Thirty minutes.
That was how long Haruka had been sitting on the floor of Room A-0174.
The notebook was open.
The three codes were written across different pages.
He had rewritten them.
Checked them.
Rewritten them again.
Nothing.
His eyes kept moving between the first code and the page beside it.
KHOOR GHDU SOHDVH FKHFN XS BRXU ORYHG RQHV
WKHB PLJKW EH GHSUHVVHG ZKR NQRZV ZKHQ WKHB
PLJKW EOHHG
Haruka stared.
Then blinked.
Then stared again.
"Okay."
He rubbed his face.
"Okay..."
He picked up his pen.
"Caesar cipher."
He wrote it down.
Caesar.
Then underneath it:
Shift?
He tried +1.
Nothing.
+2.
Nothing.
+3.
His pen stopped.
"...No way."
He shifted the letters back three.
K became H.
H became E.
O became L.
O became L.
R became O.
Haruka froze.
He continued.
Slowly.
Carefully.
HELLO DEAR PLEASE CHECK UP YOUR LOVED ONES
His expression changed.
"..."
He looked at the next line.
Three more letters.
Then another.
Then another.
His hand began moving faster.
THEY MIGHT BE DEPRESSED WHO KNOWS WHEN THEY
He swallowed.
Then the final line.
MIGHT BLEED
Silence.
Haruka stared at the sentence.
His brain refused to process it.
"No."
He shook his head.
"No, no, no."
He grabbed the notebook again.
"That's not—"
He checked every letter.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Same result.
HELLO DEAR. PLEASE CHECK UP YOUR LOVED ONES. THEY MIGHT BE DEPRESSED. WHO KNOWS WHEN THEY MIGHT BLEED.
Haruka's fingers tightened around the pen.
"Who wrote this?"
"Was it for me?"
Nothing answered.
He looked toward the door.
Nothing.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Who the hell writes something like this?"
He stood up.
Started pacing.
"Why would you use Caesar?"
Three steps.
"Why blood?"
Three more.
"Why the fourth floor?"
He stopped.
"And why tell me to check on people I love?"
His voice became quieter.
"...Why me?"
He looked back at the notebook.
The words seemed different now.
They weren't just a code.
They were a message.
Someone had gone out of their way to leave it.
Someone wanted it found.
Haruka grabbed his hair with both hands.
"Thirty minutes."
He laughed once.
It wasn't funny.
"Thirty fucking minutes for THAT?"
He threw the pen onto the bed.
It bounced off the blanket and landed on the floor.
He clutched at his own scalp, his fingers taloned in a spasm of existential agony, and with a wretched cry that seemed to rupture the very silence of heaven, he tore at the roots of his own being. A handful of dark, brittle strands—the remnants of a soul frayed by the relentless friction of life—fell like dead leaves into the abyss of his lap. It was a violent, discordant prayer offered to a void that refused to answer, a grotesque harvest of grief where he sought to pluck out the madness itself, strand by agonizing strand, until he was left shivering, fractured, and diminished, a ghost haunting the ruins of his own ruined mind.
"Caesar. It was fucking Caesar."
He paced again.
"I could've solved that in five minutes."
He stopped.
"...Three."
A pause.
"Two."
He looked at the clock.
Thirty minutes.
His frustration returned instantly.
"AND I WASTED THIRTY!"
He kicked the leg of the desk.
The desk barely moved.
Haruka stared at it.
"...Ow."
"Alright I was never smart enough to end it in 5 minutes. I deserved that for lying. It could've taken FUCKING 10 MINUTES AT MOST IF I KNEW IT WAS FUCKING CEASAR! MOTHERFUCKER HAD TO WASTE MY TIME AS IF IT WAS HIS MOTHER'S REMNANTS!"
He sat down. Rubbing his face out of annoyance.
Silence.
His anger slowly drained into exhaustion.
He looked at the first cipher again.
HELLO DEAR.
The words bothered him.
Not because they were difficult.
Because they were casual.
Almost friendly.
Like whoever wrote it wasn't trying to threaten him.
They were warning him.
Haruka's eyes moved to the next sentence.
PLEASE CHECK UP YOUR LOVED ONES.
His expression faded.
Sakura.
Yume.
Saito.
Kenjiro.
Jack.
Marie.
Marcus.
Aurel.
Nayoki.
Fuyuki.
The names passed through his head one after another.
His hands became still.
"...Loved ones."
He whispered it.
Then looked at the second cipher.
Then the third.
The first one was a warning.
The others...
He didn't know yet.
And that was somehow worse.
Haruka slowly picked up his pen.
He wrote underneath Cipher 01:
SOLVED — CAESAR SHIFT -3
Then he stared at the other two.
His confidence had completely disappeared.
"Okay."
He took a breath.
"Two more."
He flipped the page.
The numbers stared back at him.
Then the strange body-part cipher.
Haruka stared at both.
For several seconds.
Then—
"Whoever made these..."
He leaned closer.
"...you better have a damn good reason. And I hope it isn't you... Zero"
His eyes narrowed.
Because now he wasn't solving them out of curiosity.
He was solving them because someone had told him to look after the people he cared about.
And Haruka Miyamaru hated one thing more than anything else.
Being too late.
He turned the page.
Cipher 02.
Thirty minutes had already passed.
He didn't care anymore.
He was going to stay until he understood every single word.
Even if it took all night.
Even if it took longer.
Because somewhere in the academy—
someone had left him a message.
And Haruka had finally started listening.
Cipher 02
Haruka stared at the numbers.
9-14-20-8-5-4-1-18-11-14-5-19-19-1-14-4-5-13-16-20-9-14-5-19-19-15-6-22-15-9-4
He tilted his head.
"...What the hell?"
He wrote the numbers down again.
He stopped.
"Alphabet."
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
He wrote the corresponding letters beside the numbers.
I N T H E D A R K N E S S
His eyes widened.
"...Oh."
He immediately continued.
AND EMPTINESS OF VOID...
Haruka sat straighter.
The pen moved faster.
LIVES OUR KING...
He stopped.
"Our king? Fuck you mean our? Me too? I don't remember joining any cult."
He looked at the original numbers.
Checked them.
No mistake.
He continued.
OH BELOVED.
Haruka stared at the sentence.
"...What?"
He looked at Cipher 01.
Then Cipher 02.
Then back to Cipher 01.
"Hello dear..."
His expression tightened.
"Check up your loved ones..."
Then:
Lives our king, oh beloved.
"Who is the FUCK IS 'our'?"
He scratched the back of his head.
"Who the hell is this for?"
He went back to the numbers.
Maybe he had decoded it wrong.
Maybe A1Z26 wasn't actually the method.
He tried reversing it.
Nothing.
He tried grouping the numbers differently.
Nothing.
He checked every line.
The message remained.
IN THE DARKNESS AND EMPTINESS OF VOID, LIVES OUR KING, OH BELOVED.
Then the next part.
OH BELOVED.
Again.
PEACE LOVE AND BLOOD IS WHAT YOU SHALL BRING.
Haruka's face went completely blank.
"...What?"
The bell rang.
BRIIIIING—
Haruka jumped.
He looked at the clock.
"Already?"
He quickly shoved the notebook into his bag.
Then stopped.
"No."
He pulled it back out.
He needed the pen.
The paper.
Everything.
He couldn't leave this unfinished.
Haruka stuffed the notebook under his arm and rushed out.
The hallway was already filling with students.
Voices.
Footsteps.
Doors opening.
He ignored all of it.
He needed somewhere quiet.
The washroom.
He pushed the door open.
Empty.
Good.
Haruka entered one of the stalls, locked it, and sat down.
Notebook.
Pen.
Cipher.
Again.
He wrote the decoded message from memory.
Then stared at it.
IN THE DARKNESS AND EMPTINESS OF VOID, LIVES OUR KING, OH BELOVED.
His eyebrows slowly lowered.
"Void."
He wrote it down.
VOID.
Then:
KING.
Then:
BELOVED.
He drew a line between them.
"Is this describing someone?"
He thought.
"No."
He crossed it out.
"Maybe a place."
Crossed that out too.
"A title?"
Nothing.
He looked at the next line.
PEACE. LOVE. BLOOD.
Three words.
Three completely different things.
Haruka's grip tightened around the pen.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
Silence.
He stared at his own reflection in the small mirror above the sink.
Tired eyes.
Messy hair.
A notebook full of nonsense.
Three ciphers.
And absolutely no explanation.
"First one tells me to check the people I love."
He counted on his fingers.
"Second one talks about a king."
He looked at the third cipher.
"And the last one..."
He stopped.
Something about this was wrong.
Not the code.
The intention.
Whoever created these wasn't simply leaving random messages.
They knew something.
Something about the academy.
Something about him.
Maybe something about the people around him.
Haruka slowly closed the notebook.
His forehead rested against the cool wall.
His breathing became heavier.
"Think."
Nothing.
"Think."
Still nothing.
"THINK."
He pulled away from the wall and stared at the page.
His hand trembled slightly.
"Why would someone leave three different ciphers?"
He flipped between the pages.
"Why Caesar?"
"Why numbers?"
"Why the third one?"
His frustration boiled over.
He raised his fist toward the wall—
Then stopped.
His fist remained there for a second.
He slowly lowered it.
"...No."
Haruka laughed under his breath.
"I'm not doing this."
He dragged both hands down his face.
"Come on."
He looked at the words again.
OUR KING.
His eyes narrowed.
Suddenly—
Nothing.
No revelation.
No answer.
Just more questions.
Haruka closed the notebook.
For the first time since entering the washroom, he looked genuinely lost.
"...Who are you?"
The bell rang again.
Haruka didn't move.
The notebook remained open in his lap.
Three ciphers.
One solved.
One partially understood.
One still waiting.
And somehow—
Cipher 02 had left him more confused than before.
He began hitting his head with the washroom wall.
He kept hitting till his forehead started to bleed and the blood started to roll down from the forehead to his eyes. The headband he wears that was given by Yume was now soaked in blood