Since we were pulled out at just the right time, not too early and not too late, I thought it was sensible to assume that everything's just fine in the real world while we were gone and I'd wake up to the same quiet, tranquil classroom, exactly the way I left it except maybe a little bit darker because it's getting late in the afternoon and we are keeping the lights off so as to not attract attention.

Instead, I wake up to find Shun tied to a chair by Katsuki's handmade rubber band jumprope.

"Uh, kinky?" Natsumi comments, confused.

"Ahem," Katsuki coughs crossly, "I don't even tie up Hiroki, he's not into that—"

"And you are?" Natsumi exclaims in surprise.

Katsuki sighs tragically, and makes a shooting gesture. "If I tell you, I'd have to kill you."

"Can you guys stop talking about bondage and spies and explain to me what's going on here?" Anna clears her throat, trying to get everyone's attention, while Katsuki stares at Natsumi and I with a look that says "what, you guys haven't explained to her yet?"

"Sorry, we kind of didn't have time," I tell him, but my eyes are on Shun, and his eyes are on me. Which sounds pretty great but is really not great at all because if looks could kill, I'd be dead by now.

Yes, Shun is staring daggers at me for some reason I can't fathom, and there's so much viciousness in his glare that I'm surprised that his eyeballs haven't fallen out yet.

"Um, you see, he tried to hurt you, so we had to tie him up," Yukiya explains. I nearly jump because I completely forgot that he was there. I turn to him quizzically, not quite sure what he means.

"After we sent you guys into Anna's mind, Shun got increasingly weird, like he was hissing gibberish and playing with his hands and punching the desk and stuff, and suddenly he jumped up and ran towards you—"

"Me? Why me?" I whisper in horror. My heart hurts.

"We don't know either! It's good that Katsuki is much taller than he is and also happened to be making a jumprope for fun, so we managed to tie him up." Yukiya pats me on the back sympathetically. I totally get how awkward he feels; it's not every day that you get to comfort someone who has just gotten attacked by her rabid crush who is now tied up with a rubber band jumprope.

I look at Shun again. He is still glaring at me with those eyes that are no longer his, and I have to look away. The pang in my heart gets worse.

"What do you propose we do about this?" I ask Katsuki, who is concentratedly monitoring the statistics of Ririka and Hiroki, both of them still in Izumi's mind dealing with scary long-haired witches.

"We wait till we can get them out," Katsuki answers, "then we'll have enough people to put our heads together and come up with something. We'll send someone to rescue Daisuke since he'll be the only one left, and the rest of us should probably look for ways to deal with Shun, because there's no way we can just leave the campus with him like this, you know?"

It's true; there's no way. We couldn't very well explain to the people outside school that Shun has gotten infected by some brainwashing machine virus and now has a vendetta against me. The people in the outside world would probably shut him into an asylum since they'd have no way to fix him. The only way to fix him is here, in this school, with our machines.

But how? That is the question.

I decide to bring up what Shun and I had discussed before, about possibly hacking Ikoma-san's mind to see if the answer lies there.

"Technically that's one way to do it," Katsuki says, mulling over it slowly. "Retrieving info from someone's mind—exactly what we're trained to do. But I don't think it will be quite safe. See, if Shun has become like that after being a human flashdisk for less than one day, just imagine what Ikoma-san's mind would have become after so many years."

"Then what do you think we should do?" I ask in despair. From the corner of my eye I still see Shun staring at me and it's making me uncomfortable, like there's a whole horde of hyenas that have been starving for days and I happen to a delicious piece of yakiniku.

Trust me, having your crush stare at you sounds romantic and such but when it actually happens you wouldn't want it at all.

Okay, I take that back, maybe my case is just special.

Katsuki is taking his sweet time coming up with an answer, so Anna butts in first.

"I still don't know what's going on here and you guys'd better explain," she says, "but either way, if you guys are trying to figure out what to do about dark things planted into someone's mind, I think I've read a book about that in our school library."

"And what does it say?" Yukiya prompts. Of course Anna would remember the details, surely—she's the study fiend and the brain expert since we did gather from what we just saw in her mind-calendar that she's doing her utmost best to study up on neurological science.

Anna does indeed remember the details, and is more than too happy to give us a lecture on it. "It's like—well, let's say the human brain is like a computer, and when dark thoughts are planted into it, it's kind of like a computer virus, right? And what do we do when our computer has a virus?"

"Kill it with anti-virus software," Katsuki replies automatically.

"Yes. And how do we get anti-virus software for the brain?" Anna continues.

We all look at her expectantly. It's not like anti-virus software for the brain would be sold in digital gadget shops in Akihabara.

"How?" Yukiya demands.

"I don't know," Anna says, twirling a strand of her long hair with a finger, "but whoever implanted the bad stuff in the first place probably does, so we should interrogate them."

"The 'them' in this case means Mr. Yamada who's dead, Mrs. Sato who's dead, and Nurse Matsuda who's also dead, and Mr. Kojima who's not dead," Yukiya tells Anna, who covers her mouth in shock.

"I really liked Mrs. Sato!" she complains.

"I know, I liked her too," I assure her.

"Anyway, since Mr. Kojima is not dead, we should find him and hold a gun to his head and force him to spit out the details," Anna concludes calmly. "Also, because we don't have a gun, we can use a spoon which, when held to the neck, may achieve a similar effect as a gun."

Katsuki stares like his perception of the universe has proven to be wrong all of a sudden. "Goodness, what happened to teacher's pet Anna?"

"It's complicated," I tell him, and add to Anna: "Oh, and we do have a gun."

"We do?" Anna exclaims. "Then let's go interrogate Mr. Kojima! What are we waiting for?"

"We're still waiting for Hiroki and Riri to get out of Izumi's mind, which is full of witches and tentacle hair," Katsuki explains patiently, "and besides we don't know where Mr. Kojima is."

"I do," Anna states, "I just saw him from the window. He walked into the main research building."

"Ooh, let's go!" Yukiya yells, hopping onto his feet. "May I set him on fire?"

"No. We want info out of him, so we can't burn him," Anna reprimands.

"But I like setting people on fire!" Yukiya whines. Katsuki looks at him like he were a three-year-old that needs constant maintenance, shakes his head and speaks.

"Guys, guys, keep quiet for a moment. Anna, you keep an eye on the main research building. There's only one entrance so you'll see Kojima if he goes anywhere. The stats are jumping for these three, I'll have to pull them out soon, I think."

He is motioning towards Izumi, Ririka and Hiroki, whose monitors show rapidly increasing numbers in heart rate, adrenaline level and other statuses. I think about what they might be going through and feel myself tremble. The slimy hair, the witch's crooked smile, the burning water in the pot. I don't want my best friend to undergo even a second of this, yet she has already been suffering for god knows how long. I hope it has not destroyed her mental state—I'm pretty sure the snakes did have some effect on Hiroki, and he's just hiding it with his usual fake bravado. Izumi has been stuck in her nightmare for even longer; will she be all right?

Of course she'd be all right, I think to myself. Izumi is always so grounded, so practical, so stable, a little bit of witchery can't hurt her much—

She proves me right, as soon as Katsuki neatly unhooks all three, by sitting up calmly and saying, "What time is it?"

And when Katsuki tells her, she looks incredulous. "I've been sleeping for that long? So that's why I feel like my bladder is exploding!"

She runs off to the restrooms at the end of the corridor. I try to make eye contact with her, and have already half-opened my mouth to offer to go with her, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge it. It makes me kind of disappointed as I have been looking forward to cuddling with her for quite a while now. I guess she doesn't want to.

I blink, and turn around to fill in Ririka and Hiroki on the latest developments.

They need to know, because after all, the next thing we do will be to interrogate a big and beefy teacher with a gun.