Chapter 160: Confession (Patreon)

The last table of customers left the izakaya at eleven forty.

Shido Makoto finished cleaning up the back kitchen, wiped down the stove, and sorted the leftover ingredients into the fridge.

Ikeda Ken was doing the accounts out front, humming some off-key tune.

Nanami Aoyama had clocked out and gone home half an hour earlier — she'd seemed a little off today, so Shido Makoto had sent her home early.

"Nice work today, Shikata-kun." Ikeda Ken poked his head out from behind the counter.

"See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow."

Shido Makoto took off his work apron, hung it back on the wall hook, shouldered his bag, and walked out the back door.

Few pedestrians were out on the street; only the convenience store's lights were still on.

He pulled his coat tighter and headed toward the train station.

Business had been good today — a steady stream of customers all evening.

He ran through tomorrow's prep list in his head, then realized Sora hadn't texted him once all day.

Sora wasn't much of a texter, but she'd usually send something in the evening — asking when he'd be home, or asking him to bring back a snack. Today, nothing.

He pulled out his phone to check. No unread messages, sure enough.

Strange.

Shido Makoto quickened his pace.

Getting off the train, he walked to his apartment building and glanced up at the window of their floor.

No light.

Sora couldn't possibly be asleep this early — she was the type to stay up till two in the morning watching anime.

He took out his key, unlocked the entrance, walked up to the door, and pressed his ear against it to listen.

No sound.

He turned the key and pushed the door open.

The entryway light was off. The living room light was off. The whole apartment sat in darkness.

He reached for the entryway light switch. The instant his fingers touched the wall, a figure crashed into his arms.

Shido Makoto staggered back half a step on reflex, his back slamming into the door he hadn't yet closed.

His hands shot out and caught the shoulders of whoever had thrown themselves at him. The moment he recognized the shape, he relaxed.

Sora had her face buried against his chest, both hands fisted in his collar, her whole body curled into a small, tight ball.

Shido Makoto braced one hand against the doorframe to keep his balance, resting the other on the back of Sora's head.

Her hair was a little disheveled, one of her ribbons askew.

"Sora?"

Sora only gripped him tighter.

He tried to lean down to look at her face, but Sora had it buried too deep to see. She had only one slipper on; the other lay fallen on the entryway floor.

How long had she been waiting by the door?

Shido Makoto reached back to close the door, then felt around for the light switch.

The entryway light came on, falling over the two of them.

Sora lifted her face from his chest, just a little.

Her eyes were badly bloodshot, the tip of her nose red too, her whole face streaked with tears.

Something in Shido Makoto's chest lurched.

Sora rarely cried. She was the type to press her lips shut and refuse to let the tears fall even when she was angry or hurt.

The last time he'd seen her cry like this had been right after the Kasugano couple died.

"What happened?"

"Makoto... today I—" Sora's voice broke and stumbled.

She couldn't get the words out. The tears welled up again.

Shido Makoto bent down, picked up the fallen slipper, and crouched to slip it back onto her foot.

Then he straightened up, laid a hand on her shoulder, and guided her toward the living room.

Sora followed him for two steps, then suddenly stopped and buried her face back against his chest.

"I was scared."

Something tightened in Shido Makoto's chest. He set a hand on her back and patted it gently.

Then he bent down, slid one arm under the crook of her knees and the other beneath her back, and lifted her up entirely.

Sora didn't resist — if anything, she leaned her face in closer against his neck.

Shido Makoto carried her to the living room sofa, set her down, and turned on the light.

Only then did he see that Sora's left hand was clenched tight around something.

A black phone.

Identical to his own.

His pupils contracted.

"Sora."

He crouched in front of the sofa, eye level with her.

"What's that in your hand?"

Sora looked down at the phone, then held it up in front of him.

"This... this afternoon... it just... appeared... in the apartment..."

Shido Makoto took the phone and turned it over, examining it closely.

It really was identical to his own.

He pressed the power button. The screen lit up, showing a line of completed task log.

[Dungeon: "Hide and Seek" — Complete.]

[Survivors confirmed: Kasugano Sora, Nanami Aoyama, Kudo Makoto.]

[Evaluating task performance...]

[Rating: A]

So it really was the Cycle Game.

And an A rating, no less.

His fingers paused on the screen for a second, then he slowly closed the phone.

Sora had been chosen by the Cycle Game.

Shido Makoto set the phone down on the coffee table, then sat beside Sora and let her lean against him.

Sora immediately curled herself into his arms, both hands clutching at his clothes and refusing to let go.

Shido Makoto rested a hand on her shoulder and felt her body still trembling.

"Tell me from the beginning," he said. "Take your time. No rush."

Sora took a deep breath. Then another.

Her account came out in fits and starts, sometimes trailing off mid-sentence until she could steady herself enough to go on. Shido Makoto didn't rush her, not once.

"This afternoon... after you left for work... a phone just appeared on the coffee table."

"I thought you'd forgotten it here... so I picked it up to look..."

"And then I got teleported away..."

Sora recounted the entire course of the Hide and Seek dungeon.

The rules, the hints, her own deductions, and the strategy she'd devised with Nanami and Kudo Makoto to take turns being the Ghost.

Shido Makoto listened, quickly processing the information in his head.

A New Moon-class dungeon — the rules weren't complicated, but the real difficulty lay in how counterintuitive it was, and how little room for error it allowed.

In an ordinary game of hide and seek, the hiders did everything they could to stay concealed and avoid being found. This dungeon flipped that entirely — the hiders needed to actively get found by the Ghost, or else, as the round dragged on and fewer players remained alive, the situation would only grow harder to break.

That Sora had survived to the end in an environment like that — and earned an A rating besides...

He glanced down at her.

Sora's face was still buried against him, her voice muffled.

"When the countdown finally ran out... everyone who'd turned into a monster just vanished... and the other two and I got sent back to reality..."

Shido Makoto stayed quiet, his mind racing through a dozen thoughts at once.

But none of that was what mattered most right now.

"Makoto."

Sora lifted her head from his chest and looked straight at him with red-rimmed eyes.

"You have a phone like this too, don't you?"

"I thought of it while I was in that factory."

"You've been acting strange lately..."

"You go to places like that alone... face those things alone... and you never tell me anything..."

"Do you think I'd just be dead weight?"

Shido Makoto took his hand off Sora's shoulder and set it on his own knee.

He lowered his head, silent for a long moment.

"Now that you've been through the Cycle Game yourself, you should understand why I never told you," Shido Makoto said quietly.

Sora pressed her lips together and scrubbed a hand hard across her face. "You... how many times?"

"Four."

Shido Makoto told it slowly. "The first was a month ago, on the train back to Tokyo from Okizome Town."

"So it was already happening back then..." Sora murmured to herself.

Shido Makoto leaned back against the sofa and gathered his thoughts.

He wasn't going to hide anything anymore.

Sora had already been through a dungeon. She was a player now. There was no point hiding it from her any longer.

So he told her, roughly, what had happened in each of his four dungeons.

He didn't go into every detail, but he left out none of the key information — the rules, the monsters' traits, the clear conditions, the rating system, the reward mechanics.

Sora listened to all of it in silence.

Then she asked, "Who's this Ruan Luo you mentioned?"

"A player I met in the Ghost Island dungeon. More experienced than me — the most reliable partner I've worked with so far."

"A woman?"

Shido Makoto glanced at her.

"Yeah."

"How old?"

"Early twenties."

The corners of Sora's mouth turned down for a second, but she didn't press the point — this wasn't the time for that.

"And that Yukinoshita Yukino?"

"Also someone I met in a dungeon," Shido Makoto explained.

Sora's expression turned subtly complicated — she'd seen him with Yukino on the rooftop, that time at the school festival.

"She and I are just friends," Shido Makoto added.

Sora made a small huff and looked down, tugging at the ear of her rabbit plush.

"What else? You mentioned information from Ruan Luo."

Shido Makoto nodded.

He repeated everything Ruan Luo had told him at the library, word for word, to Sora.

Anomaly concentration, the mechanism behind how dungeons formed, the existence of the Special Affairs Bureau, and the fact that anomaly concentration was rising steadily worldwide.

Sora listened intently.

Shido Makoto knew Sora had a sharp mind — she just usually couldn't be bothered to use it.

"So... dungeons aren't just some supernatural force playing tricks on people," Sora slowly summarized.

"Something's actually wrong with the world itself?"

"Right."

"When anomaly concentration rises, it spawns dungeons. Clearing a dungeon lowers the concentration again. We're the ones chosen to clean up these anomalies."

"That's roughly it."

Sora fell silent for a moment. "And if no one clears them?"

"The anomaly concentration keeps climbing. Paranormal incidents in the real world get more frequent, more severe. What happens in the end — nobody knows."

Sora hugged her rabbit plush and said nothing, head down.

Shido Makoto studied her profile, took a deep breath, and got up from the sofa to walk back to his room.

He opened the drawer of his nightstand and pulled a ruler out from the very back.

It was the ghost item he'd earned in a dungeon.

He carried the disciplinary ruler back to the living room and sat down in front of Sora.

"This is for you."

Sora took the ruler and turned it over in her hands, examining it.

"What is it?"

"A ghost item — a special tool from a dungeon," Shido Makoto explained.

"You can use it inside a dungeon — it has a special effect. I'll teach you exactly how."

Sora gripped the ruler. "If you give it to me, what will you use?"

"I have other ways," Shido Makoto said.

His death-triggered 【Rollback】 was, in itself, the strongest life-saving trick he had.

By comparison, Sora needed the extra protection more.

Sora looked at him as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she just put the ruler away.

"Makoto."

"Yeah?"

"I don't want to be thrown in there again not knowing anything."

Shido Makoto looked at her.

"Tell me everything you know," Sora said, her tone leaving no room for backing down.

"Whether it's about the game, about the dungeons, or about those... teammates of yours. All of it."

"I don't want to be kept in the dark anymore."

Shido Makoto was silent for a few seconds.

"Okay."

Sora's shoulders relaxed. She leaned in closer to him, resting her head on his arm.

"Today... I was really scared," she said softly.

"I know."

"Worse than the fear — while I was in there alone, I kept thinking, maybe Makoto's been through this too, all alone in a place like that..."

Her voice caught again.

"You won't be alone anymore," he said.

Sora buried her face in his sleeve and gave a muffled sound of agreement.

The two of them sat on the sofa like that for a long time.

Shido Makoto glanced at the clock on the wall. One in the morning.

"Go wash your face and get some sleep," he said, patting Sora's shoulder. "We've got things to do tomorrow."

"Like what?"

"That intel from your Hide and Seek dungeon — we can sell it."

Sora blinked her puffy, red-rimmed eyes.

"Sell it? To who?"

The Special Affairs Bureau.

Shido Makoto stood and cleared the water glasses from the coffee table. "An investigator named Lin Yan — we've worked together before. Go over every detail of the dungeon in your head, and tomorrow I'll help you put together the report."

Sora's attention shifted. She grabbed her rabbit plush, stood up, and stepped into her slippers.

"How much can we get?"

"Depends on the dungeon's rating. A New Moon-class dungeon usually goes for around one to three million yen."

Sora thought it over, then added, "I remember it clearly. Every detail."

Shido Makoto nodded. "Good. Go to bed."

Sora stopped when she reached the hallway and glanced back at him.

"Makoto."

"Yeah?"

"...Good night."

"Good night."

Sora turned and walked into her room.

Shido Makoto stood in the living room, staring at the two black phones sitting side by side on the coffee table.

Sora had been chosen.

The one thing he'd least wanted to happen had happened anyway.

But rather than let her be thrown into a dungeon defenseless, better to start teaching her everything he knew from now on.

At least that would give her better odds of surviving.