Chapter 24
By the time they found shelter, the sky had turned the color of deep bruised violet.
Miss Aiko had led them off the main trail and into a narrow hollow sheltered by three leaning pines. It was barely a camp, really—just a patch of ground shielded from the wind, with a shallow ridge of stone on one side and enough dry brush to start a fire if they were careful. But after hours of moving through a hostile forest, it felt like a palace.
Mai sat down on a flat stone with a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
Okama crouched nearby, checking the perimeter out of habit while Miss Aiko spoke quietly with Kaito and Hana. Puss sat a little apart from everyone else, knees drawn up, tail wrapped around her legs like she wanted to interact but couldn’t make herself.
Mai watched her for a while before going over.
She looked up immediately, curious.
Mai slowed and sat a little distance away rather than crowding her.
The catgirl blinked.
Her ears twitched, but she didn’t answer right away. Then, after a long second, she muttered, “I didn’t beat the monster earlier on purpose.”
Mai smiled a little. “A lot of useful things happen that way.”
That earned her a tiny, reluctant glance.
Across the camp, Miss Aiko was kneeling beside the fire pit, striking flint against stone until a small flame caught. Her hands moved with careful efficiency, but Mai could see the tension in her shoulders even from here. Kaito was watching the woods through the trees. Hana sat close to Miss Aiko’s side, still shaken but trying hard not to show it.
Okama returned after a moment and lowered himself onto the ground beside Mai.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
Mai gave him a tired look. “You always ask that after everything.”
“Because sometimes you are, and sometimes you’re not.”
She considered denying it, then let out a breath. “I’m okay now.”
He nodded once, apparently satisfied.
For a while, no one spoke.
The fire crackled. Branches shifted overhead. Somewhere in the dark beyond the camp, something large moved through the trees and then passed on without stopping.
Mai was the first to break the silence.
“Miss Aiko,” she asked, looking up, “how long have you been here?”
Miss Aiko glanced over, then settled back on her heels. “Long enough to lose track of the days.” She gave a wry smile that didn’t quite hide the exhaustion underneath. “Long enough to learn that this world enjoys giving teachers responsibilities and then setting them on fire.”
Hana gave a tiny, surprised sound that might have been a laugh.
Mai looked between them. “So you really were looking for us.”
Miss Aiko’s expression softened. “Of course I was.”
The answer landed heavily in Mai’s chest.
Miss Aiko looked at them all in turn. “When I saw the first signs that one of my students had become connected to a dungeon, I knew I couldn’t leave it alone. Then I found proof that some of you were still alive, scattered across this world.” Her gaze flicked toward Mai and Okama. “You have no idea how relieved I am to see even this much.”
Okama folded his arms. “You’ve got a strange way of showing relief.”
“That’s because I’m very tired.”
That got a real laugh out of Hana, and even Kaito’s mouth twitched.
Puss had been listening with an annoyed look, her tail making a small uncertain motion behind her.
Miss Aiko noticed. “And you,” she said gently, “you don’t have to stay silent if you don’t want to.”
She stiffened at being addressed.
Stolen novel; please report.
Mai glanced at her, then at Miss Aiko. “She doesn’t remember who she is.”
That made Miss Aiko still.
For a moment, she said nothing. Then she looked at Puss more carefully, as if re-reading her face.
“Do you remember anything at all?” Miss Aiko asked.
The girl hesitated, then shook her head. “Only fragments.”
“Such as?”
“Classroom,” she said after a long pause. “Desks. Someone calling roll. A window. Rain, maybe.”
Miss Aiko’s expression changed in a way Mai couldn’t quite place. Recognition, perhaps. Or grief.
Puss frowned, embarrassed by the attention. “That’s all.”
“It’s enough for now,” Miss Aiko said.
Puss looked defiant and unconvinced.
Miss Aiko set a pot of water over the fire, then reached into her bag and pulled out a small bundle of dried food. “We’ll talk more when you’re ready. For the moment, I’d like to know what all of your names are.”
“Kaito,” the boy said immediately.
“Hana,” said the girl beside the fire.
Puss opened her mouth, then froze.
Miss Aiko waited.
Nothing.
She looked genuinely distressed for a second, her ears flattening. “I don’t know any name apart from my name from when I was a cat: ‘Puss.’”
Mai leaned forward slightly. “You don’t know your own name?”
The girl shot her a look. “That seems to be the point.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Okama, who had been silent until then, spoke up without looking away from the treeline. “We can call you something temporary.”
The girl looked at him suspiciously. “Like what?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you respond to.”
That did not seem to help.
Miss Aiko thoughtfully turned the problem over in her head while the water warmed. “We’ll leave that for later,” she said at last. “For now, no one gets left alone tonight.”
Kaito frowned. “You think something’s hunting us?”
“I think this forest is too quiet to be trusted,” Miss Aiko replied.
Okama nodded once. “I agree.”
Mai hugged her knees to her chest. The heat from the fire had started to sink into her fingers. The warmth helped, but only a little. “Do you know where we are?”
Miss Aiko shook her head. “Not precisely. Somewhere north of the human roads, if I had to guess. I’ve been using the weather and local flora to orient myself.”
Mai stared at her. “You’ve been navigating by plants?”
Miss Aiko blinked. “And stars. And terrain. I’m not an animal.”
Okama muttered, “Debatable.”
Miss Aiko gave him a flat look.
Even in the dark, Mai could tell the teacher was suppressing the urge to throw something at him.
The little camp gradually grew quieter as the night settled in around them. Kaito took first watch without being asked. Hana curled up close to the fire, still shaken from the earlier monster attack. Puss sat rigidly with her arms around herself until Miss Aiko handed her
a blanket, which she accepted after a short, suspicious pause.
Mai watched all of it with a strange, aching sense of unreality.
This was what they had been looking for.
Not answers. Not yet.
But a piece of the class.
A teacher. Lost classmates. A strange new world. A dungeon somewhere far away that apparently belonged to Yuuno—which still made her heart beat faster whenever she thought about it.
Okama shifted beside her. “You’re thinking too hard.”
Mai shot him an annoyed look. “You say that like it isn’t your own hobby.”
“It is. That’s why I can recognize it.”
She would have argued, but Miss Aiko’s voice carried softly across the fire before she could.
“I need to tell you both something.”
Mai and Okama looked up.
Miss Aiko’s face was serious now, the tiredness in it replaced by something sharper. “I found a book in the settlement where I was staying. It mentioned Yuuno’s dungeon by name.”
Mai’s breath caught.
Okama’s expression hardened. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She nodded once. “Very sure. And if the book is accurate, Yuuno isn’t just surviving. He’s changed.”
Mai looked down at her hands. For a moment she could only imagine it—Yuuno, the quiet boy from class, somehow at the center of a dungeon full of monsters and traps and power no one from their old life could have predicted.
Miss Aiko continued quietly, “That means our priority is no longer just survival. It’s finding the rest of you. And then finding him.”
The fire crackled between them.
Mai felt the words settle into place in her chest.
Not just lost students.
A search.
A real one.
Okama broke the silence first. “Then we need a route.”
Miss Aiko gave him a tired, approving look. “We do.”
Mai glanced at the small group around the fire: Kaito awake and alert, Hana half-asleep, the catgirl wrapped in the blanket and pretending not to need it, Miss Aiko planning their next move with the same calm determination she had always used back at school, and
Okama already mentally mapping the next dozen possibilities.
And herself, of course. Frightened, tired, and still here.
She looked up at the dark canopy overhead.
Somewhere out there, more classmates were still lost.
Somewhere out there, Yuuno was building something impossible.
Somewhere out there, their lives had all gone in different directions.
But tonight, for the first time since the white light had split their world apart, Mai could see the shape of the path ahead.
They had found Miss Aiko.
Miss Aiko had found them.
And now the search could finally begin in earnest.