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Chapter 15: Not Just Secret Rooms

-Ana's POV-

We were walking away from the room with corpses, I should update this map. We slowly reach the secret rooms. It’s crazy how it looks the same, there’s no way you can memorise all these rooms with it looking the same. We were about to open one of the doors closest to us, but we hear footsteps. Harper tries the door closet to her, and it opens. She motions for us all to get in. We were lucky that Harper found an empty room for us to hide in. We hear their impatient foot tapping the floor constantly, “Where is he?”. I see Maki shiver in the corner of my eye. We hear footsteps approaching us, “You know I don’t have time to wait about”. Maki shivers again and Liz thinks she’s cold, so she goes for her bag, but Maki holds out her hand to stop her. Wait, this voice is familiar. Think, think, think. Another language, I heard this person speak in another language, it’s the Principal! The other person hasn’t spoken yet, are they waiting for something?

“I said I don’t have the time to wait!” the Principal says. “I still don’t know why I'm doing this for you” a guy with a deep voice says. It's too deep to be natural so it has to be used as a disguise. “They said that they’re fine” the other person says. We continue to listen in but it’s being said in a code. “And if anyone should prevent you from doing it” the Principal walks closer to us until he stops and opens the door. I see Maki’s breathing quicken, her body going into panic, he’s in the room right next to us, “Put them in here, tell me and I'll deal with them”. He closes the door and we hear fading footsteps. That was so close. Liz opens the door and confirms that the coast is clear. We all leave the room and Maki speed walks, basically runs back. “Maki, wait up!” as soon as that happens, she starts sprinting to the exit.

I run to catch up with Maki, I'm surprised she remembers the way back even though she’s panicked. Wait, she doesn’t, she’s just running. Dammit. “There’s a lift, she’s going to the lift!” Harper tells me. Maki stops and impatiently presses the button with her violently shaky hands. We all reach her just as the lift opens and we go to our floor. “I forget how fast Maki can run sometimes” Liz says but I know it’s more than that. We reach our floor quickly and as soon as the door opens, she’s running to our dorm. We arrive at the dorm, and I go to Maki. Her breathing is shaky, short and irregular, her hands trembling and her eyes darting around everywhere, not knowing where to look. “Maki, look at me. That was it, that was it” I try to grab a hold of her hand, but she pulls away before I even graze my fingertip against her hand. She moves her hands towards her head and starts to pull her knees to her chest. I grab her hands and make her look at me, “I’m here Maki, I'm fine” with that she hugs me. “Breathe Maki, breathe” I rub my hand up and down her back. She slows her breathing, trying to calm down but she can’t.

-Harper’s POV-

I've seen Maki-san show some emotion but seeing her have a full-blown panic attack makes me realise how serious this is. I saw her shivering when she heard his voice, and when he went into the room right next to us, that was pretty scary. She probably thinks of him as this tall, cold-hearted guy, but she did meet him as a kid so her image of him is different. Then again, he seems likes that from just his voice. I always imagined that Maki-san would act like this when she’s in the same room as him, not having a panic attack but being scared. I see Liz-san walk to the whiteboard and write something down. ‘Principal working with someone, disguises their voice by making it really deep’ she wrote. She doesn’t know what to write so she just stops. She's been off too. Ever since we tried to figure out a reason as to why there was a detective team here.

I look back to Ana-san and Maki-san. She looks calmer than before. Ana-san moves from being in front of her to sitting next to her, but she had her arm wrapped around her. They do seem like they hate each other, well Maki-san hates her, but they really do care about each other. Maki-san steadies her breathing and places her hands on her knees. She opens her mouth to say something but doesn’t. She grabs Ana-san's hand, “There’s more than one undercover agent here. The person I saw looked very different to Kowalski”. More than one, they could get more info that way, “I think Kowalski is the only teacher undercover so it has to be another person who can get lots of info on students or gets visited a lot by them” she continues. ‘Kowalski undercover teacher and either counsellor, nurse or office staff are undercover’ Liz-san writes.