Hozuki Nozomi, with Fujioka Misaki cradled securely in his arms, led the way, following the unwavering guidance of the golden arrow. Their progress through the labyrinthine hospital corridors was punctuated by eerie encounters. Several times, figures bearing the faces of friends or acquaintances approached them, attempting to strike up casual, disarming conversations.
Yui Yuigahama, Sanshokuin Sumireko, and Asuna Yuuki each had the chance to use one of their magic cards. The act of personally dispatching a malicious apparition was jarring, yet it also instilled a strange, grim confidence. It made them feel slightly less like helpless victims and more like active participants in their own survival.
Misaki Mei also took her turn, her expression stoic as she eliminated a phantom wearing the face of a "former classmate" from her cursed middle school.
Soon, the procession halted before an unremarkable door. The golden arrow pointed directly at it, pulsating faintly.
"This is the place," Hozuki Nozomi announced.
He pushed the door open. The scene that unfolded beyond was not another hospital corridor, nor a room, but something entirely different.
They stood at the edge of a graveyard. Tombstones, aged and weathered, stretched out in neat, somber rows. Against the surreal backdrop, vibrant, unnaturally colorful flowers bloomed around each stone. The restroom door had become a gateway to this macabre pocket dimension.
At the center of the cemetery, where all the tombstones seemed to silently face, rested an ancient, ornate coffin. Its surface was carved with intricate, mysterious patterns that seemed to writhe in the dim, sourceless light.
"Ah! Nozomi! Look at this tombstone! It's… it's me!"
Yui Yuigahama's shrill cry broke the heavy silence. Startled, the others turned their attention to the nearest markers.
On each tombstone was affixed a stark, black-and-white photograph. They saw Yui's smiling face, Yukino's composed elegance, Sumireko's gentle smile, Asuna's quiet beauty, and Hozuki Nozomi's handsome features. Above each photo was inscribed today's date.
The implication was chillingly clear: according to these markers, they were all meant to die today.
Yet, conspicuously absent were any tombstones bearing the names or images of Misaki Mei or her sister, Fujioka Misaki.
"Yui, calm down. It's a cheap, psychological trick. Nothing more," Hozuki Nozomi said dismissively, though his eyes were sharp as they settled on Misaki Mei. "A more interesting question is this, Misaki. Why are there no markers for you or your sister?"
Misaki Mei remained silent for a long moment, her face an unreadable mask. Finally, she reached up. With deliberate slowness, she peeled off her white eyepatch, fully revealing the eerie, luminous green of her prosthetic eye.
"When I was a child," she began, her voice flat, "I had a malignant tumor in this eye. It had to be removed. For aesthetics, my mother first gave me ordinary prosthetics, but they… looked wrong. So she had this one custom-made—a doll's eye. It looked better." She paused, her heterochromatic gaze sweeping over the grim landscape. "And through this eye… I began to see things others cannot."
She did not directly answer Hozuki Nozomi's question. Instead, her mismatched eyes turned toward the ancient coffin at the heart of the graveyard. "I believe the answer lies within."
"I concur," Hozuki Nozomi nodded. Carefully, he lowered the still-unconscious Fujioka Misaki, instructing Asuna Yuuki and Sanshokuin Sumireko to support her between them. The girl remained deeply asleep, her breathing shallow. Were it not for that faint sign of life, she could have been mistaken for one of the cemetery's permanent residents.
Yukino Yukinoshita watched with deep concern as Hozuki Nozomi approached the ornate coffin. "Are you sure about this?" she asked, her voice taut.
"Don't worry, Yukino. It'll be fine. The truth is right in front of us." He offered her a reassuring smile that didn't quite reach his focused eyes. "Besides, if we don't resolve this at its source, there's no safe way out of here for any of you."
With that, he gripped the edge of the heavy coffin lid and flung it open.
Inside, resting on a bed of withered flowers, lay two girls.
They were identical to Misaki Mei.
The twins lay side-by-side, their hands clasped together over their chests like a pair of pristine lilies, an image of unsettling purity amidst the decay. They were utterly still, silent.
Yui Yuigahama and the others, who had crept closer to peer inside, recoiled with gasps. Instinctively, they took a step back from the real Fujioka Misaki being supported by Asuna and Sumireko, and from the Misaki Mei standing beside them.
The Misaki Mei with them watched the scene inside the coffin, her expression a complex tapestry of resignation and sorrow. She let out a soft, weary sigh.
Then, she turned her gaze—both the crimson and the green eye—to the group. Her face was utterly blank.
"You found me."
Her voice was different now, layered, echoing slightly.
"I am the 'Non-existent Person.'"
A faint, terrible smile touched her lips. "Look. We get along so well, don't we? Talking together, visiting my sister at the hospital together, experiencing all of this… together. This means we are already friends, true friends. Not false companions, but real, good friends who can stay together… forever. Isn't that right?"
As she spoke, the green eye began to emit a faint, sickly glow. The ground beneath their feet trembled.
From the earth around the tombstones, pale, grasping hands erupted, clawing their way to the surface. Figures—faceless, forms blurred—hauled themselves out of the dirt, rising to stand in a silent, shambling circle around the group.
Yui Yuigahama and the others screamed, huddling closer to Hozuki Nozomi, their bodies trembling uncontrollably. The sight of these expressionless, earth-stained forms emerging en masse was profoundly horrifying.
Suddenly, in perfect, grotesque unison, every one of the risen figures curled its lips into the same chilling, malicious smile as the being wearing Misaki Mei's face. They opened their mouths, and a single, harmonized voice poured forth, echoing the entity's words:
"Become my friend. Become a good friend. Stay together… forever!"
"I refuse," Hozuki Nozomi stated, his voice clear and firm, cutting through the cacophony.
"Why?" the multitude, and the entity at its center, demanded.
"Because you're repulsive. And presumptuous." Hozuki Nozomi's lips curled into a smirk of his own, one of pure defiance. "I, for one, love saying 'no' to ugly, self-important things like you."
With that declaration, he spread his arms wide.
A torrent of radiant, purifying light erupted from his body, expanding outward in a blinding wave. The holy luminescence washed over the encircling figures. Where it touched, the shambling puppets let out silent screams as they disintegrated into motes of dust, vanishing without a trace.
Only the central entity—the one wearing Misaki Mei's form—resisted, though its borrowed visage began to melt and slough away. The skin blackened and cracked, hair fell out in clumps, revealing the charred, monstrous thing beneath. It shrieked, a sound of rage and desperation.
"I WON'T DIE! WE ARE FRIENDS! EVEN IF WE ARE 'NON-EXISTENT' FRIENDS, I WILL STAY BY YOUR SIDE… FOREVER…!"
"Sorry. Still rejected on account of being ugly," Hozuki Nozomi said, almost conversationally. He focused, increasing the output.
To put it simply, he cranked up his magical energy. The purification he had received from Gabriel had fundamentally altered his power, allowing it to manifest as either demonic flame or sacred light. Channeling it in this specific, expansive way created the wide-area dispersal attack he had dubbed "Holy Light Illumination."
Under the intensified barrage of sacred energy, the entity's final shrieks were cut short. Its form evaporated, dissolving into nothingness. As it vanished, the tombstones bearing their photos also crumbled to dust, leaving only the ancient coffin standing alone in the now-empty field.
A heavy, uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Yukino, Yui, Asuna, and Sumireko felt a hollow sense of betrayal. The girl who had come to them for help, who had shared their frightening journey… had been the anomaly all along. It was a deeply upsetting, depressing realization.
"Hozuki Nozomi… what do we do now?" Yukino asked, her voice small. "Misaki and her sister… could they have been… gone all along?"
Hozuki Nozomi, however, shook his head, a gentle smile returning to his face. He reached out and stroked Yukino's hair. "They're not gone. They're the key."
He walked back to the now-open coffin. Reaching inside, he carefully lifted out both of the identical, unconscious girls. Then, to the combined shock and scandalized gasps of Yui and Asuna, he leaned down and pressed a light, chaste kiss to each girl's lips.
"Mmm…"
A soft, twin pair of sighs escaped them. Misaki Mei and Fujioka Misaki's eyelids fluttered open. Their eyes, one set crimson and green, the other presumably normal, focused blearily, first on Hozuki Nozomi, then on the group behind him. Confusion flickered within, followed swiftly by dawning comprehension and profound relief.
…
Later, after Hozuki Nozomi had led them out of the crumbling pocket dimension and back into the real world, he unleashed a final wave of sacred flames upon the abandoned hospital wing, ensuring every lingering trace of the curse was cleansed in purifying fire.
In a quiet park some distance away, under the light of a real moon, the real Misaki Mei, now reunited with her awakened sister, finally explained the truth.
The one who had initially come to the Service Club had indeed been the real Misaki Mei, seeking genuine help for her sister's inexplicable illness. However, during a visit to the hospital the previous day, she had been ambushed and subdued by the entity, trapped alongside her sister in a comatose state.
The "Non-existent Person," exploiting the unique psychic resonance between the twin sisters as a powerful medium, had used their captive forms to forge a potent psychic link. It transformed the abandoned hospital into its personal domain.
Then, wearing Misaki Mei's stolen identity like a mask, it had set about luring everyone she had recently encountered—Hozuki Nozomi and the Service Club—into its trap. Its goal was to break them, to have them join the legion of suicides that fueled its power, becoming new puppets in its endless, lonely game.
Misaki Mei and Fujioka Misaki, as perfect twin vessels, were not to be destroyed. The entity intended to merge with them fully, to use their bond to amplify and spread the dread of the "Non-existent Person," growing stronger with each new victim.
It simply hadn't anticipated running headlong into an immovable object. Hozuki Nozomi and his "Holy Light Illumination" had proven to be a brick wall against which its centuries-old malice simply… evaporated.