I died.
Absolutely 100% dead.
The blinding flash of light was the last thing my physical senses registered.
Kato Jun could only watch as his own body turned into a charcoal-like corpse in the fiery explosion.
The heat had been unimaginable, but now, he felt nothing at all.
He died.
But why…
Can I still see all this?
Obviously, I’m already dead…
Kato Jun watched his body fall into the sea along with the flaming, twisted metal debris of the plane.
It was as if he were viewing the tragedy from an elevated, God’s-eye perspective.
Ah, I’m really dead, I can’t be any more dead…
Kato Jun shook his ethereal head as he watched his charred corpse hit the dark waves with a hollow plop.
Dead.
There was no denying the absolute finality of that sight.
So, am I just a soul right now?
Kato Jun looked down at his hands, only to see them and his entire body gradually dissipating into the night air.
Like mist caught in a gentle breeze.
Will even my soul be wiped out?
Is this truly the end of everything?
…
“Kato-san…
Kato-san!”
“Ah—!”
Hearing someone shouting urgently in his ear, Kato Jun gasped sharply, his lungs burning as he snapped his eyes open.
The sudden shock of freezing seawater immediately replaced the phantom heat of the explosion.
He coughed violently, tasting salt and ash as he frantically kicked his legs in the dark water.
It was the school uniform of Sakura High School…
or what was left of it, clinging heavily to a small figure.
From her wet, long black hair plastered against her pale cheeks, and that crisp, pleasant voice, Kato Jun realized that the person beside him in the freezing sea was a girl.
“Are you Yukinoshita from Class A?”
Kato Jun was a transmigrator, a sophomore in Class B at Sakura High School.
He boasted excellent grades, was versatile in sports, and had a lovely sister waiting for him at home.
Because of this, he naturally knew the famous ‘Ice Queen’ of their school by sight.
“Kato-san, you finally woke up…”
Yukinoshita Yukino had thought that Kato Jun hit his head on some wreckage, causing him to suddenly pass out and keep sinking into the dark sea.
She was shivering violently, her delicate fingers gripping the edge of their makeshift raft until her knuckles turned white.
“Thank you for saving me…”
Seeing the girl struggling to pull his dead weight onto the piece of floating plastic board, Kato Jun hurriedly treaded water and helped push himself up.
“Likewise.
If Kato-san hadn’t dragged me onto this plastic board just now, I would have drowned in the seawater…”
Yukinoshita Yukino’s face lacked its usual unapproachable indifference.
Right now, stripped of her flawless facade, she was filled with genuine worry and fear about their grim situation.
Their plane had crashed into the middle of the ocean during their highly anticipated school trip.
The smell of burning jet fuel and the terrifying vastness of the dark water made it an incredibly difficult reality to accept.
By the way, I did save a girl just now…
Kato Jun rubbed his pounding temples, trying to force his fragmented memories into place.
He remembered the chaos inside the cabin, reaching out to grab the person nearest to him before the devastating impact.
But just before that, he clearly saw himself being engulfed by a sea of fire and turned into a charred corpse, completely dead…
Was that a dream?
A hallucination born from extreme terror?
Or am I somehow alive again?
“Kato-san, now is not the time to be in a daze…”
Yukinoshita Yukino’s cold, trembling voice interrupted Kato Jun’s chaotic thoughts.
She raised a pale, shaking hand and pointed toward the horizon, several kilometers away.
“We should think about how we can swim there…”
Kato Jun looked in the direction Yukinoshita Yukino was pointing, squinting through the salty spray.
Only then did he find that there seemed to be the dark silhouette of an island looming in the distance.
He looked around at their immediate surroundings again.
Not far away was the flaming wreckage of the airplane, hissing as burning metal sank into the unforgiving ocean.
He and Yukinoshita Yukino were floating in the sea, relying entirely on a fragile piece of plastic debris to keep from sinking into the abyss.
Moreover, aside from the beautiful, cold-eyed girl shivering in front of him, the ocean was dead silent.
There were no cries for help, no emergency rafts, no other signs of life in the entire sea.
Did no one else survive?
TO BE CONTINUE