Winterglass: The Labyrinth’s Echo
Riku Nashiro glanced out over the city lights, jaw clenched. Night had fallen hard. Dry air hummed below the Kojiro Viaduct, muffling the secrets that kept him up for nights on end. But for Riku—the top student at Saiten Science High—solving one clue wasn’t close to enough. He wanted to know everything. Why are students disappearing from the school labs?
Riku hid in shadows whenever he could. School lockers thudded, voices pitched low. One night, Sachiko came to the rooftop early. Riku noticed panic in her eyes. “Aoi hasn’t come home. Again. Six gone now.” Her voice no longer trembled. The rumors swirling of dark things hidden under broken floors weighed on them both. Do you trust friends enough to share secrets with them?
The two stumbled on evidence by accident, chasing echoes in locked corridors. Sachiko used her mother’s old lab key. Dusty medical charts began the trail—they matched missing students. All paths ran back to Ms Yuriko, a science teacher with a bandaged hand and a stare a little too still at the morning TV.
Turns out, Yuriko had once led a school talent program. Fearing local funding cuts, she started risky work after class. They spot strange stains on her apron as she snaps the lab padlock behind her. The pair managed to slip in later through a forgotten window. Riku gagged—something rotten invaded the air. The class hamster Suika eyed them through glass.
Night crept. Sachiko spotted a folder marked ‘Cryo-human Tests’. Notes inside spoke of a breakout—a failed test subject still inside school grounds. “Whatever broke out is alive. Maybe it walks the halls when the bell stops ringing,” Riku whispered. No one in town dared cross the basement threshold that I know of. Who would?
By the elevator, warning lights blinked. A voice—they think it’s Ms Yuriko—echoed through the tannoy: “If you choose to see, you can’t turn back.” The basement swung wide after Riku shorted wires. Wearing plastic aprons and paper masks, they slunk down stairs scarred with old elevator oil. 
At the foot, cages bent into weird angles, broken machines hummed. Dried blood splattered the tiles. An old Olympics poster on the far wall, sideways—Scientist? Athlete? Something once human crawled quick in the darkness behind glass. A hollow cough made Sachiko jump.
The pair pressed on. An arm of old bones darted across gaps, snatching pills from overturned bottles. Recording logs on the wall flickered. No one expected their own school to hide failed dreams and spliced organs, but these floors knew how to keep sin trapped.
Aoi’s blue headband led them past the last door. ID badges caught in a drain shouted a hundred stories, and Riku could almost hear kids whisper as acid near his stomach boiled. The missing are close, but cost of saving them grows. What choice does a friend have in this dark? Does a single person dare haul others from the shadow?
The hallway groans—and the thing in the cage watches. It pulls itself up and bites electrical wire, body glowing beige-pink in the murk, shuddering. It whispers: “Riku… why did you come? Don’t let them catch you, too…” The lights flick off. Glass shatters behind them. To be continued.
