Room ∞-1

( In Room ∞-1: First Night )

With a soft squeak of hinges, the door to his room clicks shut. Hanging from the doorknob outside is a little paper sign that had not been there a moment before. In English, it would most likely be labelled 'Do Not Disturb'. But this one has three kanji neatly printed on it.

使用室
Shiyoushitsu.
Room currently occupied.

Room ∞-1

He is tired. Rather more tired than he should be, all things considered. He had hated to leave Roland Deschain-san so abruptly, but the exhaustion had come over him so quickly that he was more than a little concerned for his own ability to get back up the stairs. Even the journey from his table to the bar had been tiring.

Yet somehow he makes it upstairs to his room, and closes the door, leaning back against it to catch his breath --

-- and his gaze falls on his desk.

Specifically, on a framed photograph on the desk. It had not been there when he had left his room an hour before.

The room light overhead glints off the glass in the frame, obscuring the picture behind it. All he has to do is turn off the light, and he will not have to look at it. It would be a simple matter to prepare for the night without the room light being on.

But he does not turn off the light. Instead, he slowly makes his way over to the desk and picks up the photograph, tilting it to have a proper view of the picture in the frame.

It is not what he had expected (what had he expected?), not at all. There are two girls in the photograph. One is certainly Himemiya-san. The other...

('I'll beat you to a pulp and prove I'm better than you!')

...he does not recognise her. But she wears some semblance of the Ohtori uniform, albeit a strange variation on the traditional men's design.

An odd photograph. It seems to have been cut from a larger one -- there is another hand in the photograph, not quite touching the other girl's shoulder.

Carefully, he replaces the framed photograph on the desk. Face-down.