"Alright, everyone pull out your paper scraps!"

Satoshi didn't have to ask twice. Everyone shuffled through their pockets and student IDs to produce their paper doll scraps from the Sachiko Ever After charm. As each of us found our paper scrap, we held it forward so everyone could see it. I held out my own and started listing off the others as they presented their scraps. Satoshi, Yuka, Nakashima, Shinohara, Suzumoto, Morishige…

I turned to see that Shinozaki was frantically patting down her pockets. She looked up at us. "I lost my student ID! It had my paper doll scrap in it…"

"Dammit" I scowled, scratching my head. "Where might you have dropped it?"

"It could be anywhere!" Shinozaki shouted. I could tell she was starting to panic by the way her eyes bulged. "It could have fallen with Ms. Yui when that trap removed the floor from beneath us, or maybe it's in the incinerator, or in the pool with all those bodies!…"

Satoshi stepped forward. "We'll find it, Shinozaki. If worst comes to worst, we'll find someone else's scrap—"

"No!" Shinozaki shouted, backing away. "We don't know what might happen if we try to use someone else's paper doll scraps!" She backed into a wall and slowly slid down. "I'm… I'm just going to be trapped here forever…"

Everyone else started to crowd around Shinozaki, trying to reassure her…

"Come on, Shinozaki! We'll all look together! We'll find it for sure!"

"We didn't come this far to give up on you now, Shinozaki."

"If big brother is staying to help, I'll help too!"

I frowned down at my own paper doll scrap.

"Thanks…" I sighed in relief as that jackass excuse for a teacher turned and walked out of the room.

"You're not much better, you know."

Shinozaki…

I never thanked her for helping me deal with that bully of a teacher last year. And I promised myself… as soon as we got here… that I'd protect her. No matter what.

I guess this was a test, then.

"Shinozaki!"

Everyone stopped talking at once and turned to look at me. I tried to ignore their gazes as I walked over to Shinozaki and knelt down in front of her. She looked up at me, her face red and puffy and tears flowing down her cheeks.

I handed her my paper doll scrap and laid it at her feet when she stared in disbelief.

"Get out of here. I'll find another way out."

I turned and walked away. For whatever reason, only one person even tried to stop me.

"Yoshiki!" Satoshi grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me back. "We're not leaving without anyone!"

I yanked my arm away. "Yes you are."

I considered saying more, but decided not to. What else was there to say?

No one else tried to stop me as I walked down the dirt tunnels of the bomb shelter. When I was sure I was out of sight, I leaned against a wall and let myself slide down. I held my head in both hands and held back a scream.

I didn't want to die here, but I couldn't let Shinozaki suffer through this. I certainly couldn't ask someone else to take my place here.

I didn't even realize I was crying until tears started dripping from my cheeks to the floor.

"Damn…"

I heard a footstep on the dirt floor and immediately looked up. Standing over me was the girl with eyes like a dead fish. Naho Saenoki, I think?

"Hello again… friend of Shinozaki."

I looked away. "It's Kishinuma."

The girl knelt down next to me. "What are you doing here?"

"None of your business."

Saenoki sighed and sat down next to me. "It doesn't seem like you're going anywhere. Why not talk about it?"

I groaned and wiped my face with my dirty sleeve. "The others from my school left using the reverse charm. One of them lost their paper scrap, so I gave her mine."

"It was Shinozaki, wasn't it?"

I crossed my arms and pretended not to have heard the question. Nosy bitch.

"I figured as much." Saenoki stretched out her legs. "I don't think she fully understood how far you'd be willing to go to protect her."

"There a point to all this?" I shot Saenoki a glare.

"I suppose it's moot now." Saenoki shrugged. "Too bad your friends won't be able to go home, though."

It took me a moment to process that, but when I realized what she said I stood up and kicked her in the side. "The hell are you talking about?!"

Saenoki seemed undisturbed by the kick, and I remembered she was already dead and just looked like she was alive. She stood up slowly and brushed dirt off her skirt as if it were real.

"Without appeasing Sachiko, the reverse charm has unpredictable results. It could work fine, it could kill someone on the way back to our world, it can rewind time… it's a very fickle thing."

"Dammit!" I punched a wall, ignoring the pain that shot through my knuckles. "I knew there was something we were forgetting! That ghost said we needed to give Sachiko her tongue back…"

Saenoki held up a bloody bag with a familiar name on it. "Would this, perhaps, be that tongue?"

I grabbed the bag away from Saenoki and undid the straps, revealing a dried-up and stiffened little tongue.

I looked up at Saenoki. "Tell me where to go!"

Saenoki frowned at me. "Do you really want to face Sachiko? She could easily kill you before you even had a chance to appease her."

I clenched my free hand into a fist. "For as long as I can remember, whenever things got tough I just turned and ran away. Shinozaki was the first to convince me to fly straight." I stepped in close to Saenoki, so that she could tell I was serious even if I couldn't touch her. "I'm through running! If there's even a chance I can make things right, I'm going to take it!"

There was a silence. Then, Saenoki turned her back on me.

"Follow me."

I followed Saenoki as she led me through the tunnel network until we passed a room where a large man had been hung to death. Saenoki ignored the man and pointed to the next room.

"Sachiko is buried in here."

I marched into the room and got a huge sense of deja vu. The three ghost children appeared in corners of the room, staring at me intently. On the far end was a dug-up grave with the rotted corpse of a child peeking out.

I stepped forward and held out the tongue. "Sachiko! Come out here! I've brought your damn tongue, so let the others go!"

A sharp pain erupted from my stomach, forcing me to drop the tongue into the grave. I looked down to see what seemed to be a knife jutting from my belly.

"You think a dried-up tongue interests me, punk?" A child's voice mocked from behind me, twisting the thing in my belly and making a scissoring motion with it.

I was about to answer when the scissors were drawn out and then shoved back into me. Blood started to trickle from my stomach, and I thought I saw an intestine forcing itself out of me.

"It's a shame you have to die. You're a really cool-looking guy. But I can't let jerks like you tell everyone where my body is!"

The scissors were pulled out again, and before I could react I felt a small hand reach into my wounds and rip out my innards. I screamed out in pain and fell to my knees, which only made things worse when my intestines were ripped out of me by the force of the fall.

A hellish cackle came from the girl behind me. "Oh my god, that was even funnier than I thought it would be! You're awesome!"

"Fuck off, bitch…"

I fell onto my side and gasped in pain. I could taste blood in my mouth. I felt something rolling me over until I saw the unamused face of the little girl in red, Sachiko.

"That wasn't very nice."

I opened my mouth to backtalk again, but she stabbed the scissors into my eye and I screamed out instead.

The pain was almost unbearable… but suddenly I imagined Shinozaki needing to endure this and I realized that this couldn't have ended any other way.

Sachiko sat where my intestines used to be and stared down at me. She looked like she was about to say something when she was suddenly tackled off by a little girl about her size.

"Kishinuma!"

I turned to look in the direction of the voice, twisting my stomach painfully as I did so. "Ms. Yui?!…"

The familiar figure of Ms. Yui, with new wounds and covered in dirt, limped toward me. "I'm so glad you're—" Her eyes widened when she saw my flayed belly and missing intestines. "No… God no…"

We were both distracted by the sound of a girl screaming out in agony. I turned my head to see Sachiko being held down by what seemed to be another Sachiko, this one in a yellow dress. There was a black cat plushie on the ground beside them that I didn't remember seeing earlier.

"Let go of me! Nooooo!"

The Sachiko in the yellow dress kept her twin pinned to the ground even as a bright light enveloped them both.

"The pain will be over soon… then we can rest forever… and never hurt anyone again…"

The light intensified, and with it the screams from the red Sachiko. Eventually, I had to shut my eyes to avoid being blinded. Then, it was suddenly dark again. When I opened my eyes, both Sachikos were gone and the grave was empty.

I heard shuffling next to me and looked up to see Ms. Yui frowning down at me, tears in her eyes.

"Forget me, Ms. Yui. You need to find a way out of here…"

Ms. Yui held me by the shoulder. "I'm sorry, Kishinuma… I should have come sooner…"

I noticed something had dropped from her hand onto the floor. "What's that?…"

Ms. Yui picked it up with her good hand and showed it to me. It was Shinozaki's student ID, with her paper doll scrap still inside.

I laid my head back down. Was this all a test? Or is fate just mocking me?

Another figure knelt down next to me, and despite my vision starting to get blurry I could make out the shine to Saenoki's glasses.

"What do you want?" I groaned.

Saenoki seemed to ignore my tone. "I have enough power to send one of you back to your world before the closed spaces create a new master. I thought I'd make the offer."

Ms. Yui looked up at her. "Send him back. I'll stay."

"No…" I winced in pain at the sudden outburst. "I'm a goner, even if someone calls an ambulance the moment I get back. You go."

Ms. Yui shook her head slowly, her tears starting to fall. "Kishinuma…"

Saenoki frowned. "He's right. It'd be pointless to send him back in this condition." She looked at Ms. Yui. "I guess the real question is if you're ready."

I glared at Ms. Yui. "Go! Make sure Shinozaki and the others made it back okay. They need you more than they need my corpse."

Ms. Yui clenched her teeth and looked at Saenoki. Slowly, hesitantly, she nodded.

I started to fade in and out of consciousness after that. I could barely tell what was happening around me, but I think Ms. Yui was able to escape. That's good.

I was starting to wonder if I was already dead when someone approached me. I could make out nothing of them but a shine where their face would be.

"You impressed me, Kishinuma. I didn't think you'd follow through." The shine got brighter as whoever it was knelt next to me. "I think I'll give you a little reward for that. How would you like to live on after death, as I do? Then, together we could make sure no one else has to suffer as we did…"

My thoughts were muddled, but one thing came to my mind:

What if Shinozaki came back?

"I… accept…"

~~Sacrifice~~

"Ms. Yui!"

I was filled with joy to see Ms. Yui alive. I thought she had sacrificed herself to save me, but here she was, alive and well!

Everyone gathered around her and helped her to a sitting position. The numerous wounds she had suffered was ample proof that what we had experienced wasn't just a nightmare.

"I'll call an ambulance!" Nakashima shouted out to us, walking off with her phone.

I took out a tissue and tried to wipe some of the blood off Ms. Yui's face. "How did you escape? We thought we had lost you…"

Ms. Yui wouldn't make eye contact with me. "Kishinuma and I… appeased Sachiko. But he was dying… so a spirit saved me instead of him."

"W-what do you mean?" Mochida muttered.

"Kishinuma… was already too far gone when I got there. I tried to convince him to go back instead, but he said he wouldn't make it… so he sent me back." Ms. Yui looked at me. "To make sure you and the others survived."

"Me and the others? He was thinking of me as he died?…" I was starting to see why Kishinuma had offered his paper scrap to me, but I didn't want to believe it. He couldn't have…

Ms. Yui finally looked at me, a sad look in her eyes. "He was such a good boy… I had hoped you two would get along… but I guess… that's not possible anymore."

I felt my classmates and Yuka making an effort not to look at me. Why did Ms. Yui have to go and say something like that in front of everyone?!

I stood and ran out of the room into the dark hallways, passing by Nakashima on my way out of the school. I ignored the rain soaking my hair and uniform as I pulled out Kishinuma's paper doll scrap.

"You're not much better, you know."

A surge of anger shot through my body.

"He was such a good boy…"

I tore the paper doll scrap into even smaller pieces and flung them to the sidewalk, letting the heavy rain wash them away. Then I fell to my knees and tore at my hair.

"Get out of here. I'll find another way out."

"Liar!" I seethed, not even knowing how I should feel anymore.