Lucas stood motionless at the entrance of the clock tower, rainwater dripping from his blazer onto the dusty wooden floor. In his right hand was a silver key identical to Ethan's. The only difference was the small engraving near its handle. Ethan's key carried the letter **A**, while Lucas's was marked with the letter **R**.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Noah finally broke the silence.
"Okay... either someone is making duplicate keys, or this school has the strangest souvenir shop in history."
No one laughed.
Ethan's eyes never left Lucas.
"Where did you get that key?"
Lucas slowly walked into the room, stopping a few feet away from them.
"It belonged to my brother."
"Adrian?"
Lucas nodded.
"He gave it to me the night before he disappeared."
Elena frowned.
"But if he disappeared twenty years ago..."
"I was only six."
"My brother told me to keep the key hidden until someone named Ethan Carter came to Sakura Blossom High."
The room fell silent.
Ethan felt a chill run through his body.
"He knew my name?"
Lucas looked down.
"No."
"He only said..."
"...'One day, another Carter will return.'"
Ethan tightened his grip on the envelope Daniel had left behind.
Everything felt impossible.
Daniel had somehow predicted his arrival twenty years before he had even been born.
---
Lucas stepped closer and placed his silver key beside Ethan's.
The two keys looked almost identical.
Almost.
When they touched each other...
A faint metallic click echoed through the tower.
Then...
Both keys began vibrating.
Olivia gasped.
"Did... did you all see that?"
Before anyone could answer, the gears inside the giant clock started turning again.
Slowly.
Loudly.
Dust rained from the ceiling as the enormous mechanism groaned back to life.
Deep below them...
Another metallic door unlocked.
This time, everyone heard it clearly.
The sound seemed to come from somewhere beneath the tower.
Noah looked toward the staircase.
"I have a very bad feeling about this."
"So do I," Elena admitted.
Ethan picked up both keys.
"They're connected."
Lucas nodded.
"There were never supposed to be just one or two keys."
"How many are there?"
Lucas hesitated.
"Four."
Everyone looked at him.
"Four?"
"One for each student."
Daniel.
Emma.
Adrian.
"And the fourth?" Olivia asked.
Lucas's expression darkened.
"No one remembers."
---
The words struck Ethan harder than he expected.
The scratched-out face in the old class photograph suddenly came back to his mind.
Someone had erased that student from every record.
Every photograph.
Every conversation.
It wasn't simply an attempt to hide the truth.
It was as though the world itself had been forced to forget that person ever existed.
"Who was the fourth student?" Ethan asked again.
Lucas shook his head slowly.
"I've spent years searching."
"My brother wrote about Daniel."
"He wrote about Emma."
"He even mentioned himself."
"But whenever he tried to write the fourth name..."
Lucas swallowed.
"...the page was always torn out."
A strange silence settled over the tower.
It didn't feel natural.
Even the rain outside seemed quieter.
---
Suddenly, Elena noticed something unusual.
"The envelope..."
Everyone looked at the letter Ethan was still holding.
Words were appearing across the blank paper.
Not ink.
Not handwriting.
The letters slowly emerged on their own, one after another.
Olivia took a nervous step back.
"That's impossible."
Within seconds, the sentence was complete.
**'The archive remembers what people choose to forget.'**
Beneath it...
Another line appeared.
**'Go before sunset.'**
The writing disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
The page became blank again.
Noah rubbed his eyes.
"I swear I'm never making fun of ghost stories again."
---
Without wasting another second, the five of them hurried down the spiral staircase.
As they reached the ground floor, Ethan noticed something he hadn't seen before.
Behind the tower...
Hidden beneath thick ivy...
Was a narrow stone pathway leading toward the oldest part of the school.
It wasn't shown on any modern campus map.
Lucas pointed toward it.
"The archive entrance."
They followed the forgotten path until it ended before a massive iron door built into the hillside beneath Sakura Blossom High.
It looked ancient.
Three keyholes were visible across its surface.
Not one.
Not two.
Three.
Ethan stared at the door in confusion.
"But you said there were four keys."
Lucas nodded.
"There are."
"So why are there only three locks?"
Before Lucas could answer...
A calm voice spoke from behind them.
"Because..."
"...the fourth key was never meant to open the door."
Everyone spun around.
Principal James Walker stood beneath the trees, holding an old leather folder in one hand.
His expression was more serious than Ethan had ever seen.
He looked directly at Ethan before quietly saying,
"The fourth key..."
"...isn't a key at all."
"It's a person."