Chapter Text
Ichika gazed up to the starry sky above her head, glimpsing small shooting stars that fly across the dark abyss. It was beautiful. The young girl turned to her side where her friends were sitting. Everyone was smiling while looking at the sky, enchanted by the view. Ichika looked back up to the sky and started to smile to herself, she would give anything to make this moment last forever...
But while she uttered these words inside her mind, Ichika found herself inside a teal tinted void, two ice blue orbs glowing inside of it. It looked like a nightsky starring back at, no right through her. It felt like the pair of stars gazed straight into her soul. A female voice resounded from the abyss, but the girl can’t tell what it says.
Ichika snapped back into reality in a cold sweat. She was in her classroom, the teacher talking in the background. “Did I fall asleep?” she muttered to herself, while turning towards the window. Outside there were no blue stars in the sky, only the sun giving off it’s warm rays, chasing away the cosmic horror she woke up with, the memorie of the dream fading with it. The brunette kept looking out of the window until the bell rang announcing breaktime.
When exiting the classroom, Ichika saw Honami. She felt her heart ache while seeing the brunette go to the schoolyard, chatting with her classmates. A pained sigh escaped her, then she turned away from the other friend, heading to schoolyard through another door. Now is not the time to reminisce the past.
She headed back to the main building after having a brief lunch. Walking through the hallway towards her classroom, she wound up bumping into Shiho. The grey haired girl slightly grimaced when she looked at her.
“Ah, Shiho –“
“Sorry Ichika, I’m in a hurry” Shiho interrupted, hustling away. Ichika watched her move away, heart once again aching. This has been happening for years now. Her friends avoiding her by always having excuses. It hurt to not even be able to talk properly with them. The teen sighed again, slowly dragging herself back to class. It’s not like she could do anything about it. Her friends seem to be happy without her, so she can’t bring herself to ruin their happiness, by forcing an explanation out of them.
After school Ichika headed straight back home. She wants to just burry herself in her bedsheets and wait till her gloomy feelings vanished. But when she entered the room, she tripped over her rug.
“Agh” She groaned, rubbing the shoulder she landed on, while standing up. Luckily, she didn’t fall on the coffee table, or she could have injured herself even more. The teen then gazed at the place she tripped. The tip of the rug was flipped from her tripping on it, revealing unusual black lines on the bedroom floor. “Ichika? Are you alright?” her mothers’ worried voice called from the living room.“Uh, Yeah. I just tripped.” The girl answered not averting her eyes from the black lines. Driven by curiosity she moved her coffee table from the rug and gripped the tips of the fabric, pulling it away from the floor.
Below it was a huge black circle with different inscriptions drawn in an orderly manner. In the middle of the circle was an image of a star constellation, like the ones in Honamis stargazing book. She really liked stars… Ichika shook her head, she shouldn’t get lost in thinking about Honami, she should find out why her floor has a magic circle.
She edged closer to the floor looking at the lines closer. They seem to be burned into the wood. So it’s not just an ominous drawing she never knew about, but ominous pyrography she never knew about, what makes it even more odd that nobody noticed something was burned onto her floor. The brunette doesn’t remember it being there before she got the rug 7 years ago…
The girl absentmindedly brushed her hand on the symbol, what made it react, giving of an intensely bright light which blinded the girl.
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Eventually Ichikas’ eyes started recovering from the sudden flash that was emitted by the symbol on her floor, but after seeing where she currently is standing, she doubts that they really recovered fully. “Where am I?” the confused teen asked herself. She was in her room just mere moments before…but now…she found herself in an abandoned classroom tinted pink by the setting sun. The classroom felt oddly familiar, but the girl couldn’t tell why. Inside were several equally familiar objects, a telescope, several phenny plushies like the once Shiho loves to collect and various instruments.
“OH! So, you finally came!” a female voice said, startling Ichika. “You finally decided to appear, took quite the time” the stranger continued, from where the stranded teen presumed the door was. Ichika stared at the newcomer, getting even more confused then before.
“M-MIKU?” Ichika almost screamed, not sure if she should panic or get excited, but after taking a second look she decided she should absolutely panic. The Miku in front of her still had her token teal twintails, even if a bit more on the wild side, almost literally shooting from her head and dyed pink on the ends. She was wearing a black school uniform with bright pink accents, but more disturbingly Miku had two hauntingly familiar icy blue catlike eyes and small black horns peaking from the scattered teal strands. Looking down Ichika notices that the legs end in claws of the same deep black color as the horns.
„Yeah, I’m Hatsune Miku. Nice to finally meet you.” Miku smiled, extending her hand for a handshake. Making Ichika freeze up, when she saw how every single finger ended in a long sharp claw.
“Huh…Anyways, Ichika” the demoness said, awkwardly dropping her hand “Welcome to your Sekai! Hope it’ll help you compose great songs!” she announced spreading her arms with excitement.
“Sekai?” Ichika repeated not really snapping out of the state of shock she fell after seeing those sharp claws.
“You don’t know?” Miku asked, clearly getting confused at her answer “I was sure you did…Wait why are you alone?” the demoness asked, looking around as if hoping that anyone else will reveal themselves.
“What?” Ichika blurted.
“What’s with the what? Shouldn’t you be with the other contractors?” Miku turned back to Ichika.
“I don’t know what you mean” the teen said getting more and more confused.
” I’m talking about your friends, the ones you are in a contract with” the teal haired girl answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What contract?”
Mikus ice blue eyes widen. “Wait, you don’t know about the contract? How?!” Ichika gave a timid shrug. “No, no, no that’s impossible…Maybe you just forgot about the contract? It isn’t unlikely with how much time passed, but still… How do you not remember having a contract?! It isn’t something that can slip out of your mind that easily!”
“I’m sure I would remember if I had started one” Ichika voiced, only adding to the demoness’ confusion.
“Wait is that why you didn’t come for all these years?” Miku grabbed the teen on the shoulders, shaking her ”Then does the rest not know either? You all just forgot??”
Ichika zoned out, while the demonesse tried to shake an answer out of her. She drowned in the seemingly endless avalanche of questions roaming her mind. What is a Sekai? What is this contract she and some friends of hers supposedly made years ago? Why is Hatsune Miku a demon? This doesn’t make sense! She can’t recall anything that would lead to this scenario!
“I should probably explain everything then…” the demon Miku said, after finally letting the teen go. Ichika nodded.
The demoness sighs, flicking a scaly tail Ichika never realized was there “Ok…This world here is a Sekai. It’s basically a realm created to fit a contractors’ needs to fulfill their part. You are the contractor of this Sekai. You and your friends got into a contract around 5 years ago, but you never came. There was no good way of contacting you since you haven't entered the Sekai yet, but now you’re finally here, so you should be able to compose the required song to fulfill the contract. Does that help?” She looked at the brunette with a questioning stare.
“I-I’m not sure…I really don’t remember anything about a contract”
“Really?”
“Really”
Miku let out an annoyed huff, folding her hands “That can’t be. I was there myself, are you absolutely sure?” a timid nod from Ichika.
“Then something must have gone wrong…was I too unclear…? Aghh” the demoness buried her face with a frustrated groan.
“Whatever” Mikus started, looking back up to Ichika, seeming to have collected her thoughts “I should go back to my first question: Why didn’t your friends come?”
“I don’t know. I…I haven’t really talked to them in a while…” Ichika responded with a pained expression, averting her eyes.
“So, you also don’t know that? Should have guessed” Miku sighed again. She remained silent, her eyes fixated at a far of point outside the window, seeming to be trapped in thought once again.
“Might I ask what this contract is about? Maybe that’ll help me figuring things out.” Ichika eventually offered, breaking the silence.
“Right you don’t know” Miku said looking back at her “The Contract has multiple levels. The first, the one you and your friends were in for the last 5 years, is the inactivated contract. We weren’t able to interact with you, because of it being inactive. It’s weird limbo zone between being a non-contractor and a contractor. The next is your current stage. The active contract. It’s when the Sekai has been entered. Activated the contractor requires to create a song by discovering their true feelings, in the next 3 months. If the song isn’t created till the deadline then the contractor will...” The demoness' voice died down, getting visibly more and more uncomfortable
“What happens with the contractor?” Ichika asks already dreading the answer.
“the contractor…will die” The demoness said, slightly hesitant.
Ichika heart began to race. This is absurd, how is this real? Panic rose inside of her, while Miku looked at her sympathetically.
“How can I leave this place? I need to think about what just happened” She says looking around to find something anything that can be used as an escape from the conversation.
“Ah, yeah. I just need to open a gate” Miku said, walking to the blackboard. The demon grabbed the chalk laying there and started drawing a medium sized circle with several runes similar to the one in Ichikas room beneath her rug. “So that’s what got me here” the teen thought, brain still foggy from the billion thoughts rumbling in her mind.
The circle transformed into a white tinted image of her ceiling “There. Hope you can figure things out” Miku turned back to her “And please get your friends here too”
Ichika entered the circle in a rush, not answering Miku.