“After you,” Belyana said, opening the door in the brick wall and bowing derisively.

  Behind it, the rising sun shifted to the center, the air became heavier, but Karina noticed only that all the passers-by turned into Asians.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Let's just say your name is Shinaku today.”

  “Mmm,” Karina murmured, not realizing right away. “What? How did we get here?”

  “We took a shortcut,” Belyana replied calmly.

  “Five thousand miles? Past the sea? Are you kidding me?” Karina began to boil.

  “Well, what do you expect to hear? That I just put you to sleep and brought you here to laugh at you?” she asked with a shrug. “Nice idea, however.”

  “How about the truth?”

  “Even if I explain in detail how it works, what's the use?” Belyana sighed. “In the worst case, you’ll just end up as Mary. Our thirst for knowledge is limitless, but also destructive, because we get to the bottom of the truth only in order to confirm the already established picture of the world. And when something contradicts it, we either ignore it, or go mad.”

  “Enough, enough, enough, stop,” Karina waved her hands. “Another pseudo-philosophical monologue, which begins with a veiled doubt in my mind, and ends with a direct statement that I am stupid - went through that already.”

  Belyana burst out laughing, even accidentally dropping the bag from her hands, which came into Karina's field of vision just now, because it was clearly not there before.

  “And where’s it from?” Karina asked wearily.

  “More likely what for,” Belyana, still laughing, lifted the bag and threw it to her.

  Karina looked into it and found two neatly folded school uniforms.

  “Seriously?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Even if you are going to earn some money in a brothel - I’m not going to participate in this.”

  “You wish,” Belyana mocked. “We need them for the same purpose for which they are intended.”

  “Let's say. And how do you suggest that I pretend to be a schoolgirl, in that case?” Karina pointed on her face with fingers. “Not to mention age, doesn’t it bother you that I don’t really fit in?”

  “Don’t really need to. The entire city is the magician’s domain.”

  “I don’t see anything suspicious around,” she remarked incredulously.

  “And who complained that hell after hell?” answered Belyana. “Can’t please you. Moreover, it is he who helps us, so we are not after him. I’ve always liked bald monks - in most cases they’re quite reasonable.”

  “And why then the form?” Karina asked suspiciously.

  “And here I’ll just go back to the moment at which you interrupted me,” she threw up her hands. “The picture of the world should not raise too many questions. And the teacher of you is like a porter of me.”

  On the way, visited a public toilet, they both changed their clothes, although Belyana in addition got rid of the bandage and supplemented her clothes with a black wig and brown lenses. She looked up at Karina, whose appearance was like she had come straight from a cheap porn movie, and burst out laughing again.

  “And you are now expecting me to believe that this had at least some other purpose?” Karina asked accusingly.

  “A moment ... Wait ... a second ...” gasping for air and trying to calm down, she answered, “No, it's impossible!”

  Belyana burst into laughter again, attracting the attention of casual passers-by, and Karina only looked, frowning, at her bent companion. Only after a couple of minutes, she finally calmed down, and they continued to walk.

  “Okay, good things comes in small packages,” Belyana began. “One schoolboy died yesterday. Well, that would be nothing, but he died, falling on the knife in his hand. Thrice.”

  “And?” not understanding the essence, asked Karina. “If there is no magic involved, what have we to do with it?”

  “That’s the point,” answered Belyana. “Magic is involved - causal relationships are broken. No one should have killed him, just as he shouldn’t have died himself. At least in the near future. Yet this is not the work of magicians. The fact that the bald man retains a stable domain, being of sound mind, is an unequivocal guarantee that without his knowledge even the magic bacteria would not crawl through.

  “Why is this confidence?” Karina was surprised. “Maybe the wizard himself did it?”

  “Well, actually, I just hear him,” she replied. “This mantra everywhere, to be honest, even annoying already.”

  “It's easier to believe that you've finally let slip that you hear voices than that some bald wizard, if he is bald at all, is so nice that he can't offend anyone. Everyone who was up to that time turned out to be completely insane.”

  “But you're a magician too,” giggled Belyana. “What about you?”

  In the end, a two-story school building showed up, with students going through its doors. Even though it was late afternoon, everyone acted as if it was morning. Belyana walked along the corridors confidently and purposefully, while Karina followed, looking around, at the only vaguely familiar architecture.

  In the class itself, all the children have already gathered. Manko-chan and Chitsu-chan, who were sitting at the back desks, quietly discussed how to suck deeply without vomiting, and how to imitate swallowing sperm so that the man would not notice. Satsuno-chan, with an annoyed expression on her face, was wiping some writing from her desk. Kusogami-kun pretended to be writing with concentration, every now and then furtively glancing at Amane-chan, who was looking thoughtfully out the window. Koizaki-kun used alcohol wipes to clean his desk and chair, and Koumon-kun, sitting with his feet on the table, looked with disgust at Koizaki’s swarming. One of the desks belonged to the dead Yagami-kun, while the other five, in a rather small room, were empty. These children were either sick, or the corpse on the school stairs was too strong an impression for them to come here the next day.

  “As I understand it, asking why I know who they are - is as pointless as asking how we got here?” propping her cheek with hand, Karina clarified.

  “Well, why?” Belyana answered playfully. “You're just studying with them for the third year!”

  Karina just growled in doom.

  “Stand up!” Belyana told the whole class when the teacher entered, which made Karina's face twisted only more. “Bow!”

  Fifty minutes later, the first lesson, although it should have been the fourth, ended. Amane said something quietly to Satsuno, and she fled somewhere, clearly in a hurry. Kusogami and Koizaki were talking about something, laughing.

  “I’ll probably regret this question, but why are you the class monitor?” Karina asked Belyana.

  “Don’t worry,” she giggled, “we just temporarily replaced two girls.”

  “Finally!” Karina was pretending to be delighted with the islet of the explainable. “Okay, illogicalities are illogicalities, but anyway, what are we doing here? I still don't see the point in this game.”

  “Elementary!” - clearly making fun, Belyana answered. “One of those present is a murderer. And we need to find him. Rather, you.”

  “What do you meant - me? How? And what are you planning to do?”

  “Shioma-chan!” Manko called to Belyana, standing in the doorway.

  “And I, my dear Watson, will have some fun!” she giggled again and went off somewhere with Manko and Chitsu.

  Karina sighed, which has become her most frequent reaction lately, and thought about how to solve the problem that had arisen in front of her out of nothing. She decided to start small, trying to learn something from the two, who were clearly not busy with anything.

  “Fuck off to the hell,” the only thing that Koumon answered her greeting - her eyes even darkened with unexpected harshness.

  Reasoning that swearing wouldn't help her anyway, she switched to Amane.

  “I don’t know who could hate him,” she answered in a very sad voice. “Gentle, kind, smart. Everyone loved him, really.”

  Amane sobbed faintly. Kusogami noticed this and quietly waved his hand to Karina. Koizaki returned to his seat, probably not to get in the way.

  “Shinaku-chan,” he said in a responsible tone, “You better not talk with her about Yagami-kun.”

  “Why so?” not understanding, she asked.

  “He was her boyfriend,” he said, hesitating a little. “But it's a secret.”

  “Oooh,” Karina stretched out with understanding. “But what's your business in that?”

  He was embarrassed, but this time he did not answer, but started a fable about the mood in the team.

  “Okay, okay,” tired enough of Belyana's fairy tales, Karina stopped him. “Then, can you tell me something about Yagami-kun instead of her?”

  To her surprise, Kusogami's story was slightly different. According to him, Yagami was a calculating bastard who didn’t care about anything except his reputation, and he started dating Amane herself only because she was the most popular at school. At the same time, the relationship itself was also not healthy. He controlled who she talked to, how and when, forbade her almost everything that he thought was unworthy of his ideal companion. For every offense, and more often just according to his mood, he punished her with ghosting, while she running after him and apologizing, not even always realizing if she had done anything wrong. However, regarding the enemies - Yagami really was the life and soul of group, so Kusogami rated this probability as zero.

  There was a crash, followed by everyone’s laughter. Turned around, Karina saw Satsuno next to Koumon's desk - she quickly rose from the floor and, looking down, almost ran back to her desk.

  The second lesson began, although Belyana and two girls did not come back. The teacher did not care at all not only about the absence of the three students, but also about the “class monitor”, so the lesson went on as usual.

  After it, Amane again said something to Satsuno, and she ran away. Karina wondered what it was, but Amane just looked at her, with an expression on her face that said not to poke her nose into other people's affairs, and returned to melancholic admiring the window.

  After the third, Belyana, Manko and Chitsu returned, obviously tipsy, and Karina heard a slight smell of alcohol.

  “Don't you think that getting children to drink is already too much?” she asked accusingly.

  “Not like I did it,” Belyana answered, looking at her with unhealthy shining eyes. “Anyway, this is for investigation.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Karina with disbelief, “And what have you investigated, let me ask?”

  “That,” Belyana unexpectedly hiccupped, “That they are not involved. They've been very busy all last week.”

  “With what, exactly?”

  “Earning some pocket money,” she replied as if it were a matter of course. “How they able to.”

  “I don't even want to know the details, for some reason.”

  “And rightly so. So let's switch to what you have been doing all this time.”

  Karina spoke briefly about Koumon's reaction and what the other boy had told her.

  “So, doing nothing,” summed up Belyana. “And how are you going to look for the one who killed Yagami?”

  “Why do you focus on the fact that I should look for him?” Karina asked with displeasure.

  “Because I didn’t sign up to do anything in your place,” Belyana answered in a rather cool tone.

  As they talked, Koumon poured something into Satsuno's bag, since she was absent again. Everyone else smiled with restraint as they watched his prank.

  The fourth lesson began with Satsuno's screeching, and the sound of a bag falling from her hands, the leaping laughter of the class, and a bunch of grasshoppers now jumping on the floor. Nobody betrayed Koumon, and the teacher seemed to never care about anything, so after five minutes, the insects were caught, and the lesson continued.

  During lunch, almost everyone fled. There are three left, not counting Belyana and Karina. Amane, who was probably just not hungry. Kusogami, with flushing cheeks, was trying to share his lunch with Amane. And Satsuno, who felt pretty much well in her corner. However, after a while, Amane approached Satsuno and began to speak in a raised voice that she was eating like a pig, with munching sound throughout the whole class, and that it would be nice if she disappear. She, did not willing to enter into a conflict, actually obeyed and took her lunchbox out of room with herself.

  About twenty minutes later, Koizaki returned with a broken nose. Although he replied that he had stumbled unsuccessfully, Kusogami ran up and talked to him quietly for the rest of the break.

  Everyone else returned near the start of next lesson. The knuckles on Koumon's right hand were red, and Satsuno's eyes were clearly puffy. Manko and Chitsu, it seems, somehow managed to get drunk even more, because they could no longer walk smoothly and could hardly pronounce the words.

  In the middle of the fifth lesson, the teacher finally decided to be involved in the life of the class.

  “Koumon!” he exclaimed angrily.

  Koumon himself lay with his forehead on the desk just asleep, or so it seemed like. The teacher, completely tactlessly, sharply raised Koumon’s head, which carefully chewed its own intestines, staining himself all over with something dark olive colored mixed with blood. On his lap lay a liver, already half eaten, and an ordinary pen, with which he somehow managed to pierce his stomach without emitting a squeak. But judging by the fact that all the internal organs were bare, he also helped himself with his hands.