurt.
Wrath's Artwork.
He had used it before.
He knew what it did.
So he tried.
Nothing.
Haruka frowned.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
"Come on."
He rubbed his forehead again, harder this time.
A faint red glow appeared around his hand.
Then disappeared.
"Seriously, dude... We playing hide n seek with some tsundere powers now?"
He tried again.
Nothing.
Haruka stared at his hand.
"I know how this works."
Another attempt.
The glow appeared.
Flickered.
Stopped.
He clicked his tongue.
"Why?"
He pressed his hand against his forehead again.
He wasn't trying to force it anymore.
He simply tried.
Again.
And again.
Eventually, the red glow returned.
This time, it stayed.
The Artwork began working.
Slowly.
The damage started reverting.
The pain faded.
Haruka kept his hand there until he was sure it had worked.
He moved his hand away.
Touched his forehead.
Better.
"Finally."
He picked up the headband.
For a moment, he looked at it.
Then he put it back on.
"Can't lose this."
He grabbed his notebook.
And left.
Going out of the washroom and walking back to Room A-0174.
Haruka sat on the floor.
His notebook was open in front of him.
Three ciphers.
Two solved.
One remaining.
He stared at Cipher 01 again.
HELLO DEAR. PLEASE CHECK UP YOUR LOVED ONES.
He read the next line.
THEY MIGHT BE DEPRESSED. WHO KNOWS WHEN THEY MIGHT BLEED.
His expression became serious.
Sakura.
Yume.
Saito.
Kenjiro.
Jack.
Marie.
Marcus.
Aurel.
Nayoki.
Fuyuki.
He had already thought about all of them.
Why tell him to check on them?
Was it a warning?
A threat?
Or was someone simply messing with him?
But there again who kills to write ciphers and mess with smn....
He tapped the paper.
"Who wrote this?"
Nothing.
"Was it for me?"
Nothing.
"Why Caesar?"
Nothing.
"Why blood?"
Nothing.
He looked at the notebook.
"Why the fourth floor?"
"Now that I remember, 4rth barely got any lights and got a lot of dead camera zones."
His fingers stopped.
"And why tell me to check on people I love?"
He stared at the words.
"...Why me?"
He hated that question.
Because every answer he came up with led to another question.
He moved to Cipher 02.
The numbers were still there.
He had decoded them already.
IN THE DARKNESS AND EMPTINESS OF VOID, LIVES OUR KING, OH BELOVED.
Haruka stared at the word.
VOID.
Then—
KING.
Then—
BELOVED.
He wrote them separately.
"Void…"
He scratched his head.
"The hell does that even mean?"
He looked at the word OUR.
That bothered him more.
Not the King.
Our King.
Someone was talking about the King like they belonged to him.
Haruka leaned back.
"The fact that son of a bitch wrote 'our' annoys the fuck out of me. "
"People these days be saying anything."
He looked back at the cipher.
Then the next sentence.
PEACE, LOVE AND BLOOD IS WHAT YOU SHALL BRING.
Peace.
Love.
Blood.
Those three words didn't belong together.
At least, they shouldn't.
He wrote them down.
Then circled them.
Something was wrong.
He just didn't know what.
Haruka didn't know what the word Void actually meant.
Not yet.
To him, it was just another word from a strange cipher.
But the Void was not simply darkness.
It was not an empty room.
It was not a place.
It was nothingness.
The absence of everything.
And yet—
it could give someone everything.
That was the contradiction.
The Void could grant.
The Void could take.
The Void could exist without truly existing.
But there was one problem.
It had no proper physical vessel in the world.
It needed one.
A living vessel.
Something capable of carrying its existence into the physical world.
And the process required something far more complicated than simply choosing a body.
It required emotion.
The closest living treasure of the player... Player of the main game that was started by the council leader.
Someone whose death could break them.
So that the void can take over the 2nd alive loved ones.
Not ordinary sadness.
Not ordinary grief.
Something deeper.
Hatred.
Rage.
Despair.
A level of emotion strong enough to open the way.
The closer the player was pushed toward the edge—
the closer the Void came to finding its vessel.
And someone had already been sent to begin that process.
But the person carrying out the process didn't know everything.
They didn't need to.
They only needed to follow.
The King.
That was what the followers called the Void.
A ruler without a kingdom.
A King without a body.
Its followers believed in it.
Served it.
And one of them was a blind follower.
Someone who didn't question orders.
Someone who didn't need to know the reason.
Only the objective.
Find the sacrifice.
Continue.
Repeat.
The government had made sure that person received very little information.
No unnecessary details.
No complete explanation.
Nothing that could make them question the purpose.
Because ignorance made obedience easier.
And the fourth floor had something useful.
Shadows.
Lots of them.
It had the least lighting in the academy.
Dark corners.
Empty hallways.
Places where something could disappear without being noticed.
The perfect hunting ground.
The government didn't need the killer to understand the entire plan.
They only needed the killer to keep searching.
Searching for the closest person.
Searching for the sacrifice.
Searching for the emotion that would follow.
Haruka knew none of this.
He was still sitting on his floor.
Still trying to solve Cipher 03.
He looked at the strange body-part words.
"Second letters…"
He wrote them down.
One by one.
He stopped.
"Wait."
He checked again.
A message.
Then another layer.
Caesar.
Haruka stared at it.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He wrote the ciphertext down.
He didn't decode it yet.
He was tired.
Thirty minutes had already become more than an hour.
He dropped his pen.
"Tomorrow."
He looked at the notebook.
"I'll deal with you tomorrow."
He leaned against the bed.
Silence.
For once, there were no footsteps.
No strange noises.
No messages.
Nothing.
He liked that.
Maybe too much.
Haruka looked around his room.
His eyes landed on the headband.
Yume's headband.
He touched it.
"...I should probably talk to her."
He paused.
"Tomorrow."
Again.
Tomorrow.
That word had become dangerously comfortable.
Slothful.
There was another problem.
The government wasn't the only one watching.
The Void possessed an Artwork.
The Great Eye.
An Artwork capable of seeing.
Not just looking.
Seeing.
The academy.
The students.
Their movements.
Their actions.
Their secrets.
The Great Eye could observe what ordinary people couldn't.
The government had made a contract involving it.
They wanted information.
They wanted to watch the students.
They wanted to know who was becoming dangerous.
And eventually—
they noticed Haruka.
Something about him had changed.
His behavior.
His decisions.
His way of looking at people.
His increasing willingness to cross lines.
The government believed he was moving toward something dangerous.
So they rushed.
They needed the sacrifices.
They needed the process to begin.
They couldn't afford to wait until Haruka became something they could no longer control.
And so the pieces were moved.
Quietly.
One after another.
Haruka picked up his notebook again.
He wrote:
KING = NOTHING BUT A PIECE OF CRAP?
He stared at it.
Then crossed it out.
He didn't know.
He couldn't know.
Not yet.
The King was still just a word.
A strange word from a strange cipher.
Nothing more.
At least—
that's what he thought.
Beyond the academy existed places that the players(Of main game started by council leader and aide games started by sertox or vertox) weren't supposed to know about.
One of them was the Wishing Realm.
A realm where wishes could become reality.
But wishes were never free.
Its ruler was known as the Winged Angel.
Or more specifically—
the current 98th Winged Angel.
The title wasn't inherited.
It was passed from vessel to vessel.
Ninety-eight vessels had existed.
The current one had once been an ordinary person.
A wisher.
Someone who entered the Wishing Realm with a simple desire.
To have the love of his life.
That was all he wanted.
But the 97th Winged Angel wanted freedom.
So the previous vessel spoke to him.
Begged him.
Manipulated him.
Free my soul.
Let me have my wish.
When someone else becomes the Winged Angel, you'll be free too.
Guilt was enough.
The wisher accepted.
He became the 98th.
And only afterward did he understand what he had agreed to.
The Winged Angel was not simply a pair of wings.
It needed a vessel.
The wings attached themselves to the vessel's body.
And once the process was complete, the consciousness of the vessel was transferred into the wings.
The vessel remained trapped.
The pain didn't end.
And time in the Wishing Realm was different.
One million years there—
could pass in roughly four seconds on Earth.
Four seconds.
That was all.
Outside, barely a moment.
Inside, an eternity.
The vessel would continue granting wishes until another vessel arrived.
Only then could the previous one be free.
And there was another rule.
Main player's (Player chosen by council leader) couldn't make wishes.
Side players (player chosen by other members of council) couldn't either.
Which meant the Winged Angel couldn't simply walk into their story and solve everything.
Not yet.
That realm had its own rules.
Its own suffering.
Its own cycle.
Haruka knew absolutely nothing about the Wishing Realm.
He didn't know about the Winged Angel.
He didn't know about the Void.
He didn't know about the Great Eye.
He didn't know about the government contract.
And he vary knew about the council. The root of his problem. Poor soul.
And he definitely didn't know who was carrying out the sacrifices.
All he knew was that someone had sent him three ciphers.
And whoever sent them knew too much.
Haruka looked at his list again.
Sakura.
Yume.
Saito.
He stopped at Saito's name.
Then Yume's.
Then Sakura's.
He thought about how easily any of them could disappear.
His fingers tightened around the pen.
"No."
He crossed something out.
He didn't even know what he had written.
He just didn't want to see it.
Outside Room A-0174, the hallway remained quiet.
Too quiet.
A shadow stretched across the floor.
Then disappeared.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing anyone would notice.
The person inside that shadow continued searching.
Not for Haruka.
Not directly.
For someone else.
Someone important.
Someone close.
Someone whose absence would hurt enough.
The King had given an order.
And the follower would obey.
Haruka finally stood.
He stretched his arms.
"My brain is dead."
He put the notebook on his desk.
The third cipher remained unsolved.
He looked at it one last time.
"The tattered king…"
He remembered the words from the cipher.
Something about the King.
Something about silent skies.
Something about hiding.
Something about mortal sleep.
He didn't understand any of it.
But he knew one thing.
These weren't random messages.
Someone wanted him to find something.
Or someone.
Haruka picked up the notebook.
"Fine."
He put it away.
"Tomorrow."
He walked toward his bed.
Then stopped.
He looked back at the notebook.
"Actually…"
He walked back.
Opened it.
And wrote one final sentence.
WHO IS THE KING?
He stared at it.
Then shut the notebook.
Somewhere beyond the knowledge of the player's, the Void remained.
Nothing.
Waiting.
Watching.
The Great Eye continued to see.
The government continued to move its pieces.
The Winged Angel continued to suffer through an eternity that lasted only seconds outside.
And the King's follower continued searching through the shadows.
Nobody had told Haruka the truth.
Not yet.
He didn't know what the Void wanted.
He didn't know why the people around him were being watched.
He didn't know that the government had already begun moving against him.
He didn't know that someone was searching for the person closest to him.
He didn't know that the ciphers were only the beginning.
And most importantly—
he didn't know that the word King was not a metaphor.
It was a name.
A title.
A warning.
And eventually—
he would learn why.
But not tonight. The whole day he deciphered ciphers. Did training and class with Saito and Yume. These 3 came back to room their room.
Tonight, Haruka simply lay down.
The academy became quiet.
The lights outside slowly disappeared one by one.
And somewhere on the fourth floor—
a shadow moved.
Haruka slept.
The King waited.
And the game continued.