5. Village Midnight High School
"Will you show me around the village?"
At my sudden request, Oto nodded soundlessly, turned gracefully on her heel, and began to walk.
I followed behind her.
And so began our walk together. "Anywhere you want to go?"
"Not really. I'll leave it up to you."
"I see." Oto's expression softened, as if she were mentally sketching the blueprint of a new city.
After about 0.00045 seconds of silence, she spoke again. "You're configured as a high school boy, right? Your uniform looks like one."
"Yeah. I'm a mass-production model, so I figured I might as well keep the default setting."
"Then you'll be attending school here too."
"Guess so. It's part of my profile settings."
"In that case, I'll take you there." And just like that, I was on my way to the school where I'd apparently be studying in this village. At first, the path led away from the foothills behind my house, the rice fields thinning out gradually.
Then the orderly farmland gave way to murky wetlands.
Beyond that, a few buildings came into view—
old houses that looked like relics from what humans once called the Showa era.
Cracked walls, rusted tin roofs, faded signs—
together, they carried the dense aroma of time itself.
Like the nostalgic steam rising from a pot of freshly cooked rice. We passed through a narrow street, and a river appeared ahead.
We crossed a bridge.
The water below gleamed an emerald green—
beautiful, but with a toxic beauty.
—It was close to sulfuric acid.
A humanoid's chassis could endure it; a human would burn instantly.
That was the kind of liquid flowing beneath us. And right after we crossed, I saw it:
a gate with a sign reading,
Village Midnight High School. I looked up.
Above, crows with jet-black wings circled in a flock, their sharp red eyes glaring down at us.
Their cries weren't the normal cawing of crows—
they sounded like something being forced out of a body,
as if vomiting up a poison that should never have been swallowed.
A strangled, dying shriek. "…I get the feeling we're not supposed to go in," I muttered.
But Oto didn't seem bothered at all.
Instead, she smiled—as if she'd spotted something adorable—and waved to the crows.
Then she turned that same smile toward me. "Let's go in?"
"Are we allowed to?"
I stopped instinctively.
She nodded lightly.
"Of course. It's open twenty-four hours. You can come in at midnight—most clubs are nocturnal anyway."
"Why's that?"
"Because it's a midnight school."
"You mean that literally? Not just the name?"
"Literally. It's both a name and a system."
"So when night comes, I actually have to go to class?"
"Yeah. The humanoids in this village are nocturnal. Hardly anyone's active during the day."
"I see…" Oto tilted her head slightly.
"What about you, Kai? You seem like a morning type. Think you can handle the night cycle?"
"I should be fine," I said.
"When I lived on Mars, I was in Tropical Night City—a place where night never ends. I'm used to the dark."
"That's perfect." She smiled, then stepped through the gate.
I followed. The schoolyard—or rather, what passed for one—spread before me.
But it was far too strange to be called a ground or field.
In place of grass, the entire expanse bloomed with roses—deep indigo, almost black.
The petals gleamed faintly, and their stems bristled with countless thorns.
It was a garden of thorns, a playing field in full bloom. The path leading to the main building was a sharp contrast—
paved with white marble, lined on both sides with perfectly pruned Western trees.
It felt like a Victorian royal garden.
In the stillness hung a precise, icy beauty. I couldn't help but catch my breath.
For such a small, forgotten village, it was—
beautiful. And terrifying. As we walked further in, a structure came into view:
a building that might once have stood at the heart of a bustling tourist site,
now forgotten, left to crumble in silence.
It looked part castle, part noble mansion—
a heavy arched entrance, cracked stained glass, rusted iron gates.
Yet somehow, it retained an air of dignity.
When the wind brushed against it, its half-ruined ornaments creaked faintly,
as if whispering of former glory. So this is the school. Looking around, I noticed something—shadows.
All across my field of vision, black silhouettes moved.
Human-shaped, but impossible to identify.
Were they humans? Dolls? Humanoids? Ghosts?
There was no way to tell. "What are those?" I asked, pointing.
Shadows walking across the schoolyard.
Shadows playing soccer on the black-rose field.
Shadows flying drones.
Shadows eating lunch on benches.
Shadows reading books.
They all moved like living things—but lacked any true substance. "They're the students," Oto said naturally.
"But not in real time."
"Not in real time? What does that mean?"
Confusion sharpened my tone, but she went on calmly. "Those shadows belong to the students of Prefectural 65th Chūten High School.
This place—Village Midnight High—is their mirror. The reverse side."
"…That doesn't help." Seeing my frown, she elaborated:
"Think of it this way. The Prefectural school is the main body,
and Village Midnight High is its shadow." I didn't fully grasp it, but pretended I did.
"So the shadows we see here are the main school's students,
and we're the ones in the branch campus.
Then, from their side, we'd look like shadows?"
"Exactly. You're quick, Kai. Must be a recent model."
"Maybe. I was the latest on Mars, but who knows about Venus."
"If you were top-tier on Mars, you're futuristic tech here," she laughed,
thumbs-up.
"Venus's software's a century behind Mars."
"But in hardware, Venus is more advanced."
"Well, yeah, that's true." We traded light jokes, but my eyes stayed fixed on the shadow students.
—A flicker of homesickness for Mars rose in me.
I quickly forced it down and looked away. "And those shadows," Oto continued softly,
"they're students from over a hundred years ago."
"So that's what you meant by 'not real-time.'"
"Right. For example…"
She paused briefly, choosing her words.
"Just like the light from distant stars takes years to reach another planet—
those shadows are light from the past.
The afterimages of students long gone, projected across time into this place." Before her words could even fade, a sound burst from the school's loudspeakers.
A chime—no, more like a siren.
Ominous. "Class is starting," Oto said.
"Wait, already? Is it midnight?" I glanced up.
At some point, the sky had deepened into a dense violet.
Midnight.
Countless red stars glittered, pulsing like blood cells racing through human veins.
Then, slowly, the violet began to turn red. And yet, it was dark.
Red, but not black—
and still undeniably dark. Darkness isn't the color black, I realized.
And there, standing in the courtyard of Village Midnight High,
I learned that for the first time. "It's really night now…"
I murmured to myself. Then—plop.
Something struck the tip of my nose.
I looked up. Rain.
Red rain.
Falling from the sky like blood.