Lame traffic earring- part nine

Look, she's awake!

I pointed to daikon girl,

seeing her awakened on a bed in a cell we'd come into after a certain 

paintbrush showed us the way.

Finally. I guess daikons do need their beauty rest.

It seems my best friend still has his quirky sense of humor.

I'm glad he's still here.

No! He- Tsuka- Shijima's wish...I'M NOT A DAIKON!
How'd you even know where to find me? I thought that you'd stay here. I know you can't bring yourself to kill him, even if he's already dead, just like I can't kill my apparition that came back from the dead somehow.

How do I explain everything that happened to daikon girl?

The paintbrush, the broken rules, the jump, the catch.

The room we were in was dark and cold, the moonlight outside filtering 

through a tiny window, signaling that night had truly fallen.

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck.

"It's complicated," I started, as Shijima, the 4th school mystery, 

lay unconscious on the floor beside the small bed.

She had been on the outside of daikon's cell when the wish was granted, 

when the thing that killed him, had appeared and knocked her out cold, a preparation

for a wish we still didn't understand.

The little, talking paintbrush, a subconscious of Shijima with a will to help,

had shown us where daikon girl was being kept, 

allowing us to find the real Shijima, 

and tie her up- maybe to fish some information out of her as well.

Well, now that you're done here, I can truly explain everything.

Because I want you to be able to leave.

Unlike me.

I guess you aren't the only one,

that hates feeling like this.

Being helpless as you follow the story

that society created for you.

It's sad, 

not being able to change it yourself,

because nobody can see you.

That's why my best friend was killed for a second time.

Tell us the way out.

My voice was sharper now, 

the empathy for her situation fighting the urgent need to escape this place.

She nodded, 

a sad, knowing look in her eyes.

An emergency exit, placed where the dreamers, caught in their own desires, would never think to look. A place beyond their reach.

When the hour of departure came, 

she showed them the truth, 

pointing not to a door on the ground, 

but to the sky:

See the moon? That is the way out. He wished for this world, Amane Yugi- he could never touch that light when he was alive, 

and now he's bound to the school. It sits in his mind as something impossible to reach.

Climb to where the impossible is, and you will find the exit.