CHAPTER TWO: The Girl with the Red Ribbon
The air was colder than it should have been.
Reina Kasai rubbed her arms as she stood in the middle of what used to be the Kyōgen subway station, now swallowed by an impossible fog that refused to move. The platform, normally filled with late-night commuters and fluorescent hum, was empty. Silent.
She glanced at the cracked screen of her phone. The time blinked 00:00, frozen like a dead heartbeat.
Reina adjusted the red ribbon in her hair—something she did when she was nervous. It was an old habit, something her sister used to tease her about. She hadn't seen her sister in over three years.
The last thing she remembered was boarding the train at 1:22 a.m., headphones in, half-asleep. Then... darkness. A cold, heavy kind. Now, she stood in the middle of a station that looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Dust covered the benches. Posters were faded into bleached ghosts. Vending machines buzzed faintly, but none of them worked. And on the wall, scrawled in jagged black letters:
"ROUND 1 BEGINS IN 10 MINUTES."
She wasn't alone.
Five others had appeared after the darkness—each of them strangers, equally confused, equally scared. A middle-aged salaryman with trembling hands. A girl who looked like she was barely in high school. Two university students whispering to each other. And one man who hadn't said a word—just stood in the corner with a crooked smile, watching.
They were gathered near the platform edge, arguing.
"This is a prank," the salaryman said, pacing. "A sick joke. Some virtual reality thing. Maybe we were drugged?"
Reina spoke softly. "Do you remember getting on the train?"
They all paused.
Each of them remembered something normal. Then a flicker. Then this.
The youngest girl—Mayu, she said her name was—pointed toward the far end of the station. "There's… something there."
Reina turned.
A door had appeared. A rusted, iron thing that hadn't been there a moment ago. Above it, a glowing red symbol pulsed like a heartbeat: ▶ ROUND 1:
OBJECTIVE : COLLECT ALL RED KEYS.SURVIVE FOR TEN MINUTES.DO NOT OPEN ROOM FIVE.
"Is this… a game?" one of the university students whispered.
"No," Reina said quietly, almost to herself. "It's worse."
As the others began to argue again, she stepped closer to the door. She didn't know why, but something in her blood hummed—a sense of déjà vu, like she'd dreamed this place before.
And somewhere far off—outside this strange realm, though she couldn't know it yet—another door had appeared inside a convenience store. And behind it, Noah Imai was about to walk through.