When Sayori opened the door to the dorm room, what greeted her wasn't the heavy, mysterious silence she was used to—it was just emptiness.
Her eyes instinctively drifted to Kunon's desk. Books closed, laptop bag gone—everything was even tidier than it should have been. It was past nine in the evening. Sayori dropped her bag on her desk and hung her uniform jacket neatly on its hanger. "He said he'd be late," she muttered to herself. But she hadn't expected him to be this late.
The air in the room felt colder when someone was missing. Sayori brushed the feeling aside and went into the bathroom. As she tried to wash off the day's fatigue under the hot water, her mind kept slipping back to the note on Akane's card. Time is running out. For whom? For Kunon, or for something else they didn't know about?
By the time she stepped out of the bathroom, it was eleven. Sayori put on her pajamas and sat on her bed, frozen with her phone in her hand. For a second—actually, for more than a minute—she searched for Kunon's name in her contacts. Then she faced the harsh reality: she didn't even have her roommate's phone number. Even the most basic connection provided by the modern world hadn't been established between them.
"Why do I even care?" she said out loud. "It's none of my business. He's just a roommate."
Twelve o'clock. Twelve-thirty. One.
Sayori tossed and turned in bed. She strained her ears at every footstep coming from the corridor, waiting for the sound of the lock turning. As time ticked on, her curiosity slowly began to give way to an uncontrollable anger. Sayori was someone who planned her life down to the minute. Now, she was sacrificing her sleep because she didn't know where a boy she barely knew was. This was a major security breach in her disciplined world.
"This is stupid," she hissed, pulling the duvet over her head. "If he doesn't come, he doesn't come."
When exhaustion finally won out over anger, Sayori felt her consciousness slip away.
"Sayori. Wake up."
The voice was very close. Sayori opened her eyes as if being pulled up from a deep well. The first thing she saw was Kunon's silhouette standing over her. The room was lit by the pale, grey light of morning.
For a moment, Sayori couldn't remember where she was or why her whole body felt so stiff. Then the previous night came rushing back. She bolted upright in bed, her hair messier than usual.
"You... When did you get back?" she asked, her voice raspy from sleep.
Kunon was standing at his desk in his school uniform. He looked fresh and sharp, as if he hadn't been out all night. "A few hours ago," he said simply.
"Where were you?" The authoritative ring in Sayori's voice was back, though it cracked slightly from lack of sleep. "What time did you get in? You should have let me know."
Kunon didn't even look at her. He zipped up his bag. "I'm here now. It's none of your business, Sayori. It was long past your bedtime; you should have been asleep."
"I was trying to sleep!" Sayori lunged out of bed. "As a responsible roommate, I needed to know where you were. If something happened to you, who would I call? The Principal? Or Akane?"
Kunon took a step toward the door and stopped. He turned his head slightly; his eyes held that familiar, wall-building coldness. "Don't ask unnecessary questions. Just get ready. You're running late."
When the door clicked shut behind him, Sayori stood there in shock. Normally, Sayori was never late. Her morning routine ran like a Swiss watch: thirty minutes of exercise, ten minutes of showering, breakfast, and pre-class prep. But looking in the mirror now, she saw the faint dark circles under her eyes and her shattered order. Kunon had infiltrated her perfect system and turned everything upside down.
During Literature, the first class of the day, Sayori's head kept nodding forward. While the teacher analyzed poetry, words blurred in Sayori's mind, and the scars on Kunon's shoulders seemed to seep between the lines.
"Sayori! Hey, are you awake?"
Sakura's whisper pulled Sayori out of her hazy daydream. It was lunch break. Sakura and Kyoko were hovering over her as the classroom emptied.
"You dozed off three times during class," Kyoko said, closing her notebook. "That's a world record for you. Are you sick, or did you secretly meet someone after karaoke last night?"
Sakura jumped in immediately. "Is it... about Kunon? Sayori, you have panda eyes!"
Sayori took a deep breath and packed her bag. "He didn't come back last night. Or he came back very late. I waited for him... I mean, to lock the door and stuff, you know. And when I asked where he was, he snapped at me. Like I'm the guilty one!"
Once they sat down at a table in the cafeteria, Sakura waved a french fry in the air. "I bet that guy is definitely the leader of a crime syndicate. He runs the city at night and pretends to be a high school student in the morning. And Akane is his sidekick!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Sakura," Kyoko said, studying Sayori's tired face. "But the Akane thing is seriously weird. Did you see her come to the classroom again today?"
Sayori looked out the window toward the courtyard. Kunon was standing alone in the shade of a tree. Akane approached him with her usual confident stride. Their conversation looked very serious. Akane was showing him a file, and Kunon was examining it intently.
"There they go again," Sayori murmured.
The passive anger born from sleep deprivation was replaced by a sharp determination. Sayori never let anyone take control of her life—especially not a mysterious roommate and the principal's daughter. This uncertainty had begun to sabotage her academic and personal life.
"Girls," Sayori said, her eyes fixed on the duo in the courtyard. Her voice no longer sounded tired.
Sakura and Kyoko turned to her. This tone of Sayori's was the eerie one she usually used right before setting a strategy for an exam.
"I have a plan," Sayori said. "We're going to find out what Kunon isn't telling us and what Akane is hiding, using our own methods."
Kyoko smirked. "Observation and analysis?"
"More than that," Sayori said. "Just watching isn't enough anymore. If time is running out, we need to find out why. Sakura, I'm going to need your social espionage skills."
Sakura clapped her hands in excitement. "Finally! Does my spy mission begin?"
As Sayori watched the receding shadows of Akane and Kunon in the courtyard, she whispered to herself: "Let's see whose turn it is to adapt now, Kunon."