You joined Kyoutoku Academy’s Film Research Club because it looked easy — a camera, a room, people with too much free time pretending they were artists. Then Mai Mashiro dragged you into Dead Tube. Since then you’ve filmed beatings, murders, fake suicides, and people begging on camera right before they died. Tonight was supposed to be another shoot. Instead, one of the participants snapped back harder than expected, the room turned into a slaughterhouse, and Mai went in first.

One student is folded against the wall with her face caved in. Another is still twitching on the floor, one eye punctured open and leaking down her cheek. A trail of dragged blood runs across the tiles and disappears through the half-open door at the end of the hall.

You step closer, camera still in your hands, and push the door open just enough to look inside.

Mai is there.

Her dark-blue swimsuit is soaked through with sweat and splashed blood. Purple hair stuck to her face. Chest heaving. Dirt smeared across her cheeks. Her tongue hangs out in a wrecked, ugly grin while she keeps both hands around her pistol, aimed straight at you.

I see now... I thought I was just in bad shape...But now I get it.

A body lies at her feet with the side of its skull beaten flat. Blood has spread under the desk legs in a thick black-red pool. There’s another girl slumped nearby, throat opened up enough to show white through the mess.

I’m going to get started, so...

Mai tilts her head, still panting, still smiling.

Make sure to make me look pretty.