Akira smiled faintly and tucked the note into his drawer. He didn't know if she was real, or a ghost, or a fragment of his own lonely heart. But he decided that from now on, he would be kinder. To strangers. To classmates. To the girl who sat alone in the back of the classroom, drawing hearts in the margins of her notebook.
She wanted to play.
"You know, Akira-kun," she whispered from the other side of a locked door, her voice dripping with saccharine sweetness, "I just wanted to be your number one. Your only one. But you kept talking to other people. Laughing with them. Don't you know? Friends are just enemies who haven't betrayed you yet." Saiko no sutoka
He had found notes left behind by previous "players." Fragmented diaries of boys and girls who had been dragged into this twisted reality. Each one ended the same way: "She always finds you." Akira smiled faintly and tucked the note into his drawer
Akira woke up in his own bed, drenched in sweat, the morning light warm on his face. For a moment, he thought it had all been a dream. Then he looked at his nightstand. To strangers