Usually when I see Shun the band in my head blasts out light, sunshine-y music that reminds me of breezy spring mornings, mint green parasols and ribbons in hair. Instead, right now the band in my head is playing the kind of music you hear in spy movies, when the villain has threatened to blow up one of the secret agent's many girlfriends and the secret agent is like "nooooo" and trying to defuse the bomb, but then his fingers slip and the scissors he is using fall into a lake or something.

Unlikely situation, but you know what I mean.

Shun looks unreal, completely unreal, as he makes his way towards us, dragging one foot as he walks, presumably the one that's injured. His eyes are dark pools of nothing, and his breathing is harsher than Darth Vadar's. Bad comparison but yet again, you know what I mean.

We find ourselves shrinking back, but there isn't much space left for us to shrink back to. We're in front of the room where Ikoma-san is in, and it happens to be at nearly the end of the corridor. We're cornered. There's no way out.

Of course, the easy way to solve the problem would be to just shoot Shun, but no one wants to do that. This is our friend we're trying to save, and shooting him is the exact opposite of saving him. Therefore while Natsumi holds the gun steady, we know that she isn't going to pull the trigger. Maybe Shun knows too, because he looks undaunted by the gun. He just keeps coming closer, closer, and my heart is beating like the drums in the finale to the William Tell Overture.

What is he going to do? Is he going to kill us? What is the darkness that they planted inside him, that has made him become so ridiculously vicious?

I count his steps and feel the rhythm. He takes a step with his good leg, then drags the other along on the carpet. Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh.

Closer. Louder. It's like a horror movie of the worst kind.

Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh.

I close my eyes. I feel like screaming.

Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh. Bom. Shhhhhh.

And then I do scream, because he is on me.

Everyone is also screaming all at once, and the sudden burst of sound overwhelms my senses. I always get a headache when things get too loud and too many sounds mix together, and I instinctively lash out, kicking and struggling and trying to get that knife Shun is holding as far away from me as possible. Daisuke is yelling something in a rich baritone, and Anna is chiming in with her high-pitched, grating voice that sounds like a broken violin. I can't hear the words, and I don't want to. All I want is to get away, from the loudness, from the mess it is creating in my head, and from Shun. I've never wanted so much to be away from Shun, and my heart wrenches at the thought.

He raises his knife. I see Natsumi and Anna both ready their respective guns at the same time. But they won't shoot, will they? They can't shoot. They can't.

"Don't shoot!" I shriek, and Shun brings down the knife. I roll and dodge just in time. I don't even know how—I don't have the best reflexes. We end up in an awkward position; I am now lying face-down, and Shun has my body pinned to the ground. It's the worst, because now I'm facing the ugly carpet and can't see what is going on behind me. I can hear though, and my hyperactive listening tells me what I need to know. I hear Shun hissing. Licking his lips. Raising the knife. Everyone holding their breath.

Then Izumi shouts "leave her alone you motherfucker" and Shun is no longer on my back. I do not see what Izumi has done to him, but presumably she tried to knock him off me or something because now he has turned on her, wielding the knife, looking as deadly as ever. I watch this happen as I continue to lie in an awkward position, and since I have to basically twist my neck and upper body to see behind me I end up spraining my waist, which is pretty much the most idiotic thing that could ever happen because, I mean, my crush of ten years is murdering my best friend, two of my roommates are pointing their guns everywhere, two of my classmates are sitting there soaked in blood, and here I am, getting my waist sprained.

God, I'm the most useless person on the entire planet.

But my waist really does hurt, and I have to revert to lying face down again to avoid twisting it even more. As I fall back down, something drops out of my jacket pocket. Something that I have forgotten is there.

A small, metallic object, tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand. There are three buttons on it.

I don't even remember picking it up after Mrs. Sato taught me how to turn it off. I was too busy crying over her dead body—I had probably unconsciously stashed it in my pocket so that I'd have free hands to wipe away my stupid tears, and there it had stayed.

I awkwardly try to turn around again. I don't even know what I am doing by now—my head feels like it were exploding; everything is weird and wobbly, like I were looking through a heat shimmer. All I can focus on now is Shun, who is trying his best to stick his knife into Izumi, thin and frail Izumi, not a fighter, no match against an insane Shun.

I point the late Miss Matsuda's Headache-Machine-TM or whatever she liked to call it, aim, and slam my fingers on the buttons like I were using a remote to open the garage door. I'm not exactly sure which are the right buttons to press but I figure that it should be easy to get it right—there're only three buttons, after all.

Then Shun begins to scream, and I know that I did get it right.

The corridor—no, the whole building is filled with his screams; if Ikoma-san hadn't been in a coma he'd probably have sat up to check out what the matter was. Heck, if Mr. Kojima and Mr. Yamada hadn't been dead they'd probably have already sat up to check out what the matter was as well. It's that loud.

Like, I know the machine's functions from experience; I've watched Shun being tortured by it just this morning. Yet I'm still kind of amazed at how effective it is. And I'm amazed at the fact that I actually used it, despite knowing what it can do to Shun. Drastic times call for drastic measures. No one is stabbing my best friend with a knife under my watch, not even Shun.

I let myself fall down onto the floor again (thank goodness it's carpeted, even though the carpet is ugly), scrunch my eyes shut, and cover my ears. But I can't block out Shun screaming. I can't even block out myself screaming.

"Tie him up, please tie him up, can anyone please help tie him up—"

I feel like I could scream forever. Everything is muddled, and I can feel the guilt of all the things that I should have done but didn't and shouldn't have done but did weighing down on me.

Izumi nearly got stabbed. Katsuki and Hiroki are bleeding away somewhere I can't see them. Teachers and students are lying outside unconscious. Mrs. Sato is dead. Shun has some growing darkness living in his head and is screaming from a killer headache caused by a button that I deliberately pressed.

Everyone is in trouble. Everyone is in pain. And if I had been less useless, if I had been able to do more, I could have stopped it all. I had the capability to stop it all. Because I'm the anomaly. Because I can't be brainwashed. Because I'm the savior this school needs, but I can't even save the people who are dearest to me.

All because I'm not good enough.

"Okay! Okay! Tomomi, we tied him up, stop screaming!" Natsumi shouts, and I open one eye to check. Apparently Natsumi and Daisuke still have their senses intact and have strapped Shun onto one of those school experiment desks, tightly. No escaping now.

I briefly wonder where the ropes have come from, then I remember that just this morning Shun was still tied here in this very building, and in fact it was I who untied him. The ropes are still here, and they come in handy now.

So much has happened since this morning. Too much. I don't think I can handle any more of it. But I know I must, I must—and after making sure that Shun is definitely not going to be stabbing anyone anytime soon, I press the top and bottom buttons to turn Miss Matsuda's Headache Machine-TM off.

Shun goes silent. I hope I haven't killed him. I look a bit more carefully, and am relieved to see that he's still breathing. I realize that everyone is staring at me now, or more aptly, at the device in my hand, wondering what it is and why it makes Shun scream the way he did.

"I don't know either," I hear myself say defensively, except my voice almost sounds like a stranger's. "It used to be Miss Matsuda's."

Anna raises an eyebrow skeptically.

"I didn't want to hurt him," I quickly explain. "It's just that... he... knife... I..."

I'm not even sure what I'm saying anymore. It's like when the weather gets cold and after sloshing around in the snow for a while you have to actively struggle to control your lips when speaking.

"It's okay, we understand. You were trying to stop him from hurting everyone, but you didn't want us to shoot him either, and you happened to have this device so you used it as a compromise," Natsumi summarizes for me.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah... that's it. That."

"Okay." Natsumi stands up abruptly, clapping her hands. "Now that everyone who can bother us is either dead or unconscious or tied up, we can mindhack Ikoma-san in peace. Let's finish this. Did you guys notice that the sun has set? No time to waste."

I attempt to look out of the window and immediately let out a painful groan.

"Goodness, did he stab you anywhere?" Natsumi exclaims in alarm.

"No," I whisper sheepishly, "I just sprained my waist."

Natsumi looks like she isn't sure whether to choke or laugh, but she quickly gets back on track.

"Right, so let's go. Daisuke, Yukiya, wanna spot?"

Yukiya moans. "Does it have to be us?"

"Well, we girls have already decided that we're all going in, since we've proven to be more reliable than you guys are. You can't even remember to lock the door when running away from a knife-wielding killer," Natsumi explains calmly.

"Hey, he came in after me, so it's his fault," Yukiya argues, pointing at Daisuke.

"No, you came in after me," Daisuke exclaims.

"Stop fighting," a new voice chimes in, "I'll spot."

We all look up and stare. Katsuki is striding towards us, carrying Hiroki on his back. Both of them have bandages wrapped around their arms—quite skillfully, too; Ririka is good at manipulating anything that has to do with fabric.

Ririka herself comes skipping along behind them, humming like a five-year-old.

"Since when have you guys decided to come here?" Anna wonders.

"Since two minutes ago. Hiroki is cold and we figure that this building's got central heating," Katsuki says grimly. I get a terrible feeling in my gut looking at Hiroki. He has clearly lost more blood than anyone else and seems to have a hard time keeping his eyes open.

"Spotting isn't what you should be doing right now. You should be bringing him to the hospital," Izumi reprimands.

"I wanted to." Katsuki sighs. "But he's having none of it."

"I'm staying the fuck here," Hiroki mumbles on his boyfriend's back.

"He's staying the fuck here," Katsuki repeats, with a "see?" expression on his face. Their eyes meet and for a moment they look so content with each other it makes the acoustic guitars in my head proud.

"Okay. You two stay and spot. The rest of us will all go in," Natsumi concludes. "It's gotta be an awfully dangerous mind to hack, so the more the merrier."

I don't feel quite merry. In fact, I feel eaten by guilt and more guilt, but I look at Katsuki and Hiroki and think of the acoustic guitars and feel somewhat better, somewhat more confident.

And I'm going to need the confidence, because if this weren't the final showdown, I don't know what is.