"Seiko? Seiko? Where are you?? Seiko!"
Naomi had been walking around, agitatedly calling for Seiko for the past ten minutes.
She had woken up sprawled out on the floor. When she had awoken, she didn't recognize her surroundings - she saw the bottom view of several rows of desks. Similarly, she didn't recognize the ominous sound echoing through the air as if deliberately attempting to play a trick on her. She had eventually got up and saw the piano in the far corner of the room. Then she noticed there was no one physically sitting in front of the piano playing it.
That was enough to set off alarm bells - her legs promptly carried her out of the room at superhuman speed and she had been wandering around ever sense.
This was the music room, which, coincidentally, was located on the first floor of the second wing. Her strategy might actually work.
............................
Satoshi and Seiko were standing outside, on the covered veranda between the first and second wings of the school. The sound of the rain pouring down around them, while cold, felt somewhat relaxing, and the cool air was refreshing compared to the stillness of the air inside the school. They had decided to stop and relax for a bit.. Satoshi took some time to think.
"You know, I was reading about this earlier. This hallway should lead to the second wing of the school."
"... Huh? This school has a second wing?"
"Yeah. I was reading about it; it looks like it just appears and disappears on a whim. Now that I think about it, the hallway we came from fits pretty nicely, don't you think?"
"Yeah, it does, doesn't it ..."
Seiko's voice trailed off as she stared into the forest surrounding the school, which, in the darkness, appeared as hardly anything more than an ominous sea of black. She looked like she was lost in thought. It appeared she was extremely anxious and worried, but with a hint of something else mixed in - while it was difficult for Satoshi to place the exact look on her face, he kind of sort of thought she looked somewhat ... jealous?
"Hey ... Satoshi ..."
"... Will I ever be able to see Naomi again?"
"..."
"... I want to be able to smile and laugh with everyone again. I want to keep enjoying life with everyone. I don't want to die. I don't want anyone else to die! But most importantly ..."
She suddenly stopped talking. Whatever this was, she decided it wasn't worth saying out loud. Satoshi decided not to press the issue any further. A few minutes later, they continued and entered the second wing of the school. The first thing both of them felt upon stepping inside the building was a massive pounding sensation in both of their heads, unlike anything either of them had felt before - it was so bad they felt like their head might legitimately explode at any given moment. Both reacted similarly, by contracting most of the muscles in their face.
"... Owwww," Seiko said, pressing her hand against her head. "My head hurts ..."
"Mine too. So, what should we do now?"
Then Seiko heard Naomi's voice calling her name from a distance. That was enough to apparently make her forget all about the pain in her head and take off running at full speed.
Satoshi chased after her. However, he didn't fully comprehend what was going on. It took a few seconds for him to get over the pain in his head, and Seiko had a significant head start. After passing through the first door on his left, the path split, with a shorter hallway on the left and a longer hallway on the right. The hallway on the left appeared to lead to just one door at the end, whereas the hallway on the right continued for quite some time and proceeded to split into multiple paths near the end. He turned to the left and reached the door, labeled "Permanent Records Room".
... "Hnnnngg!"
It wouldn't budge. Not as if it was locked, either - it was as if the door was entirely attached to the wall, like a decoration. He turned around and ran in the other direction, but by now the callouts coming from both Naomi and Seiko had stopped, so he had no idea where to go. He went to the other end of the hallway and entered the music room.
Promptly after he entered, he noticed the same piano that Naomi had saw earlier.
... "Egh?! What the hell is that?!" He was shocked, but not in a particularly scared way, just a curious "how is this even possible" way - he didn't sense any kind of evil presence in the room.
After he came closer to it, it suddenly stopped. This really didn't do anything to help his curiosity. But then ...
... *shake* ...
The room started shaking. It appeared it was an earthquake. Satoshi was able to piece together from the Sachiko Ever After charm failing that earthquakes were bad - after all, it was an earthquake of enormous magnitude that caused the space they were in to swallow them whole and trap them here - but this was the first time he had felt one in this plane.
"What the hell is going on?!" He quickly lost his footing, and took cover by crawling under one of the desks in the room.
13. Thor and Loki,
Nakashima Naomi, Kisaragi Aligned
, was lynched D3