He witnessed the girl's entire life.
From the moment she first opened her blurry infant eyes and let out her first cry.
To her babbling first words, to her stumbling steps, to her tearful demands to be picked up whenever she fell.
To her gradual growth into a quiet, kind girl - living ordinary, unremarkable days.
She loved sweets, adored pastries, yet agonized over calories, envying her childhood friend who never gained weight.
She adored small animals - cats, rabbits - had no resistance to plush toys, and carefully picked out phone charms.
She never yearned for an extraordinary life. To her, simply living each day well was enough. She had no grand desires, no excessive needs. Contentment with the mundane was her nature.
She never wanted to see those phantoms, never wanted to face those twisted aberrations and Alice, never wanted to experience these horrors. But after witnessing Takakai's protection and Kumami's sacrifice, she had mustered courage, prepared to face anything.
She remained conscious even now.
Alice had never truly erased Yotsuya Miko's consciousness. The aberration's malicious nature made it preserve victims' awareness, forcing them to experience helpless despair as everything was destroyed.
Takakai felt Miko's emotions and sense of self.
And Miko, in this moment, saw Takakai's true thoughts - his determination, his helplessness, his resolute decision.
So it's alright.
Takakai-san, please do what you must.
I can no longer help you, can no longer be your ally - I'll only hurt you now.
So please act without regret. I believe you've done your absolute best. At the very end, I'm glad we could speak, that you could know my thoughts. That's enough.
"..."
The girl's consciousness faded.
Her everything merged with Takakai, becoming part of him.
He had personally destroyed the girl who fought alongside him, who always tried to help.
Takakai wouldn't make excuses.
He simply focused on the fusion, sensing another presence merging with him -
[Alice]'s essence.
Icy coldness enveloped him.
The bisected-head aberrations approached.
In this instant, Takakai saw new memories - Alice's memories.
A dilapidated, abandoned school ruin.
Identical to Fujika Middle School's dark state across three loops - this place's true form before becoming a dungeon.
Four people carried something inside.
One wept quietly, one seethed with rage, one looked despairing, another flushed with excitement.
On the deserted playground, they unveiled a white shroud.
Alice's corpse.
Young, beautiful, devilishly alluring - and dead.
Three gunshots through the head - two in the forehead, one below an eye. The entry wounds seemed small, but the exit wounds had shattered her skull, leaving brain matter like frozen pulp.
The shroud bore police markings.
Her expression was puzzled, as if seeing something incomprehensible before death.
Was this human [Alice]'s final trace?
The four grew frenzied seeing the corpse. One tried kissing it before being restrained.
They produced knives, saws, prepared tools.
Takakai realized - they meant to dismember her. This was the origin of the four Alice artifacts - four obsessed fans stealing and dividing her corpse.
No... if just obsession, why bring it to Fujika? Why did each die in different school zones, conveniently placing artifacts in research bases?
Noticing something, Takakai looked sideways -
Alice stood in darkness, smiling as she watched.
The corpse was divided four ways, each fan taking a portion for "processing."
An Alice followed each one - invisible to all but Takakai, the history observer.
Closing his eyes.
No time to analyze these revelations. Focus on the present crisis.
Kita Ikuyo approached again. The students closed in, controlled by Yoruyama High's aberration.
Crack!
Takakai's forehead split open - a 4cm gash.
He collapsed, blood obscuring vision, consciousness fading.
The aberrations loomed closer.
Tap... tap...
Footsteps circled him.
Then...
Silence.
The rescue team badge healed his wounds.
Takakai rose unsteadily to see -
An empty hall.
The flesh monster curled dormant.
The rescue team member immobilized by bloody hands emerging from meat soup.
Something pounded against his consciousness.
Something trapped inside him, shrieking, struggling to escape.
"Shut up. It's midnight - don't disturb the neighbors."
Takakai muttered, stumbling toward the rescuer.
The force still attacked his senses, his sanity, his very self.
His sight, hearing, smell - all perception distorted horribly. He couldn't tell dream from madness.
Yet he kept walking.
The rescue badge showed him truth through the rescuer's eyes.
Step by step, he reached the rescuer, grabbed the meat soup, stared at the twisted Alice-face formed by its chunks, and aimed his watch.
This time, Alice couldn't stop him.
"Goodbye."
The meat soup was sealed inside the black watch.
1 second - nothing changed.
Losing this artifact seemed meaningless. The underground base remained. Fujika still stood.
2 seconds - faint tremors from below.
A minor quake, weaker than a massage chair.
3 seconds -
Everything shattered.
The base collapsed.
Fujika's buildings - classrooms, dorms, pool, gates - all fractured like glass, crumbling without Alice's artifacts as foundation.
Takakai fell into darkness.
Fell with the ruins.
With umbrella, bone staff and meat soup sealed, Fujika could no longer sustain itself.
Moreover, Takakai felt a pulling force - with three artifacts taken, the fourth was being dragged across space to reunite.
Soon he saw it -
A delicate accessory.
An eyeball-and-glass necklace?
A writhing, struggling, desperate eyeball necklace.
Without hesitation, Takakai seized and sealed it.
All four artifacts were now contained.
Alice's shrieks in his mind grew frantic - the aberration utterly broken.
He laughed.
Laughed uproariously.
"HAHAHAHAHA—"
His laughter vanished into darkness.
Meanwhile, in reality:
At an upscale restaurant, a figure set down utensils, murmuring in surprise.
A summoning gesture yielded nothing.
"The artifacts... returned to the dungeon..."
"Fujika Middle School's artifacts returned..."
"Someone changed the dungeon's situation? Now?"
The figure stood abruptly, voice trembling with disbelief.
Elsewhere in reality:
Shijo Maki took a deep breath, nodding at Fujiwara Chika behind her before pressing a doorbell beside a [Gotou Residence] nameplate.
In one hour, they'd scrambled for help.
The market manager Koikawa Ki had directed them here -
The only person who might save Takakai from [Campus Ghost Stories].
Hang on, Kai.
Unseen nearby, Shinomiya Kaguya observed their anxiety, sighing at how they'd changed.
Yet she had her own worries -
Her maid, her most trusted confidante Hayasaka Ai, had vanished without trace.
Between her recent takeover of the Shinomiya Group and Hayasaka's obvious interest in Takakai...
Kaguya suppressed her unease.
Back in the dungeon:
Takakai kept falling.
Fell until darkness consumed him.
Then—
His eyes opened to a hospital bed.
Restrained in a straitjacket.
Metal rings locked his ankles, waist and neck. Even his teeth were fitted with a guard, mouth sealed shut.
The room glowed soft violet.
Walls, floor, even the bed frame - all padded.
Like a high-security psychiatric ward.
Where... is this?
He'd anticipated many scenarios - not this.
But his strength now surpassed humans.
With slight effort, he tore the restraints, snapped the metal rings, and sat up.
Is this Fujika's [truth] beneath the [falsehood]?
The room revealed nothing. He needed to explore.
With Alice sealed, he'd already succeeded. Some risk was acceptable now.
Decision made, he stood—
—as a filthy police officer phased through the wall.
Their eyes met.
The officer raised his gun.
Bang— Bang bang—
First shot through the chest.
Second through the head.
Third through the heart.
Neither rescue badge nor blessing worked - utterly suppressed before the dungeon's true core.
Takakai collapsed onto the bed.
The officer left without a glance - in and out in 3 seconds.
Blood soaked the sheets.
Takakai's pupils dilated.
On his black watch, the lone hand trembled—
—from [6] to [7]—
—with a soundless click.