Summary
There is a rumor surrounding the inner-most stall of the girls bathroom, which is said to contain the Toilet Goddess. If one cleans the toilet piously, she will appear to grant their wish.
As two girls continue chatting, a lonely girl is shown eating within the stall. She worries they will want to look inside, but she calms down once they begin to laugh. It isn't like she wants to be in there or anything, but she can't stand being seen alone during free periods and break time. Before she had a whole group of friends, and every day was so much fun- but barely a month into middle school they drifted apart and she was left alone. It might be gross to be in a toilet room, but it's better than being noticed.
Suzu packs up her items and waits for the cleans to leave, preparing to sneak out until she realizes one of the girls is none-other than her childhood friend, Rena. She watches Rena fix her makeup when the girl next to her asks if they should have invited Suzu earlier, but Rena states that Suzu no longer gets along with them. They drop the subject and resume chatting about the toilet goddess when Rena recalls that in the story, a girl was frequently bullied for her plain appearance, and she took to cleaning the toilet every day. Then suddenly, she exited beautiful, and the bullying stopped. The girls share another laugh after Rena's friend wonders if she should give it a try, and they take off after hearing the bell.
Suzu badmouths the rumor and bitterly grabs a wad of toilet paper, rubbing the toilet and demanding the goddess come out to grant her wish of having friends. Nothing happens, as she expected. But she is left to sadly think about how much fun she had with her friends before. They would chat about manga and exchange them, and she and Rena were very close; to the point Rena would act jealously when Suzu traded manga with others, but she always denied it after Suzu teased her.
Suzu can't understand why Rena abandoned her so easily. But she was terribly mean to do this.
After class Suzu hurriedly prepares her items to leave for her next class, but she gets distracted after overhearing her classmates chatting about their future plans for the day, or what they want to do during break. While moping she returns to the abandoned stall, but for some reason, she finds "are you okay?" written on the side of the lid. She takes out a pen and grumpily writes down "not at all!"
The next day she returns as-per-usual, but oddly enough, the message has changed. Now it asks "why?". She remains doubtful, but decides to write down "who are you?" before taking off. When she returns during break, she sees "I am your friend" now added.
Over the course of the next few days, Suzu would keep returning to find a new message or response has been added. Curiously, Rena has began to notice her mood improving.
Eventually Suzu returns one day to find a drawing of their teacher. She laughs and modifies the drawing a little, and more time passes. Now Suzu has began to show up and clean the toilet as thanks to the toilet goddess for keeping her company and uplifting her mood. She sees no harm in it- even if it is a little strange.
One day, Suzu rushes to the restroom, having been late as she was tasked with staying behind in P.E. to clean up. But as soon as she enters, she expresses shock to find Rena leaving the stall, and after she drops her marker, Suzu realizes that it was her writing on the toilet lid, not the goddess. Recalling Rena's earlier words from days ago, Suzu accuses her of cruelly making fun of her, leaving Rena to innocently ask her why she's become a victim so suddenly; unable to realize how hurt Suzu actually is. Violently, Suzu shoves Rena back into the stall and grabs the door handle, yanking it shut and refusing to let go. She yells at Rena, wishing that she would disappear and warns her to never show herself in front of her again before running away in tears.
How could Rena possibly understand how alone and scared she felt being on her own?
People like her shouldn't exist at all.
The following day, Suzu is shocked when Rena doesn't show up for class. Everyone is surprised by this -including the teaching staff- although Suzu doesn't think it's such a big deal. She probably just stayed at a friends house and is running late.
She thinks about the Toilet Goddess rumor again, but she claims it couldn't have possibly have anything to do with it. But to her surprise, she is approached by Rena's friends. They assume she's worried over Rena and invite her to join them for lunch, an offer she quickly accepts. Before eating, she expresses surprise when they pull out makeup afterwards and asks if they should really be using such things since they're only in middle school; but the girls assure her that it's fine because it's only some mascara. They compliment her soft white skin before they begin to eat.
In this time, Suzu quickly realizes how fun it is being with these girls. They officially became friends, and as a result she stopped showing up to visit the toilet stall as she no longer had to. It remained where it was, and began to get dirty again.
However... it's been two weeks and nobody has seen Rena. Suzu realizes that she's forgotten about her by now as one girl asks if they were friends since elementary school. Suzu confirms that it's true, and the girl brings up how worried Rena had become over her lately. Stunned, Suzu listens as the girl mentions that Rena really wanted to to ask Suzu to join them, but because she always left in a hurry, they thought she didn't want to be near them. She isn't the type to say what she feels though, which is why it never came up directly. Suzu thinks back to when the girls were younger and confirms that this was Rena's nature.
She remembers the marker Rena dropped back before she went missing, then realizes that she was wrong. Rena wasn't trying to make fun of her, it was her way of communicating with a girl she thought didn't like her anymore!
Suzu rushes back to the restroom in a hurry. She bursts into the stall to find out that Rena wrote "You should try to talk to everyone!" and put her name beneath it. Suzu weeps as it dons on her that she made a horrible mistake, and quickly, she grabs a bunch of paper and attempts to scrub the toilet, wishing that the toilet goddess would let her see Rena again. But to her alarm, she steps back as a strange figure grabs the rim of the toilet lid and pulls themselves out to stare at her. She quickly realizes it isn't Rena, but she is unable to break out of the stall as the figure grabs her and shoves her head into the toilet bowl.
In her final moments, Suzu wonders if this is what happened to Rena. She realizes that this scary figure is none other than the plain-looking girl who mysteriously changed appearance from the story, meaning that the girl who suddenly appeared in the bullied girls place was the girl trapped in the toilet before her!
The mysterious girl -now donning Suzu's uniform- stands in the hallway as Suzu and Rena's friends approach. They ask "Suzu" if she's alright, and she smiles, telling them that everything is fine...
Tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: Delightfully subverted. Rena's first appearance and various traits make her seem like one. But it turns out the trio is actually really nice and genuinely wanted to include Suzu.
- And I Must Scream: The "toilet goddess" drags her victim into the toilet and replaces them. In the end, the original plain girl from the rumor returns by dragging Suzu into the toilet, fulfilling her wish of being reunited with Rena and granting herself freedom.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Suzu would have been better off if she just opened up and tried speaking to others, or found another place to hide out.
- Break the Cutie: Although she was partially responsible for it, Suzu's happiness was yanked away.
- The Cameo: In a case of Recursive Fiction, the first manga of the series makes an appearance.
- Deadly Prank: Not exactly though, because as it turns out it wasn't a prank! But it did cause Rena's death because Suzu thought it was. It later caused her own when she attempted to fix it.
- Failed a Spot Check: How oblivious are their friends not to notice the obviously different looking girl wasn't Suzu?
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Like Miho from several lessons earlier, Suzu's problem is that she had friends until reaching Middle School, but they began to branch out and she wasn't able to adjust. Unlike Miho, she blames her past friends for abandoning her and actively tries to avoid being seen.
- Never Found the Body: While the Toilet Goddess has replaced Suzu and nobody will question it, that doesn't explain Rena having gone missing.
- Together in Death: Yomi implies this during her epilogue.
- Tsundere: Rena is hinted to have been one, as shown during the flashback. Her friends also point out how unlikely it was for her to say how she felt, but she was clearly concerned over Suzu the whole time.
