That day was, by all accounts, an utterly unremarkable day.
Go to school, shoot the breeze with friends, sit through classes, come home and game, eat, shower, sleep.
That's how it was supposed to go.
That morning, I was trudging toward school, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
Staying up late playing online games the night before had finally caught up with me.
By some stroke of luck, I'd gotten into a random party with Hage-san, and before I knew it, I'd played straight through the night.
Hage-san was a bit of a celebrity in the online game I played.
True to his name, he used a grizzled, bald middle-aged man as his avatar, and despite running an extreme stat-dump build with zero spending, he held his own at the highest level of play through sheer mechanical skill—an absolute madman of a player.
Maybe it was the character concept, maybe the fact he barely said a word in chat—his playstyle was so absurdly cool that a lot of players were drawn to him.
So naturally, my excitement at getting to play alongside Hage-san was completely off the charts.
I arrived at school, stifled a yawn, and stepped into the classroom.
"Morning."
"Hey."
"'Sup. …What's up? You look dead tired."
I greeted my classmates, Sasajima Kyoya and Oshima Kanata.
The two of them were game buddies who played the same game as me.
"Oh man, brace yourself. I got into a random party with Hage-san yesterday."
"No way!"
"Yeah, for real. Ended up basically pulling an all-nighter because of it."
"Whoa. Seriously? Was it after I logged off?"
Kanata had been playing with me up to a certain point.
But he'd logged out earlier, saying he was about to go to sleep.
"Damn it! I should've stuck around a little longer!"
Kanata looked genuinely gutted.
But if Kanata hadn't dropped out, I never would've recruited random party members in the first place—and if he'd stayed online, I never would've ended up with Hage-san.
"So, so. What was Hage-san like up close?"
Kyoya asked, and I recalled Hage-san's magnificent performance.
"That was inhuman. Dodging the Besbel Witch's magic while advancing—can you even believe that?"
The Besbel Witch was a boss in a high-level Dungeon, and this thing was absolutely brutal.
Online, players called it "a different game" or "bullet hell"—it unleashed an absurd barrage of magical attacks without pause.
The real nightmare of this boss was that there were no gaps in its magic casting.
Zero openings. Leave it alone and it would just keep blasting away nonstop.
The standard strategy was either to max out magic defense and tank through the damage while chipping away, or to hide behind your shield user and counter with magic of your own.
And Hage-san had charged straight in from the front, dodged every single spell, closed the distance, and cut it down in one stroke.
Needless to say, I was stunned.
My jaw literally dropped in real life.
"As expected of Hage-san. That 'Idaten' title really isn't just for show, huh."
"Nah, no way you pull that off with just speed stats. You need the hands to back it up too. At the end of the day, this is what matters."
Kanata slapped his own forearm as he spoke.
He was right—even with the same Status and the same gear, there was no way I could do what Hage-san did.
"Man… I wanna get way better at this."
"Want to grind some levels after school today?"
"Sure."
"I'm in too. Let's train in the toughest area we can!"
Just as we settled on a plan, the bell rang.
We dispersed and headed to our seats.
None of us knowing that promise would never be kept.
"Huh?"
I sat down and started getting ready for class, only to notice my pencil case wasn't in my bag.
Come to think of it, I'd taken it out to organize game info in my notebook.
I probably stuffed it back in my bag and forgot about it.
"Dang it."
"What's wrong?"
Hasebe Yuka, the girl sitting next to me, spoke up.
"I forgot my pencil case."
"Oh dear. Here, you can borrow mine."
She handed me a mechanical pencil and an eraser.
"Thanks."
"Mm. Let's call it even with one snack."
"That's not free at all…"
I laughed it off, agreed, and waved my hand.
Again, I had no idea that promise would go unkept too.
And then, the moment came.
It was during classical Japanese literature class.
I was fighting a vicious battle against drowsiness.
Up at the podium, the petite teacher everyone called Oka-chan was reading aloud from the textbook, a copy of it in hand.
Most students had their eyes on their open textbooks.
I was desperately fighting to stay awake when I happened to look up.
What caught my eye was a female student sitting in the front-left seat.
The one they called Rihoko.
Not her real name.
Short for "Real Horror Girl"—Rihoko.
She was skin and bones, with a pale, ghastly face and a perpetually gloomy expression—a deeply unsettling person.
I didn't really want to speak ill of someone like that, but even knowing I shouldn't, I couldn't shake the instinctive sense of revulsion.
Rihoko, as if mocking my struggle against sleep, was dozing off with complete nonchalance.
Feeling a bitter knot in my stomach, I averted my gaze from her.
And there, it was.
It was a crack.
No one else in the classroom besides me seemed to notice it.
Right in the center of the room, directly above, a fissure was splitting through what should have been empty air.
There was no other word for it—a crack.
And it was growing larger by the second.
A crack that could shatter apart at any moment.
All I could do was stare at it, completely frozen.
Even if I could've done something, the outcome probably wouldn't have changed…
The crack split wide open with a deafening rupture.
And with it came an excruciating wave of agony.
And then I died. We all died.