Act 2 Prologue, Episode 3: A Weird Dream

"This story is about you, Schale's Sensei, and your smartwatch."

"You're not necessarily disciplined enough to claim a daily routine, but you do try your best to wake up on time."

"The smartwatch lying on the table next to you chimes to wake you up. Your one and only partner."

"Still half-asleep, you desperately search for a tablet that you don't have... And how can you find something you don't own?"

"The only electronic device the General Student Council President gifted you is a smartwatch. The Staff of Shaqed."

"You continue your meaningless search in your bedroom, and come up with nothing."

"You think to yourself: Did I leave my tablet somewhere last night?"

"As if you've done it a thousand times before, you snap your smartwatch on your wrist and go to the lounge."

"The lounge is dark, and out of habit, you start bustling around the coffee machine."

"You grind up cheap beans and make yourself a strong espresso. It's bitter, and the taste is flat, but it's exactly what you need to wake up and start your day."

"With caffeine now pumping through your veins, you head to your usual office to do your usual work."

"However, upon arriving, you notice another anomaly."

"The Student Rep should have arrived by now. But that in itself isn't necessarily an unusual occurrence. They're students, prone to running on their own schedules, so the strangeness of it slips away as quickly as you noticed it."

"...That is, until you open the curtains."

"Thus, you witness the third anomaly."

"The Kivotos you know is a landscape of black and white. The radiance which shimmered through the city has turned bleak with grey, as if the clouds have eclipsed the sun."

"But it is not overcast today. Even the streetlights themselves have lost their warm glow. Black and white dances where color once lived."

"...And the streets. They echo with an emptiness you've never witnessed before."

"It would appear that everyone and everything in the world has crumbled into dust...except you."

"Anomaly after anomaly strains your sense of reality, and not even your thoughts seem to be your own."

"Ease your worries. For these are not anomalies, after all."

"New writers often fall into the trap of writing in first person to best capture the emotions of their story, only to find that third person allows for more freedom in narrative development."

"...Perhaps that was rather too esoteric to relate to."

"You decide to change your clothes and go to the hospital. After all, you must be ill in the head, no?"

"...Or perhaps you find a different method."

"Your path to the General Student Council only further confirms what you've seen thus far."

"The scenery is dyed in black and white. As if color itself has forgotten how to exist."

"It evokes a certain sense of familiarity within you."

"You remember a scene, quite similar, but rather different. One overlaid with a dripping red that had burned your eyes."

"Familiar, but not. For the students had been with you then."

"Now, they are nowhere to be seen."

"You arrive at the General Student Council building, only to find more of the same."

"Neither the chief officer with glasses, who always looked after you, nor the pink-haired executive who loves pollock roe potato chips... No one remains."

"...After searching, you know there is one place you have yet to go."

"As if an outside force guides you, you begin climbing the stairs to that place."

"To the place where everything began."

"There, you find a mysterious girl sitting in the very center of the empty General Student Council Executive Office."

"But what is this strange sense of nostalgia she elicits?"

"Yes, but no. Yes, and no."

"For this is your dream. And a girl's simple longing."

"You gaze upon her, and she gazes back at you."