7. The Classroom at the Vanishing Point
When we stepped into the school building, I followed Oto's lead—or rather, was pulled along by her.
It felt like a child who'd done something wrong being caught by another teacher and dragged back to their homeroom, wrapped in helpless resignation.
I couldn't help but ask where we were going."Where are we headed?"Oto gave me a look that said, Isn't it obvious?"To the classroom.""By the way," I added, "what year am I in? Same as you?""Yeah. We're both third-years."Hearing that, I felt a small relief.
Third year—meaning only about half a year until graduation.
For someone like me, who'd been eager to move on to the next phase, that felt like a tiny salvation."The third-year classrooms are on the top floor," she said."How high is that?""Probably... the 1,987th floor? I've never counted, so I'm not really sure.""That's pretty high. No elevators or anything?"Oto laughed softly.
"Of course not. This is Venus, remember? And not just Venus—rural Venus."I sighed in defeat and ran a systems check on my leg actuators.
They were still in top condition.
My hardware had been one reason my previous owner hesitated to discard me for so long.
Even so, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd never match Oto's Venus-built body.
That quiet inferiority pressed down inside me.Once I confirmed everything was functioning properly, I started walking, still holding Oto's hand.
A vague anxiety whispered in my circuits: Don't let go.
That last sensation—of holding someone's hand right before being abandoned by my owner—suddenly resurfaced.
My chest actuator trembled faintly with that memory.And so, we began to climb.A spiral staircase with no visible end.
Even with my visual zoom at maximum, the vanishing point stayed fixed, unreachable, endlessly converging in the same spot.
—At the end of that vanishing point, the classroom awaited.
Believing that, we kept climbing.An ascent without end.
Long enough that another Big Bang could've happened in the meantime.
Were the students of Village Midnight High truly making this eternal climb every day?
The thought filled me not with admiration, but awe—and fear.
What a harsh planet Venus was.To fill the eternity of that climb, we talked—countless exchanges, a cascade of dialogue.
If converted into data, it would exceed the total number of atoms in the universe.And then, before I knew it, we had reached the 1,987th floor.—The hallway.It was so utterly ordinary that all our struggle to reach it felt absurd.
A normal high school corridor stretched before us.At some point, Oto had let go of my hand.
Naturally. After holding on for so long, the skin on our palms had peeled away, and our regeneration systems could barely keep up.
Had we waited any longer, our metal skeletons might have fused together from the heat.—Before our hands could be bound forever,
we quietly released each other.We didn't want to become like the "shadows" of the main school—feeding on one another for pleasure.
We didn't want to become monsters of shadow.So we walked down the hallway, toward that "end of the vanishing point" we had once only imagined, doubted, or dreamed of.
That was where my classroom waited—the space that would now be mine.Oto stood at the door and slid it open.
She entered first.
I followed, stepping across the threshold, drawn by the shape of her back,
and entered the classroom.