Alice woke up in a familiar place, the white void from a dream she had a few months back. She slowly stood up and looked around.
"I'm back in this dream again, huh? Will Senpai be in here?" She muttered to herself, Sugimoto being the first thing on her thought.
As she stood up, she noticed a key on the floor and picked it up.
"A-A key?" She muttered slightly.
She looked into the distance and saw the same door from before. She walked over to the door and touched its frame. As Alice was about to use the key, she noticed the door was already unlocked from her previous ventures. She pushed the door open and the door collapsed in front of her. The white lights that once litten up the surrounding area turned into darkness. She looked around and saw Sugimoto in front of her, chained and locked up by the lockets. The pixels on his face were buzzing and she couldn't see his face.
"Senpai..." Alice muttered.
He was kneeling on the ground, almost motionless. Alice walked up to him slowly and tried to touch his face but the buzzing sound became erratic and she pulled her hands away. She kneeled in front of him and inspected the chains. She inspected the key that she had found and held up the locket up to her.
"S-So this is the key for this padlock. So if I just put this in, it'll unlock it." Alice muttered.
She pushed the key inside the hole and began twisting it. The padlock unlocks and suddenly it floats up before vanishing, leaving only hints of sparkles in the air. Suddenly the ground began shaking and suddenly Sugimoto woke up. The pixels on his face were glitching out and suddenly disappeared. He looked at Alice with a panicked face.
"A-Alice! I-I'm sorry!" Sugimoto said in a frantic scared voice.
"S-Senpai..." Alice muttered in a feared voice.
The ground began swallowing him up, he looked to the ground before looking back at Alice.
"F-Forgive me!" He screamed at her.
She looked around her bed and began catching her breath. She was sweating bullets and felt a bit uncomfortable in her soaked pyjamas. She got up, grabbed her towel and headed for the showers. She got in the bath and sat there, thinking about the dream she experienced.
"Whenever I sleep in an exhausted state, I will get a weird dream. But after every race day, I kept dreaming about my Senpai being locked in chains. I think there's a pattern to this, maybe I should try experimenting with it later." Alice muttered to herself in the tub.
She began remembering the keys and the paddocks that were in her dream, she didn't know how she kept obtaining the keys but she managed to unlock at least one of them.
"So I've managed to unlock one of the four padlocks there. But what does it actually mean? Do they all have some sort of meaning?" Alice thought to herself.
After soaking in the bath, Alice soon got out of the bathtub and changed into her clothes. After changing her clothes, she heard a familiar tune coming from downstairs. She walked halfway down the stairs and saw her grandpa playing his favourite morning tunes. Her grandpa noticed her by the stairs and smiled lightly before returning his gaze to the sandwich he was making.
"Come down and have some tea, Alice. I'm still preparing the sandwiches." Her grandfather said to her in a calm voice.
"Alright!" Alice said with enthusiasm.
Alice ran down the stairs and sat down across from her grandpa. He was still spreading the jam onto the bread as Alice sat there. While he was still preparing her sandwich, her grandpa decided to have a small talk with her.
