The bruise on her arm still ached. Every time the long sleeves of her uniform brushed against it, she remembered the locker room tiles. Cold, hard, with the shadows of eight people circling around and around. Eri sat by the classroom window, gripping her hands tightly together on her lap. (*I want to disappear.*) The same words had been looping in her mind since morning. But she couldn't voice them. She just sat still, staring at the letters on the blackboard, trying not to let anyone notice. Fourth period English class. The teacher's flat voice echoed from somewhere far away. Grammar explanations. The rustle of textbook pages turning. The students around her ran their mechanical pencils across their notebooks with bored expressions. Eri opened her notebook too. But the words wouldn't register. She reached into her desk to pull out her textbook. Her fingertips touched paper. A folded note. Something that hadn't been there in the morning. Eri's heart went cold in an instant. Last time, and the time before that—it had been the same. The scraps of paper in her desk always carried the next horror. With trembling fingers, she opened the note. *"After school. The piano room in the old music building. If you don't come, tomorrow's supplementary session will have ten people."* Hastily scrawled handwriting. No signature. But she didn't need to confirm it. That meticulous penmanship. It was Erika's. Supplementary session—Eri already knew the true meaning of those words. The air in the classroom suddenly felt thin. The student in the next seat glanced at Eri. Maybe they'd noticed how pale she'd become. But their gaze quickly returned to the blackboard. The academy's students had already sensed the danger of getting involved with Eri and kept their distance. No one spoke to her. (*Ten people—*) Yesterday it had been eight. Two more in a single night. Eri shoved the note into her uniform pocket. Her fingertips trembled so badly she couldn't get it in properly. The teacher's voice grew more and more distant. The letters on the blackboard blurred. Outside the window, the chapel spire gleamed dully in the autumn sunlight. The sound of that bell knew everything about this academy. Four hours until school ended. She couldn't run. She couldn't ask for help. Eri simply endured those four hours, listening only to the sound of the school building's clock hands ticking forward. --- The lunch break bell rang. The cafeteria was as lively as ever. Hands holding trays. Voices chatting and laughing. The smell of soup. Eri picked up a tray and looked for an empty seat. She approached a table at the very edge. The three girls sitting there casually shifted their chairs. They squeezed together, repositioning themselves so Eri couldn't sit down. One of them, still talking to her friends, let the corner of her mouth twist just slightly. (*I can see you.*) Eri stopped walking. It wasn't blatant rejection. It was exclusion disguised as obliviousness. And somehow, that made the message even clearer. She tried another table. Same thing. Every group subtly distanced themselves as Eri approached. Small movements to prevent her from sitting next to them. They laughed and enjoyed themselves among friends, but the moment Eri entered their field of vision, the warmth of those smiles dropped by a degree. (*That transfer student.*) She couldn't hear the words. But the quality of their gazes whispered it. Upperclassmen passing in the hallway snickered behind Eri's back. When she turned around, they averted their eyes and walked away. *The usable one—* She didn't know who had started it. But she could feel it in her skin—how those words, rather than the name Eri, had spread to every corner of the academy. Eri sat alone at the farthest table in the cafeteria. She barely touched the bread and soup on her tray. Her stomach was clenched tight and hard. She gripped the fabric of her skirt around her knees with both hands. (*Someone—*) She tried to ask for help, then immediately gave up. The teachers stayed silent. She had no friends to sit beside. The exit she needed to escape through was sealed off by those brick walls. Inside her pocket, the note about the old music building continued to assert its presence like a lead weight. --- The warning bell for the end of the school day rang out, cold and echoing. The school building bustled with club activities and chatter. Moving against that current, Eri walked alone down the connecting corridor that led to the old school building. No one was looking at her. Everyone was absorbed in their own after-school lives. She stepped past the "Off Limits" sign. The air changed instantly. A wooden wing entangled in ivy. The hallway was dim, and the floorboards groaned with every step she took. The smell of mold and old wood filled the space, and the afternoon light slanting through the windows slowly illuminated drifting dust particles. (*No one's here.*) But that was only on the surface. At the very end. She stood before the sliding door of the piano room. Eri's feet stopped. Her heart pounded painfully. Her fingertips were cold, and her palms were clammy with sweat. The bruise on her arm throbbed as if it had flared up again. She breathed in. Breathed out. She opened the sliding door. *Creeeak—* The sound of metal fittings scraping echoed unnaturally loud. The room was dim. Slanted light from the window turned fine dust into beams of light, cutting diagonally across the floor. And then— Eri's breath stopped. Folding chairs had been arranged in a semicircle. Twelve female students sat there. All in uniform, from various grade levels. Some had the features of Erika's inner circle, others were faces she'd never seen before. But they all shared one single thing. Their eyes. Every single one of them looked at Eri with the same eyes. Appraising, expectant, checking the quality of merchandise. Twelve pairs of pupils glinted in the dimness. No one spoke. They just stared at Eri, fixedly. (*I want to run.*) Her knees began to tremble minutely. And yet, her body wouldn't move. Couldn't move. If she ran, tomorrow it would be ten people—the note's threat coiled around her legs like shackles. Inside the semicircle. On the floor in the center, a single cushion had been placed. Who had put it there, and for what purpose—she understood without being told. One of the upperclassmen sitting at the end of the semicircle stood up wordlessly. She slowly approached Eri and pushed down on her shoulder. "[cold]Kneel." A low, emotionless voice. Eri's knees buckled on their own. She collapsed onto the cushion, kneeling. Before her, the female students sat in a row, still in their chairs. She was looking up at them slightly, and it felt like all their gazes were piercing down through the top of her head. (*I'm being watched.*) Every single pore on her body felt those stares. The illusion that the room's oxygen was thinning. Her head spun. The first one stood up from her chair. She stood before Eri. Silent, adjusting her uniform skirt, waiting patiently. Eri's hands began to move, independent of her own will. (*Ah—*) Before her mind could even issue the command, her body obeyed on conditioned reflex. That time, through the coercion of that time, the movements had already been ingrained into her. The moment she realized that fact, something cold spread slowly deep inside Eri's chest. (*My body is already—*) Through the uniform, she felt the other person's body heat. Her fingertips trembled. But she couldn't stop. Twelve pairs of eyes observed her minutely—every single one of her fingers, the angle of her downcast face, even the disarray of the hair behind her ears. Someone let out a small, sharp intake of breath. Someone else stifled a secret laugh. The faint creak of a chair shifting slightly. The sensation of being observed from all directions. It was a different kind of terror from the closed-room violence of the locker room. Back then, she'd been pinned down by force. This time—it was far, far more insidious. The act began. The foreign sensation filling her mouth. Desperately suppressing the gag reflex that welled up, Eri kept moving her body before those twelve pairs of eyes. Her jaw trembled with fatigue, and saliva spilled from the corner of her mouth. (*I don't want this.*) (*I want to stop.*) Even if she screamed inside her heart, it reached no one. One finished. Immediately, a shadow rose from the next chair. Without even a two-second pause, it stood before Eri. "Yes, next." A cold voice. Eri wasn't even given time to catch her breath. She wasn't allowed to lift her face. With her gaze still fixed on the floor, she reached out toward the next person. The cushion on the floor bit deeper and deeper into her knees. The slanted light from the window slowly shifted its angle, continuing to circle the shadows of twelve people around Eri. The third. The fourth. Every time the sensation against her cheek changed, Eri fell deeper into the illusion that she was ceasing to be human. Her existence as a person was thinning, fading. (*Just a thing—*) The fifth. The sixth. She couldn't think anymore. Thinking was agony. She just wanted to become a machine, repeating the given motions. When the seventh person stood up, someone in the semicircle murmured quietly. "[whispers]She really is usable..." A snickering laugh seeped into the corners of the room. The eighth. The ninth. Eri's vision warped with tears, the outlines of the surrounding chairs blurring. And yet, the pressure of their gazes never vanished. If anything, her senses grew sharper and sharper, reaching an extreme state where every inch of her skin seemed to directly perceive those twelve sets of eyes. (*Someone—*) A plea that would reach no one anymore. The tenth. The eleventh. The twelfth person slowly rose from her chair and stood before Eri. Cold eyes looking down at her, wordlessly. The last one. Eri reached out with a trembling hand. --- It was all over. Silence enveloped the piano room. The twelve female students stood up one after another and exited wordlessly through the sliding door. Eri remained on her knees, both hands planted on the floor cushion, until the sound of their footsteps faded into the depths of the hallway. Her shoulders trembled minutely. She couldn't breathe properly. A few seconds after the last person closed the sliding door— The sound of a different sliding door opening. Eri slowly lifted her face. She was standing at the entrance. Lustrous black hair reaching her waist. Narrow, amber-colored eyes. Only the silver brooch at her collar gleamed dully in the dim room. Erika Himura. She hadn't been here from the start, yet she looked down at Eri with an expression that said she had grasped everything. "[gentle]You came. Good girl." It wasn't praise or appreciation. It was a flat tone, like checking the functionality of a possession. Erika pulled one of the semicircle chairs over and sat down directly in front of Eri. She slowly crossed her legs. Her amber eyes stared fixedly at Eri's face, soiled with tears and saliva. "[cold]It seems the rumors have spread more than I expected." Erika lightly brushed dust from her skirt with her fingertips. "[cold]All twelve of today's participants came here voluntarily. I didn't invite a single one. That's how much demand there is." Eri couldn't produce any words. Even when she tried to open her mouth, no voice came out. A hot lump clogged the back of her throat, as if something was blocking it. "So, Eri." Erika leaned forward just slightly. A gentle tone. But there wasn't a shred of emotion in her eyes. "Starting next week, I've decided to put up your room number on one of the empty classrooms on the first floor. During breaks and after school—so anyone who wants to can visit anytime. Students wishing to make use of it just need to apply in advance." Eri's body