The Third Ending (Part 2)

Sakayanagi Arisu looked straight into Ichinose Honami's eyes and voiced all the thoughts she had about him in one go:

"If he does anything extreme tomorrow, don't stop him."

"Anything extreme?"

Ichinose Honami asked, puzzled.

"...I don't know if it's because of me, but Kitagawa Ryo hasn't really escaped the White Room's influence."

Sakayanagi Arisu suddenly smiled. Unlike her usual faint, enigmatic smile, this one held a hint of bitterness.

"You found him outside your house two years ago, didn't you?"

"...Don't you already know?"

"Mm. I was the one who had him left there."

Sakayanagi Arisu spoke earnestly:

"Otherwise, how do you think someone who had lost almost all his memories could have walked straight out of the White Room?"

She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. Light and shadow fell across Sakayanagi Arisu's face.

"I can't believe I thought such a clumsy dream would keep me trapped for more than two years."

"The truth is, I never wanted to wake up from it. In the dream where I won, Kitagawa Ryo didn't go to Tokyo to meet you until he was sixteen."

"So when we'd just met in that dream, you sent him straight into another dream within a dream?"

Ichinose Honami recalled the dream she'd watched Kitagawa Ryo experience, where he'd been imprisoned by a false version of herself.

"...Maybe I'm more jealous than I thought."

Sakayanagi Arisu muttered under her breath. Ichinose Honami didn't hear her.

"What did you say?"

"I said that no matter how I changed that dream, I couldn't stop him from meeting you in the end. The only difference was whether he was fourteen or sixteen."

"You're practically the heroine destined to be with him."

For a moment, Ichinose Honami couldn't find a response. Sakayanagi Arisu sat there with her legs curled up, her face buried in shadow.

"So."

Sakayanagi Arisu continued, her voice not changing in the slightest:

"If something unexpected happens at the scene tomorrow, all you need to do is trust him."

"Of course I trust him."

"Then that's for the best."

"I'm going back."

Ichinose Honami waited a little longer, then realized Sakayanagi Arisu wasn't going to say anything else. She stood and headed for the door.

"You don't have to worry about having any strange dreams tonight. Good night."

"Good night."

Sakayanagi Arisu remained where she was, replying without raising her head.

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Third Ending (Part Two)

"Nice to meet you. I'm Ayanokoji Kiyotaka."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Kitagawa Ryo."

Kitagawa Ryo's first impression of Ayanokoji Kiyotaka wasn't bad. In both his appearance and manner of speaking, he seemed much like an ordinary boy of fifteen or sixteen, aside from being a little listless and seemingly uninterested in anything.

They were strangers, so there was no need for small talk. Besides, they were here today to prove two opposing ideologies. In every sense, they were "enemies."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka took a black pawn and a white pawn in his hands. Out of Kitagawa Ryo's sight, he casually switched their positions before holding them out again.

"I'll take the left hand."

After Kitagawa Ryo answered, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka opened his left hand to reveal the white pawn.

That meant Kitagawa Ryo would play white and move first.

They said nothing throughout the game, letting the time pass.

In the empty room, the only sound was the steady clack of chess pieces being moved.

"I used to think no one there could be stronger than me. Everyone said I was the White Room's only successful case, and that I represented its highest standard."

Once the chess game reached the middle phase, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka began to think more often.

His tone remained flat, making his boast sound like nothing more than a simple statement of fact.

"Honestly, I can't figure out why I'm so good at chess. Maybe playing Sakayanagi so much back then taught me everything I needed to know?"

Kitagawa Ryo replied with his usual teasing tone.

From the middle game onward, Kitagawa Ryo's advantage gradually grew.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka managed to keep the position from collapsing until the endgame.

But he still couldn't stop the overall tide of the game. After staring at the board for a long time, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka couldn't find a move that would save him from checkmate. He quietly set down his piece.

"I lost."

He didn't seem displeased. If anything, he accepted his defeat with complete composure.

"Even losing doesn't make you feel frustrated?"

"That emotion is useless."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka slowly shook his head.

"Let's start the next match."

Kitagawa Ryo theatrically rubbed his wrist and knee.

"Why don't we take a break first? Whenever I used to play Matsuo, my hands and legs would feel numb afterward. And today, I played against someone at your level."

At the familiar name, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's voice changed by an almost imperceptible degree.

"Then let's take a short break."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka remembered what Matsuo Eiichiro's butler, who had always tried to help him escape the White Room, had told him the day before.

"If the other person asks for a break, you can take a short nap."

"What's the benefit of agreeing?"

"That person escaped the White Room before you did."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka turned his golden eyes toward Kitagawa Ryo. He was curious about the other man's experience, but with them being watched the whole time, he couldn't ask directly.

About thirty minutes later, they had each changed into lightweight, close-fitting combat suits and stood facing each other in the middle of the ring.

"Let's have a good match."

"Let's have a good match."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka glanced at Kitagawa Ryo in surprise.

"Your fundamentals don't seem particularly good."

He had already put his opinion as tactfully as he could. Unlike chess, where one couldn't judge the players' skill until the game began, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had already spotted at least three weaknesses in Kitagawa Ryo during the preparations: a weak lower body, little strength in his right forearm, and poor positioning of his center of gravity and the points where he generated force.

The instant the device above the ring gave its shrill signal to begin, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka surged forward with explosive speed and closed the distance. He didn't know whether Kitagawa Ryo had deliberately left an opening, but he wasn't about to pass up such a perfect chance to attack.

In the next moment, his right hand turned into a knife-hand strike and slammed into the weakest point on Kitagawa Ryo's neck.

"One move?"

"Again."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka blinked and focused his gaze on Kitagawa Ryo, standing before him again.

"Let's have a good match."

"Let's have a good match."

The instant the signal to begin rang out, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka rushed in and whipped a roundhouse kick toward Kitagawa Ryo's head.

Kitagawa Ryo instinctively raised his arms to block it, but the force that crashed through his guard still sent him stumbling backward several steps.

Taking advantage of Kitagawa Ryo's unsteady footing, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka fired off several straight punches aimed at his waist. Kitagawa Ryo defended in a rush, but several heavy blows still landed squarely on his body.

Pain shot through his nerves to his brain. Gritting his teeth, Kitagawa Ryo searched for a chance to counterattack, but another powerful hook soon struck him in the head.

"Again."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka merely shifted his body slightly to dodge Kitagawa Ryo's opening roundhouse kick. He spun with the motion, powered his waist, and swung his right leg into Kitagawa Ryo's shoulder, knocking him back several steps and making him stumble.

Then Ayanokoji Kiyotaka charged at him like a cannonball, aiming for his nose.

Even a slight injury there would affect the body, causing the unavoidable physical reaction of "tearing up."

It worked perfectly. Then, while his opponent's vision was blurred, he aimed an uppercut at his jaw.

For the third time, Kitagawa Ryo's body hit the ground.

"Hey, again."

To be honest, I'd once tried to find out how many layers deep I could stack a dream.

The result was that once I reached four layers—a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream—it became extremely difficult to recover my awareness from the deepest layer. Worse, after that failed experiment, I lost a huge stretch of my memories, as if someone had cut a visibly blank section out of a cassette tape.

After contacting Matsuo's butler through Matsuo Eiichiro, I confirmed that tomorrow I would have just one chance to create a dream for myself and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

To guarantee my victory, I set the dream to...

Ninety-nine layers.

Of course, creating a dream of two people fighting was much easier than creating an entire world. But ninety-nine layers still exceeded my abilities.

Still.

I'd already noticed when I got trapped in Sakayanagi Arisu's dream within a dream: I'd had three nightmares about Ichinose Honami in total.

First, I watched Ichinose Honami commit theft, all the way through her high school years. Her crime remained a shackle that held her back.

Second, Ichinose Honami accidentally stabbed me to death. In the end, she not only faced trial but also suffered a mental breakdown.

Third was the first nightmare I'd seen: the Ichinose Family was targeted by an unknown force, her mother lost her job, and Honami was expelled from school after her theft was exposed. In the end, her despairing mother burned coal at home and died.

Only after waking up did I realize that this was what would happen if I failed to resist the White Room.

So, even if it was only to prevent that worst-case outcome, I had to defeat my opponent here and secure a future for Ichinose Honami and her family.

Kitagawa Ryo had lost count of how many times he'd fallen. In fact, he was almost beginning to forget why he was standing here, fighting this person... What was his name again? Starting with the fourteenth layer of the dream, his memories had begun to fade, bit by bit. The memories he'd shared with Ichinose Honami over the past few years fell away one by one, like grains of sand slipping through his fingers.

"You seem to know my fighting style pretty well. Did you look into me beforehand?"

After fighting with Kitagawa Ryo for a few exchanges, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka asked calmly.

"Maybe my body's just memorized your moves after I've been hit so many times."

Kitagawa Ryo tracked his opponent's movements with his eyes as he took his stance.

After falling twenty times, he'd already learned to withstand Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's first three moves. Now, he could even find chances to attack during the opening exchanges.

Unwavering Perseverance (Purple): Strive, work hard, never give up. (This is the cornerstone of success.)

"Whew."

Kitagawa Ryo ran his tongue over his dry lips.

"Again."

Combat Mastery (Green) has reached maximum proficiency. Upgraded to Combat Expert (Blue).