Though he had his doubts, since it was his first chance at a school lunch, he went ahead and scooped some of the curry up to his mouth. It wasn’t particularly good or bad, just sort of ordinary.

“You ate it,” Kiyomi said, her voice going flat.

“Yes.”

“I saw.”

“He swallowed it all.”

A number of voices rang out, and suddenly everything outside the windows turned red. He couldn’t see the others’ faces anymore.

“Now Yogiri is one of us.”

“We can keep playing forever.”

“Everyone together.”

“You can’t go home anymore.”

“We’ll be together forever and ever.”

The students had completely changed. The calm, quiet atmosphere had vanished.

“I’m going home,” Yogiri said, getting up from his seat. Something felt very wrong. As he made to leave, laughter erupted all around him. It sounded like far more than ten people, coming from inside and outside the classroom. The other students started to turn blurry. They didn’t look like people anymore.

Yogiri opened the classroom door. As he walked through the hallway, the jeering laughter turned to confusion. Exiting the building, he made his way into the schoolyard. Though it was supposed to be noon, the sky was bloodred. Angry, wordless roars resounded around him. Roars filled with confusion, bewilderment, and resentment.

“How?! How did you get out?!”

Kiyomi stood in front of him, blocking his path. Yogiri wasn’t quite sure what she was asking. He hadn’t been locked inside, nor had he been restrained in any way. It would have been stranger if he hadn’t been able to leave.

“You definitely ate it! You ate the food of the dead!”

“It was good. Thanks for the meal.”

He had only eaten a single bite, but he thought he should be polite anyway. Maybe they had tried to prank him by putting something weird in his food. That would explain why they were so insistent that he eat it. But even if it had gone rotten or if they had put poison in it, that didn’t mean much to Yogiri. Anything that posed a danger to him would be killed and rendered powerless.

“What are you?!” Kiyomi shouted before going blurry and disappearing.

Yogiri felt sad. He hadn’t intended to do anything to her, but she had clearly intended to hurt him. So she had been erased. Maybe she had never had a physical body in the first place.

Exiting the schoolyard through the gate, he turned around. All that was behind him was an empty lot.

-Volume 6 pages 219 and 220