The voice still echoed in Seina's head — a cold whisper that refused to fade.
"STAY... AWAY."
She rested her cold forehead against the metal locker in the school hallway, trying to anchor herself to reality. The smell of disinfectant was strong, but not strong enough to erase the memory of blood and the pulsing darkness of the creature.
"You okay?"
Thalya's voice made Seina flinch. She turned, and there she was — standing, alive, unharmed. Her violet eyes reflected genuine concern. Her neck was perfect, not a single scratch.
Seina swallowed hard. How could she explain it? How could she describe what she had seen without shattering the fragile normality Thalya believed in?
"Last night..." Seina's voice came out hoarse. "The creature showed up again. On the seventh day."
Thalya grew serious, her shoulders tensing slightly. "And...?"
"And you died." Seina looked down at the floor. "But it was different this time. I saw it clearly. You... you come back. It's like you have some kind of power. You die on the seventh day and return the next morning as if nothing happened. I think."
She waited for panic, denial, anything. But instead, Thalya's expression softened into something oddly thoughtful.
"That... actually makes some sense," Thalya murmured. "But you know what? I'm glad you kept your promise."
Seina blinked, confused.
"What did you say?"
"To stay with me until the end." Thalya stepped closer, a faint smile forming on her lips. "I just realized something. That peach scent I always notice when I wake up after the reset... it comes from you."
Seina froze. Her favorite juice. The sweet essence she always carried with her.
"What... what does that mean?" she whispered, her heart pounding.
"It means you were there with me." Thalya rested her forehead against Seina's shoulder and inhaled softly, an intimate gesture that made tears sting Seina's eyes. "In the moment when everything fades and I come back... what remains is your scent. It's the only thing that doesn't disappear. The only thing I remember."
It was a memory without shape, without pain, without fear. Only a ghost of sweetness at the border between death and rebirth. The purest, most terrifying proof that Seina was real to her.
To break the intensity of the moment, Thalya stepped back and grabbed her phone. "Wanna hear something?" she asked, her tone lighter. "It's one of the songs I listen to the most. It calms me down."
Before Seina could answer, Thalya put one earbud in her ear and the other in her own. The noise of the hallway vanished, replaced by a soft, melancholic melody filling Seina's mind. A female voice sang in a foreign language — something that sounded like longing and hope.
They didn't speak another word. They just stood there, leaning against the locker, sharing that small, private universe of sound. For Seina, it was a safe harbor after the horror. For Thalya, it was her way of saying, without words: "We're okay. We're together."
And for a moment — just that fleeting instant — the voice inside Seina's head went silent.
The music was stronger. It helped her breathe.
In that rare state of calm, her mind — once a storm of fear and guilt — began to clear. The fragments of the last cycles started to align, like pieces of a macabre puzzle.
"Thalya..." she said, her voice still shaky with emotion but now holding a thread of clarity. "I took you to that old textile factory last night... it wasn't by accident. I was trying to understand something."
Thalya removed her earbud, her violet eyes fixed on Seina, focused.
"The first time, the creature attacked you in the alley, right before midnight," Seina continued, her gaze distant, as if reading data off a screen. "The second time, on the street near school — around 11:48 PM. And last night, at the factory... it showed up much earlier. Barely past 11:20." She swallowed hard, the memory still raw. "And it always comes from the same direction, Thalya. From the north. From that old factory's direction. Like it's... patrolling a territory, or coming out of somewhere near there."
It was just an observation, a thin thread of logic tangled in the absurd — but holding onto it made Seina feel a little less powerless.
Thalya watched her in silence for a moment, processing.
"So... it's not random?"
"I don't know," Seina whispered, finally meeting her gaze. "But... I don't think so."