A doppelganger.No… worse than that. Way worse.
She didn't just resemble someone I knew—she looked like the real person but twisted, distorted, like someone had taken the original and pulled it through a nightmare filter. Every detail was familiar but wrong at the same time. My brain kept flickering between recognition and denial, like it couldn't fully process what I was staring at.
It was—
"Chihara… Akane?"
The words slipped out of one of my classmates, barely above a whisper, but it cut through the training field like a blade. His voice trembled, shaking with a mixture of disbelief and fear. And the moment he said it, everything stopped. Every step, every swing, every breath—frozen. The entire class turned in unison to stare at her as if some unseen command had swept through the air.
A beat of silence. Then the murmurs erupted.
"What? Isn't she supposed to be here? How did she even get here?"
"Wait—why the hell is her hair purple now?"
"Is she really Chihara?"
