Li hadn't intended to walk so far.
The campus after school resembled a folded piece of paper; he knew every path by heart. Yet he hesitated at the corner, his steps veering off course. By the time he realised it, the old classroom building was standing directly before him.
The building had long been abandoned, its windows boarded up and its exterior walls peeling and mottled like a fragment of time left behind.
Li stood before it, feeling a dull ache tighten in his chest.
It wasn't a sharp pain; it was more like someone had gently flipped a switch inside his head. The world remained unchanged, yet his focus blurred for a moment.
He raised a hand to press against his temple.
'What the hell?'
Wind swept through the corridor, its hollow echoes bouncing back and forth within the building. Li didn't move forward, nor did he leave immediately. He couldn't explain it to himself, but he felt that if he turned away now, he might miss something.
The instant he stopped,
In an unseen place, a rift in spiritual pressure shifted.
The fissure didn't widen, nor did it emit any warning tremors. As if drawn by a magnet, it silently rotated a few degrees in its fixed orientation.
The angle was so slight that it was almost imperceptible.
But it was now pointing directly at Li.
In the monitoring room, the data on the light screen trembled slightly.
A Night Division member frowned and zoomed in on the image. 'The fissure parameters haven't increased.'
"Then why did you stop?"'The direction changed.'After several seconds of silence,Another voice murmured: 'Is the fissure correcting its orientation?'
This defied all existing models, as fissures were theoretically influenced only by environmental factors and seals, not individual entities.
Yet the data was undeniable.
It seemed that the fissure had acknowledged something.
Li finally turned and walked away.
His headache gradually subsided as he stepped beyond the old classroom building, as if something had withdrawn from his mind. He didn't look back, dismissing it as an aftereffect of his recent lack of sleep.
However, that night, his dreams changed.
No longer fragmented blurs or disjointed shadows, they were startlingly vivid for the first time: the length of the corridor, the angle of the light and the fine dust particles in the air were all clearly visible.
Everything felt like a meticulously constructed classroom.
Li stood within it, his heart racing.
He felt an odd sensation — not the discomfort of being watched, but —
of being targeted.
It was as if something had been confirmed in the darkness.
When he opened his eyes, it was still dark outside.
His forehead was drenched in cold sweat.
Li stared at the ceiling, his breathing slowly steadying. He was unaware that he had murmured unconsciously: "Did you see?"
"Did you see?"
There was no response.
But a certain crack had already memorised his location.
Mio sensed that something was amiss in her dream.
It wasn't the scene that had changed, but the order of events.
First, she saw a silhouette wearing a school uniform and a dark coat, the hem of which fluttered slightly in the wind. The figure walked towards the end of the corridor, never looking back.
The image broke.
The next second, the same person was mere inches away; so close that she instinctively tried to see their face.
But there was nothing.
Where their features should have been, it was as if they had been forcefully erased, leaving only a blurred outline. Her heart sank.
The image shattered again.
This time, it showed a classroom.
The blackboard was unnaturally clean — not a speck of dust — yet a line of writing stood out in the centre. The handwriting was stiff, as if it had been checked repeatedly.
'Confirm interruption.'
Mio stood frozen, experiencing a distinct hesitation within the dream for the first time.
These weren't images she had 'entered'; it felt more like she had been dumped there.
She slowly pieced it together.
She recalled that the location where the silhouette had appeared corresponded to the direction of the old school building. The faceless 'he' stood within a dream layer that she had never fully entered, and that line of text wasn't a system prompt — it felt more like a deliberate message.
Suddenly, she understood.
This had been left by Li.
It wasn't deliberate information, but rather traces left behind as existence itself was being erased by the world — like fragments accidentally scraped off during the obliteration process.
Mio's fingertips tightened slightly.
She had always been passive, entering, observing, recording and following the rules without ever crossing the line.
But at that moment, only one thought occupied her mind:
If these fragments continued to scatter, he would vanish sooner or later.
The edge of the dream began to waver, threatening to throw her out. But, for the first time, Mio did not retreat from that force.
She took a step forward.
Just one step.
The world didn't respond immediately, but she sensed a deeper layer had been lightly touched.
Mio spoke softly, her voice barely audible within the dream: 'I know you're here.'
'I know you're here.'
There was no reply.
But she knew one thing for certain: from that moment on, this was no longer just a dream that she had 'happened to see'.
She had begun tracking him.