Chapter 2: The Fall

Mizuki hadn't slept. Her eyes burned as morning light filtered through blinds she'd forgotten to close. The phone sat on her desk where she'd left it, powered off and untouched. She didn't need to turn it on to know what awaited her—hundreds of notifications, messages, tags. The digital aftermath of her public execution.

Her uniform hung on the closet door. Today was Friday. If she could just endure one more day, she'd have the weekend to... to what? Hide? Plan? Figure out how to transfer schools?

With robotic movements, Mizuki rose and dressed. No eyepatch today. No accessories. Just the plain, uniform that might help her blend into the background.

A bitter laugh escaped her. As if she could be invisible after yesterday.

She skipped breakfast—her stomach had twisted itself into knots that rejected the mere thought of food. Her parents had already left for work, their absence marked only by a note on the kitchen counter: *Working late again. Dinner in fridge. — Mom*

The walk to school felt like marching to her own beheading. Each step brought her closer to the inevitable. Twice she nearly turned back. Twice she forced herself to continue.

When the school gates came into view, she froze. Students milled about the entrance, some glancing at phones, others chatting in close groups. Normal morning activity. Except nothing would be normal for her ever again.

Mizuki drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped onto school grounds.

The first whispers reached her before she'd made it ten steps. Heads turned. Fingers pointed discreetly. Smiles flashed and disappeared behind hands.

"...almost feel sorry for her..."

"...completely delusional..."

"...did you see Takashi's face when..."

Mizuki kept her eyes fixed on the ground, counting tiles as she walked. Twenty-seven from the gate to the shoe lockers. Forty-three from there to her classroom.

At her shoe locker, a small crowd had gathered. They scattered as she approached, but not before she glimpsed the locker's defaced door. Someone had taped a printed picture of her mid-confession, arm outstretched dramatically. Above it, in marker: *BEWARE THE ABYSMAL FLAME!*

Laughter erupted behind her as she tore the paper down. Mizuki's hands trembled as she changed her shoes, the simple task suddenly requiring all her concentration.

The hallway to her classroom stretched endlessly. Each face she passed either stared openly or deliberately looked away. No middle ground, no normalcy. She had become an exhibit in a human zoo—fascinating, pitiful, other.

She slid open the classroom door.

The chatter inside died instantly. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes fixed on her, ranging from amused to embarrassed to coldly curious. Mizuki forced her legs to carry her to her desk in the third row, each step an exercise in willpower.

As she sat, the whispers resumed around her.

"Can't believe she actually showed up."

"Did you see she's not wearing the eyepatch today?"

"Fifty bucks says she transfers by next week."

Mizuki stared at her desktop, tracing a small scratch in the wood with her fingernail. If she could just focus on this one tiny imperfection, maybe she could make it through the day. Maybe she could pretend none of this was happening.

A shadow fell across her desk. She looked up to find Hana standing there, concern etched across her face.

"Are you okay?" Hana asked softly.

Before Mizuki could answer, Ryota's voice cut across the room. "Careful, Hana. She might curse you with her magical flames."

Laughter rippled through the classroom. Hana's face flushed red, torn between continued concern for Mizuki and the social suicide of showing it.

"I'm fine," Mizuki said flatly, gaze dropping back to the desktop scratch. After a moment's hesitation, Hana retreated to her own seat.

The morning crawled by. Each class brought a new teacher who either pretended nothing was unusual or, worse, showed obvious discomfort at Mizuki's presence. During English, Mr. Yamada called on her to read a passage, then quickly selected someone else when the class erupted in poorly concealed snickers.

By lunchtime, Mizuki couldn't bear another minute inside the building. She grabbed her bag and slipped out of the classroom before anyone could follow. Instead of heading to the cafeteria, she made for the emergency stairwell that led to the roof—technically off-limits to students, but the lock had been broken for months.

The roof offered blessed solitude. Mizuki settled against the wall beside the access door, out of sight from both the school grounds below and anyone who might venture up. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her forehead against them, finally allowing herself a moment of complete vulnerability.

No tears came. She'd exhausted them all yesterday. Instead, a hollow emptiness expanded inside her chest, as if something vital had been scooped out, leaving nothing but an echoing void.

The roof door creaked open. Mizuki tensed, pressing herself flatter against the wall.

"I know you're here, Kamiya." Takashi's voice. "The first-years saw you come up."

Mizuki remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe. Footsteps approached, then stopped a few paces away.

"Look," he continued, sounding uncomfortable. "About yesterday... some of the teachers are worried you might... I don't know, do something stupid."

Mizuki finally looked up. Takashi stood awkwardly, hands shoved in his pockets, unable to meet her eyes. He wasn't concerned about her, she realized. He'd been sent to check on her—probably to absolve the school of responsibility if the weird girl harmed herself after public humiliation.

"I'm fine," she said, voice flat. "You've done your duty. You can go."

Takashi shifted his weight, clearly wanting to leave but constrained by whatever obligation had brought him here. "It's just... that stuff you said. It wasn't normal. Maybe you should talk to someone professional."

The emptiness in Mizuki's chest suddenly blazed with white-hot anger. She rose to her feet in one fluid motion, facing Takashi directly for the first time without an eyepatch or theatrical persona between them.

"Because you're so concerned about my well-being?" she asked, voice dangerously soft. "After making sure everyone in school had a good laugh at the 'class freak'?"

Takashi had the decency to look embarrassed. "I didn't post that video."

"But you laughed. You made sure everyone knew exactly how pathetic you think I am." The words flowed now, three years of silent observation giving her perfect ammunition. "You could have rejected me quietly. You could have pulled me aside later. Instead, you made it a performance, because even in that moment, Takashi Miyamoto had to be the coolest guy in the room."

He flinched. "That's not—"

"Did it make you feel powerful? Tearing down someone who was already at the bottom?" Mizuki took a step closer. "Or was it just reflex at this point? The popular boy putting the weird girl in her place to maintain the social order?"

"You came at me with all that bizarre cosmic fate bullshit in front of everyone," Takashi shot back, defensive anger replacing embarrassment. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Literally anything else," Mizuki replied quietly. "But it doesn't matter now. None of it does. You've made your point. Everyone has. Message received."

She moved past him toward the door. He caught her arm as she passed.

"Kamiya, wait—"

Mizuki jerked away as if burned. "Don't touch me. Don't speak to me. Don't even look at me. You've done enough."

She yanked open the door and descended the stairs, leaving Takashi alone on the roof. The brief flare of anger faded with each step, leaving only the hollow emptiness once more.

Mizuki didn't return to class. She walked straight through the school and out the front gate, ignoring the startled look from the security guard. No one tried to stop her.

---

For hours, Mizuki wandered the city. She moved without purpose, letting her feet carry her wherever they chose. Past shopping districts where students in familiar uniforms eyed her curiously. Through parks where children played, unaware of the cruelties awaiting them in adolescence. Along riverbanks where elderly couples strolled, their peaceful expressions suggesting a world Mizuki couldn't imagine—one where past humiliations had faded to insignificance.

As afternoon stretched into evening, she found herself downtown, surrounded by office towers gleaming in the setting sun. One of these anonymous buildings housed her mother's accounting firm. Another might contain her father's marketing agency. She couldn't remember exactly which ones. They had never brought her to their workplaces, and she had never asked.

Her phone remained off. She preferred the silence to whatever digital crucifixion awaited her.

Night fell. The streets grew more crowded with people leaving work, meeting friends, beginning their weekend revelries. Mizuki moved among them like a ghost, unseen, unacknowledged. In the anonymity of the crowd, she found a strange comfort. Here, at least, no one knew her as the chunibyo freak from the viral video.

Without conscious decision, her feet carried her to a familiar residential tower. Her family's apartment occupied the twelfth floor—high enough to afford a decent view, not high enough for premium rent. She stood on the sidewalk opposite, looking up at the building's façade. Lights illuminated some windows. Others remained dark. The window to her bedroom was black. No one would be home yet. No one would miss her for hours still.

Mizuki crossed the street and entered the building. The elevator ride to the roof instead of the twelfth floor felt dreamlike, disconnected from reality. The roof access required a key, but the maintenance lock had broken years ago, and management had never bothered to replace it. A simple push, and the door swung open.

The night air hit her face, cooler at this height, carrying the scent of the city—concrete, exhaust, the distant hint of flowering trees from the park three blocks over. The rooftop stretched before her, a flat expanse punctuated by ventilation equipment and satellite dishes. At the edges, a waist-high safety wall offered minimal protection—enough to prevent accidents, not enough to stop determination.

Mizuki walked to the eastern edge. From here, she could see the school in the distance, windows lit for evening activities. The courtyard where yesterday's humiliation had played out would be empty now, the cherry tree a dark silhouette against the school's illuminated façade.

For years, she had survived by living in fantasies. The Abysmal Flame. Cosmic connections. Secret powers. A world where Mizuki Kamiya mattered.

Reality had finally shattered those illusions, leaving her stripped of even imaginary protection against her crushing insignificance.

She climbed onto the safety wall and stood, balancing easily on the foot-wide concrete barrier. Twelve stories below, cars moved like toys along the street, their headlights tracing light patterns against the darkness. Pedestrians appeared as tiny figures, oblivious to the girl poised above them.

The hollow emptiness inside her expanded until it seemed to encompass the entire night sky. She had failed at the one thing that had given her life meaning—her elaborate fantasy world. Without it, what remained? Returning to school to face endless mockery? Transferring elsewhere to start the cycle again? Years stretching ahead of dreary normality, of being neither exceptional nor even noteworthy?

Mizuki spread her arms, feeling the night breeze catch her uniform shirt, rustling the fabric like dark wings. For years, she had pretended to command shadows and flame. For years, she had imagined herself special, chosen, significant.

The truth was both simpler and more painful: she was none of those things. Just Mizuki Kamiya, seventeen and alone, with nothing to show for her brief existence but a viral video of her greatest humiliation.

She closed her eyes. For a fleeting moment, she allowed herself one final fantasy—that in some other world, the Abysmal Flame truly existed. That somewhere, some version of her possessed the power she had only pretended to command. That in that world, Mizuki Kamiya wasn't pathetic or forgettable, but truly special.

"If only it had been real," she whispered to the indifferent night. "I could have shown them all."

The city continued its nighttime rhythm below, unconcerned with the girl on the rooftop. No one looked up. No one noticed. No one would remember.

Mizuki took a deep breath, savoring the cool air one last time.

Then she stepped forward into emptiness.

As gravity claimed her, a strange calm washed over her. Time seemed to slow in those final moments. She felt rather than heard the wind rushing past her ears. Her uniform fluttered around her like the wings she'd never have. The approaching ground expanded in her vision, rushing up to meet her with terrifying speed.

In that last heartbeat of consciousness, a single thought bloomed with perfect clarity:

*If only my Abysmal Flame had been real...*

Then darkness.

Absolute.

Complete.

Final.