Chapter 23 — Where's Kenichi
The fifth-floor corridor was empty. The stairwell was at the east end — forty meters away, the concrete shaft descending through all five floors of Building 1. He could hear sounds from below — footsteps, multiple sets, moving rapidly through the lower floors. Kenichi and Ren climbing. The wolf following.
Hayato descended.
He took the stairs two at a time — fast, not silent, the urgency overriding the discipline of the last sixteen hours. His shoes struck concrete, the sound sharp and rhythmic. Fourth floor. Third floor. He stopped at the third-floor landing.
Below — visible through the stairwell's open center — movement. Kenichi was on the second-floor landing, climbing toward the third floor. His face was red. His glasses sat crooked on his nose. His breathing was audible — great, heaving gasps, the lungs of a sixty-year-old man who had been running up stairs demanding more oxygen than his cardiovascular system could deliver.
Ren was behind him. One flight down. Climbing with the controlled, hitching stride of someone whose left leg was not working correctly. His face was composed — the same detached expression, the same controlled affect — but sweat had plastered his hair to his forehead and his jaw was locked with the particular tension of someone managing significant pain.
And below Ren — two flights down, visible as a flash of gray fur through the gap between floors — the wolf.
Climbing. Mechanical. Even. The same pace on stairs as on flat ground, each step identical, the costume's padded feet landing on concrete with a soft, metronomic *thud thud thud*. The knife was in its hand. The glass eyes stared upward.
"Kenichi!" Hayato whispered from the third-floor landing. His voice carried down the stairwell — a sharp, urgent hiss that bounced off concrete walls.
Kenichi's head snapped up. His eyes found Hayato's face.
"This way. Third floor."
Kenichi climbed the last flight. Reached the landing. Hayato grabbed his arm — the professor's bicep thin and hard beneath the fabric of his shirt — and pulled him into the third-floor corridor.
"Ren!" Hayato called down.
Ren was still climbing. He reached the second-floor landing, turned, began the flight to the third. His left leg buckled on the fourth step — the knee giving way, the weight transferring suddenly to his right leg, his hand shooting out to catch the railing. He recovered. Continued climbing.
The wolf was one flight below him.
Hayato could see it clearly now — the full-body costume, the gray fur, the oversized head with its glass eyes and its permanent grin. It climbed the stairs with the same measured pace, never accelerating, never slowing. The knife in its right hand caught the light from the stairwell's overhead panels — a flat, silver line that swung gently with each step.
Ren reached the third-floor landing.
The wolf reached the second-floor landing.
Hayato pulled Ren through the doorway and into the corridor. "Left. Move left. Find a room."
They moved. The three of them — Hayato in front, Kenichi in the middle, Ren behind — moved down the third-floor corridor at the fastest pace Ren's damaged leg would allow. Doors on both sides. Classrooms. The first one — 3-A — Hayato tried the handle. Locked. The second — 3-B — locked. The third — a faculty workroom — unlocked. He pushed through.
The room was large. Tables arranged in a U-shape, chairs pushed in around the perimeter, a whiteboard on the far wall. A secondary door on the right wall — connecting to the adjacent room, an internal passage between workspaces.
Kenichi entered. Ren entered.
Hayato closed the door. There was no lock.
He looked around the room. Chairs — lightweight, plastic, useless as barricades. Tables — heavy, solid wood surfaces on metal frames. He grabbed the nearest table and dragged it toward the door. The legs screeched against the tile — a sound that in any other context would have been merely unpleasant but that in this context felt like a siren.
Takeshi wasn't here to help. The table was heavy. Hayato's arms strained. Kenichi appeared beside him — the professor, thin and old and gasping, putting his hands on the table's edge and *pushing* with whatever strength his body had left. The table moved. Slid against the door. The edge caught the door frame and wedged itself into the gap between door and floor.
"The connecting door," Hayato said.
Ren was already there. He'd crossed the room, found the secondary door, opened it. Beyond — another workroom, identical in layout, with its own door to the corridor. An escape route.
"If it comes through here, we go through there," Hayato said.
They waited.
The wolf's footsteps were in the corridor. That soft, mechanical *thud thud thud*, approaching from the stairwell, moving west along the third-floor corridor. The same direction they'd taken. The wolf had seen them enter the corridor. It knew the direction of travel. It would check every door until it found the one that opened.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
A pause. The sound of a door handle being tried. A locked door. The handle released.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
Another pause. Another handle. Another locked door.
*Thud. Thud.*
Silence.
The handle of their door turned.
It caught against the barricade — the table's edge wedged against the frame, the weight of the furniture preventing the door from swinging inward. The handle turned fully, released, turned again. Pushed. The door moved half a centimeter and stopped. The table held.
A pause.
Then — impact. A shoulder hitting the door. The entire frame shuddered. The table shifted — two centimeters backward, the legs scraping tile. Hayato pressed his body against the table, adding his weight to the barricade. Kenichi did the same.
Another impact. Harder. The door cracked — a hairline fracture running diagonally across the wood panel, the sound of stressed material beginning to fail. The table shifted again.
"Go," Hayato said. "Through the connecting door. Go."
Kenichi moved. He crossed the room and entered the connecting passage, disappearing into the adjacent workroom. Ren followed — his limp pronounced, each step a negotiation between speed and pain.
A third impact. The table slid. The door opened six inches. Through the gap — gray fur. A glass eye. The fixed grin.
Hayato threw his weight against the table one last time, buying half a second, then turned and ran. Through the connecting door. Into the adjacent room. Ren was at the corridor door — the exit on the other side, the one the wolf hadn't tried — pulling it open.
They spilled into the corridor. Ren went right — toward the stairwell, toward the floors above. Kenichi went left — away from the stairwell, deeper into the corridor's western wing.
Hayato went right. Followed Ren.
Behind them — the sound of the barricade failing completely. The table screeching across tile. The door slamming open against the wall. And then the footsteps — *thud thud thud* — the wolf entering the workroom, crossing it, passing through the connecting door, emerging into the adjacent room.
It would have to make a choice. Right or left. It couldn't hear — it couldn't track by sound. It would go through the door to the corridor, and it would see the corridor extending in both directions, and it would choose one.
Hayato didn't look back. He reached the stairwell. Ren was already climbing — fourth floor, pulling himself upward on the railing, his left leg trailing behind him. Hayato followed.
They reached the fourth floor. Then the fifth.
The fifth-floor corridor. Sachiko's door — the faculty office where she was hidden — was ahead. Hayato ran to it. Tried the handle. Locked. He knocked — two rapid knocks.
The lock turned. The door opened. Sachiko's face appeared — tense, her eyes moving from Hayato to Ren behind him.
Ren pushed past both of them and entered the room. He crossed to the far wall and collapsed against it — sliding down to the floor, his left leg extended in front of him, his hands pressing against the knee. His face, for the first time in Hayato's memory, showed something other than detachment. Pain. Pure, unfiltered, biological pain that his composure couldn't mask.
Hayato entered. Sachiko closed the door. Locked it.
"Where's Kenichi?" she asked.
The question hit Hayato's chest like a fist.
*Kenichi went left. I went right. He went deeper into the third-floor corridor — the western wing, away from the stairwell. The wolf came through the connecting door and had to choose: right or left.*
*Which direction did it go?*
*I don't know.*
He moved to the window. Looked down at the campus. The courtyard was empty. The pathways were empty. Building 1's third-floor windows stared back at him — glass panels, opaque with reflected light, revealing nothing of the interior.
Minutes passed.
One. Two. Three.
At **8:16:00**, his bracelet vibrated.
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