Time never waits.
It delivers all equally to the same end…
You, who wish to safeguard the future,
However limited it may be…
You will be given one year,
Go forth without falter,
With your mind and heart as your guide and strength…
XXXX
Evening, in the train station in Sapporo…
The cacophony of the voices of the crowd around the fair-skinned, red/blue-eyed emotionless-looking girl with long straight purple hair tied up with a dark green ribbon into a ponytail behind her head and wearing a short sleeve light blue shirt with a dark blue vest over it and a purple wristwatch on her wrist, knee length grey denim jeans and matching sneakers on her feet (and also carrying a diamond pattern black and white duffel bag over her left shoulder) is tuned out by the girl as she stand and waited on the platform for the train that'll take and bring her to Iwatodai dorm on Tatsumi Port Island, the place where she lost her parents and siblings in a tragic accident on the Moonlight Bridge and the loss of her parents and siblings has caused her to become a emotionless girl.
After another few minutes of waiting, the train arrived and stopped in the station and opened it's door and the girl stepped into the train (with some of the crowd) before she look around the interior of the train, spotted an empty seat near the window and quickly approach and sit down and closed her eyes to sleep as the train closed it's doors and drove away from the station toward it's next destination.
XXXX
3 hours later, late night…
"Figures. I'm late and it's nearly midnight." thought the girl in her mind as she watched the train finally arrived and stopped in the Iwatodai train station of Tatsumi Port Island.
"We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the delay…" said a male voice from the PA system above the girl.
"Yeah, whatever." thought the girl uncaringly about what the PA system just spoke out.
"Iwatodai, Iwatodai. This is the final train bound for Tatsumi Port Island. Please make sure you board in time for departure…" the PA system droned on as the girl grab her bag, stood up and walked out of the train only to stop on the platform to take out a flyer from her left pants pocket and unfold it to see where the dorm's location is.
"Now, to see where the dorm is." Thought the girl as she glance down at the flyer in her hand.
"Iwatodai, Iwa-" the PA system droned on before the watch on the girl's wrist and the clock hanging on the wall above her struck midnight and the entire surrounding around the girl immediately change and turned dead silence.
"Hm?" said the girl as she raised her head for a look and saw that all of the lights in the station had gone out, leaving the station lit by a creepy green glow and with dozens of glowing crimson and black coffins standing upright around her where the crowd is.
"What a strange phenomenon and stranger still is that I'm the only one that didn't transform into those upright coffin things. Whatever that's happening around me now doesn't concern me and I should get to the dorm." thought the girl with a blank look on her face and a shrug of her shoulders before she folded and put the flyer back into her pocket, turned to her left and walked out of the station.
As the girl walked out of the station, she saw, ignored and make her way past even more of the coffins standing upright in different places around her with puddles of blood on the ground and the moon in the night sky above her is glowing an eerie yellow and looks much larger than ever. After the girl spend the next 16 minutes walking down the street, she finally arrived, stopped and glance silently at the huge five-storey dorm building in front of her before she walked up the steps toward the double front doors, opened it and went in.
Once the girl went into the dorm and closed the door behind her, she take a look at the dorm's lobby around her and saw a reception desk to her left, a living room to her right with the dining room behind the living room and a staircase leading up to the upper floors in the far left corner of the dorm.
"As expected of a normal-looking dorm. However, another strange thing is that the lights in here is still on and functioning, unlike outside." thought the girl as she shrugged her shoulders.
"You're late." said an unfamiliar young boy's voice suddenly to the girl and she glance and saw a pale-skinned, short black-haired, ethereal blue-eyed boy with a black beauty spot under his right eye and wearing a long sleeve black and white stripe prison shirt and matching pants standing behind the reception desk and staring at the girl.
"I've been waiting for a long while." said the boy as he raised his right arm to click his fingers before he disappear from the desk and reappear in front of the girl. "Now if you want to proceed, please sign here." said the boy as he gestured at a kind of sign-in sheet with a pen on it lying on the desk.
"You want me to sign the paper?" said the girl flatly to the boy.
"Yes and don't worry. All it says is that you take full responsibility for your actions. You know… the usual stuff." said the boy.
"Very well then." said the girl as she pick up the pen and wrote her full name Miyuki Arisato on the blank space for names at the bottom of the sheet and handed the sheet over to the boy.
"Thank you." said the boy thankfully to the girl named Miyuki Arisato as he take the sheet from her and promptly make the sheet disappear into thin air.
"Wow, that's quite the magic trick from a boy like you." said Miyuki as she gave a blank smile to the boy.
"If you say so. And one more thing that you need to know. No one can escape time. It delivers us all to the same end. You can't plug your ears and cover your eyes. And so it begins…" said the boy before darkness approach and enveloped him completely from behind until he's gone from Miyuki's sight. Soon after he's gone, the light in the dorm disappear as well and the same eerie green light shrouded the dorm like the outside.
"Guess I was wrong about the lights being on and functioning in the dorm. Oh well, time for me to…" thought Miyuki.
"Who's there!?" said an unfamiliar girl's voice suddenly to Miyuki, which make her turned to glance at where the voice comes from and she saw a slightly tan-skinned, short light brown-haired, brown-eyed girl (who's staring at Miyuki with a frighten and tense look on her face) about her age wearing a long sleeve pink sweater jacket with a red ribbon tied around her neck, black mini skirt, knee-length black socks with white lines on the outer sides and brown shoes and a beige holster with a gun in it (which the girl had her hand hovering near it) strapped around her left thigh.
Both Miyuki and the girl stared silently at each other for another few seconds before the girl quickly took hold of the gun and about to pull it out from it's holster.
"Takeba, wait!" said yet another female voice calmly from behind the first girl (Takeba) before she and Miyuki glance at the other girl standing on the staircase and Miyuki saw that she's a mature and pretty-looking long red-haired (with a part of it covering her left eye), reddish brown eyed, fair-skinned girl wearing a long sleeve white blouse with the same red ribbon tied around her neck, black skirt and knee-length, high heel black boots on her feet and the same beige holster with the same gun in it strapped around her waist.
"Looks like these two is most probably the other dormmates that live in this dorm before I came. Wonder why they've guns on their thigh or around their waist though… Yeah, whatever." thought Miyuki to herself about the two girls and the guns that they had on them before the green light went away and the normal lights came back into the dorm.
"The trains were delayed and is the reason why you arrived this late?" asked the red-haired girl as she approach and stopped in front of Miyuki with her arms crossed and a small smile on her face.
"That's right." replied Miyuki with a nod of her head.
"I'm not surprised." sighed the red-haired girl before she introduced herself to Miyuki. "My name is Mitsuru Kirijo and I'm one of the students who live in this dorm."
"…Who's she?" asked the first girl as she glance at Mitsuru.
"Miyuki Arisato. A transfer student from Sapporo." replied Miyuki flatly to the first girl's question before Mitsuru could answer her.
"That's right. It was a last-minute decision to assign her here; she'll eventually be moved to a room in the girls dorm upstairs." said Mitsuru as she nodded to Miyuki.
"… It is really okay for her to be here?" said the first girl as she glance unsurely and concernly at Miyuki.
"I guess we'll see." said Mitsuru thoughtfully to the first girl without looking before she decided to introduced her to Miyuki. "This is Yukari Takeba. She'll be a junior this spring, just like you." explained Mitsuru as she gestured with her hand at the girl named Yukari Takeba.
"…Hey, I'm Yukari." said Yukari, feeling a bit relax now.
"Yeah, sure." said Miyuki as she shrug her shoulders.
"It's getting late so you should get some rest. Your room's on the third floor, at the end of the hall and your things should already be there." said Mitsuru after she's done introducing and explaining herself and Yukari to Miyuki.
"I'll show you the way. Follow me." said Yukari, offering to show Miyuki the way to her room.
"Sure." said Miyuki as she walked past Mitsuru to follow Yukari up the stairs toward the third floor before they walked down a hallway past several rooms and stopped in front of the last room near a window.
"Well, here we are. This is your room." announced Yukari as she glance at Miyuki while gesturing at the room with her left hand. "Pretty easy to remember, right? Since it's right at the end of the hall, and all. Oh, and by the way… Don't ever lose your key. You'll never hear the end of it. Got it?" added Yukari concernly to Miyuki.
"Yeah, got it." said Miyuki.
"So, do you have any questions?" said Yukari.
"Yeah, I do have one. Does that boy live here too?" asked Miyuki.
"…What boy?" said Yukari in worry and confusion to Miyuki.
"You know, the boy who asked me to sign my name on a contract." said Miyuki.
"Like I said, what boy are you talking about?" said Yukari.
"You know what, never mind. Forget about it." said Miyuki.
"Alright then." said Yukari before she asked Miyuki another question. "Actually, on your way here from the station, was everything all right? You didn't run into problems?"
"None at all." said Miyuki as she shake her head a little.
"I see, that's good, then." said Yukari as she nodded and gave a small smile to Miyuki. "Well, I should head back to my room now so good night and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Uh huh." said Miyuki as she watched Yukari turned and head toward and entered her own room opposite hers before she opened the door, stepped into her new room and she saw a desk standing against the wall between two windows to her left, a cupboard leaning against the wall to her right, a single-sized bed leaning against the wall in front of her plus several boxes that contains her stuffs inside in the middle of the room.
Miyuki then closed and locked the door behind her before she walked past the boxes (which she decide to unpack tomorrow), put her duffel bag down on the desk before she walked toward the bed and lie down on it and soon fell asleep due to exhaustion.