The air in River Valley High the next morning wasn't just heavy; it was saturated. The usual kinetic energy of slamming lockers and shouted greetings was dampened, replaced by a low-frequency hum of whispers that seemed to vibrate in the bones. They clung to the linoleum, snaked around corners, and wrapped cold tendrils around my ankles as I walked. Eyes, sharp and evaluative, tracked my progress like predators scenting weakness.
"There he is… look at the face." A hissed comment near the vending machines, punctuated by nudges. "Purple and yellow… Sato really marked him."
"Saw the clip. Hit the dirt like a sack of rice." A suppressed snicker.
"Kaito's crew says he runs the halls now. Tanaka's living proof."
I kept my gaze welded to the scuffed floor, the fluorescent lights suddenly clinical, exposing. I yanked my blazer sleeve lower, the rough wool grating against the swollen ridge on my forearm – Kaito's hidden signature. The fabric felt like a lead weight. Inside Classroom 2-B, the atmosphere crackled. Glances flickered my way – fleeting pity, lingering morbid fascination, the oppressive weight of being yesterday's spectacle. Ren slid into the adjacent desk with a stifled grunt, moving stiffly. The pallor had receded, replaced by a hard-set jaw and shadows beneath his eyes that spoke of pain poorly concealed.
"Rumor mill's hit warp speed," he muttered, voice low and gravelly, his eyes scanning the room like a perimeter guard. "Sato's fan club's pushing the 'undisputed champ' angle hard. Sheep are baa-ing right along."
"Let them," I rasped, forcing concentration onto opening my notebook. My knuckles were bruised too, a stark contrast to the unnerving smoothness I thought I felt beneath the bruise on my cheek. The pen felt alien. "Static."
Ren shot me a sidelong glance. "Static that amplifies. Static that paints targets on backs."
Second period. The low murmur curdled, thickening into something viscous and dark. The focus shifted. A name surfaced, carried on hushed, urgent breaths laced with dread: Ayato.
*"Miyazaki? 2-C? Gone. Poof."*
"Not gone. Taken. By the Ratio."
"Heard his family yanked him last night. Emergency transfer."
*"Bull. My friend's sister works admin. Saw the system flag. Not a transfer code. PH-1. Phenomenon Hold."*
Ayato Miyazaki. Quiet intensity. Eyes perpetually fixed on some intricate internal schematic, usually manifesting as breathtaking mecha sketches in his notebook margins. His desk, two rows back by the sunlit window, sat like a raw wound in the classroom. A void. A silent, screaming indictment of the normalcy the teachers feigned.
The whispers metastasized during break, swirling in toxic eddies near the lockers.
"My cousin shares his Saturday juku," a 2-A girl confided, voice trembling, eyes wide. "He ghosted Friday. No call. Then yesterday… his mother came. To clear his locker. She looked… hollowed out. Like her soul got vacuumed. Packing his sketchbooks, trying not to sob."
"So it's confirmed?" a boy demanded, voice tight with revolted fascination. "He… Emerged? Just collapsed and… changed?"
"That's the Pattern," another girl snapped, tone brittle as old glass. "District stats dip, Ratio kicks in. Random. Brutal. They say our zone's numbers are spiking. It's Russian roulette."
I leaned against the cold locker metal, feigning a search for a phantom book. Ren stood sentinel, jaw clenched.
"It's not airborne, geniuses," Ren growled, low but carrying, locking eyes with the gossiping group. "It's coded. In the damn DNA. Activated by… hell, nobody knows what. But it doesn't hopscotch between people."
A lanky boy with a perpetual sneer turned. "Whatever, Nakamura. Freak show is freak show. Stress? Trauma?" His gaze slid pointedly to my bruised face, then lingered on Ayato's void. "Maybe getting stomped triggers it. Wouldn't wanna be collateral damage."
The implication – contagion by proximity – was an ice pick to the spine. Cold deeper than Kaito's fists seeped into my marrow. The real poison wasn't the Phenomenon; it was the fear, mutating into ignorance and cruelty. Decades of science – genetic, dormant, non-communicable, and triggered by unknown environmental /biochemical factors leading to the inevitable, terrifying sickness – crumbled before primal terror.
"I heard the sickness hits like a truck," a first-year whispered nearby, pale. "Fever that cooks your brain. Then… collapse. They haul you off wrapped in this weird… film. Like a cocoon. For weeks."
"Someone in Saitama – their brother went in a guy, came out after three weeks… different. Voice, face, the works. Old soccer pics look like a stranger."
"My dad knows a Health Ministry guy," another boasted, leaning in. "Says they're tracking clusters. Maybe linked to specific water. Super hush-hush."
"My grandma called," a girl murmured, genuine terror in her eyes. "Said if anyone even looks peaky, steer clear. Said the sickness phase might be… catching something else, even if the Emergence isn't."
The cafeteria was a pressure cooker nearing critical. The din felt forced, conversations clipped, eyes darting like startled birds. We huddled at our window table, the weak autumn sun offering no warmth. Sora pushed her karaage around, finally leaning in, voice a thread over the clatter.
"Haruki-kun…" She faltered, chewing her lip. "Hypothetically… what would you do? If… if you got sick? Like that sick? If the docs said… it was starting?"
The question landed like a lead weight. Riku froze mid-bite. Ren's gaze snapped to mine, sharp, protective.
"Do?" I echoed, voice distant. "About the sickness?"
"You know," Sora pressed, eyes wide with horrified fascination and empathetic dread. "If you woke up burning, aching everywhere… and you knew. Knew it wasn't flu. Knew it meant… weeks in some hospital cocoon… and coming out… her. Girl-Haruki."
The image was visceral, suffocating. Waking shivering yet burning, muscles screaming, a deep, wrong ache in the bones. The dawning horror as tests confirm. The isolation. The loss of control as sedation takes hold, the cocoon enveloping… the terrifying void within it. Waking to a foreign body, an alien voice, a reflection that steals your name. The sheer, gut-wrenching erasure.
"I…" Tongue thick, useless. "Run. Before the collapse. Vanish. Mountains. Off-grid. Never let them take me." The words tasted like betrayal and ash. Die as me, not what emerges.
Ren slammed his palm flat, trays rattling. "No one sees it coming, Sora!" Voice raw, frayed. "No warning label! No 'Emergence Imminent' sign! It's a fucking ambush! You get sick – deathly sick – and by the time they know, running's a joke. You're caged. Your body becomes a prison, then a… chrysalis for something else."
"Yeah," Riku added, bravado stripped, leaving hollow gravity. "Imagine. One day, you're you. Ball games, cramming, crushing. Next… fever spiking. Collapsing in the hall. Waking weeks later wrapped in that… gunk, feeling… hollow. Then they peel it off, and you see her in the mirror. Your life… friends… name… gone. Poof." He shivered.
Sora wrapped her arms tight, eyes glistening. "I think… I'd beg my parents to… let me go. Before the cocoon. I couldn't… face coming out different. Losing everything."
Silence. The hypothetical was a chasm beneath my feet. Ayato's empty desk wasn't tragedy; it was a roadmap to hell. The persistent chill in my bones, the strange tenderness beneath the bruise, the unnerving smoothness of my skin… were they stress? Or the first, insidious whispers of the sickness? The tremors before the collapse? The question screamed: Is it starting? Am I next?
The Festival posters screamed obscenely.
AUDITIONS TOMORROW!
GHOSTS OF THE PAST AWAIT!
Forced cheer veneered over pervasive dread. Fun felt like dancing on graves. A collective, terrified breath held, waiting for the next collapse, the next void.
Walking back, feet dragged me past 2-C. Ayato Miyazaki's desk. Sunlight streamed onto vacancy, illuminating dust motes like lost souls. The phantom scent of graphite lingered. My hand rose unconsciously to my chest, where the strange tenderness pulsed faintly.
What did he feel when the fever hit? Did he know? Was he scared?
Is Ayato screaming inside that cocoon? Or is she… peacefully asleep, becoming?
*Or just… erased? A PH-1 code, a ghost story haunting River Valley's halls?*
I tore my gaze away, the coldness within expanding into a vast, dark void. Each step back to class carried the crushing weight: Ayato's empty desk wasn't just his end. It was a harbinger. The whispers following me weren't about a fight or a bruise. They were the countdown, the school wondering who would be next to sicken, collapse, vanish into the Ratio's silent cocoon.