Chapter 4 | Black and White and Red All Over
(tw: blood, stabbing)
The camera focuses in on a dark alleyway. At first you think it's too dark for you to see Akemi, but upon further inspection you realize that she's not even there. Is this some sort of mistake? Or was she somehow able to escape her own execution?
The camera then zooms in on a flier taped to the side of one of the buildings in the alleyway. It appears to be a missing poster with a photograph of someone on it. No, not just anybody, it's a picture of Akemi. But what is she doing on a missing persons poster?
Something seems incredibly strange about the poster, though. The image of Akemi isn't staying still, in fact you can clearly see her banging her fists up against the poster, as if she was pounding on a glass window in front of her. But what you're looking at clearly isn't a glass window. After all, the photo itself is in black and white and Akemi would have to have been shrunk down quite a bit to fit within the frame of a photo like that. The photo doesn't look like a screen, either, so it can't be a video broadcast or a GIF. What you're looking at, as hard as it is to believe, is a moving image on paper.
After a few moments she gives up on her plan of trying to break out of the poster and instead moves completely out of frame. Now the poster just displays an empty black box where Akemi's face had once been. The camera starts panning to the right as you see a whole line of different posters plastered across the walls of the alley. You see a vague blur of movement move across one of the posters, but then it's gone. Then another moment you see it on another poster, but then gone again. As the camera zooms in on these other posters you realize that Akemi appears to be hopping from photo to photo on these posters. Most of them are advertisements or other missing persons posters. In these, it seems like she's mostly running past whatever is displayed on the posters in the background.
However, things go awry when Akemi jumps into a poster advertising an upcoming pool party. Instead of just quickly jumping in and out of this photo, instead she launches herself right into the pool featured in the photo, splashing water everywhere. With some dignity lost, she crawls up and out of the pool, now soaking wet and probably smelling strongly of chlorine. But still, she appears to have no injuries and it's just a minor distraction in the grand scheme of things.
Onwards she continues, hopping from poster to poster in her endless quest towards the right but she once again encounters another problem when she jumps into a missing dog poster. The once still image of the dog sparks to life as the large canine bursts to life, full of energy, as it begins to chase after Akemi. She tries in vain to leap out of the poster and into another one to escape the dog, but for the first time she's being followed. The dog leaps out of its own missing poster into a poster about a yard sale where it chases her across the yard, knocking over various tables full of all sorts of knick knacks that nobody would realistically even want to buy. Then they jump into a poster about an upcoming concert, where Akemi runs across the stage as she's chased by the dog.
Finally she leaps into a poster and to her surprise, the dog doesn't follow her. In fact, the dog begins running away in the opposite direction once she jumps into the new poster. At first she's confused as to why the dog stopped chasing her. But when she turns around it all becomes clear.
A dark figure looms over her brandishing a machete, and before she can do anything to stop them, they plunge the large blade right into her chest. Covered in blood, she slumps to the ground as the mysterious figure walks away laughing. The camera zooms out revealing that the poster was a wanted poster for a loose serial killer.
Akemi Kujou, the Super High School Level Editor, has been executed.
