Opening the shoji screen, the boy took a step onto the tatami of the darkened tea room.

"..."

Wordlessly, he stared into the center of the room.

Cushions and low tables were scattered everywhere.

Only a small amount of light managed to pierce the decorative screen above the door and enter the room, making it difficult to see anything clearly. But he could see the scene easily enough. In the center of the room was a girl. One look and he knew she was dead.

She was upside-down, thick white cotton socks on slender legs thrust into the air like the arms of a cheerleader at a pep rally. Her shoulders were limp on the floor, her head twisted around so it faced the same direction as her body. There was no blood anywhere.

Her long black hair seemed to flow across the tatami, and her vacant eyes just seemed to stare back at the boy.

"..."

The boy took a slow step backwards.

As he did, something hot slid downwards from above, just grazing the tip of his nose.

Startled, he glanced upwards towards the ceiling.

He froze.

"You saw me," said the killer hanging from the ceiling. It wore a girl's shape, but was a creature of indeterminate gender. "Now that you've seen me, I cannot allow you to live." Its voice was somewhere between laughing and singing.

A moment later, the boy felt his body flung aside, as the creature lunged down towards him.

"-Gah!"

For some reason, the boy felt oddly happy.

***

The actual events probably form a very simple story.

From a distance, they appear to be quite confusing; to have no clear threads connecting them whatsoever, but the reality is that this is undoubtedly a much more straightforward, commonplace tale.

But from our individual standpoints, none of us were quite able to see the whole picture. All of the people who somehow had a part in this story were unable to see beyond their own unique role.

My name is Niitoki Kei.

I'm in my second year at Shinyo Academy, although I'm so small that I'm often mistaken for a junior high school student or worse, some elementary school kid. Despite all this, I'm the president of the student discipline committee.

"Kei's like a big sister. She might look like a kid, but there's just something reliable about her," my friends always tell me, half-mockingly.

I don't consider myself to be a particularly serious person, but everyone around me seems to think that I am.

They're always asking me for some type of advice or help, and I've got a major sort of glitch where I can't ever seem to tell them no.

"Can you, Kei?"

"Niitoki, please!"

Someone says these words to me and I just can't settle down.

But this has basically nothing to do with me being on the discipline committee.

Our school is only an average, mid-level sort of place, but like many other high schools, it considers guidance to be the teacher's job, and the discipline committee is just there for decoration. It's sad, really. There are a number of students who have run away from home or gone missing this year, but none of the teachers care enough to put forth any effort into finding them, and all the headmaster does is whine about how much of a headache they are, and how poorly they reflect upon the school.

Ah, whatever.

All this negligent attitude does is irritate the hell out of me. My tiny little sense of right and wrong is next to useless.

It's not like they'll ever listen to me.

If anything of any significance happened to us, we wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it.

As it was, we knew nothing.

See, all the people close to me, myself included, had no way of knowing each other's problems or just what it was that we were fighting.

We simply had to guess blindly, and just act on out gut.

The man who came from the sky, the woman made from his design-the-twisted, strange events they brought about must have begun around that time.

Right as my heart had been broken.