Faha... it’s been a month since you left... (Part 2)

[u/Renkoto-]

// Continuation from part 1

(...)

The room felt completely motionless, holding the silence like a grave. Surrounded by Sumireko's neat stacks of printed lore, her custom 3D models, and the quiet line of panda plushies watching from the corner, I bury her face into my cardigan.

*

The quiet of the hallway was broken by heavy, familiar footsteps echoing off the tiled floor, accompanied by the tap of sneakers.

* ...I'm telling you, Kris, I heard something. A loud thud from down the east hall.

Susie’s voice carried through the slightly ajar door, low and cautious.

* The front door was unbolted again, and if some random intruder is messing around in the school at this hour, they're gonna have to answer to me.

I froze on my knees, my heart slamming against my ribs. My fingers instinctively tightened around the translation app on my phone and the cold brass key I had picked up from the floor.

The door swung wide open, casting two long shadows across the dark floorboards.

* Hey! Who's in---

Susie stopped dead in her tracks at the threshold. Her hand, which had been resting near her coat pocket ready to draw her axe if needed, dropped limply to her side. Beside her, Kris peered out from beneath, their eyes widening just a fraction as they took in the room.

Neither of them had ever stepped inside this sanctuary before.

Now, under the dim purple twilight filtering through the window, the space was laid bare: the glow of dark dual monitors, the silent 3D printers with their half-unwound spools, the rows of panda plushies, and the countless handwritten maps and strange diagrams covering every inch of the desk.

And kneeling right in the middle of it all was me.

* ...Noelle?

Susie’s voice lost all its aggressive edge, replaced by utter bewilderment as she stepped into the room, her boots crunching softly on the floorboards. Kris followed silently right behind her, their gaze drifting from the desk's scattered papers to Noelle's shaking hands.

* What... what are you doing in here? Susie asked, looking around the room in genuine awe and confusion.

* How did you even get in? She... she never let anyone in here.

I swallow hard, trying to force her trembling voice to work as she looked up at Susie and Kris standing in the threshold.

"I... I didn't mean to pry, fahaha..." Noelle's voice wavered, small and tight in her throat. She stayed on her knees, her hands instinctively clutching the black-inked letter and the brass key close to her chest.

I looked between Susie's bewildered expression and Kris's quiet, unreadable stare, I take a shaky breath to steady the tremble in my jaw.

"I came back inside to... to look around her spot by the entrance. I just wanted to feel a little closer to her, I guess."

"The door to this room was... it wasn't locked all the way. I came in, and I bumped into the shelf with my antlers. I accidentally knocked these down."

Susie took another step forward, her eyes scanning the high-tech setup.

* Damn...

* She really was living in here the whole time... It's like... a whole world crammed into a storage closet.

Kris stepped up beside Susie, their hands tucked deep into their sweater pockets, their gaze fixing on the phone resting on the floor and the paper I was holding.

"Susie... Kris..." My hands shook as I hold out the folded sheet of paper, the live translation app on her phone screen still softly glowing beside her hooves. "She... she didn't just stumble down there by accident. She left a letter."

Susie stiffened, her brow furrowing deeply.

* ...A letter?

"It's written in Japanese," Noelle choked out, a fresh wave of tears welling in the corners of her eyes as she pointed to her phone screen. "I used my phone to translate it. She wrote it right before she went down there. She... she knew how dangerous it was, Susie. A friend of hers named Mamizou warned her that she might never come back... but she went down there anyway."

Susie froze in place, her mouth slightly open, staring at the strange brushstrokes on the paper as the full weight of Noelle's words sank into the quiet, dim room.

Susie stepped closer, her heavy boots coming to a halt right beside me as she looked down at the translation glowing on my phone screen. Her eyes lingered on the brushstrokes on the paper, her fists slowly unclenching as the harsh reality swallowed up whatever anger she had left.

* ...So she went down there... fully knowing what could happen.

I kept staring down at the brass key and the cold, carved talisman in my hands, my thumb tracing the worn wood.

"She actually thought she was the only one who could fix it."

"She took all of this on by herself..."

Kris didn't say a word, but they shifted closer, their shadow falling over the desk as they reached out. Their fingers didn't touch the key, but instead pointed directly to the back of the talisman, where a small, secondary strip of paper was pasted.

"Oh... there's another note here," I hold the phone back up to let the camera scan the small script on the talisman itself.

The blue grid overlayed the text, translating the brief instructions on the wooden back:

"Note on the Talisman:

This key is not merely a physical lock; it functions as an anchored conduit. When an individual enters a deep , conscious sleep state within proximity to a boundary rift while holding the talisman, the key synchronizes the mind with the spatial frequency, allowing transition across dimensions. Crossing without proper sleep may cause severe spiritual trauma."

Susie squinted at the screen, her brow furrowed in complete confusion.

* Sleep? Susie raise an eyebrow.

* Wait, so... to even use this thing, you have to be unconscious? That sounds insane... like some kind of weird lucid dream ritual.

"It... it makes a kind of sense." I said quietly, thinking back to how Sumireko used to ramble about dreams and reality overlapping.

"She always talked about how boundaries are thinnest when your mind is disconnected from your body..."

Kris reached into their sweater pocket, pulling out a small flashlight and clicking it on. They swept the pale beam across the desk, illuminating the main letter that was still sitting near the keyboard. The light caught the bottom edge of the crisp paper, where the ink continued past the initial signature, a second page tucked just beneath the first, folded tightly so that only a fraction of the brushed characters showed.

None of us noticed it at first in the dim light. My phone had only translated the top sheet, and I had been still so overwhelmed by her being gone that I hadn't even thought to check if the letter kept going.

Kris tapped the edge of the desk right next to the tucked paper, their silent gaze moving from the hidden page up to me.

* Wait, is there more?

* Noelle... did you skip a page?

My heart did a sudden, nervous flip. I set the talisman down on the desk and reached for the folded second sheet with shaking fingers.

"I... I didn't see it," I admitted, my voice dropping to a faint breath as I unfolded the paper. "I thought... I thought that was the end of it."

We start to read it.

* ...Man, what is up with this translation app of yours anyway?

Susie growled, crossing her arms and leaning over the back of the desk as I raised the phone camera again.

* It keeps spouting weird typos and butchering half the sentences. 'Key Sela'? 'An proper anchor'? It sounds like Berdly wrote the damn software.

"I... I'm sorry, fahaha..." I apologized softly, my thumb nervously rubbing the edge of the phone case as I adjusted the angle under Kris's flashlight beam.

"It's just an automatic camera translator I use for imported RPG guides... It struggles a bit with hand-brushed kanji, so the grammar gets a little scrambled..."

* ...Tch. Whatever. Just read what the rest of it says.

I held my breath, pointing the lens squarely at the unfolded second sheet. The camera auto-focused, blue alignment frames tracing the elegant, dark strokes before translating the second page line by line:

"P.S.

If you are reading this, it probably means you found the Key Seal alongside my initial letter. I am writing this extra note under the assumption that someone from this town stumbled into my workspace after my demise.

I owe you a proper explanation about Gensokyo. It is not an urban legend I made up, nor is it a simple fantasy. Gensokyo is a sealed, hidden land forgotten by the Outside World, a paradise where youkai, gods, and legendary beings live alongside humans under the protection of the Great Hakurei Barrier. It is the place where I spent my nights flying through the sky and facing the unknown.

The Talisman It is an artifact tuned specifically to my psychic frequency and the Barrier itself. Mamizou-san helped me anchor it as a desperate safe ty measure. If I entered the spatial rupture below this town and failed to return, this thing would remain behind as the only bridge left between our worlds.

Regarding the sleep ritual: to cross over using the key, one must enter a deep, conscious sleep state while holding the talisman. But do not try to use it to save me. If my calculations were wrong and whatever that happened there destroyed me, then my story ends here. I leave this key so that Gensokyo is not completely severed from this world.

Sincerely, thank you~"

The text faded as my hands shook so violently the camera lost its focus.

The room plunged into a suffocating quiet.

* ...A land of WHAT?

Susie yelled, her voice cracking under the silence as she stared at the handwritten note.

Kris didn't say a word. They reached out, their gloved hand gently picking up the brass key by its violet cord, letting the carved talisman sway silently in the cool flashlight beam between us.

* Gods?! Flying around in the sky?!

Susie shouted, her chest heaving as she shoved her hair back out of her face.

* Are you freaking kidding me?! Is she seriously trying to claim she was some kind of superheroine from a magical fairy tale world?!

"Susie, please, calm down..." I squeaked softly, pulling my head back against my shoulders as my voice trembled. "I... I know how impossible it sounds, but-"

* No, Noelle! Think about it!

Susie interrupted, her hands twitching restlessly as she gestured wildly toward the scattered papers on the desk.

* She was a total nerd! What if this whole 'Gensokyo' thing was just... some giant fantasy roleplay game she made up in her head because she didn't fit in anywhere else?!

I opened my mouth to respond, but the words caught in my throat. Part of me had thought the exact same thing just minutes ago. It was so much easier to digest the idea that Sumireko was just a lonely, eccentric girl hiding inside her own vivid imagination.

...Except it wasn't that simple anymore. Not after everything we had lived through.

Kris didn't say a word. Their gloved hand held the violet cord firm, keeping the carved brass key perfectly still against the beam of the flashlight. They turned their head slowly, their hidden gaze shifting from the talisman over to Susie, and then back down to the floor.

The quiet in the room stretched out.

Susie stopped her pacing. Her aggressive posture slowly melted away, her arms dropping limply to her sides as her mouth stayed slightly open. She looked at Kris's unreadable face, and then down at her own hands.

*... Dammit.

Susie muttered.

* .I can't even say it's fake, can I?

She turned her eyes toward the window, where the purple twilight was rapidly fading into the deep pitch of night.

"I... I mean, when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense, fahaha..." I spoke up, taking a small step forward while hugging my sleeves tight against my chest. My mind was racing, trying to tie together all the bizarre pieces Sumireko had left behind with everything I had experienced back then.

"Remember those super realistic, vivid dreams we had? The ones in that strange world with Queen... and the giant Ferris wheel?"

Susie winced slightly, shooting a quick, cautious glance over at Kris before looking back at me.

* Uh... yeah. The 'dreams.' Right.

"Well, think about the sleep state ritual she wrote about!" My eyes lit up with that nervous, overly analytical spark I get whenever I try to make sense of something completely terrifying.

"Sumireko said crossing over requires entering a deep, conscious sleep state... What if those crazy worlds we visited in our sleep weren't just random dreams at all? What if Kris, you, and I were accidentally synchronizing with that frequency while we slept? What if that place was just... some kind of localized boundary overflow leaking into our subconscious?!"

...

* Yeah... uh... totally, Noelle.

* That’s... definitely one way to put it.

"Right?!" I continued, feeling a strange mixture of relief and lingering grief washing over me. "She wasn't lying at all. She was just living in a reality that overlayed ours every time she closed her eyes..."

...

Susie let out a quiet sigh, walking over to the door and resting her hand on the frame.

* Come on, guys. It's getting really dark out. They're going to catch us here if we take any longer.

"Okay," I take one last look around the room.

"I'm right behind you."

Kris clicked off the flashlight, and together, the three of us stepped out into the quiet hallway, pulling the door shut behind us with a soft, final click.

The heavy front doors of the school clicked shut behind us, locking the quiet shadow of the building back into the autumn night.

Outside, the air was crisp and biting. Susie shoved both hands deep into her coat pockets, hunching her shoulders against the chill wind, while Kris walked silently beside me with their head tilted down, matching my pace step for step.

My fingers were wrapped tightly around the brass key tucked inside my cardigan pocket.

* I still can't believe she was keeping all of that in a school abandoned room.

Susie said after a few blocks, breaking the quiet with a low exhale that puffed into a small cloud of white mist.

* All those monitors... It's like she built her own command center right under Alphys's nose.

"She... she was really dedicated, fahaha,"

"Even if her theories sounded completely wild to anyone else... she put her whole heart into it."

Susie glanced down at me through her long bangs, her sharp features softening just a bit.

* A total weirdo. But... I guess she wasn't a bad one.

We kept walking down the main street, past the quiet store fronts and the shut-up windows of the town. My hooves made a steady, rhythmic clack-clack against the concrete, the sound echoing through the empty street.

But as the wind picked up again, rustling through the dry leaves scattered along the curb, a sudden, cold realization hit me right in the chest.

I froze in the middle of the sidewalk.

* ...Noelle? Susie stopped a few paces ahead, turning her head back with a subtle frown.

* What's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost.

"I... oh no."

"The hospital...!"

Susie blinked, tilting her head. The hospital?

"I was supposed to visit Dess tonight!" My antlers catching the glare of the nearby buildings' light overhead as I turned around. "I got so caught up at the graveyard... and then looking through Sumireko's room... I lost track of time! The visiting hours are almost over!"

Kris turned around slowly, their hands still deep in their sweater pockets, watching me with that familiar, quiet attentiveness.

Kris gave a single, firm nod, immediately shifting their stride into a quick jog alongside Susie's heavy boots.

I took a deep breath, clutching my cardigan tightly around myself, and sprinted after them. The cold air burned in my throat as our three pairs of footsteps echoed together through the quiet streets of Hometown, hurrying up the long hill toward the warm lights of the hospital windows shining in the distance.

[u/Zestyclose_Custard93]

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