The operation was scheduled for the early morning.
It was not at night or after school, but during that brief window when students had just arrived on campus and order had not yet fully stabilised. The Night Division usually avoided crowds, yet this time they had chosen the time slot that was most easily detectable.
The secondary sealing point was located in the old equipment room beneath the gymnasium.
Originally merely an 'emotional buffer node', its sealing grade was low. Its function was to absorb stray spiritual pressure and prevent anomalous phenomena from spreading upwards. Under normal circumstances, its mere existence ensured that no incidents occurred in the vicinity.
Yet the Night Division proceeded.
They did not dismantle the talismans or the structure itself. The leader simply placed his hand on the sealing core and paused for a few seconds.
As if confirming something.
Then he withdrew his hand.
The seal neither exploded nor collapsed; it simply ceased functioning. The runes remained intact and the structure was preserved, yet it no longer responded to any regulatory commands.
It was like a device that had retained its shell but been stripped of its purpose.
'Status lock complete. Seal downgraded. Initiating pressure release.'
No one asked why.
They all understood that this was not destruction, but guidance.
Abnormalities began to surface that very morning.
These were not sudden incidents, but rather scattered phenomena that defied immediate classification.
During the day, footsteps echoed down empty corridors. Occasionally, shadows flickered outside classroom windows where there should be none. Bells chimed faintly at irregular intervals, their origins impossible to pinpoint.
Though none of these incidents were severe enough to warrant school closures,
The sheer volume of occurrences was overwhelming.
They were so numerous that they were gradually eroding the entire campus' sense of security.
The student council began to receive reports, but they were unable to pinpoint the source. Teachers could only reassure students by attributing the disturbances to stress reactions or collective hallucinations.
Yet the Night Patrol clearly observed it all from their monitoring room.
The spiritual pressure wasn't running wild — it had simply been released.
'The fluctuation range is expanding.'
'There's no clear core.'
'Something's off.' Someone frowned. 'There is a core. It just hasn't manifested yet.'
They pulled up all anomaly timestamps from recent days.
The trajectories slowly overlapped on the chart, finally converging on a blank zone.
It wasn't a location, but a time:
It was an existence that should have appeared, yet never did.
'Continue.' The leader said flatly.
'Release a little more.'
Meanwhile, as Li walked between the academic buildings, he suddenly sensed that the air felt different today.
He couldn't pinpoint exactly what felt unusual, but he felt unusually alert and could hear distant whispers with startling clarity.
He stopped and looked up at the sky.
The daylight was bright and showed no signs of abnormality.
Yet a vague tightness gripped his chest, as if something was drawing near while deliberately avoiding his gaze.
Li exhaled softly.
'It's happening again.'
He didn't know what was happening.
But he could sense it — the entire academy was being deliberately unsettled.
And that force was slowly and steadily pointing towards him.
At the distant sealing point, the Night Division personnel closed the monitoring panel.
'If he's truly here...'
He won't be able to resist revealing himself for long.'
This time, they weren't preventing an anomaly.
They were waiting for it to emerge.
Li stopped in his tracks.
He wasn't waking up or falling, but he suddenly found himself unable to walk any further.
The corridor stretched on, the lights flickering on one by one. The floor was clean to an almost unnatural degree. He had had this dream countless times before, so there should have been nothing new about it.
But this time, his feet had stopped of their own accord.
The sensation was strange.
It wasn't danger or the unease of being watched. It felt more like someone had finally focused their attention on you, somewhere you couldn't see.
Li's breath caught for a moment.
He didn't turn around immediately.
but his heart began racing, as if to confirm that this wasn't an illusion.
Someone was watching him.
Not surveillance, scrutiny or appraisal, but more like a confirmation: 'You are here.'
Li finally turned around.
The corridor was empty.
The lights hadn't flickered, the space hadn't warped and the airflow hadn't changed since a few moments earlier. Reason swiftly took hold, telling him: 'There's nothing there.'
But the sensation didn't vanish.
It lingered, like an aimless gaze.
Li stood there, his throat tightening.
'... Who?'
His voice was faint, but not swallowed by the dream.
There was no response.
But in that instant, he suddenly realised something: this dream no longer belonged to him alone.
He looked down at his hands.
The contours of the dream were sharp and distinct. Its weight was tangible and real; even the warmth at his fingertips was palpable. The blurry, unfocused and ever-disappearing states of the past were gone.
This was the first time he had felt stable within a dream.
Li smiled briefly, almost unconsciously.
'So I'm not alone after all.'
The words had barely left his lips when the space seemed to shift ever so slightly. Though imperceptible, it was enough to make a certain presence pause.
At the other end, Mio abruptly halted at the edge of the dreamscape.
She was not repelled, but met with a glance in return.
In that instant, she nearly stopped breathing — not from fear, but from confirmation.
He had sensed it.
Not a hint, not a trace, but the very essence of her gaze.
Mio stood rooted to the spot, unable to advance further.
She knew that one more step forward would set this in motion completely, and that now was not the time.
The dream began to unwind automatically.
Li's figure gradually receded into the distance. The scene steadied once more, as if everything that had just transpired had been nothing more than an illusion born of a racing heartbeat.
But they both knew that once certain things were confirmed, there would be no turning back.
When Li woke up, it was already dawn.
He sat up and stared blankly ahead for a few seconds before placing a hand over his chest.
His heartbeat was steady yet carried an inexplicable warmth that lingered.
He murmured softly, as if speaking to the air or to someone who had not yet appeared:
'Next time... remember not to hide.'
Sunlight streamed in through the window.
On some unseen level, mutual awareness hung just one step away.