The faint light from the hall barely penetrated the room itself, casting long shadows across rows of old school files and trophies and forgotten furniture.

Karina's nerves prickled. She wasn't supposed to be here, and something about this place made it feel like a secret that was better left alone. But she had to know more about Mai—the student who was supposed to be the star swimmer but had been mysteriously replaced.

She was heading for the back of the room and the filing cabinets soon. In silence, she creaked softly through the metal drawers as she opened each one in a series of hopes to find Mai's profile.

Old paper dust filled the storage room; each shuffle of her hands turning through files broke into the silence.

It seems she finally found it: Mai's student profile.

She pulled out the folder and sat in an old chair. She started running over the information: dux, straight A's, perfect attendance, and reams of awards for her athletic prowess. Then she saw something odd.

And then this final note down at the bottom of the file, almost on the eve of the festival, that she had received medical advice to retire from professional sportsbut doesn't say why.

Only some high-handed oblique reference to "injury" and nothing else.

Karina squint.

There's something fishy. There has to be more to an injury than this.

And she has never heard about it before.

Is it a hush-hush to keep it in the dark?

She sat, lost in her thoughts, when suddenly she was shocked by the sound—a slight creak outside of her door.

Karina froze.

Her heart thumped quickly against her chest. Maybe some is outside.

Then the room suddenly went black; lights went out quickly, plunging Karina into cold, suffocating silence.

She had just finished reading the disquieting note in Mai's file when the power went out at the whole school-an event that had never happened before within the loops-but new nonetheless and paralyzing her.

Karina's mind ran wild, full of images and visions of what was happening.

What was happening? Why now?

She had only come here to enquire but now she was alone trapped in the freebiting darkness of the storage room with nothing else to keep her company except her overactive imagination.

A faint light from the street illuminated just this much of the dusty room through the window.

Her thoughts spiralled.

Karina wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to curl into a ball on the cold, hard floor. Her back rested against the chilling metal filing cabinets.

Air came in short, stuttered gasps that each time were harder to take than the last. Her heartbeat sounded deafeningly loud in the stillness around her.

She couldn't help but shudder at the running tremors through her own form. Tears welled and trickled down her face as she fought for silence. She was so violently afraid that any sound she might make could draw something to this place.

She didn't know what, but her mind had already worked out all the worst possibilities.

Ghosts.

Shadows.

Something unknown and lurking in the dark.

But she had nearly reached the breaking point when she heard something: a sound, the faint step of shoes across the floor.

Her breathing catches. But then she sees, out of the corner of her eye, something in that shadowy light coming through the window, something familiar, a pair of shoes and one of which she knows all too well:

Winter's shoes.

Karina blinked, her face canted forward by tension and the fit of tears stopped short by the wave of relief.

Steadies breaths, ragged to start, and then begins with slow upward glances; Winter was standing there, her figure hardly visible, but sometimes the dim light from the passing cars outside illuminated her face.

Winter sat on the floor with her back against the table near Karina, no word was spoken. Her serenity did not alter; no word was said but she was sitting there with Karina in the darkness.

Karina was dabbing at her tears as she struggled for composure, swallowing again as lumps inside persisted, and sniffed quietly.

The silence was an eternity, but with Winter there, calm serenity spread over her that Karina hadn't expected.

For that moment, at least, Karina was safe once again.