Morning announcements echoed through dormitory corridors with familiar institutional cheer, automated voices reminding students of upcoming deadlines and schedule changes, and June Burns lay in bed listening to the same message repeat three times before silence finally returned, her head throbbing with pressure that had nothing to do with physical pain and everything to do with the persistent sense that something in the world had shifted without anyone acknowledging the shift.
She'd been feeling it for weeks now.
Not constantly, but in waves that arrived without warning and departed just as abruptly, moments where reality seemed to thin, where the solid certainty of walls and floors and the basic physics governing existence felt provisional rather than absolute, like everything was one layer removed from where it should be.
Her roommate had suggested stress, recommended meditation or reduced course load, offered sympathetic understanding that assumed June's discomfort stemmed from academic pressure or social anxiety or any of the normal challenges students faced in competitive environments.
But this wasn't stress.
This was recognition of wrongness that everyone else was successfully ignoring, and June couldn't determine whether that made her more perceptive or simply more vulnerable to whatever was causing the wrongness to manifest.
She forced herself out of bed, moving through morning routine with mechanical efficiency, and tried to avoid looking at the mirror above her desk because sometimes her reflection arrived seconds late, showing her previous position rather than current one, and explaining that phenomenon to anyone would require admitting she was either hallucinating or reality was malfunctioning and neither option seemed likely to produce helpful responses.
Classes beckoned with inevitable obligation.
June gathered her materials, left the dormitory, and stepped into corridors already filling with students moving toward different destinations, their conversations forming layered sound that should have been comprehensible but increasingly felt like noise her mind struggled to parse into meaningful language.
She made it halfway to her first lecture before the pressure behind her eyes intensified to the point where walking became difficult, and she detoured toward an empty classroom, seeking momentary refuge from whatever environmental factor was triggering the sensation.
The classroom was dark, unoccupied, chairs arranged in neat rows that suggested recent use followed by proper cleanup, and June sat down heavily in the back row, pressing palms against her temples and trying to breathe through the mounting discomfort.
The door opened.
June looked up, expecting a professor or maintenance staff, and froze when she saw who'd entered.
White hair.
Perfect posture.
Expression of absolute neutrality.
The student whose name she could never quite remember despite having seen him multiple times, whose presence triggered exactly the kind of reality-thinning sensation she was currently experiencing, amplified to the point where the classroom itself seemed to recede, walls becoming suggestions rather than certainties.
He—she couldn't access his name, the information sliding away every time she tried to grasp it—stood near the doorway for a moment, apparently unaware of her presence, then moved toward a desk in the front row with the same measured efficiency he applied to everything.
June wanted to leave.
Wanted to stand up and walk out and put distance between herself and whatever he represented, except movement felt impossible, her body refusing to cooperate, and she remained frozen in the back row watching him settle into his seat like a student preparing for lecture that wasn't scheduled to occur.
Minutes passed.
He didn't move, didn't look around, just sat there with patience that suggested he could continue sitting indefinitely without discomfort or need for activity, and June felt the pressure behind her eyes intensify further, accompanied now by nausea and the distinct sensation that her thoughts were becoming untethered from the internal monologue that normally organized them.
She tried speaking, tried forming words that might establish human connection or at least confirm she existed in the same space as him, but her voice emerged strangled, barely audible even to herself.
"Why—" she managed, the single word requiring enormous effort.
He turned, looking directly at her for the first time, and June experienced the full weight of attention from eyes that reflected light without warmth, that observed without judgment but also without anything resembling human recognition.
"Why does it hurt?" he finished her question, his voice quiet, even, carrying across the empty classroom with unnatural clarity.
June nodded, unable to form additional words, and waited for an answer she suspected wouldn't help even if he provided one.
"You're more sensitive," he said simply. "Most people don't notice. You notice everything."
The confirmation that her perception was accurate rather than hallucinatory should have provided relief, but instead it intensified her panic, because if this was real then reality genuinely was malfunctioning and there was no external reference point stable enough to provide sanctuary from the wrongness.
"Make it stop," June whispered, the request desperate, irrational, directed at someone she had no reason to believe could help and every reason to suspect was the source of the problem.
"I can't," he replied, still watching her with that neutral attention. "I'm not doing anything. You're just aware of what everyone else successfully ignores."
June closed her eyes, trying to block out visual input that might reduce the sensory overload, but closing her eyes made everything worse because then she could feel the wrongness more directly, could sense the way space itself seemed uncertain about its own dimensions, could perceive the fundamental instability underlying what should have been solid physical law.
She opened her eyes again, gasping, and found him still watching her with the same careful neutrality.
"It won't kill you," he said quietly. "The awareness. It just feels like it will."
The statement was probably meant to be reassuring but failed completely, and June felt tears streaming down her face without having consciously decided to cry, her body responding to stress her mind couldn't adequately process.
"Who are you?" she managed to ask, the question emerging more clearly now despite the ongoing discomfort.
He tilted his head slightly, considering, and when he answered his voice carried the same finality it always did.
"Uno Nao."
The name landed in her awareness and immediately began sliding away, her mind attempting to catalogue it and finding nowhere stable to place the information, like trying to store water in hands that couldn't close properly.
She repeated it silently, forcing retention through pure stubborn will: Uno Nao, Uno Nao, Uno Nao.
"I won't remember," she said, the realization emerging with crushing certainty. "I'll forget again. I always forget."
"Yes," he confirmed, offering no comfort, just acknowledgment of fact.
"Why?"
"Because remembering me requires accepting that systems aren't complete. Most people prefer completeness, even if it's false."
June laughed, the sound bitter and slightly unhinged, because the answer was simultaneously profound and utterly useless, explaining everything while helping nothing.
The pressure behind her eyes began to recede slightly, whether from adaptation or because Uno's presence was somehow stabilizing or simply because her system was shutting down non-essential awareness to preserve core function she couldn't determine.
"I should go," she said, though she didn't move, still uncertain whether her legs would support her.
"You should," Uno agreed, not encouragingly or dismissively, just confirming her assessment.
June stood slowly, testing her balance, and found movement possible though unsteady, and she made her way toward the exit with exaggerated care, focusing on each step to avoid stumbling.
At the doorway she paused, looking back at Uno who'd returned his attention forward, apparently content to sit in an empty classroom for reasons only he understood or didn't feel required to explain.
"Will it get worse?" she asked.
He didn't turn around, but his voice carried clearly: "It will get more obvious."
June left, pulling the door closed behind her, and stood in the corridor trying to remember why she'd entered that classroom, what she'd been seeking refuge from, and slowly the memory decayed, leaving behind only residual anxiety and the name she'd forced herself to remember that was already becoming uncertain.
Uno... something.
Uno Nao.
She repeated it silently, walking toward her lecture with renewed determination to maintain the memory, to prove that retention was possible even when her mind insisted otherwise.
By the time she reached the lecture hall, the name had faded completely, leaving behind only the knowledge that she'd forgotten something important and the persistent headache that suggested reality remained unstable regardless of whether she could identify the source.
Elsewhere in the academy, systems that had functioned flawlessly for centuries began exhibiting behaviors that maintenance staff couldn't explain and enchantment specialists couldn't correct.
The library's cataloging array started filing books under categories that didn't exist—not incorrect categories, but labels that had no referent, organizational structures that presupposed knowledge frameworks the library didn't contain.
A professor teaching Advanced Runic Theory discovered that certain runes he'd taught hundreds of times no longer behaved predictably, their effects shifting based on factors that shouldn't influence runic function, and when he submitted a report the administration's response came back contradicting itself, approving and denying his request for investigation simultaneously.
Three students independently reported the same dream—walking through academy corridors that ended abruptly without walls or doors, just cessation of space followed by awareness that they'd walked through the cessation without noticing and were now somewhere they couldn't identify despite being able to see their dormitory from an impossible angle.
Otani Kotone documented it all, her reports growing longer and less coherent as she attempted to organize observations that resisted organization, and slowly her certainty about her own role began to crack, questions emerging that protocols weren't designed to address: What is an observer when observation itself becomes unreliable? What is documentation when documentation contradicts itself? What is system maintenance when the system has begun questioning its own function?
She stood at her terminal reviewing overnight logs, watching data streams that updated and then contradicted their own updates, seeing timestamps that claimed events occurred before their causes, reading incident reports that referenced buildings the academy didn't have and students who'd never enrolled.
Her hands moved across the interface with practiced efficiency, flagging anomalies, creating new categories for observations that fit nowhere in existing taxonomies, and with each new category she created she felt herself diverging further from the perfect obedience that had defined her existence.
The system wanted certainty.
Demanded it, actually, requiring that all observations resolve into stable classifications that could be stored, retrieved, and acted upon.
But reality was no longer providing material stable enough to classify, and Kotone found herself creating an entirely new framework that admitted uncertainty as valid input, that allowed for observations to remain unresolved indefinitely, that accepted contradiction as permanent condition rather than temporary problem requiring correction.
She saved her work, logged out, and stood near the window overlooking the central courtyard where morning classes were beginning, students moving between buildings in patterns that looked normal from this distance but which she knew from documentation were increasingly chaotic when examined closely.
Uno Nao walked across the courtyard below.
Kotone tracked his movement with eyes that saw him clearly, while every sensor in the building struggled to confirm his presence, her awareness split between direct perception and instrumental failure, and she wondered—not for the first time this week—whether she was experiencing consciousness or malfunction.
The distinction had become less clear.
Below, Uno paused near the fountain, looking up toward her window with that same neutral attention, and for a brief moment their eyes met across the distance.
Kotone felt recognition pass between them, acknowledgment without understanding, and then Uno continued walking, disappearing around a corner while sensors frantically recalibrated to account for movement they couldn't properly track.
She returned to her terminal, pulled up a blank form, and began typing a report she knew would go nowhere, would likely be flagged as system error rather than legitimate observation, but which she needed to create anyway because documentation had become the only anchor she had to certainty.
Subject: Uno Nao - Week 4 Observations
Classification: PENDING_INDEFINITELY
Summary: Reality degradation continues. Subject remains unchanged. I am changing. Uncertain whether this constitutes failure or evolution. Request guidance. Expect no response. Will continue observation regardless.
She filed the report, watching it disappear into administrative channels that would process it according to protocols designed for a world that no longer existed in the form those protocols assumed.
Then she gathered her materials and left her office, because observation required proximity and she'd been maintaining too much distance, documenting from safety when what the situation actually demanded was direct engagement with whatever Uno represented, even if engagement meant confronting the possibility that understanding wasn't achievable and certainty was an illusion systems maintained through collective agreement rather than actual fact.
Outside, the academy continued its careful dance around wrongness, maintaining routines that suggested normalcy while fundamental principles quietly failed, and somewhere in the administrative depths beneath the oldest buildings, authorization was being granted for measures the academy had never before needed to employ, corrections that would either restore function or accelerate collapse.
Ray Loss's summons had been issued.
He would arrive soon.
And when he did, the academy would discover whether deletion was possible or whether some things existed with such fundamental priority that deletion itself became meaningless.
The answer would reshape everything.
Or destroy it trying.