Craziness Knows No Bounds

The Footage

The little hair on my skin slowly rises up as I feel like I was about to get consumed by something unknown. I tell myself I have to open my eyes. The closer it comes the more I feel drowned. After several attempts I finally wake up feeling relieved after seeing the familiar view, my dorm room. I quickly glance towards Ren, feeling even more relieved that I'm back to reality and that everything's okay except my unusual breathing. I sit up from my bed rethinking of what kind of weird dream I had but i just shake it off and get up to get ready, seeing the time is now 8am.

After my short shower and dressing up, I reach out for my phone and decide to text Lisa.

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Me: Hey, are you ready? Come to my dorm room and bring Tsuki with you.

Lisa: We are coming over in a few minutes!

Me: Okay, weird question tho, Should we involve.. miss yk who?

Lisa: Who?

Me: Monika you dumb dumb

Lisa: Oh well I mean shes pretty much involved so just humour her I guess, she could be helpful.

Me: Hmm fine.

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Knock Knock!!
I open my door slowly and let the 3 girls in and tell them to be quiet. Lisa hovers over Ren, the worried expression on her face tells me everything. "Don't wake him up", I whisper. She chuckles at my somewhat terrible attempt of a whisper and whispers back, "I'm not that dumb". She lightly caresses his head while he's still fast asleep and gets up. "Alright, lets go find the fucker who decided to hurt my man",she says. My jaw almost dropped at this cool side of her but I ain't falling behind. "Yeah let's go, I'm ready to fight anything or anyone for my best friend!", I reply back while throwing on my jacket and exit the room with the 2 dumbfounded girls behind us.

On our way to the Academy, We discuss about our approach to gaining the cctv footage and we decide it will be faster if Monika asks for the footage since she's part of the student executive disciplinary team. As we approach near to the Security Guard's Office, the nervousness and curiosity atmosphere flies through. I take a deep breath in readying myself for the plan we just made without much thinking when i notice the other girls doing the same. I look at all of them and say, "We got this!", it was a temporary effect which seemed to work. Monika takes the lead and knocks on the door of the office. We stand there like looking like half criminals in silence while we wait for the door to be opened.

The door is opened by a male guard, who had an irked expression until he saw Monika standing at the front. "Is something the matter?", asked the male guard.
Monika replies, "Yes, we would like to view the cctv footage of yesterday please". I watch as the guard scratches his head, "Is there a specific reason as to why you would want the footage?", he asks looking at all of us as if he wants to know why there are 3 random people wanting to see the footage. I look at Tsuki and she looks right back at me, somewhat panicking at the guards question. I clench my fist as i end up saying whatever comes out of my mouth, "This woman here claims that she saw one of us committing a misconduct but she doesn't know who did it so she dragged us all here to find the culprit". It felt like my soul almost escaped my body after rambling but it's not like it was all of a bunch of crap it was somewhat true, we had to find a culprit in the end.

The guard ponders for a few seconds before opening his mouth, "Alright since it's related to such events, we can let you in!". A sigh of relief washes over me and the girls turn around to face me with a nod of approval. It made me feel like a hero momentarily but we then step in to the office with the door shutting behind us.

He plops onto his chair and starts typing on his keyboard. "Do you know what time and location you're looking for?". Monika looks at me for a brief second. "I believe it would be the Girls dormitory at around ... 5pm?". The guard nods at her words and goes back to typing. I glance around his computer and me and the girls exchange glances as the paranoia starts creeping on us. The guard hits "ENTER" on his keyboard which stops the paranoia in that second and we watch the footage on the big screen in front of us. Monika requests for the footage to be slightly sped up and the guard holds the right arrow on the keyboard which allowed the footage to be sped up. We focus on the screen until i see something and i yell, "STOP!"

He stops and zooms in without being told to. We all look at the screen and see Ren. The timing was roughly around 5:10pm. We track Ren's movement through all of the cameras on each floor and him entering the girls dorm. I note it all in my brain and register every information i can get from the scene right now. Monika requests for the footage to sped up again in which the guard once again complies with her request.
He speeds up the footage and i take out my phone and check my call logs to see the timing of when Ren called me. I check the screen when it shows 6:30pm. However the most bizarre thing ever happened...

Around the timing of 5:10pm to 6:30pm... Ren isn't seen leaving Lisa's Dorm. We were all so confused and ask the guard to speed up until this morning. We watch the whole footage but its like the footage was turned into a still image, no signs of leaving or the accident...
Even the guard was confused and slapped the computer to see if it would work like old times. He turns around to us and says, "Seems like your case will be difficult to solve this time Ms Monika, sometimes the computers and footage are a little off". Monika seemed like she was more invested than ever in this bizarre footage and case. She asks the guard if there is any possible way for anyone else to gain access to the footage or even the office but he nods his head as if to say no and we all end up eventually leaving the office feeling puzzled and somewhat annoyed since this was the only clue we had but it was nothing but a failure.
I wonder to myself what could hurting Ren or doing all of this could possibly mean... Is it truly a computer error or was it done purposely?

~End of chapter 10~