Today is the day of my funeral. No, it's the day of my execution.
“Over there!”
“Don’t let it get away!”
“Catch it!”
The boys were shouting, brandishing their sticks as if they were swords. Yet, it was no fierce enemy they were facing. It was no stray dog or cat they were chasing. It was but a small fox cub. A small motherless cub who wandered down from the mountains into town, only to be found and turned into the newest plaything.
To such a small creature, human children are but monsters. Smaller than grown men, yet far more violent and cruel. They were pictures of innocent, yes, but also tainted with pure kind of malice. Anything they catch becomes a toy; and when they tire of the toy, they will lock it in a cage until it shrivels up and dies. They pull off wings on a whim, and tear out its legs, and eventually dismantle life itself. Curiosity drive them past taboos, and they are unashamed of their own destruction, and ignorant of restraint.
Worst and dangerous of all are the ones they call the “gang leaders.” These little tyrants form packs, and their footsteps pounding hard enough to make the grounds tremble, delighting in chasing anything smaller and weaker than themselves.
The fox cub run as though the wind itself were at its heels, slipping and stumbling through the alleys, and tripping again and again on unfamiliar pavement, tumbling and rolling, and covering in dust. The hard, compacted roads of the town, beaten flat by men’s boots and tires, were merciless to its tender paws, unlike the soft earths of the mountains.
Bursting out of the alley, the fox cub faltered, caught between flight and fear, then turned left and fled toward the park. There were a few girls there, sitting in the sand and playing house in the sandbox, too absorbed to notice. The fox raced past them and hid behind the shadow of a slide.
The girls were pretending to be a family, speaking in grown-up tones. A wooden box was their table, and upon it sat a tin dish painted with golden fish, some mud pies shaped like dumplings, and a can brimming with sand. Inside a hula hoop ring lay a baby doll.
“Where’d it go!?”
“It’s hiding somewhere!”
“Find it! No matter what!”
The boys charged into the park, shouting and waving their sticks wildly.
The fox went still, small as a shadow, its sides quivering with each shallow breath. It met the eyes of one of the girls. Not the ones playing house, but a lone girl sitting on a stack of concrete pipes nearby.
“There it is!”
The shout was close. The fox crouched lower, ears pressed flat against its skull.
“Circle around! We’ve got it trapped!”
“Give up, rat!”
The boys brandished their sticks, quoting lines they’d learned from samurai dramas. The girls playing house finally noticed the fox hiding behind the slide.
“What are you doing? Stop it!”
“Yeah, leave it alone! The poor thing!”
Their words struck the boys like thrown pebbles. One of them slammed his stick into the ground, hard enough to make the sand jump.
“Shut up! Girls should be quiet!”
The girls flinched. Their shoulders trembling, their faces stiffening. The boys pounded their sticks against the earth and the swing set poles, and the girls hurriedly gathered their toys and left the park.
When they were gone, the boys closed in on the slide.
“All right, you go.”
“W-what, me?”
The boy who’d been ordered forward was clearly out of place in the gang. Thin and pale, he stood clutching his stick as though it might turn to a serpent in his grasp. A new kid within the group, he was unused to such “games.” His breath came hard from the running; he probably hadn’t run much since his last school sports day. His clothes were neat unlike the others, his knees were clean and unscuffed whereas theirs were crusted with old dirt and blood. A boy who had yet to learn the taste of falling.
“If you screw up, you’ll regret it.”
A light jab to his ribs made him wince. Nodding awkwardly, he tightened his hold on the stick, sweat slicking the wood. From the shadow beneath the slide, the fox cub gleamed up at him. Its eyes sharp and teeth bared. There was fury and raw hostility in that tiny face.
He gasped and started to swing the stick but in the next instant, the fox leapt at him. He cried out as it struck him full in the face. Down he went, the breath knocked from his lungs. The stick clattered away. His hands flew to his face, to the hot, living thing that clawed and bit and screamed. Grabbing wildly at its tail and ears, he finally tore it away then rolled on the ground clutching his face. Red seeped between his fingers, wet and warm.
“Ahh—b-blood! Bleeding! He's bleeding!”
The boy who’d been swaggering like a tyrant now shouted in terror. The color drained from his face, his mouth twisted in terror.
“I’m getting an adult!”
“Me too!”
They broke and ran, their courage scattering like leaves before a hard wind.
Only the wounded boy remained. He lay half-curled on the ground, groaning. He bit down on his lip to keep from crying out. He dared not think of what his face had become. Bitten? Clawed? When he’d torn the fox from his face, he had felt the skin pull and tear beneath his eye, he had heard the sound it made, an old rubber band snapping in two.
His heartbeat pounded. The warmth spilling through his fingers frightened him more than the pain itself.
“Calm down. It’s just scared,” a girl’s voice said nearby.
Peeking through his fingers, he saw the girl, the one who’d been sitting alone on the concrete pipe.
“There, there. It’s not scary at all,” she was saying to the fox. On her knee was a scrape still stained with fresh blood.
The girl turned her face toward the boy.
“You okay? That’s a lot of blood.”
“Y-yeah,” he answered, and nodded. Reaching into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief, he found the girl already pressing a slightly crumpled one into his hand.
“Thanks… oh, but—”
His hands were sticky with blood. The girl didn’t hesitate; she let him grip the handkerchief.
“Is he all right!?”
The boys returned with the shopkeeper and a crowd of adults trailing behind them.
“How dare it bite a child. I’ll beat the bastard to death!”
“Hey, you’re badly hurt. Here, let me take you to the hospital.”
An outstretched hand was offered, but the boy shook his head, “I’m fine.”
“Well... It looks like the bleeding’s stopped, but make sure you go to the hospital with your parents later, okay?”
“Where’d that fox bastard go?”
Clutching the handkerchief with both hands, the boy shook his head.
“Darn, it ran off. If you see it again, you tell an adult, ok? Don’t go chasing it by yourself.”
After everyone left, only the injured boy remained in the park.
“Um… I’m really okay now,” he said, watching her.
The girl peeked out from the pipe and came forward. She was holding the fox tightly to her chest.
“We have to take this little one back up to the mountain now, while we still can,” she said.
“A-ah.” He hurried to stop her. “I—I’m Kotoyuki! You are—?”
The girl answered without turning around.
“I'm—”
“Hinako!”
The sound of a hand slamming the dining table thundered through the living room, and the dishes clattered in reply. On the tatami floor lay an overturned miso soup bowl, and beside it, Hinako’s mother was scrubbing at the spilled soup with a rag. Each motion sent another tremble to her already fragiled back.
"How DARE you talk to your father that way!”
“If you hate Mom’s cooking so much, then don’t eat it.”
“What was that…? Say it. Say it again if you dare!”
Spittle flew from his mouth, splattering onto the plate of pickles. The meal her mother had prepared, their breakfast table was being desecrated and spoiled before her very eyes.
“…Then why don’t you make your own food?”
“What… WHAT did you just say!?”
“Cook for yourself. You’re good at cooking, aren’t you?!”
He snatched up the ashtray, and for a heartbeat Hinako saw nothing but the arc it would take. She instinctively raised both arms to shield her head. The ashtray flew off, but it had taken in a completely different direction, scattering grey butts and blackened ash across the tatami floor.
Through the crook of her elbows, Hinako glared up at him, but what stared back was no longer her father, but something else, quivering and trembling in rage, they looked more monstrous than anything else in the world. Those swollen eyelids barely hiding the bloodshot, murky eyes beneath. The twitching of his right eye and the left corner of his mouth, the yellowed and crooked teeth glimpsed whenever his upper lip jerked upward. The thick beard sprouting around his mouth, quivering with every shouted word. All of it filled her with terror.
That hideous face and that horrible voice. The sight of him alone was enough to make her heart shrink and her stomach turn. And yet, today, she couldn’t just sit there in silence.
“Mom, you don’t have to cook for someone like him anymore.”
“Hinako, stop. Please don’t talk to your father like that.”
Her mother scolded her gently, still scrubbing at the tatami.
“You too, Mom! Why don’t you ever talk back to him?”
“I made a mistake. I think the miso soup was a little bland this morning.”
“That’s exactly why he keeps getting away with it, because you just keep smiling like there's nothing wrong!”
“That's enough, Hinako.”
“Why do you tolerate this, Mom?” she said, staring at the overturned soup bowl. “He does awful things, says awful things… and you just sit there smiling like it’s fine?”
“Hinako.”
“Because that’s how it is. He starts fights at the drop of a hat, yells himself hoarse, throws things, drinks every day… a father like that—”
“Hinako!”
Her mother’s voice cracked through the air. She hadn’t heard her mother shout like that in a long time. The rag in her mother’s hand moved faster, harder, scrubbing as if she meant to scour a hole straight through the tatami.
“Apologize to your father.”
“…Why?”
Hinako truly did not understand. Why would her mother defend a man like that? Why was her mother like this? Why was the Shimizu household like this?
She looked up at the family photograph hung on the lintel. Her father, Kanta; her mother, Kimie. In the wedding photo her older sister wore shiromuku. All three were smiling except for Hinako, whose false brightness was absent from the image.
Ever since her sister married away, the house had become more and more intolerable. No place felt breathable. Of course it was her parents’ home; this was the world they had made. She, who came later, had no rightful place to remain.
Thump.
Her head pulsed, a dull hammering behind her eyes. It was the chronic headache. One that had plagued Hinako for months, lately especially severe. Her father’s shouting always made it worse, his voice would always find ways to strike her skull from within.
She couldn’t stay here.
Rising without a word, Hinako turned to leave, but her father called after her.
“Wait—where d’you think you’re going!?”
Whatever she did, it was none of their business, she thought. But her thoughts stuck in her throat, bitter and useless, swallowing the words that rose to her lips and stepping out of the living room.
As she shoved her heel into her shoe at the genkan, her mother came up behind her.
“Hinako, won’t you apologize to your father, please?”
“Why? I didn’t say anything wrong.”
“I know that,” her mother said.
“Then why should I apologize?”
Her mother offered the habitual smile.
“Because it’s an important day soon.”
“...What of it? It’s none of my business.”
“It is. You can’t be at odds with your father right now. So—okay?”
The smile stretched wider, pressed over itself like a bandage over a wound that would never close.
Hinako looked at that face and hated it from her core. The sycophantic grin her mother wore whenever she tried to placate someone. She hated it as deeply as she hated her father, perhaps even more.
“I… don’t want to.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want to become like you.”
Cruel words. Hinako knew it even as she said them. But her head was pounding. The pain was so fierce she thought her skull might split. The pain left no room for pity, no space for kindness.
Turning her back on her speechless mother, she slid open the door.
Outside, by the communal well in front of the house, she set down an empty bucket and began to pump. Normally, at this hour, the neighborhood women would gather for their wellside chatter but strangely, no one was there today.
She scooped a handful of water, swallowed her headache capsule, and let it slide down her throat.
“Haa…” she exhaled.
There was no freshness to this morning.
It wasn’t just her mood. The sky itself had soured. Thick, gray clouds hung heavy and dour, smothering and suffocating in its gray-white shroud. A thin mist pooled over the mountain village; behind the house, the green of the hackberry and beech trees blurred like watercolor through fog. Her father had asked where she was going, but she hadn’t thought where she would go when she left. There was no place that would came up. She simply let her feet carried her down the familiar slope that wound from the mountains toward the town below, as always. She would walk, and let her mind catch up later.
There was no wind. Nor were there stirs of grass and trees.
A quiet morning.
From the slightly distant neighbor’s house, the usual rattle of their washing machine was absent. No morning birdsong either, she hadn’t even seen one bird fluttered its wings in the air.
Normally, she wouldn’t have noticed. But when something that should be there wasn’t, it stood out.
The sloping path that wound down the mountainside gradually leveled out into firm ground; the scent of damp earth gave way to dry dust. The border between mountain and town. Trees thinned into buildings, the narrow paths of the mountain widening into the cramped streets of town. Two-story wooden houses lined the way, with a thin veil of mist curled along the ground, blurring edges. The distance turned white, blurring the outlines of the houses, softening the world until it look dreamlike.
The town was quiet too.
No hum of the ventilation fans she would always heard. No sound of the shopkeeper sweeping the street with his bamboo broom. No baby crying.
All the small, familiar sounds that made a morning alive were missing. Maybe it was loneliness that made her realize, she was listening for sound, hungry for the noise of life as she walked.
“That’s right… Chizuruya.”
If anywhere, someone would be there.
She understood then: what she wanted was to talk to someone.
Chizuruya General Store sat in the center of town. A little shop selling daily necessities, but more than half its goods were cheap sweets and toys. There was always someone there, the children eating candy together, drinking ramune, and exchanging little bits of gossip. Even if she had nothing to say, it was enough to just listen to others.
It was the children’s gathering place of the town.
If she was to go anywhere, Chizuruya would be the place. The thought should have come sooner, and she wondered why it hadn’t. But now that it had, her steps grew lighter.
Yet not far down the road, her way was barred.
A three-wheeled truck stood across the path, canvas cover drawn tight over its bed. Its pale blue body was streaked with dust, the paint faded to the color of old sky.
There was no sign of the driver.
“What’s this doing here…?”
On the pale blue body, white letters on the side read Okamoto Fisheries – Fresh Fish. Perhaps, the driver was making a delivery. One of the houses nearby, maybe. Hinako didn’t feel like waiting for him to return, so, annoyed though she was, she decided to take a detour.
Ebisugaoka was a small rural town, cradled between mountains that loomed to the north and south. Once, before the war, the place had thrived. A brief, noisy bloom of life fed by migrant laborers who came for dam construction or coal mining. But now, with the dam long finished and the mines closed, the companies that once moved in had all withdrawn one after another. The population had thinned like mist under sunlight, and the town had been left behind by the tides of postwar economic growth.
Still, not everyone wished for redevelopment. Many of the townspeople, especially the elderly who held fast to the faith of Ebisugaoka, opposed it. Their devotion could be seen in every corner of the town.
“There’s even one here…”
As Hinako stepped into a narrow alley, she found a small stone shrine set into the wall.
Natural stones had been arranged into the shape of a torii gate, and within it sat two white-painted Inari statues. One had its color flaking off in mottled patches, and the other had both ears broken. Offerings of water and rice sat in small vessels, and something wrapped in cloth had likely been placed there as a votive tribute for memorial purposes.
Ebisugaoka had long been a center of Inari worship. From small household altars to humble stone statues, there were so many dotted its slopes and alleys throughout the town that no one could count them all.
“Maybe I should pray,” she murmured.
Hinako was never particularly religious, and even when she saw shrines like this around town, she rarely stopped to put her hands together. But once when she was little, they had been her guides. The town had seemed vast then, and she would all too often get lost in it. Afraid to speak to adults, she’d wander further and further down strange paths until she couldn’t find her way home. Whenever she stumbled upon one of these Inari shrines, she would press her palms together and whisper: Please, show me the way back.
Should she keep walking straight? Turn at the next corner? She had wanted some sign to lead her home.
And now, standing in the same streets she had known all her life, she felt that same lostness return. And, in truth, she had felt it for quite some time.
When she stepped out of the alley, Hinako found herself at a wide T-junction. The detour had taken longer than she’d thought, but if she turned right and followed the road, she would reach the main street before long. A little farther still, and she’d be standing before Chizuruya.
Even so, she glanced around uneasily.
Something really was not right today.
This part of town was usually hemmed in by close-packed wooden houses, yet there were none of the slightest traces of human life. Come to think of it, since she’d left home, she hadn’t seen a single person.
“You traitor.”
The word came from above her, falling like a pebble into still water, half teasing and half dry, but with a sharp edge of contempt.
Hinako looked up.
Leaning over the railing of a second-floor balcony was Sakuko Igarashi. Her braided hair bound with pink ribbons that fluttered faintly in the still air.
“Where you off to?" she called down, her tone were light teasing. "Don't usually see you come this way.”
Her smile was bright and familiar, the same smile Hinako had seen countless times before... at least, it appeared that way.
“Ah, um…” Hinako glanced back the way she came. “A truck was blocking the road.”
“Chizuruya?”
“Yeah… I just want to talk to someone—”
But when Hinako looked back up at her, the words caught in her throat. Sakuko’s smile remained, soft and girlish but her eyes weren’t. Not a hint of the Sakuko she always knew.
“I’ll be there in a bit.” Sakuko said.
“...O-okay, see you,” Hinako murmured.
“You traitor.”
As Hinako turned her feet forward and began to walk, the word was thrown at her again. She stopped and looked back, and saw Sakuko retreating into the room, leaving behind the faint, tinkling sound of her girlish giggle.
The same sweet laugh Hinako had always known.
GIKOOOOWWWWWW—!
The ray gun flared with a blinding light.
BOOMMMMMMMMM!
A shot from one of the squad finished the job—there was a huge explosion. At last, the hated Galactic Imperium’s commander lay defeated. Thus, peace was— or so we thought—restored to our Ebisugaoka.
“—Uh, my turn? Okay, emergency dispatch: urgent orders from the Space Army HQ!”
“This is the Space Army Ebisugaoka Branch! What’s the situation?”
“Report!”
“Um—well, currently, cigar-shaped—no, wait, sorry.”
“No need to apologize. You’re a recruit who just joined the squad, right?”
“It’s okay. Just calmly read what’s written there.”
“Okay… right. Ahem. Currently, it seems that about one hundred small UFOs and a cigar-shaped mothership have attacked Ebisugaoka.”
“What!? The Galactic Imperium has sent a new enemy!?”
“Those despicable bastards. Base, report current damage to the town!”
“—Eh, damage? Uh…”
“(Read this part here.)”
“(Oh, okay.) Due to attacks from multiple discs approaching from the northwest, the Magogawa railway bridge appears to have been destroyed. Invasion of the surrounding area has resumed—(is that good?)”
“(Perfect.) Damn! The bridge is out! We can’t get out of Ebisugaoka now.”
“They’re trying to isolate us. Call ops at Space Command right away!”
“All right—recruit, you’re joining the ops meeting too.”
“Uh—o-okay… ah—yes.”
“Don’t be nervous. Here—”
A clenched fist was offered.
“Huh?”
“Come on, try it.”
The recruit timidly made a fist; the senior tapped knuckles against his.
“It’s the signal between squad members. Remember it. Watch how we run the ops meeting.”
“The town’s peace depends on us! We’ll strike back, partner!”
“Yeah! We’ll absolutely protect Ebisugaoka from the Galactic Imperium, partner!”
Since she was little, Hinako had often come here. Back then, it wasn’t called Chizuruya, it was Space Army Headquarters. As a member of the Space Army defending Ebisugaoka from the invading Galactic Imperium, she’d draw aliens in her notebook to “analyze enemy data,” and play with dolls under the pretense of “treating wounded soldiers.”
Except for Hinako, all the Space Army members were boys.
Because she spent her time playing “boys’ games,” she was left out of the girls’ playtime. They said she was strange, a girl who liked to play with boys.
Hinako never understood why there had to be such a sharp divide between boys and girls. She wanted to play princess and dodgeball. It didn’t make sense why girls were only told to play “girls’ games.”
So, in the end, she kept on playing “Space Wars” with the boys.
Even now, Chizuruya, their old “headquarters”, was still, somehow, a gathering place. No one ever promised to meet there, but somehow, people would always meet each other. They drifted in, as if pulled by invisible gravity.
Today, sitting on the bench in front of the shop, was Shu Iwai. He was staring blankly at a small cardboard box resting in his hands. When he noticed Hinako walking up, his expression stiffened for a moment, then he raised a hand.
“Yo, partner.”
Hinako sat down beside him. Neither of them tried to meet the other’s eyes. Shu's gaze wandered restlessly, while Hinako stared at a single point near her toes.
I, uh…”
At last, Shu spoke. Hinako looked up at him.
"Hmm?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then froze and closed it again. The conversation stopped there, and silence stretched on between them.
“...Say something.”
“You’re the one who should be talking… aren’t you?”
“If my partner’s got nothing to say… then I don’t either.”
Shu exhaled softly, a faint smile tugging at his mouth.
“Well… that’s my Hinako.”
He held out the box he’d been carrying. It said Cold Medicine on the front. Hinako took it and murmured, “Thanks. That helps.”
“It's not like you to just let stuff happened though...” Shu said, his gaze still facing forward. Then, after a pause, he added, “But whatever you end up choosing, you know I’ll always be there for you.”
“...Shu.”
Shu turned toward Chizuruya.
“This place is still our base. Whenever you’re lost, just come back here, and—”
“Shu! Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Rinko Nishida came up the lane with a light, careless step. But as soon as she saw them, that spring in her stride faltered, and the cheerful smile on her face faded to a flat, unreadable expression.
“And Hinako, too.”
“...Yeah. I just got here—”
“What were you guys talking about?”
Rinko cut her off, her tone laced with something sharp and teasing.
“N-no, it wasn’t anything much…” Shu began, fumbling for words.
Ring, ring—the soft jingle of a bell broke the tension.
“She said she just wanted someone to talk to.”
It was Sakuko. Her bicycle whispering to a halt before the shop, the front wheel still turning lazily.
“Right, Hinako?”
“Yeah… thanks to you, I feel a bit better now.”
Hinako’s breath left her in a small sigh. She could not thanked for Sakuko's sudden arrival enough, the awkward air between them seemed to scatter like dust in sunlight.
“Well then, I’m honored to be of service, ma'am”
Rinko said, lifting the hem of her skirt in a mock curtsy, exaggeratingly polite.
“If I had known you’d be here, I would’ve brought that magazine you lent me.”
“Oh, you can hold onto it. The moment I lent it to you, I knew I wasn't getting it back.”
“What's that supposed to mean-!”
Laughter broke out, and the stiffness between them finally began to thaw.
“Anyway,” Sakuko said, leaning forward to peer into the dim interior of the shop, "did you guys bought any snacks?”
Rinko gave her an exasperated look.
“You just had breakfast. You can’t still be eating sweets.”
“Hey, snacks are different! I could eat candy all day. Honestly, I could live on candy for morning, noon and night.”
“Really? You might as well just open your own candy shop at this point.”
“Right? That’d be awesome, owning a candy shop.”
As Rinko and Sakuko bantered back and forth, Hinako watched them absently.
Then, something drifted across her vision.
Fog.
She turned her head, expecting wind off the hills, but the air was still. At some point, the fog had grown thicker. The buildings shapes in the distance were blurring, their eaves and roofs melting into the white fog.
This was no morning fog.
Between the dried-goods store and the neighboring house, the fog began to move, turning in upon itself, folding like a living thing. It seemed to be gathering, feeding on the surrounding vapors and trying to take shape. It rose, slowly and soundlessly reaching the same height as the telephone pole nearby. Hinako rose with it, as though drawn by invisible strings, her gaze fastened upon the shifting mass. She could not look away, completly bewitched by the sight.
“Hinako?”
Sakuko's voice snapped her back to herself.
“Oh… sorry, what?”
Sakuko glanced at Rinko, and the two exchanged a small, knowing smile. Then she turned back, lips parting to speak.
“You trai—”
The rest never came. Her body suddenly convulsed. A pinprick of red bloomed her pale throat, just below her jaw.
One drop. Then another. And another.
Drip. Drip. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip—
The droplets multiplied, dark and glistening before their eyes, swelling like beads of blood welling up from a hundred needle pricks. They ran together, spreading across her skin, across the white curve of her neck. A wet, bursting sound came from inside Sakuko's body.
“Sakuko… that… what—”
Hinako’s voice didn’t reach her, her voice lost in the stillness.
Sakuko's trembling eyes darted to her trembling hands, as if they no longer belonged to her. The crimson beads had reached her wrists, crawling like living things, blooming across her arms, her face, her cheeks. At her feet, the ground began to swell, veins pulsing beneath the surface. Something like the shape of hōzuki, Chinese lantern plants, bulged up from the earth.
Their red, fleshy skins split open with a meshari sound, revealing rotted inner flesh.
Flowers.
Red, grotesque flowers, like organs turned inside out, blossomed from the wounds in the soil. Their petals glistened, slick with blood. Across the ground, they seemed to bubble up as more and more of the grotesque plants pushed through the soil.
“Ah… ah…”
Sakuko sank to her knees among the blossoms spreading around her feet, a soft moan spilling from her lips. The beads on her face thickened, merged, and began to move. They slithered down her skin, stretching and twitching at the tips like antennae.
That was when someone screamed. Hinako had not realized it was Rinko's voice that tore through the air. Before their eyes, their friend’s body was changing into something monstrous. Rinko and Shu could only scream and stumble back, both of them pale as ghosts.
Hinako, meanwhile, were fixed beyond Sakuko, to the fog that was creeping closer. It was gliding toward them, sliding over the blooming field of flesh and flowers that had already begun to consume the earth.
No—
It was no fog.
It was a creature, cloaked in vapor. It loomed twice the height of a grown adult, formless yet terrible all the same. No, it had form, but no clear shape. Whether it had a face, limbs, or anything human at all, she could not tell.
It was shapeless and indistinct.
Then it screamed. A piercing, unearthly cry, neither beast nor human. It was a siren's wail from another world, a voice that no living being should ever have to hear.
“Partner!”
Shu's shout tore Hinako’s consciousness away from the monster. As he broke into a run, Hinako kicked off the ground and followed after him.
The town was fading before her eyes.
The houses, the streets, the very stones beneath her feet were being swallowed by a raging tide of fog spilling from nowhere. Colors drained away, shapes grew vague, and it all began to feel as though the world itself were teetering on the brink of vanishing.
Even her friends were fading.
Shu's back, running just a few paces ahead, his outline wavering like a ghost in the sun. Further still, Rinko was nowhere to be seen. A terrible thought took shape in Hinako’s mind: that they too were being erased, body and soul, along with the town that had birthed them.
Her heartbeat lost its rhythm, her breath came ragged. Her legs felt wooden, as if her body no longer remembered how to run. The road, straight as a drawn blade, seemed to twist beneath her.
From behind came the sound of red, a rising tide like the roar of sea in storm, one that consumed as it advanced. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it spilled across the fences, the poles, the shopfronts. A grotesque bloom of viscera-like plants burst and spread, consuming the town.Red flowers of meat and sinew unfurling where houses once stood. It was as though Ebisugaoka itself was being turned inside out, laying bare its innards.
A thunderous bellow split the air.
Hinako dared not look back, but still she strained her eyes to glimpse behind her.
Too close. Closer than she’d imagined.
The monster, accompanied by fog like white waves and blood-red flowers, seemed not yet fully manifested in this world. The outline of its form frequently crumbled, and each time it crumbled, the image reformed in an unstable state. However, only its unusually long arm remained unbroken, maintaining a clear shape and extending straight towards Hinako. At the end of that arm, fingers with venomous, jet-black claws repeatedly grasped at the air.
When she looked forward again, Hinako gasped.
Shu was gone.
She squinted into the fog, but there wasn’t even a shadow.
A dreadful thought flashed across her mind, but she forced it away. No. That couldn’t be. They must have ducked into a side street while she wasn’t looking.
Her own panic tripped her.
She fell hard, the air punched from her lungs, crashing into a bed of scarlet and plum-colored petals, bursting upward in a red haze before her eyes. She scrambled up, but the monster was there.
Not behind her. Before her.
And as she turned, another loomed behind. The same shrouded shape, the same vast, formless silhouette. Could there be several of these things in town?
Despair clawed at her throat, but there was no time to feel it.
Her eyes darted left and right, then caught a gap between two fences, a narrow alleyway, and a flight of stone steps leading down. Without thinking, she dove for it.
She’d never been down this backstreet before. Many of the alleyways here were dead ends, and she knew she might be running into one but there was no choice. Dead end or not, it was the only path left to her.
As she ran between a stone wall on her right and a wooden fence on her left, she began to hear a sick, wet sound. Red slimy tendrils sprouted from the cracks and twined around her arms. They brushed her arms, sticky and warm. She tore them away, but more came, wrapping round her wrists, her legs, her throat. Somehow, panic gave her strength, and she broke free and burst out into a slightly wider street, only to find herself in a walled-in cul-de-sac.
For a heartbeat she stood frozen, though she’d half expected it. But it was too soon to give up.
Her eyes caught on a old and wooden ladder propped against the wall. She leapt for it just as the ground behind her was already bubbling red. One second later, and she would’ve been lost.
Clambering up onto the roof of a house, she paused to catch her breath, just for a second or two. Looking down, she saw the corruption already halfway up the ladder, swallowing rung by rung. She shoved it aside and crawled low across the tin roof. The metal was cold beneath her palms, pitted and streaked with bird droppings.
She crossed to the next roof, and the next, until she dropped down into another street, one block south away from the monster’s path. Here, the strange vegetation hadn’t yet reached full bloom. From the gap between two houses, she could see a red vine like a snake’s tongue writhing out of a narrow alley, but it didn’t move further. The tightly packed houses formed a wall that slowed the abomination's advance, if only for a while.
The monster seemed not to be following.
Hinako sank to the ground.
Her heart hammered a willd and unsteady rythm against her ribs, her lungs burned as if she was being drowned in her own breath. Each breath scraped her throat raw; so dry she was Hinako couldn’t even swallow. This was no fatigue she had ever known, not the kind a school run or club practice could ever prepare her for. And no wonder, she’d been running for her life, death snapping at her heels and no end in sight.
What was happening?
It all felt unreal, a nightmare that refused to end.
“Shu… Rinko…”
Had they escaped? Were they hiding somewhere safe?
Maybe Shu had gone to call for help, but the police station was across the bridge in the next town, far far away. And even if they came, what could a handful of men do against something like this?
Yet what unsettled her most—
Was the silence.
For all that had happened, not a single scream echoed across town. No screams, no running feet, no slamming doors.
It was as if the only ones who’d ever existed here—
Were the three of them.
Perhaps the townspeople, terrified by the strange scene outside, had shut themselves up in their homes. Had they even seen those monsters, if only for a moment?
“—Ah!”
Hinako’s breath caught as the thought struck her.
She had to go back, to Chizuruya.
She had run away.
The thing had come upon them all too suddenly. She had been confused, but that was no excuse. She had left her behind. Left her there, all alone. By now, she must be scared, anxious and lonely, maybe even crying. The thought of that burned away what little reason remained.
Hinako had to go back. She had to save her.
“Wait for me, Sakuko.”
She turned from the open street and slipped into the narrow ways that threaded between the houses. The main road was too exposed; the fog-creature might still be there. She knew it would be a long way around, but these alleys, hemmed in by walls and hedges, offered both shadow and shelter.
Red was everywhere.
Some streets were already completely choked by writhing roots and glistening blooms that pulsed faintly. A few areas were spared, but it was only a matter of time before they too were swallowed. Desperate to reach Sakuko even a second sooner, Hinako searched for shortcuts, cutting through private yards, squeezing her body through gaps barely wide enough for a cat, slipping through cracks in fences she’d never noticed before.
She entered another yard, perhaps the fifth or sixth she’d crossed. She had lost count. Here, the fog hung thick and close, the red flowers had begun to creep across the gravel, with their fleshy petals slick with dew. That meant the creature might be close.
She crouched low beside the hedge. The gravel whispered faintly beneath her, though she tried to make no sound at all. A summer futon hung dried on a clothesline, dimming the sunlight and casting the yard into a dusky half-light.
Then, a sound from inside the wooden, tile-roofed house.
Thud.
The storm shutters were half-closed, and beyond them lay a dark tatami room.
Again, thud.
“...Is someone... there?”
Her voice was no louder than a breath, yet the question felt absurd on her tongue. She was trespassing in someone’s yard.
Thunk... thunk... shuffle... scrrrk...
Something moved across the mats. Something hard, dragging itself across the tatami. Peering into the darkness of the room, she saw a shadow, a human shape perhaps, was stirring.
“Um—” she began, but her voice failed her. She pressed her lips shut, took one slow step backward, eyes never leaving the shadow.
It moved again.
The figure inside moved with a bizarre, jerky stiffness. The head tilted too far, left then right, bending its limbs in directions no humans could do. The limbs twisted upon themselves like sticks of wet wood. It would freeze in grotesque poses, then spasmed violently, each of its joints snapping with convulsion.
From it came a faint, creaking noise—
kiri... kiri... kiri...
The sound of wood straining before it breaks.
A chill ran down Hinako’s spine.
Something was wrong.
She lifted her heel, about to turn and leave—
It came bursting out of the tatami room. The thing lost its footing on the slick veranda and pitched forward, and tumbled headfirst onto the stepping stones in the garden with a resounding crash.
With a convulsive twist, the creature bent upon itself, lifting its upper body without once touching its hands to the earth. Its neck was bent backward, the body bowed like a drawn bowstring, and it staggered to its feet. From the head that hung upside-down, long black hair streamed down, plastered wetly across the back with the color of candle wax.
It looked human, and yet it was not.
A mockery of a person. A puppet that had learned to move but not to live.
Its gnarled, emaciated frame resembled a life-sized wooden puppet with joints, or else a raw, mutilated body crudely stitched together. In one hand it clutched a kitchen blade, red with rust, dark as old blood.
“...What... is that...?”
The simple question slipped out before she could think them.
It was moving, yet there was no sign of life in it. Even though it stood right before her eyes, it carried no sense of presence. It had no breath, no warmth, no blood, no pulse. None of the things that made something alive.
Panic took her then. Her mind refused to hold the shape of what she saw, something that could not belong to this world.
She couldn’t bear to look at it, not even for a second.
Every instinct screamed to flee. She wanted to escape, to flee this nightmare right now.
In her haste, her foot crunched against the gravel. The sound was soft, but it echoed like thunder.
At once, the monster’s upside-down face snapped toward her.
It had a human shape, but where its eyes should have been there were only burns, keloid-like scars. Its flesh-colored lips were swollen with infection, glistening as though ready to burst.
It turned its upper body toward her, slow and deliberate, the knife rising in a single, quivering arc.
“D–Don’t... don’t come any closer!”
Hinako’s voice broke. She seized a nearby ceramic flowerpot from the step and hurled it. The pot shattered against the creature’s cheek, spilling black soil across its skin. The thing did not flinch. Its joints groaned as it stepped forward, knife in hand and poised to strike.
Hinako threw again, stones and sandals and laundry, anything her hands could find.
The monster stumbled again and again on the gravel but still it came.
Never looking away from the creature, Hinako stumbled from the yard into the narrow street. Her hand brushed a bamboo pole leaning against the neighbor’s wall, used for hanging laundry. She grasped it like a spear just as the monster lunged, knife thrust forward.
Hinako rolled dropped low and rolled aside. The knife cut the air where her neck had been. Hinako struck out wildly, thrusting the bamboo at its legs. The blow landed with a hollow crack, and the creature tripped and fell with a thunderous crash.
Turning her back, Hinako ran.
Behind her came the sound of pursuit, heavy and chaotic footsteps making a mad rhythm of thuds, a symphonty of scraping metals being dragged in a sack and along the ground.
Hinako did not look back.
She kicked aside buckets, sent basins clattering into walls, tore through hedges, smashed through fences, scaled low walls slick with moss.
So they did exist after all—
Other monsters, not just the one born out of fog.
Were these things wandering all throughout the town?
Heavy coldness washed through her veins, dimming the edges of her sight.
What are those creatures? Where did they come from? What is happening to this town? Is this only just happening to Ebisugaoka, or is it something much larger...?
Her mind turned these questions over and over until they lost all shape. By the time she realized it, the footsteps behind her had gone silent. But there was no comfort to be found in that silence.
She had only escaped danger for the moment.
This town was a maze of narrow gaps and blind alleys and corners, and with the fog thickening, she could no longer tell what hid in its depths. There was no safety to be had, and yet she wanted, just for a moment, to rest and to breathe.
Her throat burned with thirst.
The road beneath her feet changed from bare earth to concrete, and the air soured with the stench of standing water and rust. The close wooden walls gave way to tin, the fences to gray cinder block. She had reached the southern edge of town, the Tsugikawa district.
Once, the district had housed the dam workers and their families, with rows of residences and dormitories. The miners’ homes up by the pit had been torn down soon after the mine’s closure, but many of these homes remained, half of them still inhabited. The other residences were replaced by ramshackle workshops and scrap yards.
Perhaps because it was far from the place of origin, or because there was little soil to be had, the red growths had yet to spread and overtake this part of town.
A concrete waterway ran through the street, a narrow canal three meters wide, where dull gray water flowed without a sound. As she crossed it on a makeshift bridge of iron plates that moaned beneath her weight, she caught the faint crackle of static—
A noise.
It came from a workshop just ahead. She crept closer and peered inside. No people, and no monsters. The place was strewn with sand molds and furnaces for molten metal, a foundry for pots or ship parts once cast here, maybe. The noise came from a vacuum-tube radio in the back.
Near the entrance, a water tap was set into the ground. Her thirst clawed at her throat, and was becoming unbearable; this was nothing short of salvation. With gratitude, she fell to her knees, twisted the handle, and drank straight from the spout, gulp after gulp.
When at last she lifted her head, she turned the radio’s dial. She wanted to know, anything, about what was happening. If there was still a broadcast, maybe someone was reporting this disaster. But no matter how she tuned it, every station was the same endless hiss.
A dreadful thought crossed her mind. The noise could draw them.
Her hand went to the switch—
and then from the speaker, came a voice.
“...To... whomever... hearing this... give up... let go...you can rest now...you are already...among the dead...”
That was all.
Afterward, only noise filled the air. What she’d heard was faint, but it had been a woman’s voice, emotional, almost theatrical, like an actress reading her own death aloud in a radio drama.
Yet surely, no one would broadcast that in a time like this. And it hadn’t sounded like a reporter.
Hinako shut off the radio and turned to leave but something on the floor caught her eye.
An iron pipe, a coupling still attached at the end.
She picked it up and gave it a few swings.
Not bad. The weight felt good in her hands.
Those monsters had meant her harm. She’d been lucky to escape before, but luck would not save her forever. From now on, she would need a weapon.
Stepping out of the foundry, she found the fog had thickened to a pale wall. Along the edge of the waterway, the first red flowers had begun to bloom and twisted, with fleshy vines creeping up the guardrails.
In the haze beyond, something shifted.
“Please... be safe, all of you.”
Her voice came out as a whisper. She worried for them. But if anyone could survive, it was Shu. She knew him too well, her partner since childhood, since their days as soldiers of the Space Army Corps. He had notebooks full of emergency protocols for every kind of disaster.
Ebisugaoka had faced its share of alien invasions, and each time, somehow, they pulled through. He would protect Rinko too, of that she was certain. And Rinko... she would never leave his side.
But Sakuko—
Sakuko was different.
She was the one Hinako was supposed to protect. She should have stayed with her. She never should have left her alone. Sakuko would surely accuse her again, and said she broke her promise.
Hinako quickened her pace. She couldn’t let that come true.
Sakuko would call her that again, wouldn’t she?
She couldn’t become a traitor for real.
"If only I could become an adult..."
That was Sakuko's favorite phrase.
"If I could become an adult, I could travel around the world on a grand ship,” she’d say, eyes shining, “with someone wonderful, like a youth-movie star.”
That was Sakuko Igarashi: airy and dreamy with her head often far up in the clouds. A strange girl, just a step out of the world. Her imagination was so vivid that anything she read or watched seemed to spill into her life. The worlds of manga and novels mingled freely with her own, and so her words wandered beyond the bounds of the ordinary.
She’d claim she saw a fairy in the mountains, or the school rabbit spoke to her one morning. Then she’d laugh to herself, a soft, secret laugh that left you wondering how serious she’d really been.
Lately, she’d become obsessed with the supernatural. Two months ago, she’d confessed to Hinako, with her eyes grave and her voice hushed, that she actually possessed spiritual sensitivity.
Hinako hadn’t been surprised. Sakuko had long spoken of dreams in which gods or the dead appeared to her, calling out and pleading for something.
And perhaps, Hinako thought, that wasn’t entirely her fantasy.
At the edge of Ebisugaoka stood a small shrine: the Sennensugi Shrine. The Igarashi family had served as its priests for generations, a line of quiet, enduring devotion. On festival days, one could see Sakuko there in her shrine maiden robes, graceful and solemn beneath the ancient cedar tree.
Maybe her dreams of gods and spirits came from that lineage. Divine whispers in her veins.
No adult in Ebisugaoka was more devout than Sakuko. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always hesitated between “running a candy shop” and something else, then smiled and said:
“When I’m a grown up, I want to inherit our shrine.”
She took pride in her lineage as a priest’s daughter. Even as faith waned and the Sennensugi Shrine slowly fell into neglect, she dreamed of restoring it. For someone so full of reverence, it would not have been strange if the gods truly did speak to her, now and then.
It was with that Sakuko and Hinako made their promise.
The summer of their first year in middle school, during a test of courage.
The game was simple: pairs of students would walk through the graveyard at night, take the paper talisman from the grave at the far end, and bring it back. The pairs were chosen by lot but for some reason, Hinako wasn’t allowed to draw. It was simply decided that she would go with Sakuko.
Sakuko clung to her arm the whole way, making it hard for them to walk.
“You live at a shrine,” Hinako asked, “and you’re still afraid of ghosts?”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Sakuko replied softly. “I see them sometimes.”
“Then what are you so scared of?”
“I’m scared of the dark.”
She said that when everything went black, she felt truly alone. When Hinako asked if being alone was so terrifying, Sakuko answered without hesitation—yes. It was the most terrifying thing in the world.
“Hinako… you’ll stay with me, right?”
“Huh? Yeah, of course.”
“You won’t leave me and go somewhere else?”
“Don’t worry,” Hinako said. “I won’t leave you. I won’t go anywhere.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I’m glad…”
Relief softened her face. She hugged Hinako’s arm tighter, so tight it hurt.
“Hey, Hinako…” Sakuko looked up at her from below, expressionless now. “You really mean it, right? You’ll never betray me. Ever.”
You promised, she said.
Finally.
Finally, she’d made it back.
All the detours, all the wrong turns. It had cost her more time than she could forgive herself for. From the depths of her heart, Hinako wanted to apologize to Sakuko for being so late.
The street before her burned red with monstrous bloom, bright and furious, blooming like a wildfire. The path lay flayed open, raw and steaming in the mist. IAnd through that thick white shroud, the old playground of their childhood stood still, empty and drowned in silence, a ghost of what once was.
And there, Sakuko was waiting.
Just as Hinako had last seen her, she was lying before the old Chizuru shop.
“...Saku...ko... no... oh, oh...”
Hinako stumbled forward and collapsed beside her.
“Ah—ahhhh... Sa—Sakuko! Ahhhh!”
Sakuko's body was blooming with flowers.
The vivid and cruel colors, scarlet and plum and the black-red of half-clotted blood that wrapped her frail frame. It was as if her very blood had burst forth and blossomed into flowers.
Flowers born of human flesh and blood, abhorrent and parasitic things, rose from her pale skin, pushing through to stand erect on red-brown stems, and from each bud unfurled a wet, red blossom. Petal upon petal they opened, until the flowers swallowed her whole, and erased from this world.
“Stop... stop it...”
Hinako grabbed the largest bloom from Sakuko's chest and tore it away. The stem gave with a sick, stringy sound. A vile, tearing sensation traveled up her fingers; warm pus smeared across her hands. For every flower she ripped free, new buds split her friend’s skin and pushed out again. Hinako clawed at the blossoms like a madwoman, shredding them, tore them, crushing them beneath her palms.
“Stop it! Stop—stop it!”
She clawed and yanked, tearing the flowers from the body she loved.
She would not forgive them.
These cursed things that bloomed from Sakuko's life. She would never forgive them.
All she wanted was to free her. To release her.
Her hands would not stop. They tore and tore, until she could no longer tell if she was saving her or desecrating her.
“Sakuko... you can’t see like this, can you? It’s all dark, right? Wait for me...”
She stripped every flower from her friend’s face. And beneath that writhing mass, the face that had once smiled at her, was gone.
Melted and ravaged beyond recognition.
There was no face left to find.
The bulb above her head burned a weary yellow, its tin shade trembling with each flicker, as though it remembered to live.
Once, this place had been full of noise. Boys huddled by the counter, arguing over which beigoma or menko to buy. Girls shared milk caramels, whispering secrets and laughter between them. And behind the counter sat the old woman who ran Chizuruya. She sat with her lips pressed into a stern line, watching everything.
These were the scenes Hinako had seen since she was small, now felt like memories from a distant life.
The children were gone, the old woman too.
The only sound now was the faint, insect-like buzzing of the flickering bulb.
At least the inside of the shop hadn’t been overrun, the shelves still stood where they always had. The plants that devoured the rest of the town had only crept a little inside, setting faint roots along the shelves near the entrance where wide glass jars of candy and crackers still stood in quiet ranks.
“It was your dream when you were little, wasn’t it? You used to say you wished you’d been born the daughter of a candy-shop owner instead of a priest’s, so you wouldn’t have to live in such a stiff and stuffy place.”
Hinako spoke softly as she carried Sakuko's body inside.
She couldn’t leave her out there. Not like that. She found the old lap blanket the shopkeeper used to keep over her knees and gently draped it over Sakuko.
“Here, you can eat all the sweets you want now, whenever you like—”
Her throat locked up. The words wouldn’t come anymore.
She was staring at the rise beneath the blanket, Sakuko's body. But it wasn’t shaped right. Something was missing. Something human.
That was her misfortune made flesh, the form her tragedy had taken.
Why had it come to this?
Sakuko, who had been so devout, and had given so much to her faith. Why had she been made to suffer like this? And that god she said she saw in her dreams... why hadn’t He protected her?
Hinako clenched her teeth.
She knew the truth.
The gods had nothing to do with this.
The greatest sinner here was herself. She had broken their promise. She had betrayed Sakuko.
“I’m sorry, Sakuko...”
Hinako grasped the pull cord dangling from the bulb.
“Sweet dreams.”
But before she could tug it, the light flared wild, almost in protest. As if something or someone was trying to tell her no.
Was it Sakuko?
Was she saying, don’t make it dark?
Hinako let go, and the bulb stilled.
Through the fogged glass of the sliding door, she looked out into the street. She saw a shape staggering closer, halting and crooked. Each step has its limbs twisting against themselves, neck bent wrong, legs bending backward at the joints.
A human shape, but no human soul.
A monster.
Maybe it was the same one she’d seen back in the neighborhood. Maybe not.
It did not matter anymore.
There was only one thing left inside her now, and it was boiling and consuming her from within.
“I wanted to keep our promise, Sakuko...”
Hinako stepped outside, her feet crunching on the red petals strewn across the stones, an iron pipe lay half-buried among them. She took it up, and gripped it tight around the cold metal.
The creature shrieked and charged, the butcher knife raised high, steel flashing wet in the dim, and metal clanging with every step.
“I couldn’t keep it... I couldn’t—UAAAAAAAH!”
Hinako screamed and met its rush headlong. There was no fear left in her, there was only rage. But that rage wasn’t for the monster. It was for herself.
As the blade came down, she swung the pipe and caught its arm in mid-swing. The blow split bone with a sound like cracking ice, knocking the knife from its hand and shattering its arm.
Without pause, she swung again, more harder, and the iron crashed down upon its skull.
A crunching, splitting noise, bone or something worse, vibrated up the metal into her arms. The creature’s neck snapped in a crooked angle, and it fell forward, clutching at the postbox like a lover.
Hinako didn’t stop.
She brought the pipe down again and again. She beated its back, its ribs, its head, again and again, screaming meaningless sounds, and her words lost to madness.
Each swing sent another wet, hideous impact through her arms. Something wet splattered across her face. The monster twitched, its limbs jerking, scattering bits of meat or fragments or something unnamable into the red flowers below.
She didn’t know how long she kept at it. Only when her breath burned and her arms ached did she realize the thing had long since stopped moving.
She stopped.
Wiped her face.
And her hand came away red.
Blood. The thing had blood, like a human.
The thought made her stomach twist.
Then she felt something behind her. Hinako spun and swung the pipe but it met only mist, scattering the fog.
Thump.
A pulse of red flickered through her vision. Her skull throbbed, each heartbeat a hammer. Her breathing grew ragged and shallow. She couldn’t get air; her breath rasped in her throat like a whistle through a cracked flute. Her fingers trembled. The pipe slipped from her grasp.
She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a small paper box labeled “Cold Medicine.”
Her hands shook as she tore one free, pinched out a capsule, red and white, and shoved it into her mouth. She tried to swallow but her throat was too dry. She bit down. The shell burst between her teeth, bitter and sweet all at once. Bitterness spread over her tongue, and a sickly sweetness flooded her nose.
She dropped to one knee, clutching her head with both trembling hands. The world began to peel away, layer by layer, flaking and unraveling before her eyes.
And then—
The fog came.
It rolled in slow and heavy, and swallowed everything whole.
"Offer up your flesh and blood...So that our clan may prosper."
A voice? Who could that be?
It was a voice steeped in dignity. And the words carried weight.
She pried open her lids, heavy as lead, forcing them apart.
It was terribly dark.
Though she was certain her eyes were open, there was only darkness before her. Her skull throbbed like a bruise as she lifted it and forced her body upright.
One closer look, and it wasn’t complete darkness. Somewhere ahead, a faint light flickered, glimmering in the far dark like a dying star. Turning her gaze, she saw thick columns standing in rows, and beyond them, what looked like an altar bathed in amber fire from a pair of paper-screened lanterns.
“...Where... am I?”
Her voice fell flat in the still air. The sound went nowhere, swallowed by the walls.
Her eyes swept around again. Beyond the lit pillars, the shadows were too deep to pierce through. The air was stagnant. This was no outdoors. This was a wide, enclosed space.
Her head still swam, but she managed to rise and walk toward the light.
It was indeed an altar. Gohei, sake jars, and offerings were neatly arranged, and at the center sat a golden sacred mirror that caught the lantern-light and scattered it in trembling shards across the room. Most striking of all were the two fox statues, one on either side of the altar, their eyes sharp and unyielding.
How had she come here? Where had she been before this?
She tried to remember, but her mind was a fogbank.
She remembered nothing.
She possessed nothing.
As she stood there, lost in her thoughts, the light changed. The lanterns along the pillars flared one by one, waking in sequence, further and further down the hall. Their glow revealed a path between the straight and narrow columns and at its end stood a pair of massive double doors.
She felt instinctively she had to go there, not because the doors were visible, but because something deep within her knew she must.
Drawn by the lantern light, she walked down the corridor. As she walked, she saw symbols and letters had been carved into the pillars with something sharp.
“I can only pray that I do not pass through the gates of Hell.”
"I can’t go home anymore. Father, Mother… I want to see you one last time. – Mayumi”
“Farewell, my beloved.”
Each mark were prayers, regrets, and resignations. All of them were words of parting.
“...Hell? Can’t go home...? What does that mean...?”
She wanted to think, but her mind refused to work. It felt like when one has a fever, light and drifting, and not unpleasant, yet detached from reality. Her soul had floated a step away from her flesh.
She reached the sixth pillar, and suddenly a pulse throbbed inside her head. With each step forward, the pounding grew stronger, her vision slowly tainted red from the edges inward. The lights ahead began to swim red.
“My head... it hurts...”
The pain built until her breath came ragged. Her skull were caught in a vice, her mind boiling within it, threatening to burst from her skull. The deeper the red flooded her sight, the sharper the agony became.
She couldn’t stay here. She had to reach the doors, quickly.
Unbearable torment and panic seized her, Hinako stumbled forward, half-blind, and threw herself against the doors.
They didn’t move.
She rammed them with her shoulder, once, twice and thrice, but they wouldn’t budge.
“They won’t open...! Help...! Anybody...! Please, help me...!”
“Calm yourself, Hinako.”
A man’s voice came from beyond the doors.
Was it truly reaching her ears? Even she couldn’t tell. Right now, all she knew was that she had to get to the other side, no matter what.
She beat the door with her fists, shouting desperately.
“Please! It's stuck! It won’t open!”
“That's enough. Give me a moment; I’ll open it for you.”
“Open it! Open it! OPEEEENN IIIIIITTTT!”
Her cry turned shrill with terror. Hinako stepped back a few paces, took a running start, and threw herself shoulder-first into the doors. She didn’t care if she was hurt, even a broken bone or two would be fine. With blind, reckless force she slammed herself forward.
But just as she was about to make contact, the double doors swung inward on their own.
Hinako stumbled through the gap—
—and a pair of arms caught her before she fell.
“Are you hurt?”
It was a gentle voice, one suffused with kindness and compassion. A faint fragrance drifted between them. The smell was sweet and strange.
Hinako lifted her face.
And a fox looked back at her.
The man before her wore a fox mask. It was a half-mask that covered only his eyes and nose; below it, pale skin gleamed in the lantern’s tremor.
“You must not be so reckless. If there is harm to be done, I'll bear it. You should take better care of yourself.”
He took her hand and helped her to her feet.
“...Thank you,” she murmured, still dazed.
When she looked at him again, she took in his form fully. His hair the color of pale silver of frost and snow, drawn back into a single slender tail that brushed his nape; a single golden earring hung from his right ear. He was dressed in a white ceremonial kimono marked with a family crest, elegant in both appearance and bearing.
Hinako was handed a lantern.
Through the paper of its shade, the light within it burned soft and golden, and upon the shade was painted the same crest, the same three-leaf emblem that adorned the man’s kimono.
“Shall we get going, Hinako?”
The air was damp and heavy, thick with the scent of old wood and wet grass and earth long left to rot. The path she walked was dim, but what lay beyond it was darker still, so black it seemed the world had been drowned in ink. It was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the ground began. A seamless expanse of darkness stretched infinitely in every direction.
Only the places touched by the lantern’s glow came into being; each step she took drew the circle of that light forward, and behind her it closed again, swallowing everything in night.
Let your guard slip, and the dark would devour you whole.
A mist drifted low along the ground, the only thing in motion in this still and breatheless place. The earthen road gave way to an old stone path, as she passed beneath one red torii after another. There were moss grew thick between the flagstones, lanterns leaned on their bases, a quiet and still pond, and the many red railings. The place might once have been a garden of a forgotten shrine.
Ahead, a pale blue light wavered in the fog, guiding Hinako onward. It was the light from the fox-masked man’s lantern, swaying in the dark.
“Mind your step,” he said. Every so often he stopped to look back at her. “There’s no need to hurry. Take all the time you need.”
For reasons she couldn’t explain, his voice calmed her heart.
Who was he, this man who knew her name? Surely, someone she had known once. For now… she should just follow him. There was nothing else she could do.
At times, the blue lantern wavered as if the darkness itself had drawn a breath to snuff its flames. In those moments, her heart leapt to her throat. Hinako would dart her eyes through the gloom, and then, as though nothing had happened, the light would return, swaying softly as before.
She mustn’t lose that light.
She quickened her pace, fearful of being left behind.
Crossing a red-lacquered arched bridge, Hinako stopped.
“...Wha—? Who’s there?”
She could have sworn someone had called out to her.
Not the fox-masked man. This voice was closer and younger. A child’s voice.
Before her stood a small shrine, bathed in the orange glow of two hanging lanterns. The curtain bore the same three-leaf crest she had seen before. Within, a fox statue sat in solemn repose, and before it, on the altar, lay a short dagger with cords of red and gold and flame-like engravings. A sacred offering most likely.
“That voice just now…”
There was no sign of anyone nearby. Perhaps, her mind had been playing tricks. She turned to leave but then she felt it: a gaze, fixed upon her back.
She turned.
No one there. Just a doll.
Seated in the shadow of the shrine’s pillar was a celluloid doll, a little girl in a red one-piece dress with lantern-sleeves.
Hinako stared at its features. The plump cheeks, the round eyes… it looked so much like a doll she’d owned as a child.
Surely it wasn’t this thing that had called to her—
“What… is this…”
Her eyes froze on the pillar behind it. Carved into the wood were the words:
“Don’t trust the fox mask.”
Was it him the words warned of? But who had written them here and why?
She looked back toward the fox statue. Its bared teeth seemed twisted into a ghastly grin.
“What’s wrong?” The fox-masked man had stopped ahead, glancing back. “Come. This way.”
His figure slipped once more into shadow, leaving only the blue flames glimmering and swaying in the dark. There was nothing for her to do but follow him... though…
Hinako’s eyes fell again on the dagger.
Something told her she might need it. She reached out and took it in hand.
The instant her fingers brushed the hilt, the air itself seemed to die. It was as if touching the dagger had flipped a hidden switch.
Sound vanished.
Everything, gone.
Her ears was as though it had been plugged with wax; the world itself had fallen mute. No wind stirred here, the silence was so deafening it bordered on madness. If she did not move, she thought, even sound itself might cease to exist. And yet, until moments ago, she could still feel faint vibrations, the subtle presence of unseen spirits, the shiver of air between the trees, ripples upon the pond’s surface.
Now even those had been erased.
And in that utter silence, something broke it.
Chains.
The faint clatter of metal, then came the slow drag of many iron links, drawing closer and growing louder.
Hinako drew the dagger from its sheath, and raised it in both hands toward the noise.
“What…—it’s blunt?!”
The blade caught no light; its edge was dull, crushed and useless. Still, a dull blade might wound.
The chains drew nearer.
From behind a large boulder, something stirred, and began to crawl forth upon all fours.
It wore the shape of a man, yet it was no man. Perhaps it had been once a captive, for shackles clasped its wrists and ankles, and broken chains trailed behind like shed skins. An iron collar girdled its neck, whether it was a pet or a pillory, she could not say. It swung heavily with a huge padlock, and barbed wire coiled its arms like living flame, piercing flesh and emerging again in ugly stitches. Patches of skin had been stripped away, raw meat showing pink and red beneath the flayed skin. Marks of torments, plain as brands.
It was a torturous sight to bear. If there was mercy to be had, it was that pain could touch it no longer.
This monster was hollowed.
In its chest gaped a large, tear-shaped hole like wood rot, blackish pus threading down and dripping in strings. No heart beat within, no entrails filled the spaces of its belly. There was nothing.
Worse, the face is but a gaping dark, for it had been clawed away and gouged deep. No agony could ever twist what was not there. A thing of emptiness, bearing a darkness as profound as the one surrounding them. Facing it, Hinako realized something.
The monster was approaching, but it did not crawl towards her. It kept stopping, straining to catch some scent upon the windless air.
It cannot see.
Of course, this thing had no face. No eyes to see, no nose to smell and no tongue to taste. Yet ears it had, great pointed ones. Silence was its hunt. The silence had been made for its sake, to make prey easier to be found.
Good that she noticed. What could a dull blade do against a monster anyway? Better to avoid, if she could help it.
She eased the sword back into its sheath, her breathing scarced, and began to edge away.
Her foot missed a step, and in her soundless panic, she staggered and her hands shot out for the shrine's pillar.
She looked up, slow with dread.
The dark regarded Hinako.
In the depths of that darkness, eyes that should not be met hers.
She had been found.
The hollowed monster kicked off the earth with its limb and leapt, hurling towards Hinako. Her legs failed her; she could not dodged. As the void opened to devour her whole, all she could do was thrust her arms straight out.
Sound returned to her ears. First came the dry clack of the sheath striking stone, then wet splatter of saliva and bloody pus falling from its empty face onto the earth. The short sword gripped in both Hinako's hands had vanished deep into its faceless maw; only its tip emerged from the rear end of its skull.
The creature's form ran like wax in flame, dissolving into wisps of shadow, and then it was gone.
"You've been walking quite a bit"
The man in the fox mask was waiting in front of the door of a building that resembled a storehouse. Flanking the door stood two twin statues of foxes with their mouths open, facing each other.
"You look pale" he said. "Have you been pushing yourself too hard?"
"...No. I'm fine..."
Hinako spoke nothing of the monster. The thing was done; there was no need to burden him with needless tales. The path lay onward, and that was all that mattered.
"This is the sacred vault," he told her, "where precious things are kept. I have prepared something within for you."
He placed into her hands a hōju, a jewel shaped like a chestnut, smooth and heavy and large enough to be held in both hands. As Hinako stared at it, unsure of what it might be used for, the fox-masked man produced a key of matching girth and fitted it into the mouth of one fox statue. Following his lead, Hinako pressed the jewel into the jaws of the other.
A mechanism groaned to life deep within the stone, and the doors parted. The man stepped through first. Hinako made to follow, yet at the threshold she stopped and turned.
Again, a gaze she felt. Not the same as before, for this one carried a chill. A creeping malice that raised the hairs along her arms and the shivers down her spine.
There was no monster.
"What's wrong?" the man asked from within.
"It's nothing."
She crossed into the vault. There the man held in both hands a stone of translucent bluish-green, like frozen mist captured in jade, the same size as the one the fox statues had held.
"Carved from the mystic pale snow nephrite," he said. "I fashioned this key especially for you."
"Especially for me...?"
The fox-masked man nodded and offered her the key.
"It is a key to the sanctuary. None but you can use it."
She took it. Lighter than the jewel had been, it clung to her skin with a cool, silken touch, pleasantly cold as the mountain spring water. A solemn aura clung to the thing, a weight of reverence and rarity; she couldn't measured its worth, but the moment she touched it, she knew it was something far beyond than what she desrved.
"Shall we go? It is not far from here."
The man stepped out of the building ahead of her, leaving behind the faint sweetness of incense that clung to his robes. Hinako thought of him like a figure stepped out from an old fairytale. His every movement was graceful, exuding the air of noble upbringing. His words, his voice. They carried a strangle balm that soothed her heart and mind.
What a strange man
Lost in her thoughts, Hinako had fallen far behind. She hurried to catch him, yet at the doorway she stopped once more.
Again.
A gaze rose from below, lifting like cold fingers along her legs. On the floor at the entrance, sat a celluloid doll, its head bowed. The same doll from the shrine where the short blade had lain in offering.
"Why is it here?"
The doll had not walked here with its own two feet. Someone must have carried it and placed here on purpose.
But why?
A shiver ran through her.
It's watching.
It was not the doll's gaze. It was something else, something more alive; the same chill felt before. It was staring fixedly at her, holding some dim, murky emotion. Staring and staring, peeling back her skin to see what lay beneath.
Why was it watching her so intently? Why only watch? If it had something to say, why not say it? Why send nothing but silent stares?
She could read nothing, not of its emotion nor of its intent. Enduring the constant unseen stare from such an unsettling presence finally became too much for Hinako.
With a swift motion, Hinako fled from the vault.
The entrance to the shrine hall was lit by soft, otherworldly glow of stone lanterns, their flames casting a spectral sheen upon ancient timbers. It rose before her like the great gatehouse of a great shrine.
A pair of foxes stood with fierce, intimidating expressions. They glared down as though the very stones had taken life to ward off anyone who came before the doors.
Hinako met their stone-cold stare and with trembling hands, fitted the key into the mouth of one. With a solid unlocking sound, the heavy double doors slowly swung inward.
"The door from earlier was for welcoming visitors" the fox-masked man said, peering through the widening gap to the gloom beyond. "But this door denies all but for a select few who may tread sacred ground."
"Am I...allowed inside?"
Her voice was small and hesitant. The thought of setting foot in so sacred a place made her shrink. Yet the dark beyond, filled with monsters as it was, is no better either; she did not wish to be left here.
The fox-masked man nodded.
"Why, of course. Today you are most welcome."
"...Most welcome."
Had she been meant to come here today? Hinako reached inward, searching her memory.
I don't know. Maybe that's how it was.
But if so, how could she have forgotten such a thing until today?
Forgotten? No, she should have remembered. But now...
Her thoughts were muddied, thick as river silt. Confidence in her own memories had slipped away like sand between fingers. Something was wrong with her. With her memory. With her head. A persistent haze clung to every one of her memories, blurring edges she once knew sharp.
"You are still not well, are you?"
It must have shown on her face; the man had noticed, but the concern in his voice was gentle.
"We must continue on ahead. Shall we rest for a while?"
"I'm...okay. I think."
"I see. Tell me if you need a break."
Hinako gave a small nod.
"Then, shall we move onwards?"
The fox-masked man stepped forward through the door to the sanctuary.
I should follow him. For now, at least. Surely, the way ahead is pitch-black too, and I carry no light bright enough to walk it alone. And besides, he doesn't seem like the kind of person who would lead me to harm.
A flicker of doubt remained, yet she set it aside and crossed the threshold after him.
A gaze clung to her back. It coiled about her back like cold silk. The same malice she had felt within the vault.
She turned.
Mist lay thin upon the ground, and beyond it the darkness stretched without end. Deep within that endless black, something was there. The mist swirled unnaturally, disturbed by movement; shadows darker than shadow gathered form, on the very edge of becoming solid.
Hinako tried to close the door. She didn't know what it was; but her instinct knew it must not past this threshold. She just knew. But no matter how hard she pushed, the doors would not budge. The strength required would be beyond mortal.
Startled, she looked up and turned her gaze back outside.
In that fading haze, something was parting the ground-level mist and approaching at terrifying speed.
No—too late—
She gave up and tried to pull away from the door, but her decision came a moment too late. The thing was upon her in a heartbeat.
A violent shock hurled her backward. She struck the hard floor and tumbled across the shrine hall.
I have to get up. Get up right now and get out of here.
She could not. She couldn't move a single finger. She lay sprawled, her cheek pressed to cold wood, staring toward the doors as only the faintest mosquito-like groan escaped her lips.
Her head had struck stone. The world began to recede, vision clouding, whitening at the edges as her consciousness thinned. In that haze, she met the eyes of a girl standing in the doorway.
The celluloid doll.
Its painted gaze fixed upon her, unblinking.
Mist crept in across the threshold, flowing over the floor like living smoke. It swallowed Hinako without resistance; white fog thickened across her hazy sight until nothing remained but a pale blur.
A shadow trod through the mist. It had the shape of a person, it stooped and lifted the doll in both hands, then passed Hinako by without pause and moved deeper into the shrine hall.
Her mind sank after it, down into the fog that engulfed her skull.
Someone was calling.
For sometime now, a voice had persisted, soft and fervent as prayer, repeating a name.
Her head was laying on a lumpy, uncomfortable pillow, listening to it drift in and out of the fog in her mind.
“—ko… Come on, stay with me… Talk to me… Hinako!”
The name was hers. She wanted to reply, but her consciousness was still muddled; even when she opened her mouth, no words came out. Yet, it seemed to serve as an answer all the same.
A breath of relief came from above.
"Thank goodness!"
She cracked her eyes. A face was looking down at her, worn with exhaustion, yet eased by gratitude.
“…Shu…”
Still half-awake, she lifted her heavy head and forced herself upright, and her leaden body to rise.
The mist-hazed vision of Ebisugaoka returned in fragments: twisted, alien plants choking the streets, the memory of flight and terror.
"Well, you have never been one to go down without a fight, right?" Shu said. He sat cross-legged on the cracked road amid trampled flowers, a wry half-smile on his lips. The uncomfortable pillow, she realized, had been his lap.
“You’re… alive.”
“More or less.”
He lowered his gaze. The smile lingered at the corners of his mouth, but the rest of his expression was now tangled.
“…And Sakuko?” The question hung between them. "She's okay...right?"
Hinako wanted to nod. Instead she turned her face away and pointed toward the darkened storefront of Chizuruya. There lay Sakuko, covered by a lap blanket that had once been ochre. Now it was soaked black with her blood, the stain spreading wide and sword-shaped across the fabric. Shu's face barely changed. When the mist had attacked earlier, he had witnessed with his very own eyes how Sakuko fell. Perhaps he had already steeled himself for an end like this.
"What is going on? Everyone in town is gone. Are we having some kind of bad dream?"
"Wherever we go, it's only monsters… Everyone else is gone."
Hinako remembered the grotesque shapes that had hunted them.
"Worse than any nightmares...If this isn't one, I don't know what is."
"Even so… we were lucky."
Lucky?
The word felt so out of place that Hinako felt a twinge of unease.
"Even if the only ones left in this world are the two of us… I'm glad one of them is you. Partner."
He said it, then looked away with a sheepish expression, as though the words had embarrassed him. He stood abruptly and stared up at the fog-choked sky to cover the moment.
"Wait, what about Rinko?"
Hinako rose too.
Shu froze. His eyes darted around, clearly rattled.
"N-no, I mean, she just said she had something to talk to me about, but y'know, earlier wasn't really—"
"Rinko was supposed to be with you!!"
He stared back at her, still rigid.
"Shu!!" Hinako raised her voice. "Didn't you two escape together?!"
“Ah…sorry. I’m guess I'm still confused.” He covered his face with one hand, muttering to himself. “We weren’t together. We all got split off when we ran. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Where would she go in a time like this?”
Rinko was no fighter. She carried no weapon, knew no way to stand against these things. Hinako had assumed Shu kept her close and guarded. If only she had found some safe place to hide in, but what place is safe in Ebisugaoka now?
Her mind couldn't help but invite the worst possibilities in.
"Maybe she have gone home?" Shu said at last. He stooped and retrieved a wooden baseball bat from the ground at his feet. He had likely scavenged it on the way back here. No blood stained it; perhaps he was lucky to have not needed to use against these things yet.
"Let's check Rinko's place, partner."
He took a few practice swings, then shouldered the bat and walked ahead, kicking through the crimson flowers that carpeted the street.
Hinako found her own length of iron pipe half-buried among the blooms and followed after him.
"Yeah, let's go, partner."
Partner.
According to Shu, the word was not to be tossed about lightly. It belonged to one person only, the person in all the world who you could entrust your back to. One true partner per lifetime, and no more.
They had begun calling each other that during the Space Wars games.
Shu had started it all. The spark was an old Japanese film, Kaiki! Uchūjin Daishinryaku (Weird! Alien Invasion). A movie he had expected to be a thrilling tokusatsu action flick about brave adults defending Earth from aliens. Instead, it proved to be a cynical, socially conscious film exposing the anxieties of modern Japan. As an elementary school kid, Shu hadn't understood any of it; the letdown was so great he resolved to form his own space army corps to defend the planet.
At first, he gathered the other boys. Somehow, neither could quite remember who suggested it, Hinako had occaisonally joined as a provisional member. When the other girls started to exclude her and she began to play alone, Hinako officially joined the unit.
The other members gradually lost interest as new things caught their attention and stopped showing up. In the end, the only ones who kept fighting until the very last were Shu and Hinako. There was never a clear reason or trigger to quit; as they grew older, the world became bigger with information from science magazines and tokusatsu shows got folded into new settings, and before they knew it, it was a world only the two of them understood.
Puberty arrived, the Galactic Imperium stopped sending in new forces, but they never officially disbanded the space army unit. The setting lived on somewhere in the quiet spaces between them.
Even now they were still proud members of the Space Army, and still called one another partner like the old times. And only with Shu did Hinako’s speech roughen, turning boyish and blunt.
Hinako let her gaze wander.
Narrow lanes ran between tile-roofed and tin-roofed houses that leaned toward one another. The unpaved earth bore childish drawings in crayon wax: fighter planes, flying saucers. From second-floor windows bamboo poles jutted at angles, hung with drying diapers, tenugui towels, cleaning rags.
An ordinary sight, that can be seen in any backstreet of any town.
If only there were none of these mist, these grotesque plants, and these monsters lurking about.
“Hey, Shu.”
He stopped and turned.
“What is it, partner?”
“This… all of this right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Is it possible we’re still playing Space Wars? That this is just… inside one of our dreams? Be it mine, or yours?”
"A dream, huh?" He considered it with a thoughtful nod. "Then, let's test it the old way, we pinch each other's cheek."
He reached toward her face as he said it, so Hinako reflexively dodged with a yelp of "No!"
“I can pinch my own cheek just fine, thank you very much.”
She turned away, stepped a little apart, and squeezed her own cheek. Pain or no pain, dream or waking; it hardly mattered anymore; the question had slipped outside her conscious thought.
She had let Shu see her so rattled. The sudden approach of his hand had startled her. It was not out of embarassement but seeing it so close, Shu's hand became strangely huge. She had never really looked closely at a friend's hand before, so she hadn't noticed until now: at some point, Shu's hand had become thick and large: a man's hand, not a boy's.
Guilt pricked her. When she looked back, Shu was pinching his own cheek with grave concentration.
"Ow…doesn't seem to be a dream."
Emerging from the alley, the world opened wide.
Fields stretched away in every direction, a quiet sea of grass and stubble and earth. They were nearly there for Rinko's house laid north-northeast of Ebisugaoka.
The quickest route cut straight through the main streets, but the warren of close-packed buildings was a perfect lair for the things that hunted. Narrow ways invited ambush; multiple monsters could close from either side in moments, and there would be no room to swing or run. Worse, many of the lanes were already choked beyond passage by the red blooms—those obscene, visceral growths that had spread with unnatural vigor. Their advance had slowed of late, yet they continued to root deeper across the town. Venture to the back alleys and they might find themselves trapped. And if the monsters came, it was over.
No doubt, the path would be longer, but the wisest course was to detour through the farmland district in the western outskirts of Ebisugaoka. In open clear grounds, a watchful eye could spot trouble from afar; they could avoid unnecessary fights and drastically reduce the danger.
All of this was Shu's plan.
He had always been the one to map the safest path, to pare away every avoidable risk, to lift their chances however little he could. Hinako remembered him always using the same kind of careful tactics whenever they infiltrated an enemy base during their old space wars games.
Scattered farmhouses and barns with faded tile roofs stood here and there amid the fields. Shadows that might have been monsters moved among the distant gloom, yet none seemed to mark the two of them. Probably because all of them had their eyes gouged out, they hunted with their other senses. Keep a safe distance, then they would pass by unnoticed.
They only have to stay alert for anything hiding behind the long rows of rice stalks piled up like walls to dry.
“Town overrun by monsters,” Shu murmured, gazing up at the pale sky sliced by power lines. “Does put you in mind of the Space Army days, doesn’t it?”
It wasn't even ten years ago, yet it felt so distant. Strange how memory could stretch time thin.
As they passed along the irrigation canal beside the rice paddies, Hinako remembered something too.
“Come to think of it, I got lost around here once when I was little.”
A game of hide-and-seek with friends. In these parts a child had few choices: behind a toolshed or waterwheel hut, or crouched behind whatever came to hand—bamboo blinds, empty barrels, baskets. The bold ones burrowed into the stacked rice bundles left to dry on stakes, risking a scolding if caught. Otherwise it was only a matter of watching the seeker and slipping from one poor hiding place to the other.
Hinako hated being found so quickly, and she hated getting yelled at even more, so she ran off in search of a better hiding place. The perfect spot never appeared. So, she kept running till the familar grounds vanished and before she knew it, she could not find her way back. She was lost, unable to find her way back to where everyone had been playing. The moment she understood, terror took her and she wept.
"I was sniffling and bawling as I walked, then a girl around my age came up and asked what was wrong. She took my hand and led me all the way back to where everyone else was playing."
“Must’ve been one really kind kid,” Shu said with a laugh as he crossed a plank over the irrigation ditch and stepped into the paddy. Hinako followed after him.
Cutting straight across the fields would bring them to Rinko’s house far quicker than skirting the edges. The rice had long been harvested; the paddies lay dry, no standing water to slow them.
The stubble stretched away in every direction—short, bristling stems the color of old gold.
"I'ts hard to picture a tough girl like you crying." Shu said.
"Me neither. That was a long time ago, I don't think I've cried since then."
"You tend to keep things bottled up inside. That's a bad habit of yours, you know."
Was it a habit? She had never thought of it so. Hinako turned the question over and over. When had she last wept? And why? But the memories refused to surface cleanly; it must have been long ago indeed.
“If it ever gets too hard,” Shu began. Tension rippled across his back. He seemed to be carefully searching for the right word. “—If it ever gets too hard, just cry. Anytime. Don’t hold it in. I’ll always be here for you, no matter what.”
He turned then, eyes steady and sure. Hinako met that gaze and nodded once.
"Thanks, partner."
"Right, let's go. Rinko's waiting."
He resettled the bat on his shoulder and started forward, then paused.
“Hm?” He scanned the fields. “The fog’s gotten a lot thicker.”
It was true. Things that had been clear only moments before now blurred at the edges, swallowed by gray. There was something moved within the fog.
“We should hurry. We shouldn’t stay here too—”
Hinako froze.
Shu was gone.
She spun back and forth, searching every direction. Nothing. No sign. If he had run off, she would have heard the dry crunch of rice stubble under his feet.
“Shu? Where are you?”
Even as the words left her she cursed herself silently.
Don’t ask something stupid like “are you there?” Of course he’s there. He wouldn’t just disappear.
The fog was playing tricks. It sought to blind them, to steal away landmarks, to wrap each soul in solitude until despair took root—just as it had done to her all those years ago when she was small and lost.
Do not panic in this silence. Do not let fear win. That is what they want.
She swung the iron pipe hard enough to make the air sing, slashing at the haze before her face. Then she walked on alone into the fog-choked paddy, the mist rolling like a slow sea all around her, pressing in.
The fog clung to the fields like a shroud, and scattered among the paddies stood many small Inari shrines. Some were simple shrines made of stone, others were weathered fox statues left to the rain and wind until moss claimed them. There seemed to be almost too many, yet who could fault it? Inari was the deity of abundant harvests. If anywhere deserved to be called the heart of his worship, it was this entire farmland district.
A full third of Ebisugaoka consisted of rice paddies and fields. But now more than half of that land lay fallow, growing nothing. The young had gone to the cities; the farming families starved for heirs. In the old days a child who strayed into the growing rice drew the wrath of sun-blackened farmers in ragged work clothes. They would be beaten mercilessly with sticks and endured the many curses till the tresspassers collapsed and fled sobbing. Yet, somehow the children still ventured in, and sometimes they never came back. Dawn would find them floating in the irrigation ditches, changed beyond recognition.
Because of her own memory of getting lost, Hinako had always found this whole area frightening even as a child. Whenever she passed this way to Rinko’s house she kept to the edges, always hurrying home before nightfall.
It was because of a certain local ghost story tied to these fields.
It happened during the war.
Several military police officers who had come to Ebisugaoka from out of town, were found one morning in the irrigation canals. Every corpse had grotesquely swollen abdomens, heads split open like overripe pomegranates. The autopsy revealed their innards gone entirely—replaced with hundreds of dead rats, small fishes, frogs, snakes crammed down throat and anus alike. The hollowed-out skulls were likewise packed full of eggs: fly eggs, mantis eggs, grasshopper eggs, cicada eggs and more. It wasn’t that someone had stuffed the bodies; the insects had laid the eggs there themselves.
The officers had become what people called “hollow demons”, bodies with gaping voids where head and torso should have been filled with life.
Witnesses reported the policemen kicking over the roadside Inari shrines, spitting on the fox statues. Blasphemy, the townsfolk whispered. Rumor had it this was divine retribution for their blasphemy.
Sakuko had told her the story during the peak of the occult boom, so some of the gruesome details might have been embellished. But the core was true: multiple military policemen had really died in a strange manner within these fields; Sakuko said it had even appeared in the newspapers at the time.
Why did she have to remember something like that now, of all times? A chill crept up her spine. She quickened her pace.
Shu would be heading for Rinko’s house too. Their old rule held: when separated, do not search for each other—make for the agreed meeting place first. One of the many disciplines Shu had established for their old space army unit.
She passed a rough shelter of stakes and rush mats. Inside lay an aluminum lunch box, a pot of cold rice, chopsticks, a rice-crusted ladle—all scattered as though the workers had fled mid-meal. Breakfast abandoned in haste. Until morning the town had changed, men had sat here eating. Where were they now?
Hinako slowed her steps and shifted into full alert.
She had spotted a human silhouette in the fog ahead.
It wasn’t Shu. No bat.
A monster imitating a person? Or perhaps—
She tightened her grip on the iron pipe and advanced cautiously, watching closely.
“—Phew. Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
With a breath of relief she lowered the pipe.
A scarecrow.
She had half-expected it in a place like this.
A simple, typical local scarecrow: bundled straw with a bamboo pole for arms. The face was just a stained tenugui towel wrapped around it. No features drawn, blank and eyeless. A white vinyl bag tied to the “hand” fluttered faintly when the wind rose, meant to mimic movement and frighten birds. But the breeze was gone now, it simply hung limp.
What made this one strange was the sailor uniform it wore. Most scarecrows dressed in tattered old kimono. Was changing its clothes supposed to have some different effect? A kind of charm? Or just someone’s idea of play?
Hinako held her breath.
She felt watched again.
The tension she had just released snapped taut once more.
Without moving her head, she shifted only her eyes.
Nearby stood a two-wheeled cart loaded with buckets, kettles, straw hats, bulging hemp sacks. Among the clutter sat a doll.
A celluloid doll.
Dressed in red with blonde hair sat leaning against one of the sacks.
She had occasionally seen small children helping in their parents’ fields. Perhaps one of them had left it behind. Hinako turned fully and stared hard at the doll.
“…Is it? …Yeah, it really is.”
It looked exactly like the doll she had owned as a little girl. The likeness was carved deep in memory and heart. There had been a time when that doll was her only friend.
After a group of girls cruelly told her, “Girls who play with boys don’t get to join tea party,” and excluded her, the doll became her confidant. Her celluloid friend had always been on her side, no matter what.
Of course it had. Hinako moved its limbs, spoke to it in a changed voice, made it speak her own thoughts. A doll could never disagree, for its words could never contradict her own will or opinions. But they weren’t the doll’s words—they were Hinako’s. Its words were hers alone. In truth, the doll wasn’t her friend or ally; it was another her. A second Hinako made of celluloid.
So had the child Hinako truly had no ally at all?
No. She had one.
Her older sister, Junko.
Beautiful, gentle and skilled at everything; be it cooking, or sewing, or studying. The pride of the Shimizu household. Until she married and left, Junko had been Hinako’s sole confidante, the one who shielded her from their father’s rough hands and violent outbursts.
Until her surname changed from Shimizu to Kinuta upon marriage, Junko had been Hinako’s sister.
Hinako loathed the custom from the bottom of her heart that took her sister away. Everyone called marriage a woman’s happiness but she understood none of it.
Every day she had watched her mother suffer cruelty from their father. How could that possibly be happiness? She had never believed it for a moment. Her sister had seen the same thing, yet she chose the same path. Hinako couldn’t comprehend it.
It made no sense.
What even was a woman’s happiness?
Why did women have to act “like women”?
Why was playing house acceptable, but space wars were not?
Even as a small child, Hinako had felt discomfort, doubt, and disgust at being treated “as a girl.” That feeling had extended even to her doll. Playing with dolls meant obeying the mysterious societal rule: “Girls must act like girls.” To Hinako, that celluloid doll had come to feel like a tool for forcing her to be feminine. In time she might have offered it to an Inari shrine for a quiet release. But as a child, she had acted on pure emotion and thrown the doll away.
Another memory she didn’t need to revisit now.
The gaze she had felt had probably been the doll’s after all.
She was becoming too jumpy. Or perhaps in a situation like this, heightened senses were actually a good thing. Either way, she couldn’t afford to linger here any longer.
“I need to get back quick.”
First things first, she turned her gaze back to the path ahead.
And she froze.
Everything had changed.
In the fog ahead stood multiple human silhouettes. Their postures were not natural for scarecrows, and there were far too many. Man-shaped monsters. Somehow, she had been surrounded. They stood in grotesque parody: backs arched unnaturally, limbs splayed at absurd angles, frozen like marionettes cut from their strings. Seven of them floated in the mist, perhaps even more further back.
It almost resembled a still from a butoh dance performance, but there was no artistic beauty here, only sheer strangeness, deformity and abnormality. They seemed poised to begin a frenzied performance to hellish music.
As Hinako stood transfixed, the fog parted without wind. The veil was torn away, and the shadows became solid forms. For a split second, it looked like male and female students playfully messing around.
But the youthful scene vanished, replaced by a grotesque, festering tableau of horror.
They had the shapes of young men and women, dressed in sailor uniforms riddled with holes and filthy, frayed gakuran school uniforms. Their faces were like white porcelain, not just in color, but in hard, glossy texture. Cracks ran across them; pieces had chipped away, revealing glimpses of human skin beneath. If the earlier humanoid monsters were creatures imitating people, these were the corpses that had become monsters. If someone had made scarecrows out of corpses, would they not look like this?
They stood motionless, eerily still and silent. Their expressions defied description: black voids for eyes in blank faces, mouths torn wide in silent screams. Come closer and they would surely bite.
Careful not to provoke them, Hinako gave them a wide berth and continued forward.
How long she walked she could not say.
Behind her came the sharp crack-crack of rice stubble being crushed. She stopped, raised the iron pipe, and turned.
Two shadows in the fog, frozen in those grotesque poses. These scarecrow-things could move after all, and not just stand in places. They were frozen in odd poses now, but—
On impulse, she turned and ran. A moment later, the crunching footsteps followed. She stopped and looked back: the two shadows were roughly the same distance away, still frozen in those same strange poses.
It was like Daruma-san ga koronda. They moved only when unobserved. She didn’t understand the rules of these monsters at all, but apparently that was how it worked. Their movement didn’t seem especially fast. If she kept walking and occasionally glanced back to freeze them, they probably wouldn’t catch up.
After a while, more shadows appeared in the fog ahead. From their shapes, they were the same student-uniform scarecrows. Were they swarming all over the paddies like this? And how many infested these fields?
She detoured widely again. Midway through, something caught her eye.
Another blank-faced scarecrow made of straw and bamboo stood there.
Did they gather wherever these scarecrows were?
The pursuing footsteps grew slightly louder. Looking back, four shadows in strange poses now stood in the fog behind her.
“They’re increasing…”
An ominous sign, but as long as they didn’t catch her, it didn’t matter. She could just keep ignoring them and push through. A little farther on, more warped shadows emerged ahead in the mist.
How many of these are there? Had the entire field become their domain?
And again, another blank-faced scarecrow stood right there…
“Wait—”
She stopped and approached the scarecrow, peering at its face.
This one's different.
This was the very first one she had seen. The stain pattern on the tenugui wrapped around its face was exactly the same. A chill ran down her spine. Her footing grew unsteady, as though the ground were swaying.
She had been going in circles this whole time.
“Am I… lost again…?”
She was sure she hadn’t mistaken the direction. Something was distorting her sense of orientation.
The footsteps caught up again. She could not stop.
This time she tried an even wider detour.
Rinko’s house should be straight north from here, but she moved to east from the blank scarecrow’s position. After a good distance, she adjusted course northwest, deliberately threading an irregular pattern to throw off whatever force was at work.
But soon after, the silhouettes of scarecrows appeared in the fog ahead.
“I can’t get anywhere…no matter how far I walk.”
She was trapped in an endless rice paddy. If this continued, she would only exhaust herself. But she couldn’t stop. Using the blank-faced scarecrow as a landmark, she chose a direction she hadn’t tried yet. Again and again, she returned. No matter, she would simply picked another path and kept going.
Walk, advance, fail, rethink, find a way out.
The situation wasn’t static.
With every loop she made, the number of pursuers multiplied. She hadn’t counted, but surely a dozen or more were chasing her now. The sound of rice stubble being crushed from behind had become like oil popping in a giant wok. Though not fast, the scarecrows apparently never tired. They pursued at the exact same pace without faltering. Meanwhile, Hinako’s legs were growing heavy; she had been stumbling over nothing for a while now. Her throat was parched, she hadn’t eaten a proper meal since breakfast. Her stamina was nearing its limit. Being caught was only a matter of time.
She had lost count of how many laps she had made.
Was she doomed to wander these paddies forever?
The memory came back to her with painful clarity, as though it had happened yesterday: lost in a strange place, convinced she would never see home again, weeping aloud as she followed the paddy paths.
Then she realized.
It had gone quiet.
The crackles over the rice stubble had vanished completely, but they hadn’t disappeared. She felt a sticky, clinging, unpleasant gaze on her back. They were right behind her.
What else could it be but monsters?
“Enough already. I don’t have time to—” She clenched her teeth hard. “I don’t have time to play with you anymore—”
She spun around, raising the iron pipe high.
It was a scarecrow in sailor uniform. Arms held out horizontally as though crucified, head and long black hair hanging down.
Hinako couldn’t bring the pipe down.
The aura this monster gave off felt eerily similar to someone she knew well.
The monster jerked its head up. The motion sent its hair flying. The disheveled white face turned toward Hinako. Its expression was utterly absent. The pitch-black eyes locked straight onto her, twin deep, dark wells filled with thick viscous black emotion. As she stared into those abyssal pupils, Hinako’s vision suddenly trembled and blurred. The monster’s face doubled, tripled. A human face flickered over the blank white noh-mask-like surface, appearing and vanishing.
A girl. Smiling, yet her eyes held no mirth. Endlessly deep, black pupils.
Hinako knew that face. She had met her long ago. But she didn't know her name.
Suddenly the monster jerked its neck backward at an impossible angle and twisted its body violently. It raised its right shoulder sharply while dropping its left, it swung its left arm all the way behind its back, then thrust its right arm straight forward. With every movement came a muffled crack-crack-crack as though its joints were breaking inside.
The monster’s right arm was fully extended. Its gnarled, elongated fingers pointed somewhere.
“Hey! Hinako!”
Shu.
Only hearing his voice did Hinako finally lower the iron pipe.
“Over here! Hurry!”
He was swinging his bat in front of a large house, calling out. Hinako raised her hand in acknowledgment, then looked around.
Her feet stood on an unpaved road. Not on the dry, post-harvest soil of the paddies. An irrigation canal ran beside her, and beyond it the misty farmland stretched away.
Somehow, she had escaped the endless field.
That monster...helped me?
When she looked back, the scarecrow thing was gone.
That face...
The girl’s face that had overlapped with the monster’s. It looked so much like her.
It's all right now. You don't have to be scared anymore. The same words the girl had spoken long ago, when she found a weeping child lost in these fields and led her home.
“Where have you been, partner?”
Shu asked, carrying the bat across his shoulder, his voice light as though they spoke a casual chatty conversation.
There were fresh gouges on the bat, as if it had clashed with something for the wood fibers slightly frayed. Looking closer, Hinako noticed sand and bits of grass clinging to various spots on Shu’s clothes.
“I got lost in the paddies. There were these weird scarecrow-like monsters—”
As she explained, Hinako glanced back toward the misty farmland. No signs of the scarecrows in the fog anymore.
“So you ran into monsters too, huh.”
“Yeah, but as you can see, I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t exactly worried or anything,” Shu said with an easy, familiar smile.
“Where's Rinko?”
“I was just about to call her. Hope she’s in there.”
Hinako looked up at the house in front of them.
It was a large, two-story wooden building with a thatched roof, surrounded by a protective grove of trees. It was easily the biggest residence in this farmland district.
"Rinko! You there? It's me, Shu!" He called up toward the second floor, where Rinko’s room was. “If you’re here, say something!”
Hinako wiped damp palms on her skirt, settled her grip anew on the iron pipe's cold length. Walking through town had made it clear: no roof in Ebisugaoka could any longer swear itself safe. Monsters had come bursting out of private homes too. If whatever was inside this house wasn’t Rinko but something else, it might come charging out at the sound of Shu’s voice.
She strained her ears, listening for any noise from within. Shu slowly lowered the bat from his shoulder and scanned the surroundings. He was on guard, his eyes sweeping the yard and the fog beyond, watching for any monsters that might be drawn by his own shouting.
No response came from the house. Not even a creak from the floorboards.
It seemed Rinko hadn’t returned home.
Shu and Hinako exchanged a glance and a small nod, preparing to leave. Then, the genkan door exploded outward with a wooden crash.
"Shu!"
Shu instinctively started to raise the bat, but before he could fully ready himself, Rinko rushed out from inside and threw her arms around him.
“You came! I’m so gla—ah.”
The smile that had spread across Rinko's face. One full of relief and joy, vanished the instant she saw Hinako.
“Oh, Hinako. Glad you’re safe too.”
Her tone was noticeably deflated. Reluctantly, almost wistfully, she peeled her arms and fingers away from Shu.
“More importantly—are you hurt? Your family?”
“I’m not hurt,” Rinko answered Shu, then her expression darkened. “But…no one’s home. They disappeared. Even my grandmother, and she can barely walk… This can’t be right. It’s just… wrong…”
As if suddenly remembering something, Rinko looked around frantically.
“And there are these creepy ghost-like things wandering everywhere… What even are they…? I don’t understand anything anymore. What even is going on?!”
She pressed close to Shu and buried her face in his chest. He turned a complicated look toward Hinako. A troubled look, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words.
It had been a long time since Hinako last entered Rinko’s room.
More dolls and trinkets crowded the shelves than Hinako remembered; the space had a distinctly girlish feel to it. Fashion magazines had multiplied too, each one bristling with sticky notes and bookmarks. Rinko must have grown much more interested in traditionally feminine hobbies and clothing. For Hinako, that whole world held no appeal whatsoever.
“…Sakuko… How could someone so good… end up like that…”
She had just heard the manner of Sakuko’s end. Rinko’s shoulders shook; tears brimmed but not yet fall.
Rinko, the class president, the ever dutiful model student. Sakuko, the odd one out, eccentric and often isolated from the rest of the class. Even they themselves had probably found it strangest of all that the two of them had become friends. Their personalities were complete opposites. Yet perhaps that was why they fit together so well.
Sakuko had a way of doing strange things without warning, saying peculiar words that left others blinking, causing people to attract to her like moths to flame, unable to be left alone. Small mishaps followed her like shadows—nothing grave, but enough to draw trouble. Whenever that happened, it was Rinko who stepped in to fix things, her familiar sigh and her “it can’t be helped” expression. Sakuko had adored Rinko for always coming to her rescue. Rinko, for all her complaints and grumbles, had surely come to think of the ever-troublesome Sakuko as something like a little sister.
Hinako, who had watched them side by side, knew it better than anyone.
“If I’d known it would come to this… I should have… done more for her…” Rinko said.
Hinako wanted to hear what came after “more for her,” but there were things that needed to be done first. More urgent than grieving a friend’s death was their own survival.
“Listen, both of you.” Shu’s face was grave as stone., his voice tinged with deadly seriousness “We can’t stay here. The longer we do, the worse it gets. We have to leave town. Right now. No—we are leaving.”
Hinako had been thinking the same thing. The red blooms were continuing to spread even as they spoke. She didn’t know exactly what kind of harm would come once they fully took over and rooted themselves deep, but no doubt they were closely tied to the many appearances of monsters. If they completely choked Ebisugaoka entirely, the numbers would only be multiplied.
“Leave town…?” Rinko’s voice cracked. “What about our parents? Everyone else in town?” She cried out, as her knees sank weakly to the floor. “Everyone’s just… gone somewhere, right? And we’re the only ones left…”
“Rinko…” Hinako crouched down in front of her. “Of course we’ll help them. But there’s nothing we can do by ourselves. We have to call for help. And to get it, we have to move now.”
“She’s right,” Shu said. “We’re not abandoning anyone. We’re leaving town so we can come back with real aid, and save them.”
Rinko looked up at the two of them with tearful, upward glances, her eyes were red-rimmed. She turned toward the open window.
“Even if we wanted to leave… look.”
Shu hurried to the window; Hinako followed close behind. Standing side by side at the sill, they understood exactly what Rinko meant.
“See? It’s impossible.”
Rinko let out a shaky breath from behind them.
The only bridge connecting Ebisugaoka to the city center, the one spanning the river at the town's boundary, had been brutally destroyed. The center of the Magogawa bridge had been violently torn apart, the broken ends curling upward like two centipedes rearing back in threat. It looked as though either an enormous explosion had ripped through it, or else some gigantic hand had seized the middle and ripped it in half. Whatever it was, the bridge's destruction was an unnatural, monstrous level of scale.
“If the east bridge is out—” Shu muttered to himself, then spoke loud enough for both to hear. “Right. If the east is no good, then west. We head for the western prefectural road.”
“The prefectural road… You mean cutting through the mountain behind your house?”
Shu nodded at Hinako.
“Wait, can we even cross that mountain?”
When Rinko asked, a faintly smug look crossed Shu’s face.
“There’s a path to the wasabi fields. A secret shortcut only my family knows.”
Having a clear goal seemed to rekindle a spark of energy.
Rinko, too, appeared to steel herself. She closed the window, began stuffing necessary items into her schoolbag from her desk drawers, preparing to leave the house.
Shu examined the fresh gouges on his bat.
“It’s going to be a bit of a long journey, so we’ll run into monsters no matter what. Rinko, just to be safe—can you grab some medicine and bandages?”
“Yeah. There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen. I’ll go get it.”
“I’ll help you look for it. I want some water too.” Hinako said.
No place inside the house was truly safe either. The Nishida house was large. With these many windows and doors, there were plenty of entry points for monsters to slip through. And above all, Hinako wanted to avoid anyone moving alone.
“With my partner along, I feel safer already,” Shu said with a grin and a nod.
“Where’s the kitchen again?”
Hinako, iron pipe in hand, took the lead. They descended the wooden stairs slowly, listening carefully for any presence or sound on the first floor.
Halfway down, Hinako stopped.
A celluloid doll.
The same one she’d seen in the paddies. A little girl in a red dress, identical to her old “friend.” It sat leaning against the handrail post.
Carved into the tread beside it were the words:
Beware of Rinko.
A cold draft brushed down the nape of her neck.
As Hinako started to turn, her vision spun violently.
A hollow metallic clang struck her ears, a sound of someone striking an empty bucket exploded against her eardrums. A pain like being beaten repeatedly with a stick crashed through her entire body.
Ugh…”
She heard her own groan.
Through her narrowing lids that were already beginning to close, she saw Rinko standing in the middle of the staircase. Rinko who looked down at her with a face stripped of expression.
Eyes wide and unblinking. The pupils within them were—
Endless. Endlessly dark and deep.
Nothing but darkness.
In the darkness she stirred. The bed beneath her was hard and unforgiving, and no comfort to be taken. Sleep clung to her like damp wool; her thoughts drifted in a gray haze. She had to wake up. Had to get up and go. She couldn’t keep that person waiting.
The thought came and she asked herself: Who?
Who was it? Even she had no answer for herself.
First, she forced her eyelids open. Yellow light entered her vision. It was the glow of a paper lantern. It lay rolling near her face, probably the one she had dropped. By some small mercy, no oil had spilled, and the flame hadn’t caught the paper bag or anything else.
She tried to sit up.
Pain bloomed everywhere. She must have taken quite a blow to her body. The ache in her head was the worst of all; she had hit it hard. Was that why everything felt so foggy, her memories so muddled?
“What… happened…?”
Something was clutched in her hand. A short dagger with flame-shaped decorations on the hilt. That, she remembered. She remembered the three-leaf crest on the lantern too.
She took the lantern in her other hand and, with effort, pushed herself to her feet.
“…It’s so dark.”
Mist-hazed blackness stretched without limit above and to either side.
She was standing on a roofed corridor with a gabled roof.
Vivid vermilion-painted railings and hanging lanterns whose carved shades threw intricate shadows. The light beckoned onward into the gloom.
Where did this corridor lead? Was it all right to go farther?
Why had she come here in the first place? What was she supposed to do?
Maybe seeing something would jog her memory, so she started walking.
The floorboards beneath her feet were black-polished by centuries of shadow, the entire corridor steeped in ancient, solemn air. All around was a pond whose surface drank the night, and black as pooled ink. Even in such darkness, there should be life, yet when she leaned over the railing, extending the lantern toward the water to illuminate it; there was no sign of it, not even a flicker of scale or a single ripple. Feeling as though she had done something utterly pointless, she resumed walking with a dull sense of disappointment.
Then it came.
“Hinako…”
A human voice, calling her name.
“Hinako…”
It drifted from afar yet seemed to fall from above, or rise from below—directionless, disorienting, as though the sound itself mocked the ear.
“…Sakuko…? Is that you, Sakuko?”
No answer, yet she knew the voice.
Languid and loose, drawn-out and eerily slow but Sakuko sometimes spoke like this when she was joking around.
“Over here, Hinako…”
Was it trying to lead her somewhere?
At a time like this, of all places?
She had no idea. No idea at all.
But if someone was calling her, it must be because they wanted her to come. If she was being called, then she should go.
Because if she didn’t—
—they would only keep calling her anyway.
A traitor.
“Hinakooo! This way, this way.”
“Come on, it's this way.”
“Not there.”
“Come on, over here~”
Hinako turned her toes toward the sound again and again, letting it pull her forward like a thread through the dark. She followed its guidance, yet blind obedience felt perilous.
Something else was prowling through these corridors.
When the pale thing first lurched from around a corner she had thought it a naked white-skinned woman crawling on all fours, until horrors shapened the sight. White, unnaturally so, as though it was coated in thick powder. A failed puppet of wood and bone; from the knees down its legs had been hacked away and replaced with knife blades driven into the stumps.
A grotesque thing.
It lurked in the shadows along the corridor, contorting its body into hideous postures reminiscent of praying mantises or cockroaches, then scuttled after her relentlessly with clack-clack-clack of steel on wood. Whenever she heard those footsteps, more of the same kind would emerge from the darkness, gleefully joining the chase. When they attacked, they lunged forward and performed a kicking motion, the knives aimed to shear her head from her shoulders.
And all the while Sakuko’s voice led her deliberately toward places where those monsters were hiding, cackling with glee.
“Hinako~ Hurry up and come~ Hurry, hurry~”
It happened again and again. She was chased around the corridor by several of these things, forced to flee into the various attached buildings that lined the walkway whenever she needed to shake them off. Most of those buildings were storehouses for ritual implements: offering tables, sake bottles, incense burners, candlesticks, rows of long chests filled with sacred items. Some structures were grander, solemn-looking that looked like the vault from earlier, always guarded by paired fox statues and hung with shrine curtains bearing the three-leaf crest.
“Hinako~ Are you still coming?”
The voice stirred things long sunk in the bottom of her mind. All of them concerned Sakuko.
She had often been taken by Sakuko to the Sennensugi Shrine; she had even been secretly shown inside the treasure hall once. Seeing these shrine-related objects must have stimulated those recollections.
Yet it felt strange.
The memories that resurfaced were not particularly old. Yet they had been buried so deep, teetered on the edge of being forgotten entirely. Until she heard this voice, she hadn’t even remembered Sakuko’s name.
Even now, bit by bit, the fragments continued to surface.
She remembered the five hundred yen she had lent her.
But each memory felt terribly fragile, as the moment she grasped it, the edges would began to slip away. Not because Sakuko or the events themselves were faint impressions, but because something was wrong with her.
She had been hazy for a long time.
The feeling she would get when she sat on her futon right after waking, drifting unsteadily between dream and reality. Was this also because she had hit her head?
Maybe that was why there were many other things she had almost forgotten.
Maybe that was why she didn’t even fully understand her own situation right now.
“…Sakuko?”
Hinako stopped. The guiding voice had fallen silent.
In its place came the sound of soft, hiccuping sobs.
Here the corridor’s roof ended, and an indigo sky looked directly down on her. Ahead lay a bridge. Vermilion railings lined with golden orb-shaped caps; countless floating lanterns bobbed on the surrounding pond, casting dim ghostly light. At the far end of the bridge stood a solemn tower gate. Closer, near the bridge’s entrance, a figure in white knelt with its back to her.
The sobbing came from that back.
Hic… hic…
The pained, gasping sobs pulled yet another distant memory from the depths.
During an elementary school seaside training camp, Sakuko had panicked. Right after lights-out, she started screaming and hyperventilating. In the unfamiliar environment, her fear of the dark had erupted into a full attack. That night they left the lights on; Hinako had stayed awake the whole night, holding her hand while she wept until dawn.
In a world of such absolute darkness, being alone must be terrifying and unbearable. That must be why she had been called here, Hinako thought as she crossed the bridge, her footsteps soft on the planks. Standing behind the trembling, crying back, just like that night at camp, she called the name.
“Sakuko…”
The sobs cut off sharp.
But the tears kept falling—plop, plop, plop—dripping from the bowed face onto the bridge planks, where they burst and spread. From over the bowed shoulder Hinako saw the tears: thick and white, viscous and trailing threads like pus. The hair, bound in twin tails, was matted with something white but she couldn't tell if it was grease or pus.
“You came.”
Sakuko said. She staggered to her feet.
Hinako stared in stunned silence at her back.
Sakuko was dressed as a shrine maiden. In her left hand she held a suzu bell with a handle; in her right, a golden shide paper streamer. The white chrysanthemum-patterned chihaya robe she wore for her sacred dances had been stained the color of clotted blood and pus.
“I came to help you, Hinako.”
She spoke with tender affection, then turned.
Her face had been plastered white, but rot had eaten deeper. Large sections had corroded and collapsed away. The lower jaw was gone entirely; around the exposed mouth cavity, wriggling feelers resembling centipede legs twitched.
“Sakuko… no…”
Seeing Hinako back away, Sakuko tilted her head. From what little remained of her face, white eyes filmed with grease stared at her.
“Where are you going?”
A length of chain slithered from her hand with a metallic jangle. At its end a sickle pendulum swung.
“Oh. So you are going to leave me behind after all.”
“No, Sakuko, I—”
“Traitor.”
She raised the suzu bell.
Shaaan—it rang.
Sakuko screamed.
A wail of anguish. A demon’s howl. A shriek of torment from the depths of hell.
Even changed beyond recognition, the thing before her was still Sakuko.
But the sound that came from her no longer belonged to anything human.
“Let’s run together… let’s cross the finish line together… Hinako.”
Raising the sickle high in an exaggerated arc, Sakuko spun, dropped low, and swept upward in the motion of harvesting rice. The dull gleam flashed; Hinako barely dodged, feeling the blade's wind grazing the tip of her nose. In the next instant the suzu bell thrust downward, brushing her shoulder as the wind pressure whipping her hair.
“Come with me.”
“Sakuko?! Why…”
Hinako drew the short dagger from her breast, unsheathing it and pointing the tip toward Sakuko. Why was she pointing a blade at her friend?
Sakuko moved with the graceful elegance of a kagura dancer—sickle swinging, bell thrusting. Each dodge was met with an immediate follow-up attack. This agility, this swift motion. This was not the clumsy girl who had hated gym class and been terrible at sports.
Hinako could do nothing but evade; even when openings appeared, the short dagger wouldn’t reach. So she used her voice.
“Why do we have to fight each other like this?!”
“Liar.”
“What did I lie about?”
“‘I’m scared of being abandoned by people.’”
“…What?”
“You remember when I told you that, right?”
“…When was that?”
“See? You forgot. You promised me, Hinako—‘I will never abandon you.’ But you’re a liar, you broke it.”
“I didn’t abandon you!”
“Oh really? What about the sports festival marathon?”
“Marathon…?”
“I begged you. I begged you to run with me, to not go ahead, to not leave me behind.”
“…What did I do…?”
“You left me behind! You ran!”
“That was…I was in the track club then… if I didn’t take it seriously I’d get yelled at…”
“Excuses.”
She swung the suzu bell wide—shaaan.
Behind Sakuko appeared a halo shaped like a Buddha’s aureole; it began to glow ominously.
A terrifying rumble like an earthquake filled Hinako’s head. Everything in sight plunged into red, as if she was being engulfed in flames, even the surrounding darkness burned crimson.
“Sakuko, stop this!”
“You want me to stop?”
The headache became unbearable, as Hinako clutched her head and froze. Sakuko hurled the sickle. Jara-rara-rara—the chain extended, the blade flying straight toward her. Hinako ducked, kicked off the ground, slipped under the chain, and lunged into Sakuko’s embrace.
“Nooooooo!!”
Sakuko screamed. The short dagger was buried in her chest. It slipped from her writhing grasp and slid across the bridge planks back to Hinako’s feet.
“It huuuuurts!!! What are you doing, Hinako!!”
“Shut up! It hurts me too!”
Hinako snatched up the dagger and readied it again.
Come to think of it, she could not remember ever fighting with Sakuko before. Had Sakuko ever fought anyone? Probably not. She hated confrontation, and shrank from resisting. So why was she laying her emotions bare like this now?
Sakuko released the bell and sickle chain, then lunged with an animalistic roar, wrapping Hinako in a crushing embrace. Incredible strength squeezed the breath from her lungs; her bones creaked. This was not the frail Sakuko she knew.
“Dodge this.” Sakuko’s pus-covered face was right in front of her. “Just like you tried to leave me… just like you tried to leave me all alone…”
Was this her fault? Her crime? Had Sakuko ended up like this because she was truly a traitor?
“Hinako, stop already.”
“…What?”
“You’re not supposed to be here right now. This isn’t the place for you yet.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“ I know… I know you want nothing more than to not be here…”
“…What don’t I want?”
“Don’t hate yourself. If you were suffering, you should have told me. You were in pain, weren’t you?”
“Sakuko, what are you talking about?! I’m not suffering, I’m not in pain—”
“Don’t you actually want to go back? Aren’t you lonely?”
“I don’t feel that way at all.”
“Traitor. Fine. Then let’s stay together like this.”
The embrace became an iron vine. If she relaxed even a fraction, her bones would shatter. She desperately fought the crushing force, and managed to wrench her left arm free, and plunged the short dagger into Sakuko’s neck.
A blood-curdling scream shook the air.
Sakuko clutched her throat and collapsed.
Freed, Hinako dropped, her knees buckling and her breath gasping for air. Only their ragged breathing echoed across the bridge.
Suddenly Sakuko lifted her face, snatched up the suzu bell, and charged with a scream.
There was nowhere left to run, for Hinako's strength completly deserted her.
The bell descended toward her unprotected head. She squeezed her eyes shut.
The impact came from an unexpected direction. Something slammed into her from the side; her vision blurred violently and a floating sensation seized her as the world tilted in weightless vertigo. If I’m floating, then I’ll fall, she thought in an instant, and waited for the crash.
But strong arms wrapped around her back, pulling her head close, cushioning the fall. Most of the impact was absorbed by whoever held her.
In that moment, Hinako smelled a sweet fragrance. That scent…
“Are you hurt?”
A voice descended, calm as clear water and out of place in this madness.
“Yes!” she answered reflexively, then looked up.
The face of the fox-masked man was close. Behind him stood Sakuko, raising the suzu bell again.
“Ah—”
She opened her mouth to warn him, but before the words came out, the fox-masked man threw himself over her.
Sakuko whose voice no longer resembled her, screamed as she brought the bell down again and again on his back.
“Stop!” Hinako cried, but her voice was drowned by a bestial roar. Each strike made the man’s body shudder violently. All Hinako could do was stare at his gritted-teeth expression through the mask.
Noticing her gaze, he softened the line of his mouth.
“Fear not. This is nothing to fret over.”
With an especially hideous shriek, Sakuko raised the bell once more. The man turned, thrust his open palm toward her in a pushing gesture. Sakuko staggered as though struck by an invisible force. He brought his two fingers together, index and middle extended and pressed together, in front of his own mask.
"Heed my command as law and yield to me!!"
He thrust the fingers toward Sakuko. Her beast-like screaming and movement stopped instantly. He swept his hand in a dismissing motion.
"Begone!!"
Silence flooded the bridge.
Sakuko was gone.
The masked man steadied his breathing and lowered his arm.
"How foolish of an evil spirit to dare set its foot here."
“…What was that...?”
He stood and looked toward where Sakuko had been.
“That was the impurity that clung to you.”
“Impurity…”
Hinako remembered. Right after entering the corridor's entrance, something had attacked her. Was that the impurity? Had it followed her in? Then the thing here hadn’t been Sakuko, but it had only worn her form.
"It is gone. It will haunt you no more. Rest assured, you are safe now."
She placed her hand in the one he offered.
He helped her to her feet.
"To live in this world… is to walk amidst impurities. But we can ward them off."
Hinako gazed into the eyes behind the mask. They had been sharp and fierce earlier; now they were gentle once more. This man had shielded her with his own body.
To think such a person existed.
At first she had known nothing and feared everything. Now that fear was gone.
“Now, let us go.”
The fox-masked man walked toward the tower gate, and Hinako followed after.
The gatehouse passed behind them, and they stepped onto a path of raked white gravel and ancient flagstones. The air turned colder still, sharp enough to bite the lungs.
The man lifted his face to the starless dark above.
“From here onward is sacred ground. Neither I nor you may bring impurity inside.” He lowered his gaze to Hinako. “Here we cleanse it away.”
Hinako nodded.
A temizuya pavilion stood ahead, lit by twin hanging lanterns whose flames burn steady and pale. Above the stone basin, a single fox statue gazed toward them with a solemn expression.
The fox-masked man bowed once, then traced swift, precise characters in the air with his right hand. Immediately, water began to fill the basin before their eyes.
With reverent movements he took the ladle in his right hand, scooped water from the basin and poured it over his left hand. He switched the ladle to his left, poured over his right. Switching it back to his right, he collected a small amount of water in his left palm, rinsed his mouth with it, and quietly spat it onto the ground. With the remaining water in the ladle he cleansed his left hand once more. Finally, he held the ladle upright with both hands and used the last drops to purify the handle.
Every motion flowed with graceful, almost liquid beauty.
He turned to Hinako.
“Now, you as well.”
“…Yes.”
Hinako stepped forward hesitantly and bowed deeply. A sound like boiling broth reached her ears. She looked up with a start.
The basin no longer held water.
White-hot molten iron seethed within it, bubbling and spitting, throwing off heat that scorched her face even from where she stood.
“No… no, I—”
She shook her head violently, backing away.
"Calm yourself. It is but water." the masked man said, voice calm as still pond. He held out the laddle to her.
The basin was clear again—ordinary water, cold and transparent. Yet what she had just seen could not have been an illusion. The memory of that searing glow lingered on her skin; the bubbling sound still echoed in her ears; afterimages of blinding light seared in her vision and danced behind her lids.
But he said it was only water. Then it must be only water.
She scooped water with the ladle and began the purification.
The bitter cold bit deep, almost pleasant after the heat.
She collected some in her left palm and brought it to her mouth.
“Ugh—”
Hinako’s eyes flew wide open. She clapped a hand over her mouth. What spilled between her fingers dripped to the ground and hissed—.
Inside the basin, the molten iron danced again and raged in white heat. The searing light carved deep, casting jagged shadows across the fox statue’s face and making its carved eyes seem to follow her.
Inside Hinako’s mouth, a small hell had been born.
Her tongue charred, hardened, and shriveled. Her gums melted away, teeth loosened and scattered and clattered against one another inside the ruined cavity. The soft palate sloughed off in ragged pieces. Every mucous membrane in her mouth tore and ruptured. A stench of things that should never burn filled her nasal cavity.
“Nn… nnh… nnnnnn—”
She groaned and moaned and writhed. Her eyes bulged, and her tears streamed.
Yet the fox-masked man did not move a muscle, did not speak a single word. He simply watched her intently, steadily, without the slightest change in expression.
Just before consciousness slipped away, Hinako saw it.
Leaning against one of the temizuya’s pillars sat a celluloid doll. On the very pillar her back rested against, the words carved were:
Don’t trust the fox man.
The sound of hurried footsteps on the boards snapped her back to consciousness.
Shu came pounding down the stairs, his face pale and wild with alarm.
From the low angle of her vision, she realized she had fallen from the stairs right in front of her.
“Hinako! Hey! Wake up!”
“I’m… fine…”
Shu lifted her into his arms. She managed the words even as her voice scraped raw in her throat, her words came out in terrible hoarse.
“You klutz. You slipped and fell right down the stairs,” Rinko said mockingly as she descended after him.
She really had been clumsy. With a long journey ahead, getting injured now would only slow all of them down. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like she’d twisted anything.
“…Your arm, what happened?”
At Shu’s words, Hinako noticed her right sleeve was completely gone, torn off from the shoulder; her arm bare in the dim light.
“I must have… caught it on something and ripped it…”
She glanced around as she spoke, but the missing sleeve was nowhere to be found.
“Let me see.”
Shu took her arm with the careful touch of someone who had done this many times before. He turned it this way and the other, inspecting for cuts and bruises, and anything hidden. Much like a doctor. In his case, calling him one wasn’t far off. His family had been pharmacists going back to his grandmother’s generation; until a proper clinic opened in Ebisugaoka, the Iwai household had been the town’s de facto physicians. Even as a child, Shu was called “Professor Horticulture” for his encyclopedic knowledge of flowers and herbs, most of it taught by his grandmother. Once he could read on his own, he studied medicinal plants and pharmacology independently, eventually amassing knowledge that rivaled any pharmacist. Now he was essentially Hinako’s personal physician in all but name, even compounding remedies for her frequent headaches.
“Doesn’t look like anything serious from what I can see. Does it hurt at all?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Good,” Rinko said, returning from the kitchen with the first-aid kit. After a quick glance at the two of them, she sat on the raised wooden step at the entrance, opened her shoulder bag, and began stuffing in bandages, adhesive plasters, iodine tincture, and a pack of seal-brand stomach medicine from the kit.
Hinako looked around.
Just past the stairs was the earthen-floored entryway. Beyond that lay the raised wooden floor with a large cauldron and stove; across from it was the kitchen entrance.
Nothing seemed out of place. There was nothing.
And yet something nagged at her.
Right before she fell down the stairs, she had noticed something was wrong.
That was probably why her attention had lapsed and she slipped. The shock of the fall had erased whatever the wrong had been.
When she had descended the stairs, the view was just the entryway and kitchen entrance. She checked again and again, but nothing looked different. If it had been so easy to forget, perhaps it had been nothing worth remembering. Yet, the feeling lingered, murky and unpleasant all the same.
She lifted her gaze to the stairs.
Maybe something had been on the landing? But nothing caught her eye. Perhaps the memory of seeing something was itself mistaken.
Still unsatisfied, a fleeting image flashed through her mind.
From the landing, something looking down at her—a scarecrow-like figure frozen in a crucified pose.
And the face of that scarecrow—
“What’s wrong, partner?”
Shu was watching her with worried eyes.
“It's nothing.”
She had almost grasped it—something important—but it slipped away at the last second. She gave up trying to recall it. There was no time to waste standing still over something like this.
Rinko’s preparations seemed finished. She sat on the raised step, staring at them with unblinking eyes. Hinako picked up the fallen iron pipe and stood.
"Let’s go. There’s no time to waste."
“Right.” Shu stood too, bat in hand. “Our target is my house. We’ll take the backroad, mountain, then the prefectural road.”
“You’re going to protect me, right?” Rinko’s voice turned sweet, almost singsong. Then she shot a sidelong glance at Hinako. “I’m not strong like some people.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Stay close to me.”
Shu turned toward Hinako and spoke the words he had repeated since they were children.
“Partner, I’m counting on you.”
Hinako nodded.
“Yeah. Rear guard’s mine.”
The plan was to move west along the northern mountain edge of the farmland district, gradually veering south to secure a safe route through the town center, then head straight for Shu’s house from there.
The red plants spread with terrifying vigor, yet the fog was proving to match in its ferociousness and menace. What had once crept low along the ground now thickened and rose in heavy banks. Massive clumps of fog, large enough to swallow a person whole, drifted about like living creatures. A moment’s carelessness, and you’d be engulfed. Once the mist latched onto someone, it clung to their every movement, robbing them of sight, leading them astray, hiding their companions from view until they were completely alone. Then it carried them away to some unknown place. Perhaps the true nature of kamikakushi—spirited away—was something like this.
In such thick fog, they had to stay close enough not to lose sight of each other’s backs. But they also had to consider the risk of friendly fire during sudden monster encounters, so they agreed to keep just enough distance that fingertips could still touch if arms were outstretched. Rinko, however, stuck to Shu like glue, chattering endlessly about trivial things with no sense of tension. Shu looked mildly troubled by it. Rinko also made her displeasure plained whenever Hinako came too close, so Hinako reluctantly kept a little distance behind the pair, following while half-listening to their conversation and staying alert.
“By the way, Shu… how much longer are you gonna keep up this “partner” routine with Hinako?”
This was the first time Hinako’s name had come up in Rinko’s line of questioning.
“How long…? I call her partner because she’s my partner.”
“Calling someone ‘partner’ sounds like something elementary-school boys do.”
Shu gave an awkward laugh.
“I've never treated her like a girl.”
“Yeah. Now that you mention it, never felt like I was being treated like one either.” A dry chuckle escaped Hinako as she said it.
Rinko turned with a chilly expression and gave a small snort.
“I see. So that’s why, whenever you talk to Shu, you sound kinda manly.”
“Well… some of it is just old habit that never quite went away, I guess…”
Truth was, if she completely dropped it, the relationship between her and Shu might change in some ways, and that thought made her uneasy. From childhood, the world around her had constantly demanded she distinguish between boys and girls, but Hinako had always found every such reminders repellent. The very idea of having to be conscious of someone’s gender felt profoundly warped and unnatural to her.
"We’ve been hanging out with each other since we were little kids." Shu said
“Hmm.” Rinko sounded unimpressed.
"Huh… So that’s why you two didn’t get into a relationship?"
“Wha—” Shu visibly flustered. “N-now’s not the time for that kind of talk—we should be thinking about what happens after we escape—”
He cut himself off abruptly, immediately raising his bat and pulling Rinko behind him.
“Partner, did you hear that?”
“Yeah.”
Hinako nodded, gripping her iron pipe and scanning the surroundings.
“A roar. Some huge beast.”
They were in one of the narrow back alleys etched between houses—rear entrances and kitchens facing each other across the passage. The red blooms had spread recklessly into every corner of town, but areas hemmed in by physical obstacles were still slower to be overtaken. Places with fewer plants tended to have fewer monsters. The dense clusters of buildings still contained quite a few such gaps. Shu had keenly spotted and used those paths, threading their way here without having to combat any monsters.
“I’ve never heard anything make a sound like that,” Shu said.
“Me neither.”
Neither the humanoid monsters nor the scarecrow ones had made any noise. The only other possibility was the large, vessel-encased monster that had appeared with the initial outbreak and relentlessly pursued them but its cries had been much higher-pitched. The one they heard carried the heavy, low resonance of a large predatory beast.
—and as they stayed on guard, it came again.
“It's probably from Chizuruya,” Hinako said.
Shu’s face soured.
“That’s bad.”
Their route had been west from the street in front of Chizuruya toward Shu’s house.
“Guess we have no choice but to force our way through.”
Hinako let out a short sigh. Rinko, still clinging to Shu’s back, went pale.
“I can’t fight, you know.”
“Stay behind me, Rinko.”
They slipped into an even narrower side path on the left side of the alley—more of a gap between buildings than an actual passage—and crouched behind a lattice fence to hide.
The three of them fell silent.
This street was, by far, the worst they had seen yet.
Red vines and tendrils wrapped and stained every surface: wooden fences, storm shutters, hanging laundry, apple crates, bicycles. Everything in sight.
The surrounding houses were completely overtaken by the red blooms. They had forced their way into gaps around doors, windows, and lattices, climbed up eaves and rain gutters, and layered flowers and leaves across the outer walls in scale-like patterns. Between the houses, crimson vines snaked like power lines, swaying eerily up and down even without wind.
Chizuruya, the old hangout that had once been the children’s social hub, was unrecognizable. It looked like something covered in half-dried scabs, grotesquely ruined. Near the entrance, enormous sack-like masses resembling internal organs repeatedly inflated and deflated in ominous rhythm. Thick tubes made of fused vines and tendrils extended from the roof and side walls, writhing as they connected to neighboring buildings—like arteries feeding into the heart that was Chizuruya. The bench where they had once held their strategy meeting was now occupied by an unnaturally large demonic flower, spreading its petals like a courtesan in full display.
From inside Chizuruya emerged humanoid monsters. Two then three shambled out one after another. Two of them had half their bodies densely covered in virulent red blossoms.
They were trampling on Sakuko's resting place. Hinako fought down the fierce urge to charge out right then and smash them all to pieces with her iron pipe.
Whenever one touched a wall or utility pole, the plants growing from their bodies extended roots into the contact point and bloomed there.
They are planting
A tremor shook the ground.
At regular intervals, heavy vibrations rolled through. Every glass sliding door in Chizuruya and the surrounding houses rattled in unison. From the opposite direction the three had been watching, something enormous appeared.
A mass roughly the size of an elephant they had once seen at the zoo. The tremors came from its footsteps. The roaring had been this thing too.
The thing was a chaotic riot of vivid reds: scarlet, rustic, pale-peach and bone white. The mass was a squat, grotesque meatball-like creature assembled from gathered plants and viscera. Short arm-like protrusions and thick legs carried its bulk. A malignant tumor born in this warped town. From one arm sprouted a giant blade like a handle-less kitchen knife; with it, the creature hacked off the plants growing on its own body. The severed pieces took root where they fell, blooming into new aberrant flowers.
“So that’s how they’re spreading these disgusting plants… It's swallowing the whole town,” Hinako muttered.
“There’s even something like that…? This town is already…” Rinko began despairingly, then gagged—“Ugh”—and pressed a hand to her mouth.
“There are too many of them... What do we do, Shu?”
“We'll go around. Cutting straight through town in this state is way too dangerous.” After a moment’s thought, Shu said "“—Let’s head for the middle school instead. From there we can take the mountain path. It's gonna take us a while, but we can avoid town. Alright then, let’s move.”
Shu started back the way they had come, as Rinko hurried after him. Hinako turned to follow, then glanced back at the giant mass one last time.
It lumbered along arrogantly. The humanoids planting nearby seemed to annoy it; it swatted them aside and crushed them underfoot with its bladed arm. Even as they writhed and crawled, still trying to plant. The sight of them was almost pitiable and infuriating. It faintly reminded Hinako of someone she knew well.
The giant mass growled in displeasure, shoving and striking at the other humanoids as though they were nuisances. Hinako knew that kind of rough, violent behavior all too well. After all, she had argued with someone like that just this morning. To think even monsters acted the same way—it was almost laughable.
The giant mass half-turned, facing in Hinako’s direction.
She couldn’t tell where its eyes were, but she felt their gaze lock onto her.
“Don’t look. Don’t look…”
The creature slowly raised its enormous blade. Then the center of its body split wide open sideways like a mouth and unleashed a thunderous roar.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ATTITUDE?!”
In that instant, the figure overlapped with him.
Her father had been a tyrant.
A drunkard and a brute, quick with his fists and quicker with thrown objects. Whenever something displeased him, he threw things at her mother. The house’s pillars and tatami mats were scarred with countless marks from his projectiles. From early childhood, Hinako had lived in constant fear of him. His shouting made her tremble uncontrollably; his glare paralyzed her. The more she cowered, the angrier he became. As she grew older fear was joined by loathing and gave way to hatred, and hatred to defiance. Arguments became frequent. Objects once thrown only at her mother began to fly at her too.
One day they had a furious argument. She no longer remembered why.
What happened next was burned so vividly into her memory that everything else faded around it.
He had thrown a knife at her.
A tuna-filleting knife her father had once used when he dreamed of opening a restaurant, a dream long dead. When it embedded itself deep in the tatami at her feet, Hinako’s breathing grew ragged; her heart pounded wildly. In her mind she saw it buried in her own face, her own chest.
She imagined her father doing that to his own child.
Terror overwhelmed her.
The raging man in front of her—the one she called father—looked like a terrifying monster. She could neither fight nor flee, Hinako simply stood rooted to dirt and frozen.
“Partner, let’s go!” Shu’s voice snapped her back.
His silhouette and Rinko’s waited in the fog of the narrow passage.
Hinako raised a hand in acknowledgment.
The giant still watched her. Its bulk could never fit down this alley; it made no move to pursue. Perhaps it had something to say. Perhaps it had no thoughts at all—only that endless, unblinking stare. It watched until she turned away and vanished into the mist.
They followed the southern rim of town through the Ebisugawa district, skirting west toward the mountain path’s entrance. Even here the red plants struggled against concrete; the degree of encroachment here hadn’t changed much since they had passed through earlier. Still, little by little, red was bleeding into the landscape. When she happened to glance up, she spotted three blood-colored flowers blooming inconspicuously among the rust on a corrugated tin wall.
The fog, unlike the plants, respected no barriers. It poured in from every direction, thick and shameless. This district had many houses perched atop retaining walls, the terrain was full of sharp elevation changes, making the fog’s density wildly uneven. Low places became reservoirs, where mists became stagnant seas of white and visibility dropped to nothing. Fogs was constantly replenished by fresh influxes, creating pockets of freakishly thick concentration. The watercourse was the worst among them; fog pooled thick along its banks until walking felt like plunging through a raging blizzard of milk.
In the midst of that blinding whiteness, Hinako and the others were suddenly surrounded by an uncountable number of humanoid monsters and forced to scatter. Though there were iron railings, the risk of falling into the canal remained. Crouching low, feeling for secure footing with the soles of their shoes, they groped through the fog in search of anywhere to hide.
She groped through the murk until her fingers found rough wood. It seemed to be a small material storage shed. She slipped inside and crouched, decided to wait the worst to pass. After a while, when she sensed the presences outside had faded, she emerged. In a voice barely a breath and too quiet for the monsters to hear, she called for Shu and Rinko.
No answer came back through the fog.
That wasn’t a problem in itself. The rule held: when separated, do not search for each other, and head straight to the prearranged destination. One of the ironclad disciplines of their old space army unit. All she had to do now was make for the mountain path entrance.
But another problem had already arrived.
“—ow…, not now…”
A headache.
Deep inside her skull, a throbbing pulse had begun.
It was not yet severe, but she had that sick premonition of violent waves coming soon.
The frequency of her headaches had been steadily increasing. Before, it had been three or four times a week, at a point which already worried Shu, but in the past week alone, the attacks had come almost every day. This morning alone marked the third episode, and it wasn’t even past noon.
She slipped her fingers into her pocket to reach for the “cold medicine” box.
Shu had forbidden overuse. One day, three doses. If the pain forced her past that limit, wait at least five hours between extras. She could not take more than four total in a single day.
Taking one now would mean swallowing nearly a full day’s worth when only three or four hours had passed since the last.
The medicine was gradually losing its edge—
Over-the-counter painkillers had stopped working early on. When she consulted Shu, he explained that her body had built up tolerance. Soon after, she stopped using commercial drugs altogether, and Shu began compounding medicine tailored specifically to her. Ever since, he irregularly handed her red capsules packed inside empty “cold medicine” boxes. Shu had carefully selected the agents based on her living environment, constitution, and everything else, adjusting the formula so it placed the least possible burden on her body.
“If getting rid of your pain and suffering is something I can do, then I’ll do anything. I’ll always be there for you. So you hang in there too, partner.”
The medicine Shu made for her was incomparably more effective than anything over-the-counter. Within five minutes of taking it, the headache would vanish, as though it had never existed. She had rejoiced, thinking the torment was finally over, only for the duration of relief to slowly shorten, like with the commercial drugs.
Tolerance had developed to this one too.
In the end, this pain might be hers forever. Hinako had half-resigned herself to that fate—
But recently, she had noticed a change in the scent of the capsules Shu compounded. When she placed one on her tongue, a faint, sweet peach-like fragrance drifted through her nose.
How pathetic she felt. She hadn’t done anything herself, yet she had been ready to give up.
But Shu hadn’t given up. Day after day, he searched, experimented, and struggled to find a medicine that would finally free her from the pain.
“I have to keep trying too.”
She could still endure it.
Quietly, she withdrew her hand from her pocket.
The path climbed steadily west from the Ebisugawa district, following the old mountain road that once served as the primary route over the ridge.
Around Ebisugaoka the trails had suffered badly in the typhoon several years back, with landslides swallowing whole sections, leaving them impassable. However, there were still “walkable” sections where stone paving had been laid and stairs built into the slopes. These routes local schoolchildren would usually use as commuting paths.
The red plants had not claimed this ground as fiercely as the town below. Red vines appeared sparsely, but without any real momentum of growth. Fog was present, but unlike the monstrous fog that had appeared in the town, this seemed to be ordinary mountain fog.
After walking for a while, a small wooden two-story school building topped with a thatched roof came into view.
Ebisugaoka Middle School.
The school that had opened attached to Ebisugaoka Elementary shortly after the war under the new postwar education system, later renamed, and the place where Hinako and the others had once studied.
“Did the two of them make it?” she murmured.
The entrance to the mountain path they were aiming for was right next to the school’s back gate. If Shu and Rinko had arrived first, they should be waiting there.
Her head still felt heavy with the lingering ache, but fortunately it hadn’t worsened since earlier and had settled somewhat. A faint ache behind the teeth, nothing more. If she could endure without taking the medicine, that would be for the best.
There stood the familiar sawtooth oak tree. She had gathered acorns under its shade countless times as a child. Turn left at the tree and the rear gate would appear.
“I don’t know.”
It was Shu’s voice.
“You’re lying, aren’t you, Shu…?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
Were they arguing?
It suddenly felt awkward to step out, so Hinako stopped in the shadow of the oak.
"You really think you can fool Hinako? Wake up already. Hinako is already—"
"Cut it out. I don’t wanna talk about that right now…"
It was a heavy conversation. The tone alone made that clear. Worse, it seemed to concern her, and that alone made it even harder for Hinako to step out of the oak's shadow.
"I’m not gonna cut it out. I’m gonna keep bridging it up until you snap back to reality."
“I said knock it off. Seriously. It doesn’t matter what happens to me!”
“Then what does?”
“Hinako matters more than me.”
A blatantly loud sigh came from Rinko.
“Hinako is lost right now. She’s suffering. I can’t just abandon my partner.”
“How long are you going to keep playing this ‘partner’ game? You don’t have a partner anymore, Shu.”
“That’s not what I mean. I…”
“You what?”
“I…”
Had Shu even spoken in such a frail, trembling voice before? At least Hinako couldn’t remember a single time.
“You won’t say it? You can’t, can you? Then I’ll say it for you. Because you don’t understand, Shu.”
“That's enough, Rinko.”
“Hinako—”
“Just stop!”
“Hinako is dead.”
Hinako is dead.
The words landed like stones in still water.
The ache in her head grew a little stronger.
Silence stretched before a long, shuddering breath broke the quiet.
“She’s not the Hinako you knew. She’s gone. She’s living a better life in another world. The Hinako Shimizu you knew doesn’t exist anymore.”
The moment Rinko declared it with absolute certainty, Hinako stepped out from the shadow of the oak tree. An acorn cracked under her foot. Both Shu and Rinko noticed and froze, expressions hardening.
"Oh, partner. What took you so long?" Shu said.
“Sorry. I kept you waiting, both of you.”
"It's fine,” Rinko said lightly. “We only just got here ourselves. Right, Shu?”
Shu gave an ambiguous nod, his face clouded with complicated emotion.
“I see. So, let’s keep moving.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Shu said, his expression turning grim.
A chain-link fence surrounded the back of the school building. Behind Shu stood a metal gate, the very entrance to the mountain path they were aiming for, but thick chains wrapped around it, secured with a heavy padlock. And to top it off, barbed wire had been neatly coiled along the top of the fence.
A tin sign hung beside the gate:
NO TRESPASSING – DANGER! Children must not enter the mountain – Principal
“It's locked...There never was a lock here though....”
Back when the other girls excluded her from their groups, Hinako remembered playing on this very mountain path ahead.
“There were landslides and collapses all over the place after that typhoon, remember? That’s why. The government survey even said the bedrock under Ebisugaoka’s mountains is weak.” Shu said.
“So what do we do?”
Shu made a face that said isn’t it obvious?
“We go borrow the key.”
He looked up at the school building.
The school lay silent, empty of footsteps but full of echoes. How long had it been since she walked these halls without a trace of chaos? Perhaps the last time was when Sakuko had forgotten something in the classroom and dragged her along after hours, through the dim school corridors bathed in dusk.
With Shu in the lead, they cautiously checked for any sign of monsters before entering the building through the back door. Inside the school, there was almost no trace of the red plants’ encroachment. The floorboards, worn smooth and darkened from years of footsteps. The pale, chilly sunlight filtering through the glass sliding doors into the corridor. Such ordinary scenes stirred distant, nostalgic memories.
In front of the classroom door labeled 1st Grade Elementary, Shu paused. After exchanging glances with Hinako then Rinko, he readied his bat, gripped the handles of the double sliding doors, and slowly opened them with care.
A quick sweep of the room. Empty desks, chairs neatly aligned, blackboard still bearing faint traces of yesterday’s lessons. No monsters. Shu exhaled, as he signaled, “All clear.”
"I can’t… I need to take a break."
The moment they entered, Rinko staggered forward and collapsed face-first onto the nearest desk. The classroom was filled with the faint scent of white chalk and pencil shavings.
“You can take a rest, partner. I’ll go see if I can find the key.”
As Shu turned to leave the classroom,
“Wait?! No way—” Rinko jerked her head up from the desk with a start. “ I want you by my side, Shu! I need you here! Please stay with me! Please... I’ll be so scared and lonely…”
“No, I mean, even without me here, Hin—”
With a loud scrape of the chair, Rinko stood up, rushed over, and clung tightly to Shu’s arm.
“Please, stay with me. Okay?”
Hinako picked up the iron pipe she had momentarily set on the desk.
“You should rest up too. I’ll go find the key.”
“Wait— I should be the one—”
“Yeah, exactly,” Rinko cut in, interrupting Shu. “You’ve been leading the way and protecting us the whole time, Shu. You should rest at least once in a while. Hinako has just been tagging along behind us, she still has plenty of energy left.”
“Hey, what do you mean she just tagged along?”
Scolded, Rinko wilted a little, but her eyes clearly said she hadn’t said anything wrong.
“Don’t worry about it, I don't mind. You two just stay here and rest. I’ll be back..”
Shu started to step forward as if he wanted to say something, but Rinko immediately grabbed his arm and held him back.
“I’ll be right back once I find it.”
With that, she slid the door shut behind her with a firm shut.
A muffled voice came through the door, and she could hear Rinko saying something, but the words were muffled and hard to make out. However, the tone was strangely sweet and pleading.
“Right, then.”
Iron pipe in hand, she began walking through the school that had once been her place of learning.
Her next destination is the staff room, where most of the school-related keys were kept. Nowhere else made sense. The school building had elementary classrooms on the first floor, along with the staff room, a storage area for staff, and club locker rooms. The second floor held middle school classrooms, plus special rooms like the science lab and art room.
If the key turned up quickly, this round trip would take no more than five minutes.
Yet she did not hurry nor have any intention to.
Hinako knew the truth of it. To Rinko's eyes, she was an intruder.
The hostility had been plain from the first. She was not so dull as to miss it. Even now Rinko might be wishing her to never come back, all so she could have Shu to herself in the quiet classroom.
"I like Shu, you know."
Rinko herself had confessed to her once before.
"Are you and Shu currently dating?"
She had asked another time, half-teasing, half-curious.
Hinako had clearly told her: they weren't in that kind of relationship, and she didn't have those kinds of feelings. On top of that, she had added that she didn't really understand romance very well, but she would cheer them on. The matter was at an end, she had thought it so.
Only some time later, she heard a rumor Rinko was badmouthing her behind her back.
Hinako could not understand why.
She had clearly said she had no such relationship with Shu, even giving her support. So why did Rinko have to hate her?
From that day forward it had felt as though a triangle had been drawn around Shu, with Hinako and Rinko at the points, pulling in opposite directions.
Rinko wanted her gone, no doubt. If there was no affection, then keep away. But to Hinako, Shu was her precious friend, her partner. That bond she would not sever.
"That's why I don't like talk about boys, girls... that sort of thing."
It wasn't exactly considerate toward Rinko.
At most, she planned to take her time going and coming back slowly.
Her eyes drifted to the wall.
Children's calligraphy practice sheets and crayon drawings were posted there.
A picture of two girls sitting atop a large red torii gate. Another of stick-figure people, made of circles and lines, were walking toward a mountain with countless torii gates standing in rows. A drawing of boys and girls holding hands but yet the faces of two children were scribbled over in red, with a red torii drawn above their heads.
Strange pictures. Honestly, they were creepy. Every single one featured a torii gate, but what even was the theme?
A soft rustle at her feet, compelling her to look down.
"—A fox?"
It was a fox folded from red paper lay beside her shoe.
Guchikuyo, a grudge offering.
One of the charms that swept the middle school like fever.
You wrote a complaint or grievances you couldn't tell anyone on a piece of paper, then folded it into a fox shape. If you left it somewhere no one would find it, your pent-up frustration would supposedly clear away. If someone happened to comes across another's grievances, reading it aloud would offer it solace but no matter what was written, you were supposed to keep it to yourself and never tell a single soul. There was also a nasty form of bullying where some kids would wrote the name of someone they hated and made sure to put it in a place they would see it.
"Nostalgic. Are the kids really still doing this?"
She picked it up and unfolded the fox.
You're dead, Hinako.
She immediately threw the paper away.
The red sheet fluttered through the air and landed among the red blossoms that now carpeted the floor.
She jerked her head up.
The corridors inside the school had completely changed.
Hallway, walls, and ceilings. Everything was overgrown with that loathsome plant. Mist poured in from the far end of the corridor. Within the vigorously swirling, overlapping fog, human silhouettes appeared, striking poses like avant-garde art.
The fluorescent lights reflected off the mist, illuminating it like a spotlight.
A girl in a sailor uniform. It was one of those scarecrow monsters.
Not one or two but countless shadowy figures, each in bizarre, meaningless poses, stretched back into the depths of the fog.
I have to warn Shu and Rinko.
Hinako spun 180 degrees on her heel to head back to the classroom where the two were waiting.
She froze on the spot.
What lay ahead was no longer the corridor lined with elementary classrooms she had just walked through.
The rear entrance passage that should have been there was gone. In its place stretched an endlessly long hallway that had not existed moments ago, thick with blooming red plants gone mad. Scarecrows in school uniforms struck grotesque, otherworldly poses, as though capturing frozen scenes from their school lives.
Multiple footsteps approached, treading on the grass.
Reflexively, Hinako ran.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a poster on the wall:
No running in the halls.
These scarecrow things had a habit: they would only move when unobserved. Look away or turn back, they would pursue. Have them remained in field of vision, they stayed motionless like wooden puppets. They could be easily pushed past or knocked down. Yet, they would rise again when unseen, and their pursue renewed. That was how their numbers kept growing.
She almost passed the ascending staircase on her right, noticed it at the last second, kicked off the floor with her heel to pivot instantly, and charged up without slowing—taking the steps two at a time.
The second floor was just as grotesque as the first: the same red blooming infestation, tainting the halls with the rotten guts of a monster.
A classroom door stood open. She dove inside and slammed it shut immidiately, bracing her shoulder against the wood.
There was nothing tried to force its way in. The scarecrow monsters made no attempt to force the door or ram against it. She held the position a little longer as she scanned the room.
It was empty, there was nothing in here with her.
She slid down the door until she sat on the floor.
Outside the windows, red vines and blossoms smothered the glass. Weak daylight filtered through in bloody hues, turning the classroom dim and crimson.
"Wait... this place..."
The neatly aligned desks and chairs cast sharp-angled shadows. Hinako went to the window and looked down at the desktop of the rearmost seat. There was doodling carved with a utility knife: stick figures being abducted by a flying saucer.
Shu's mark.
"So it really is Class 3-1."
The classroom where Hinako, Shu, Rinko, and Sakuko had spent their middle school days together. Her seat had been second from the corridor side in the front row. Rinko's was right behind hers.
"She used to help me study a lot."
Hinako sat in her old seat. From there she could see: the blackboard, the teacher's podium, the clock. Memories tying them together came flooding back.
Maybe her middle school self had been the most twisted version of her.
Not as childish as an elementary schooler, but not yet mature like a high schooler either. For Hinako, middle school felt like the awkward in-between stage of a tadpole and a frog.
It's a period of grotesque transformations, a horrific torture in its own way.
When she was little, she hadn't felt much difference between boys and girls. She had thought it wouldn't matter if she weren't a girl. But once puberty hit and her body relentlessly asserted its sex, Hinako's world changed in a snap. When she played in the water with boys as a child, she didn't care if their underwear was showed, it had been fine. But in middle school, even if still she didn't care, everyone else suddenly did.
The world had abruptly turned into something romantic.
Once, an ordinary girl named Hinako Shimizu had sat in this very seat.
She stood out a little because she was in the track club and could run well, and because she was taller than most of the girls.
"Boys used to say, 'You're a girl, but you're so tall.'"
You're a girl, though. You're a girl, so act like one. Girls should be girlish.
If people were going to say that so much, then fine, she didn't need to be seen as a girl. She wouldn't struggle to live as one. Not like her mother.
Once, a very stubborn girl named Hinako Shimizu had sat in this seat.
She couldn't accept things decided by others, even if they were right. She wanted to choose everything about herself for herself. Even if the path she chose turned out to be wrong, as long as it was a decision made after careful thought, she would not regret it.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “If it’s the road I chose, I won’t regret it.”
Snap.
Something broke. The sound echoed throughout the classroom, and that something rolled to a stop at Hinako's feet.
She reached down and picked it up.
It was a piece of chalk, broken in the middle.
Her gaze shifted to the blackboard.
Liar.
The words were scrawled huge in the center, surrounded by hundreds of smaller repetitions spiraling outward. It looked like thousands of legged insects swarming together. The sight made Hinako's skin crawled.
A rustling sound started nearby, and masses of something spilled out from inside the desks. They were the "grudge offering" foxes. Far more than ten or twenty. They piled up on her lap, overflowed, and spilled onto the floor. Leaning back against the chair's backrest, she cautiously picked up one of the foxes and unfolded it.
I know the truth. Hinako thinks I'm some weird kid too, doesn't she? She looks down on me and talks trash about me behind my back. Even though she's the one getting whispered about and badmouthed by the other girls in class. Yet she walks around with that fake smile of hers, and act like she's the only normal one around here.
I can't stand how she looks down on me. It pisses me off.
I hate her. I hate her so much.
"Sakuko?"
There was no name written by the author, but there was no mistaking it. Yet Hinako had never once heard anything like this come out of Sakuko's mouth.
Is this her true feelings? Or...?
She unfolded another.
I hate P.E. so much, but today something good happened. Little Miss Perfect tripped and fell today. Looks like even Hinako the star athlete can mess up, huh!
I wish she had fallen flat on her face and ruined that pretty nose of hers, too!
"Sakuko... is that how you really feel?"
You hated me that much? If that's the case, you should've just said it sooner.
And another she unfolded.
Hinako or whatever, just go ahead and trip so hard you break all the bones in your body. End up with a body that can never run again for the rest of your life.
To think she had been hated this much by her own friends.
Friends?
Could this even be called a friendship? Had Sakuko even thought of her as a friend at all?
"Ugh..."
The throbbing in her head, quieted for a time now started to flare up again. Her breathing grew shallow and rapid. Her fingertips began to tingle.
It was still small, but the pain inside her skull pulsed in rhythm.
Reading them hurt. But she had to keep reading, didn't she?
That was the whole point of the offering, the solace.
She picked up another fox.
You're nothing but a fly. All you do is get in the way. You're annoying. Just disappear somewhere. If not, then at least shut your trap and stay quiet, and stop bothering others. Stop buzzing around Shu all the damn time. Don't hog him all to yourselves playing your stupid little "Space Wars" games in your own little world.
She knew instantly, whose grudge this one belonged to.
Thump. Thump.
Red pain flickered in front of her eyes. The pain inside her head was red. The red pain throbbed.
Next one. Read it. Accept it.
She would take in every bit of hatred handed to her.
She picked up the next fox and opened it against her chest.
Do you get it? The way I've felt, being deceived by you all this time. No matter how hard I stared, I was never there in his eyes. The one reflected in his pupils was always you. Do you understand how I felt when I realized that? You've always been an eyesore to me.
If you'd only hurt me, I could still forgive it. What I can't forgive is that you hurt him too. I will never forgive you.
The only thing that needs to disappear from this world is cockroach Hinako, the one always clinging to Shu. It doesn't matter if it's an accident or an illness—die however you want. Or just move far away. Disappear from this town. Forever. God, if you really exist, grant me this wish. I'll offer anything.
I've hated you since forever. Even though you're prettier than anyone, that attitude of yours "I'm not trying to be a girl" or whatever pisses me off so much. Disappear. Get killed. Get abducted. God, devil, whatever, I don't care. Just erase Hinako from my world.
This isn't a grudge. It's gratitude. Because my wish came true. Hinako Shimizu is dead. We'll never meet again. She's gone to some faraway world and will never come back to Ebisugaoka. Thank you, God.
"I am... a cockroach?"
A tidal wave of hatred. Naked, unsheathed resentment. The words were coming for her life, trying to kill her with language alone. She had thought the hostility directed at her was blatant.
But this—
This was beyond anything. Rinko hadn't shown even a fraction of her true feelings outwardly. Even these words written here might still have layers of filth hidden underneath.
All of a sudden, the town was enveloped in a thick fog. Everywhere I looked, it filled with nothing but monsters, I could only bring myself to to sit inside my empty house, alone and shaking. Then Shu came for me and rescued me, and I was so, so happy. After that, in this terrifying insane world, if it meant I could be alone with Shu like this, it didn't matter if I'd be here forever. But then that cockroach Hinako had to show up too, what are the odds?!
Hurry up and disappear, cockroach. You're already dead. I killed you. There's no place for you in this town anymore. Or did you forget that?!
Something's wrong.
These grudge-offering foxes here were supposed to be from the past.
Yet what was written in them was about today. Events from just a few hours ago. Grievances about things that had happened today shouldn't be in this classroom.
No, at this point everything in this world is wrong.
This might be very well be a hell created by Rinko. Whether it encompassed all of Ebisugaoka or was confined to the school, she couldn't tell.
But that wasn't right either.
Sakuko's words had been here too. So it wasn't one person's doing. It was the school itself.
Schools hold all kinds of people's cruel memories.
They've witnessed bullying, and betrayal.
They've seen people kicking others down.
Children can be surprisingly cruel.
School itself is hell.
Chirin.
Somewhere, a clear bell rang.
"Even so, do you still want to stay with your friends forever?"
The moment Hinako heard that voice, she knocked over the chair and stood up. She stumbled, catching her foot on a desk leg, then steadied herself against another desk as her gaze darted wildly.
"Junko?"
There was no mistaking it.
It was her older sister Junko's voice.
Why was her sister at school—? The question died unborn; there was no room for it.
"Junko? Where are you?"
Her wandering eyes caught movement reflected in the corridor-side window glass. The dark, murky pane let no color through; the figure appeared only as a deep green shadow.
"You get it, don't you? Friends aren't forever. They will betray you eventually. Just as they say you betrayed them."
"Junko..."
Through the glass, she faced her sister's shadow. The shadow slid smoothly along the inside of the glass, moving from near the front entrance toward the back of the classroom.
"Whether their worth is justified, that is for you to decide—" The shadow stopped and turned toward Hinako. "Get ready."
Worth and decide. These are the words Hinako repeated silently to herself.
Yes. She had to think carefully.
What to compare against what. By what standard to judge.
"It's time to say goodbye to your friends now." Her sister's voice grew heavier. "You're the one who has to kill them. With your own hands."
I have to kill them.
With my own hands.
The blood drained from her face. She stared down at her palms, pale as a fish's belly.
"That's why you came back here, isn't it?" The deep green shadow began walking again inside the clouded glass. "You came here to see clearly, to make the judgment. Time is running out. If you haven't decided yet, do it now."
The presence felt as though it might leave at any moment. Hinako hurried to the back of the classroom and slid open the door.
"What do you—"
There was no sign of her sister in the corridor.
Despite how vividly red and contaminated everything had been, the plants inside the school building had almost completely vanished. A few tendrils had crept in through the gaps around the windows and the entrance doors, but there was no full-scale blooming or rampant growth.
The endlessly stretching corridor had returned to its normal length, the fog had completely cleared, and not a single scarecrow monster remained in sight. It was as though the nightmare had been nothing more than a dream. The school building had reverted to exactly how it looked when she first arrived.
The key to the back mountain was easily retrieved from the key box in the staff room.
It had taken far longer than planned.
Shu must have been worried, but for Rinko, this extra time had probably been quite welcome.
When Hinako returned to the classroom where the two were waiting, she placed her hand on the sliding door's handle—then, thinking better of it, balled her fist to knock.
"Hey, Hinako's gone now, you know. Are you really going to keep playing Space Wars all alone like this?"
Rinko's syrupy-sweet voice drifted through the wooden door. Shu was mumbling something in response, but his words were too low to make out.
"Then how about this? Let's start a brand-new Space Wars, just the two of us."
Another murmur from Shu, but again his words were too soft to catch.
“I can be anything you want, Shu. If you want me to be your partner… or maybe some kind of femme fatale …or anything at all. Or maybe—”
Hinako slid the door open with a rattle.
"Got it...Found the key."
She stepped into the classroom wearing an expression that said she hadn't heard a thing. Shu shot up from his chair like a spring-loaded toy.
"Welcome back. Sorry for the trouble, partner."
"Sorry I kept you waiting. The key was harder to find than expected."
Shu took the key from Hinako and peered out into the corridor from the doorway.
"These plants haven't really gotten in much yet. Good. You should rest a bit too, partner."
"No, I'm fine. I don't need to rest."
"Rest." Rinko tugged on Hinako's arm and guided her firmly into the chair she herself had been sitting in. "Shu and I can stay up and keep watch over you while you sleep."
"No, really, I'm—"
The moment she tried to stand, Rinko's hand pressed down on her shoulder, forcing her back.
"Rest, Hinako. We'll keep an eye on things outside." Shu picked up the bat that had been leaning against the desk and headed out of the classroom first.
Rinko slipped her hand gently around Hinako's back and leaned in close. In the smiling eyes that met hers, something black and wet writhed in the depths.
"Nighty niiight... Hinako."
The man gazed into the distance, lost in memories of his distant childhood, sinking into deep emotion. On that day long ago, he had been saved by a single girl. A voice as beautiful as the rolling chime of a bell and arms soft and gentle. She had soothed him as no other ever had, enveloping his trembling, fear-stricken, pain-racked body.
Never in his life had he been shown such warm affection.
In that instant, on that day, the girl had become someone irreplaceably special to him.
His first love.
Yet this faint, fleeting and above all, powerfully intense emotion was something his bloodline deemed unnecessary.
From that day onward, he had kept the feeling locked away deep, deep within the innermost recesses of his heart. Never letting it leak out, never allowing a glimpse when he thought of the girl; he hid his eyes beneath the mask.
I want her. I want that girl—
To claim her, he had known he must wield power in two worlds: The world in which the girl lived, and the world in which he lived. Wealth and authority in both.
So he had labored. He had studied, bowed, cultivated grace and learning until his hands bled from effort and his bones broken and grounded to dust.
One year, two years, three years had passed. Year after year, the longing only grew stronger, yet at last the fruits of his painstaking toil ripened, and now, here he was, together with her.
Yet she was not free, there was still something she had to do.
It would be heavy, painful, harsh, and severe—
She must sever, here and now, everything that bound to her. All the old, filthy things that had clung to her from the ordinary world. She must free herself with her own hands.
Until she accomplished it, he would guide her and stand by her side to witness it. And once everything was finished, he would be closer to her than anyone else, there to comfort and there to embrace. So that together they could walk the path ahead—through eternity, through everlasting life—without hesitation.
How many times had he dreamed of this day? How he longed for the moment when he could behold her figure clad in white like the fragrance of mist.
Now she lay against his knee, eyes closed and breath shallow. Gazing down at the pale face with closed eyes, the man spoke to her.
"You saved my life and laid claim to my soul… In turn, I shall save your soul by claiming the life of your old self."
Hearing his voice, Hinako slowly stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open, heavy with fever.
Right beside her was a face wearing a fox mask.
"Do not push yourself. You need rest."
“No…” She raised the head that had been resting on the man’s lap. “I can… get up…”
Even as she said it, her voice was feverish and unsteady, her head heavy and swaying. Her tongue felt thick, and her words tangled.
“The purifying water was perhaps too strong for you.” The man stroked Hinako’s bangs. “But you did well to make it this far, Hinako.”
Hinako tilted her head and looked around.
A path of gravel and flagstones. A temizuya basin where a fox with a solemn face sat.
She remembered. She had taken that water into her mouth—
But the pain was gone now. The burning, festering sensation in her mouth had vanished.
With the help of the fox-masked man’s hand, she stood.
The cold air felt pleasant against her skin.
“Come. Onward, we go.”
Guided by the fox-masked man, she walked the approach with the tower gate at her back. Ahead stood a gate with great red doors flanked by massive seated fox statues. The man performed a gesture with his hands, and the great doors parted without a sound.
“Beyond here, you will make a very important choice. But there is no need to hesitate.”
“Yes…”
For some time now, the resolve she had held to her chest—she repeated it silently to herself.
She must sever the stench and impurity of the mundane world—
She must forget. All the memories up to yesterday were nothing now—
“I’m going in.”
She stepped forward, through the doors.
"Hinako...where are you?"
How many times had Sakuko called out her name into the darkness?
There was always no answer. Just the small echo of her own voice, small and frightened, swallowed by the black.
Sakuko hugged her knees and sobbed quietly.
The room was a traditional jail cell, one wall made entirely of vertical bars. Inside, it was pitch-dark and oppressively narrow. Beyond the bars, two slender andon lanterns gave off feeble light, and about twenty short, barely flickering candles stood in some places. Outside the reach of those flames stretched absolute, empty blackness.
Why was she here? She could not remember any sin grave enough to earn this. If this was punishment for something bad she had done, she would apoologised at once. Only let her out.
She hated the darkness pooling in the corners of the cell. She hated the darkness that crept outward from the edges of the lantern and candlelight, ever inching closer.
Terrified of the dark Sakuko had always been. And being alone, she was scared of it even more.
Yet somehow, she had ended up shut away in this dark, lonely place. If there was any clue, it might be the dreams she had yesterday and today.
In yesterday's dream, she heard a god's voice saying, "Revive the Sennensugi Shrine to its former glory." The god did not show its form, but it declared, "I am the Sennensugi."
Sakuko had been astonished in the dream. To think the sacred tree itself would appear in her dream and speak directly to her. Because the Sennensugi Shrine had been seized by an "evil god," the tree's divine power had waned, and faith in it had withered. To restore its original strength, the shrine must be revived at once, the voice commanded.
When Sakuko asked what this evil god was, it answered: a fox.
Inari-sama?! She had recoiled.
In the dream she had spoken long with the voice. She voiced her wish of inheriting the shrine herself one day. The rituals were solemn, beautiful; dancing them made her heart feel purified. She had loved it, and so too did the voice. The god declared it would make Sakuko its eternal maiden, allowing her to perform the sacred dances forever. Even if she died and became an empty shell, it would let her dance eternally—
And today she had another strange dream.
This time, a voice told her she must not revive the Sennensugi Shrine, for it had long fallen into ruin because it had been worshiping an evil god.
Sakuko angrily protested that her family's shrine did not enshrine any evil deity.
Then today's god said:
"That great cedar tree has long since died and become nothing more than an object. When old things grow ancient, they come to harbor corrupted life and transform into something malevolent. The oldest tree in this village, that great cedar, has become a loathsome evil god."
Sakuko remembered her grandfather's words: when objects grow very old, spirits dwell in them and they become tsukumogami. And the being that rules over ninety-nine spirits was called the Tsukumogami.
Was the "evil god" referring to that Tsukumogami?
There was no way the sacred tree could turn into some kind of monster like that.
So her answer had been certain.
If she was going to make a choice, then she would put her trust in the yesterday's god.
Reviving the Sennensugi Shrine was Sakuko's dream.
Then today's god said:
"That cedar is the ringleader of evil gods. Foolish shrine maiden who would serve such a being. I shall crush that empty head of yours. Become an empty vessel, just like those worthless maidens."
So perhaps this was punishment from the god.
Am I... that strange?
Is it not normal to hear the voices of gods in dreams and believe them?
Ever since she was little, she had often heard strange voices or seen things no one else could. When she told people, at school they called her "weird girl" or "mysterious," and no one ever took her seriously.
So she never made any friends.
The only ones she could talk to were the rabbits in the school's animal shed. After classes, she would go to the rabbit hutch and speak to them.
Eventually—
"That freak only has rabbits as her friends, huh?"
"Why doesn't she just move into the rabbit hutch already?"
That's how the mockery started.
Hinako was the first human friend she ever made. Even though Sakuko was "weird," Hinako never mocked her or avoided her. When Hinako spoke to her, she answered normally.
That was incredible.
When she talked to others, they would tease her, make fun of her, give her a thin smile and ignore her. Why was Hinako different? Maybe she was just a truly kind person. But Hinako was also a bit of outcast herself. Sakuko learned Hinako hated being told to "act like a girl" and found it hard to live that way. Yet even knowing how difficult it was, she refused to bend or conform to others. She lived true to herself. She wanted to become strong like Hinako.
Hinako was a cool friend.
She wanted to be with her always.
At school, they were together, and did everything together. Recess, lunch, even going to the bathroom. When it was time to pick partners for gym, Sakuko would run straight to Hinako first. They would be walking home together, and would stopped by Chizuruya on the way.
She wanted to do everything together.
"When we get boyfriends, let's do it at the same time, okay?"
"When we get married, let's do it together too."
"If neither of us ever gets a boyfriend or husband, let's live together."
Hinako always said yes. It had been a promise they have made.
Sakuko believed Hinako would never break a promise, but just to be safe, she wrote every single one down in her "Promise Notebook," complete with dates.
So, when she overheard that conversation, she couldn't believe it. She immediately checked the Promise Notebook. The promises were there, written clearly, with dates. So why…?
She felt betrayed.
A rattling sound made Sakuko lift her face.
Far back where the candlelight reached, a shutter was slowly rising. She had not even known the shutter was there or the fact that it was a shutter.
"…Ah."
Crawling from the depths of the cell, Sakuko clutched the bars and peered out. Gradually, a figure appeared from beneath the slowly rising shutter.
"Hinako! You came!"
She wedged her face through the gap in the bars.
"Hurry, hurry. Please get me out of here!"
Hinako stepped into the room, but there was nothing on her face. On top of that, she was silent.
"Hinako?"
Their eyes met. But Hinako's gaze seemed vacant, unfocused as though her mind were elsewhere. The darkness in those eyes sent a shiver of dread through Sakuko.
Hinako turned her head slowly, scanning the room without moving her body.
What was she looking for? Maybe the key to the cell?
The silence was eerie. Quiet was the same as darkness, for they both summoned loneliness. So Sakuko spoke.
"You're late. You didn't come at all, so I thought you'd betrayed me again."
Hinako seemed to have found something. She picked up an object from the shadows, a square cloth cover of some kind.
"When I heard you got a marriage proposal, I was shocked."
Hinako turned the cover over and under, examining it from different angles. As though she was wondering what it was for.
"It's from a really wealthy family, right? Wow, talk about marrying up."
No reaction. It was as if her voice wasn't reaching her at all.
"Hey, hey," Sakuko kept calling. "What about our promises?"
Hinako turned toward Sakuko. But it wasn't Sakuko she was looking. It was the andon lantern placed in front of her cell that her gaze landed at.
"Hey, are you listening?"
She glanced back and forth between the cover and the lantern, then seemed to realize something.
She walked toward the lantern.
"—Why aren't you saying anything?"
Hinako was trying to place the cover over the lantern.
"What are you doing…? Hey. Stop it."
The room grew darker.
She had covered the first lantern. One lantern's worth of light had been stolen from the room. The darkness that had pooled in the corners of the cell began creeping toward Sakuko.
"Huh!?"
Hinako was now looking at the second lantern.
"Wait! Wait, what are you doing? Stop! Don't make it darker—"
It seemed she had heard nothing, for Hinako went searching for the other cover.
"Why? Did I do something to you? Did I make you mad? Oh—the five hundred yen I borrowed? I'll pay you back! With interest!"
In the back of the room, Hinako found the second cover.
"…No, please, I hate the dark. I hate being alone. Listen, please? Ever since you became my friend, you were my light. Because of you, I wasn't lonely anymore, I didn't have to be alone…"
Cover in hand, Hinako approached the remaining bright lantern.
"I'm sorry for calling you a traitor. You're not a traitor, Hinako. I'm sorry for being selfish about getting married together too. I knew. Just like how my legs are slow and yours are fast, everyone walks through life at their own pace. I was a little jealous that you'd get married first, but I couldn't be honest with myself, so I said 'traitor' just to be mean, just to be a little spiteful—"
Thump
The room plunged into near-black.
She had covered the second lantern. Hinako was now almost entirely a silhouette. Behind her, the candle stubs remained, but its flames flickered like dying embers in the gloom.
"NOOOO! IT'S DARK!!! IT'S DARK—!!!"
Sakuko grabbed the bars and shook them violently back and forth, but Hinako just watched her with a face utterly devoid of anything.
Then she turned her back and began walking toward the entrance.
"NO NO NO NO NOOOOO!!"
As Hinako walked, the candles nearest to the cell began to go out one pair at a time.
The darkness grew slower and slower, advancing ever so steady.
"Please don't go!! We promised we'd stick together forever!! I don't want to be alone—!!"
Every last candle extinguished. Darkness gathered at the far end of the room. Sakuko's scream rose. Behind Hinako as she left, the shutter slowly began to descend.
"YOU TRAITORRRRRRRRRR!!"
Her cries turned from agonising, slowly degrading, gradually sounding less and less human.
But her screams could no longer be heard.
"Hinako… hurry up and come already…"
The heat made it hard to breathe.
Sweat poured from Rinko in rivers. Her clothes clung stickily to her skin, unbearably irritating. She feared she had sweated away even the bare minimum moisture needed to sustain a human body.
Above a seething, crimson-red pool of molten lava, an iron cage hung suspended by chains.
Rinko was locked inside that cage.
Beyond the bars, she could see the vast hall of some building, separated by thick black iron grilles. Having a reservoir of lava inside a building was abnormal, but compared to her current situation, it hardly seemed something to be surprised about.
"Hot… it's so hot… damn it, that Hinako… damn Hinako…"
Kind parents. A big house. A wealthy life.
She should have no complaints at all.
She'd always gotten plenty of allowances. When she was little, she would buy candy for everyone at the store. They'd drool and say, "Thank you, Rinko, thank you!" over and over. When she clapped her hands, they'd swarm around her like idiots, mouths opening and closing like fish. She thought it was pathetic, yet that made it satisfying. The candy store had been one of the places where Rinko could clearly demonstrate her superiority.
School had been no different.
As an honor student and class president, Rinko had taken good care of the stragglers.
It was fun. Seeing kids worse off than her made her acutely aware of how superior she was. And being thanked by them and their parents felt good too.
She had also been the one looking after the lost causes.
Hinako and Sakuko.
They're so carefree and empty-headed, drifting through the day in their own strange orbits. Eccentric, spacey, and completely lacking in teamwork. Neither of them knew the first thing about fitting in, they stood out like sore thumbs in class. Without her, they would have been torn apart by the other children.
Because she had taken care of them, they had somehow managed to fit in. The only reason they had any friends at all in class.
That was fine. As long as Hinako stayed true to her awkward self, it made Rinko feel noble. Helping her made Rinko feel like such a kind, wonderful person. Thanks to the two of them, Rinko had been able to live every day brimming with self-esteem and happiness.
She had really believed she was an honor student, born to be class president.
But she knew. At some point, she knew.
The truth of it.
She wasn't a model of virtue at all.
She was a girl who felt tallest when stood on others and revel in it.
She was worthless, and she came to hate herself.
The pleasure she had learned from lording over others as a child. That was where it all began to go wrong. The ugly, contemptible Rinko Nishida had been born in that candy store long ago.
Shu was probably the same.
She couldn't stand someone like Hinako, someone so beneath her, to have built a relationship with him that went beyond "just partners."
Jealousy surged up uncontrollably, and she despised herself for feeling jealous of someone like Hinako. When she heard about Hinako's marriage proposal. Part of her had genuinely wanted to celebrate her friend's happiness. But deep down, she knew another part of her wanted to cheer that her romantic rival would soon be gone.
The knowledgement of that made her felt utterly filthy and loathsome.
Rinko was being scorched by her own flames of self-hatred.
"You look even more beautiful today."
The words dripped with irony and self-mockery.
Hinako had arrived.
But she didn't spare Rinko so much as a glance. Instead, she was examining the several pulley mechanisms installed in the hall. They resembled grandfather clocks, with large wheels at the top around which chains were wound. Hinako fitted a disc-shaped object into a recess on the front of the first device, and the pulley began to turn.
The chains rattled, and the iron cage jerked downward with a violent lurch. Rinko stumbled, losing her balance badly, and clung to the bars with both hands.
"Kh… studying, sports… choosing clothes, makeup… I was always better than you at everything…"
Her breathing came in ragged gasps; her sweat poured like rain from the tips of her bangs and her chin.
"How many times did I save your absent-minded ass…? And now a hopeless person like you is going to be happier than me today… talk about irony."
Without even glancing at Rinko, Hinako moved to the second pulley device.
"It’ll do me some good to finally be rid of the burden that is you!"
She inserted another object into the second device. The cage lurched sharply to one side; one corner dipped into the lava with a violent hiss and thick white smoke billowed up, enveloping the cage.
Inside the tilting cage, Rinko desperately gripped the bars, coughing violently while glaring at Hinako.
"Gu… just disappear already! Get out of my world! Erase me from your world! Why you…? Why do you get it all? I'm the one who has to work so much harder for everything…"
Hinako moved to the third and final pulley device. For the first time, she turned her face toward Rinko but it was her empty eyes Rinko met, as blank as if she were looking at a wall. She fitted the last object in and the mechanism came to life.
The chain extended further, mingling with the sound of Rinko's labored breathing.
"Have you ever thought about how he feels? Forcing him to witness this today. Just for once, have you ever imagined what that would do to him?"
The chain's length stretched further and further; Rinko's ragged breaths mixed in. The cage sank corner-first; sparks of fire danced up in front of her face, illuminated by the white-hot glow.
"You betrayed him! You toyed with his feelings and betrayed him! …You are the lowest of the low. What kind of 'partner' are you…? Say you’re sorry! Get on your knees and beg for forgiveness!!"
The cage dropped sharply, plunging into the lava. Lava sprayed up like the foam from an opened beer bottle, fountaining up in a crown of fire. Inside the cage, now glowing red-hot from the searing metal, Rinko ran back and forth like a trapped rat, searching for escape. Sparks caught onto her clothes. The flames took her thrashing, screaming face. The lava swallowed Rinko whole and vanished her from sight.
As the cage sank completely into the lava, Hinako did not stay to watch Rinko burn alive to the end. She turned and left the scene.
In the now-empty inferno, Rinko's final cries was drowned by the sizzle choir.
There was nothing left of her voice, soon after.
The double doors of burnished copper parted with a low groan, revealing a chamber vast enough to swallow light itself. Hundreds upon hundreds of medicine bottles stood in endless rows, shelves climbing floor to ceiling.
"…Hey… you came…"
Shu floated in midair, with both of his arms raised.
Upon closer inspection, chains ran from his wrists to the shadowed rafters above; another iron collar girdled his throat, linked by a single heavy length to the ceiling. His eyes were already clouded, the whites veined with red.
"Hey, partner. Guess this is the last time I get to call you that, huh? Look, see something familiar?"
Beneath him stood six low pedestals.
Shu's most treasured ray gun. The Space Army notebook filled with records of every strategy and battle. The science-hero manga Mecha Ninja Saburo that they had read over and over together.
These were the items tied to memories of Shu. A museum of his short life, displayed as exhibitons.
“Tell me how you really feel, partner. Your choice. I can handle it."
Hinako walked beneath him without slowing, passing into the deeper shadows on the far side of the hall, opposite the entrance.
"It's alright. Do whatever you want, Hinako…Whatever the outcome is, I’ll… respect my partner’s choice."
Despite the awkward angle of his neck, Shu tried to follow Hinako's movements with his eyes as she passed below. He strained against the collar, twisting as far as the iron would allow. When she moved beyond the arc of his vision he gave up; his head dropped forward, chin against chest, the chain pulling taut.
Hinako grasped the lever set into the wall and pulled it down without hesitation.
The chains at Shu’s wrists snapped free in the same instant. His body dropped with violent lurch. The collar chain caught with a metallic clang that echoed through the hall. The sudden halt jerked him upward again. Suspended now by a single chain from the ceiling, his limbs flailed once, twice, as he tried to swing side to side.
On the opposite side from the entrance, the double doors began to open with a mechanical, grinding sound.
Shu clutched at the iron collar around his neck, his face had gone the color of old plums. His legs kicked feebly for a few heartbeats longer, more spasm than struggle, then slackened entirely. His arms hung straight down, fingers open, empty.
Just before the convulsions in his legs finally ceased, the doors closed behind Hinako with a heavy thud.
"It must be hard for you to bid farewell to childhood friends."
The fox-masked man was already there. He gently placed his arm around Hinako's shoulders.
Hinako's face was expressionless, her vacant eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Without sound, her lips alone formed the word "yes."
She seemed about to say something more, but it never became voice or word. Only the ghost of a breath.
"Hm?" The fox-masked man tilted his head slightly.
"No… It had to be done... I should have… done it sooner… much sooner." Hinako bowed deeply. "I'm so very sorry… for showing you such an unsightly side of myself…"
"You need not apologize. If anyone should, it's me that has to beg your forgiveness for forcing this pain upon you."
Hinako gently laid her own hand over the one resting on her shoulder. Then she lifted her gaze to meet the eyes behind the fox mask. Her eyes accepted only those pupils visible through the mask's openings. Everything else seemed to have vanished from her field of vision. The fox-masked man lowered his hand from her shoulder and took several steps forward before turning back toward her.
"Come."
Hinako nodded and began to walk.
No more than a few steps, than the pain began to bloom again in her head.
She tried to press on regardless, but her gait grew unsteady; her body tilted to the left. She shifted her weight right to keep herself from falling but momentum carried her forward, her knees buckled and she collapsed. The man's back moved slowly onward along the covered corridor that stretched on for thousands of bays.
Hinako's eyes remained fixed upon him as he walked further and further.
Then her vision wavered and sank in black.
The dream had been terrible, Hinako thought as she lifted her head from the desk. The classroom lay empty around her, deathly silent. Fog pressed against the papered windows, turning the world beyond to milky gray; nothing could be seen.
"…Shu?"
She called toward the corridor-side door, but there was no response. She picked up the iron pipe she had set at her feet and stood from the chair.
"Rinko?"
She slid the door open a crack and peered into the hallway.
There was no sign of either of them within sight.
"Where the hell did the lookouts go…?"
She stepped out of the classroom and called their names toward the deeper parts of the school building. She waited, ears straining, but an uncanny silence blanketed the entire structure.
A cold certainty settled in her gut. She hurried to the rear entrance and stepped outside.
There it was, exactly what she feared.
The chain-link gate at the start of the mountain path stood wide open. The padlock she had removed was still dangling from it, and the key she had given to Shu was inserted and left behind.
"They left…? But why would they leave me behind…?"
Perhaps some emergency had forced them to flee. A sudden monster attack, maybe. In times like this, the rule was the same as in the Space Army handbook.
"Shu…The plan’s to meet up… at your place, right…?"
She spoke the words aloud, as though saying them would make them true.
The moment she stepped through the gate's thresold to chase after them, a nauseating sensation washed over her, like crossing into a different domain entirely, and a sharp, stabbing pain lanced through her skull, brief but bright as lightning.
The atmosphere itself compelled her to turn back.
Behind her the school and the fence line were already vanishing behind a curtain of fog. Red plants bubbled up from the earth like blood from a wound, spreading in foam and flower.
From the heart of the fog something vast took shape, and burst apart. The same white thing that had come for them at Chizuruya. Around it, several vaguely human-shaped presences tumbled out of the mist.
No choice but to run.
The mountain path was far from ideal. Untrodden and overgrown, it twisted sharply in places, making it nearly impossible to sprint. Roots snaked across the dirt; sudden drops plunged away to nothing; fallen trees blocked the way like barricades. Every step threatened to turn an ankle or send her sprawling.
She raced along the narrow mountain trail until it opened slightly. To her right appeared a half-collapsed stone staircase. It looked climbable, but other paths branched off too. In that split-second hesitation over which way to go, the pursuers close the distance dangerously.
From an unexpected angle, a fog-wreathed hand lunged at her.
She could not dodge. Instinct brought the pipe up; metal met flesh with a dull clang. The force hurled her backward. She flew two, three meters and struck the stone steps hard, landing on her back. Agonizing pain exploded through her spine and hips.
The monster, draped in fog like a kimono, flickered between formation and collapse, its shape never quite stabilizing before it was swept away by a sudden sideways gust and vanished.
As the surrounding fog thinned and dispersed, a massive torii gate loomed directly ahead. Stone weathered to the color of old bones.
"They… didn't follow…"
It seemed the thing could not pass beneath the torii. She stood and looked around. Identical torii gates continued in a line through the fog, red pillars marching away in white. She climbed the stone steps beneath them. The view opened further, and a gigantic tree appeared.
Its bark was stone-like; the trunk split vertically down the middle from the center, exposing a hollow black void within. Near the base, where shimenawa sacred ropes were wound, four or five broken-faced Jizo statues wearing red aprons peered out from holes in the roots.
Sakuko had told her about this.
The Sennensugi Shrine wasn't the small, out-of-the-way shrine where her grandfather served as its head priest. Originally, it had been a grand sanctuary deep in the mountains. At its heart stood a thousand-year-old cedar regarded as the deity's sacred body. But lightning struck it during the Edo period, and it withered.
"So this is the real Sennensugi…"
Perhaps this tree had protected her from the fog monster. Seen in that light, its figure standing silent in the mist appeared almost divine.
Sakuko had also mentioned that inside the hollow of this sacred tree, people practiced the custom of offering old, worn-out tools for memorial rites, part of the tsukumogami faith that lingered here. Tsukumogami were spirits said to dwell in objects that had been used with care for a long time whether it be rubbers, futons, old magazines. Anything. The older and more cherished, the stronger the spirit that would inhabit it, according to ancient belief.
In Ebisugaoka, the tsukumogami faith had syncretized with Inari worship, creating a unique local religious worldview. Even in town, one could spot offerings at small Inari shrines: broken-toothed combs or dulled needles stuck into abura-age fried tofu as memorial gifts. Because it was too difficult for the elderly to climb the mountain, people had begun leaving offerings at the more accessible shrines in town.
That was another one of Sakuko's words: faith changes shape according to the living, evolving over time.
Sakuko's dream had been to revive this shrine. Looking at it now, even in its abandoned state, Hinako could feel that its divine power had not truly faded.
What should have been a detour had turned out fortunate, for Shu's house lay not far beyond.
She bowed once to the Sennensugi tree and set off again along her path.
Shu’s house stood at the edge of the wasabi fields, a low, weathered place half-hidden among green terraces that had been tended since before either of them was born.
The Iwais have also ran a wasabi farm.
The vivid expanse of wasabi paddies had always been one of Hinako’s quiet joys since childhood. Traces of the family's past as apothecaries remained: the garden was cultivated with a variety of medicinal herbs. Most of the plants were unfamiliar to her, so whenever she asked Shu their names, he would happily launch into detailed explanations. Even her cherished landscape had been invaded by the red blooms, but here the medicinal herbs cultivated by the Iwai family seemed stronger; the contamination had not spread as far. Thanks to that, Shu's house had suffered almost no damage. Only a few stray tendrils had begun to test the wood.
"Shu!" She circled around to the garden and called out. "Partner! It's me—!"
No response.
She went around to the front entrance and placed her hand on the sliding door.
It was locked.
They hadn't arrived yet.
A cold foreboding, ominous premonition brushed her, then passed. She headed toward the work shed behind the house.
Once it had been used for drying herbs and mixing pungent compounds; now it was where apparently Shu spent most of his time. He had spent half his childhood in his secret second base.
When she slid the door open, a sweet fragrance poured out.
Peach-like.
It was exactly the scent that came from the headache medicine Shu had given her.
He must have been compounding it here.
Inside, strings had been strung wall-to-wall, hung with dry leaves of deep red-purple. Above the medicine chest stood neat rows of small glass bottles, their labels written in foreign script. Scattered across the workbench were the basics of an apothecary's trade—mortar and pestle, grinding bowl, and a scattering of notebooks and envelopes, and those familiar red capsule medicines.
One notebook had nothing written on the cover. Was it a record of ingredients and ratios for his compounds? Or perhaps the new volume of the Space Army notebook, the one where he would always logged strategies and battle records, and shown it to her afterwards.
When she picked it up, something slipped from between the pages and fell onto the workbench. One was a key, its handle decorated with a flying saucer charm tied on with string. No doubt it was the house key.
The other was a plain brown envelope.
The address read: To Hinako Shimizu. A stamp was affixed, a letter ready to be mailed.
After a moment's hesitation, she opened it.
Hey there, partner.
We've made it out of some pretty vicious battles together, huh? Even had to part ways with our fair share of comrades on the battlefield.
I just never thought we'd have to part ways too.
But at least ours won't be a goodbye through death on the battlefield.
From now on, you can't ask for anything from me, okay? 'Cause it's not like I can expect your help anymore.
You have to look after yourself now. I won't be there to drag you to safety when you fall.
But wherever we go and no matter what we do, we'll always be a part of the Space Army!
And we'll always be partners, got it?
Thanks for everything, Hinako.
Shu
A single tear traced down her cheek.
"Partner… thank you for everything."
She placed the medicine box on top of the letter. The one Shu had compounded especially for her.
"I'll do my best too… without having to rely on you… all on my own."
She wiped the tear with the back of her finger and let out a soft breath.
"For now…" She closed her fingers around the flying saucer charm in her palm. "I guess I’ll wait for the two of them inside the house."
She slid the door open to leave the shed.
A massive surge of fog roared in like an avalanche.
From within it, the shadow of an enormous hand reached toward her. Hinako's neck twisted; she was hurled outward and tumbled across the dirt.
"Ugh… guh…"
Groaning, she lifted her face. A glimpse of abnormally long arms trailing silver-white fur. Through the violently swirling fog that rolled across the ground, the hem of a white kimono flickered into view.
Then darkness swallowed her.
The stairs descended into darkness, step after step after step, Hinako could not say how long she had been walking them. Time had slipped away like sand through fingers; she could not remember when the descent had begun, only that it seemed it would never end.
Everything was fogged.
The whole world blurred and hazy, and wrapped in white mist, shallow and dreamlike. She moved through it half-asleep, half-awake, every sense dulled to the same gray blur.
She stopped.
Her right hand was clasped in another’s.
Beside her stood the fox-masked man. It was his hand she was gripping.
"The path ahead is one of great pain and suffering." His voice carried that same strange calm, the low chime that eased the heart even as it spoke of torment.
"I know. But I am not afraid."
"Onward, then. Here we perform three rituals."
"Yes."
The two resumed their descent down the stairs.
Something watched intently as Hinako's back was swallowed by the darkness below.
A celluloid doll.
She sat motionless on the stairs, as though she had something she desperately wanted to say. On the wall beside her, words were carved in her handwriting.
Run! Hurry! There’s no going back!
The vermilion bridge arched over the black pond, its railings crowned with jewel-shaped finials that smoked like incense burners, thin threads of pale vapor rising from their mouths. Hinako walked it with unsteady steps, each footfall heavy, knees threatening to fold. Again and again she nearly fell, her consciousness slipping in and out, but each time her knees buckled, the man supported her body. And each time, he whispered words spun solely for her sake into her ear, pouring strength back into her legs.
When next she woke, she sat upon a backless wooden chair before the altar.
Upon the altar stood a fox statue, gleaming golden in the lamplight. Around it, censers released red smoke that rose and coiled into sinister vortices near the ceiling.
Hinako let her gaze drift hazily.
“I am here.” The fox-masked man sat beside her in the same manner. “I am always right here, by your side.”
“…Yes.”
A solemn melody began to flow.
The musicians themselves were invisible, but these were the tones of shō mouth organs and small bells. From the depths emerged a fox-masked shrine maiden. In her hands she carried a long, narrow wooden box with the lid already removed.
She stood before Hinako and lowered herself so that the contents could be seen.
Inside lay a beast’s arm, its silver fur beautifully lustrous. At the gnarled fingertips gleamed sharp claws the color of charred black.
The maiden placed the box upon the altar and extended her hand toward Hinako.
Hinako gently stretched out her right arm and laid her hand over the maiden’s. The maiden gripped it firmly. Hinako caught her breath and looked up at the maiden’s face, but she held no expression. Still holding the hand, the maiden took a small, colorless bottle of sake brought on a tray by another maiden and poured the clear liquid over Hinako’s arm.
The fragrance of sacred wine.
The fox-masked man rose quietly, took a short white wooden stick from the tray, and placed it between Hinako’s teeth.
Her breathing quickened slightly.
Another maiden handed her a small pot. With trembling hands, Hinako grasped the handle and pressed the curved saw blade against the base of her right arm.
The shaking intensified; her breathing grew even more rapid.
She began to saw slowly. The serrated edge bit into fabric fibers then to skin. She drew it back and sawed again. This time the skin split, and blood welled up. Her hand paused. Hinako’s shoulders heaved as she tried to steady her breathing. The masked man watched in silence beside her. She drew her breath, held it and resumed cutting. Skin parted, muscle gave, and blood sprayed in multiple fine arcs. Beads of cold sweat stood out on her forehead; flecks of blood spattered her pale cheeks. She sawed, and sawed, and sawed deeper. A large pool of blood spread across the floor. With each stroke the wet, fleshy sound gradually changed to the rasp of cutting something harder. Hinako’s eyes were bloodshot.
“Nnngh—!”
A final snap as bundles of fiber parted; the saw blade slipped free beneath the arm.
The arm was severed.
The maiden who had held her hand placed Hinako’s arm into a lacquered box. And another presented the box containing the beast’s arm before her.
The two maidens began sewing the beast’s arm to the stump of her right shoulder. While they worked, Hinako hazily listened to the tones of the shō and bells, as needle pierced skin, thread pulled taut.
When the grotesque procedure was complete, the two maidens bowed and withdrew.
Hinako’s right cheek was a chaotic smear of splashed blood and sweat.
From the base of her right arm onward, it was no longer human. The long silver fur covering the forearm swayed as though each strand were alive.
She tried moving the fingertips little by little.
“…It moves.”
“I am proud of you, Hinako.”
Those words alone were enough.
She stared at her new arm, so beautiful it might have seemed stolen and given to the wrong girl. Cold skin, no warmth, the color of death and sickness. Yet the fur shimmered like mist caught in moonlight.
The masked man watched her.
“Does it still hurt?”
“No… it’s just… My arm feels… a bit tense…"
“Are you not afraid?”
“No… I am not afraid… This is my duty… Please... Let’s do… the next one..”
He nodded.
A door at the left rear of the altar opened.
Two more fox-masked maidens entered. One carried a long-handled branding iron with solemn reverence. The face of the brand glowed red-hot.
The fox-masked man took another white wooden stick from the tray and bent before Hinako to place it between her teeth. But she shook her head. He met her eyes, and saw her resolve within, and instead gently but firmly placed both hands on her shoulders, enveloping them.
The maiden with the brand stepped behind her.
Hinako’s breathing gradually accelerated. In response, the tones of the shō and bells rose higher.
The pressure on her shoulders grew stronger. A searing, gouging sensation bloomed across her back. The stench of burning skin assaulted her nose. The sizzle of melting fat and bodily fluids bursting filled the air behind her.
Hinako’s eyes flew wide open; she stared at the fox-masked man’s face. She bit her lip until blood welled in her mouth and she can taste the iron within, locking the scream inside her mouth.
When the fox-masked man released her shoulders, the maiden with the brand withdrew.
The back of Hinako’s clothing had burned away across her back. There, seared in angry red-black, was a three-leafed staff.
As consciousness began to fade and she swayed forward, the fox-masked man caught her.
“You’ve done well, Hinako.”
“…Yes.”
“The next ritual shall be the last.”
With his help she stood, but her legs gave out like cut threads and she sank back down.
“It will take a little time to prepare. Rest until then.”
The music of shō and bells drew her consciousness away.
When she opened her eyes, a maiden stood before her.
The maiden held a bronze mirror toward her with both hands. Hinako gazed at her reflection in it. For a long while, time passed that way. In the mirror, her reflection shifted its gaze sideways.
Another two each carried shallow boxes and placed them on a stand. White silk cloth lined the boxes. One contained a half-mask similar to the one the man wore; the other was empty. Before the boxes, instruments suited for cutting, pinching, peeling, and scraping were laid out in a neat row. All showed the patina of long use.
One maiden reverently lifted a short dagger, its hilt exquisitely carved, and bowed to Hinako. The maiden standing behind her gripped Hinako’s head firmly with both hands—her slender arms exerting a vise-like unimaginable strength.
The first maiden raised the knife, its silver tip pointed toward Hinako’s face. Hinako's expression was rigid, but she refused to close her eyes; she stared straight at silver tip as it approached.
The tip pierced the skin on the left side of her face with a soft pop. Slowly the blade circled, slicing through the upper half of her facial skin. Setting the dagger aside, the maiden took a spatula-like tool and inserted it into the incision. The spatula slid effortlessly beneath the skin and peeled along the cut line. Skin parted from flesh with a wet sound, accompanied with Hinako’s short, sharp exhalations. She clenched her back teeth and dug her nails into her knees. The fox-masked man, watching closely, enclosed her hand in his.
Setting the spatula down, the maiden slipped her fingers beneath the flap of skin, and carefully, slowly she pulled it away. The peeled upper half of her face was placed with meticulous care into the empty box.
Next, the fox half-mask was fitted over the exposed area and sewn in place.
Black, root-like veins rose across the mask and extended toward Hinako’s face. They crawled over her skin and burrowed beneath. Beneath the surface, the black veins merged with her blood vessels; the fox mask and Hinako’s facial skin became one.
The bronze mirror was held up again.
Reflected was the woman with the fox face.
The maidens bowed and departed.
“You have endured incredible agony.” The fox-masked man gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “That was brave of you, Hinako.”
With a startled gasp, Hinako began to tremble violently.
“N-no… I can’t… It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts…!”
“Hinako! Look at me… Look into my eyes!!”
Hinako grew quiet, as though entranced. The fox-masked man drew her gently into his arms.
“There. No more pain or suffering to be had. Calm yourself…”
“…Yes… No more pain or suffering to be had… I… will calm…myself.”
“Very good. That’s my Hinako.” He took her hand and helped her stand. “Come. Everyone is waiting for us.”
The two began walking back across the vermilion bridge.
Behind them, the celluloid doll watched.
Simply watched.
"You are so beautiful, Hinako."
The fox-masked man's eyes were rapt with bliss.
Hinako bowed deep, the motion slow and reverent.
"Thank you… very much…"
"You have severed the past, endured the rituals, purified the arms and palms defiled by the mundane world, and now you possess this splendid, powerful arm of silver-white. Your bearing is no longer that of a human—it is that of a divine spirit. And now you will become one of our kin. To think such a day would come… I… I am truly blessed."
He seemed overwhelmed with emotion, every feeling pressing against his chest.
They stood at the very heart of the infinite corridor that encircled the divine precinct. In the eternal darkness, at the innermost sanctum of the black shrine hall that stretched without limit. Before the grand black doors adorned with a golden three-leafed staff. Beyond these doors, the two of them would seal their bond. And through those bond, would they become true husband and wife.
"Come, then. Shall we go?"
Hinako placed her beastly hand in the one he extended.
"…Yes… together…"
The golden crest split apart; the doors parted inward with a low breath of ancient wood and iron. A long, straight passageway stretched ahead. To either sides, stood ranks of figures dressed in crested hakama and black mourning kimono, all wearing fox masks.
The kin.
Beyond the passage, tiered platforms rose, rows upon rows of fox statues standing in silent ranks. Generation upon generation of ancestors, carved in stone.
"Behold. The others are celebrating us." the fox-masked man said.
"May you know eternal happiness."
"May our line know eternal glory."
"Come, let us rejoice."
"The pressed flower you enclosed in your letter. I still treasured it even now." the fox-masked man mummured as they continued to walk.
"There is no need to fear."
"I was once like you."
"There were days I cried."
"There were days I suffered."
"The first letter I ever wrote to you was a farewell. Do you remember? We were still in elementary school. Family circumstances forced me to leave Ebisugaoka. The night I wrote that letter was the most painful moment of my life till then."
"Offer yourself."
"Bless your new birth."
"This place is utterly unlike the world you knew."
"All memories of yesterday are useless. Die."
"At times, the blood of the lower world must also be taken in."
"Serve. Obey."
"Speaking of letters, I must apologize to you. I once wrote that there were times I could not tell whether you were a demon or a goddess. Do you remember? Please do not misunderstand. Those words slipped out only because of the anguish of being unable to see you. Since you tormented me so deeply, perhaps they were not entirely wrong after all."
"Forget all uncouth upbringing."
"Once we obtain this girl's blood and soul, our clan will flourish even more."
"Foolish parents and foolish friends. All of them are mere dust."
"Attachments are not so easily severed."
"Whenever I gazed at the moon, I would see your graceful form in my mind." The fox-masked man said.
"Sever them."
"Uproot them."
"Your newly born body and heart. Everything. Everything must be pure."
"You wrote to me about the stifling feeling you carried in daily life. I replied that it was proof of your growth. How fitting, I said—doesn't your very name contain the character for 'leaving the nest'? The day you take flight is near. And it seems I was right."
"Rejoice that you can offer every last drop."
"A woman need only follow a man."
"Become a wise and virtuous woman who serves our line with utmost sincerity."
"Give thanks for the fortune of being chosen."
I no longer need to think about anything. If I follow this person, I will be happy. He promises me every happiness a human being could possibly desire. A lifetime of abundance, a station no one can look down upon, a love without end. In exchange, I will offer everything I am, body and soul. Even the resolve I have cherished since my childhood, to decide things for myself, I will offer that too.
From now on, I will obey everything he decides.
That is my happiness…
Guided by the sound of the dragon flute, the two reached the worship hall, where the air was thick with solemn tension. The tones of shō, hichiriki, and gongs joined in; the faint, tranquil strains of gagaku music spread through the space.
The floor beneath their feet was vast mats of tatami shrouded in deep darkness. When Hinako strained her eyes against the countless gazes she felt, she saw rows of ancestral fox statues fading into the mist. For all the hall's vastness, the light was pitifully meager and scarce. Snow lanterns and candles burned around the altar, yet their feeble glow failed to climb the high steps before the god's seat; it remained unnaturally black.
They trod the faded rush mats to stand before the altar where two great fox statues sat facing one another in judgment. Soon the high priest descended the stair, and bowed once.
The fox-masked man bowed in return, and Hinako followed suit.
Above their lowered heads, the priest swung the ōnusa purification wand in wide arcs.
The sound of the ōnusa whipping through the air and the gagaku melodies filled Hinako’s head. Layering together, they formed dissonant chords that further scrambled her already hazy consciousness.
Still bowing, Hinako’s blurred gaze came to rest on a doll placed on the tatami. A girl doll in a red lantern-sleeved dress had turned only her face toward Hinako, sending a look that seemed desperate to speak. Beside it on the tatami, characters burned with searing light.
Remember! Your name is Hinako Shimizu!
Inside Hinako’s mind, the gagaku warped and twisted; the sound of the ōnusa turned into the grinding scrape of chain upon chain.
She raised her head just as something sang through the air and fell.
Hinako twisted aside at the last heartbeat; the blow struck the mat beside her in a burst of sparks and embers. She stumbled, and fell hard. Before her eyes the tatami split and smoked.
What had struck was no ōnusa, but a bundle of links glowing with incandescent heat.
Fearfully, she lifted her gaze as she stood.
The priest had no face.
Where eyes, nose, mouth should have been gaped a ragged pit, deep as a forge crater, rimmed with molten stone. From that wound lava oozed in slow, viscous streams, dripping to hiss upon the floor.
“I’m in such a happy mood today. So, so happy…” The voice was rotten and thick “Today is really a great day—because it’s the day Hinako finally die and disappear from our world!!”
“…Rinko?”
The name slipped out unconsciously.
In that instant, fragments of memory were dragged forth, cutting as they rose. From those fragments, other memories surfaced—
Yes. That voice, that way of speaking. It’s Rinko.
That was the trigger. The thing that had kept Hinako’s thoughts numb until this very moment. The thing that had clung inside her head, preventing thought, preventing judgment. The thing that had kept her mind perpetually foggy. All of it suddenly lost its grip; Hinako’s consciousness snapped sharply into focus.
The fox-masked man was gone. His kin gone with him.
“I’ve hated you since forever, Hinako. I always thought you were creepy.”
The blazing priest Rinko advanced toward her, dragging the searing chains and each leaving scorch-marks as she walked.
Hinako backed away, keeping distance.
"Rinko! I’ll die, I’ll be gone for good, just like you want me to!"
"Oh, I’ll forget about you! I will scour you completly!"
Rinko swung the incandescent chains with such force they howled through the air.
“Every last trace of your name from my memory and the world!”
The links rose high.
Hinako threw up her right arm in desperate guard.
"Your disgusting name...all of it....gone. Gone! GONEEE!!!"
The chains crashed down.
Her beast-arm met them, black claws and silver fur flashing. The limb was beautiful in its savagery, thick with sinew and sacred strength. It was already part of her now.
But no matter how resilient, taking a direct blow from chains wreathed in such ferocious, hate-fueled inferno could not leave her unscathed. The pain of flesh being seared and shaved away was excruciating.
“—I won’t be erased.”
For an instant, the image of the doll flashed through Hinako’s mind.
“I… I…”
The sight of the burning letters carved into the tatami resurfaced.
“Yes—my name is—”
Power stirred within the silver-furred limb. The rippling fur shimmered, no longer heat-haze but roaring karmic fire. A sound like cracking ice rose from within the arm. The silver fur surged violently. Cold blood throbbed through the limb.
“I am Shimizu—”
The beast-arm had thickened to twice its breadth, hand grown massive, fingers long as daggers. The gagaku, which had fallen silent for a time, resumed in a violent, rearranged crescendo.
“You knew how I felt and you kept blooming anyway! I hate you! I hate you!!”
Rinko made a sweeping motion as though scooping up the ground. Instantly, lava erupted from the tatami, spraying against pillars and ceiling.
Rinko’s anger, hatred, and jealousy summoned molten rock into being here.
“I was such an idiot. I believed in you! You had me fooled the whole time!”
“I didn’t fool you about anything!”
“I’ll place a curse on you! You’ll lick the very bottom of misfortune and die!”
“I don’t deserve any of these abuse!”
Dodging pillars of lava, Hinako leaped and brought the black claws of her beast arm down toward Rinko.
“I’ll curse you! I won’t let you be happy! If only you didn’t exist! If only I hadn’t been tricked by you—I wouldn’t have suffered like this! I wouldn’t have become so miserable!”
“Your happiness is your own responsibility! Your misery is your own doing! If you want to be happy, work for it!”
“You were always in the way. Buzzing around Shu like a fly—always, always pissing me off. I wanted to kill you, you were such a nuisance!”
From the lava pools, charred schoolgirls crawled out by the dozen. Every one of them had Rinko’s face. Burned, blackened Rinko. Wherever their flaming bodies touched, the tatami ignited.
“…Hinako. Do you remember? The day we first met.”
“Huh? What about it! The entrance ceremony?”
“Of course you don’t remember. Typical. When you were little, you got lost in the fields near my house and bawled like an idiot. I felt sorry for you, so I helped you out of pity. And you don’t even remember?”
“…What…? What?”
She helped me when I was lost?
That means…
“I said, ‘It’s okay now, you don’t have to be scared anymore,’ right? I wish I’d never helped you that day. I wish I’d lied to you and sent you merry on the wrong way. I’ve thought about that ever since. If I could go back, I would. Kids falling into irrigation ditches and drowning in rice paddies. That happens all the time, doesn’t it?”
“The girl back then… was you, Rinko?”
She barely remembered the face. She had always wanted to thank her someday. Maybe even become friends.
“You should’ve stayed lost in that field!! Then… then I wouldn’t have had to feel like this!!”
Rinko raised the chains once more but Hinako seized seized that burning arm in her own clawed grip.
Fox face and volcanic crater glared at each other inches apart.
“I always wished your creepy little Space Wars game would end already.”
“It’s ending now.”
“And you ended it in the worst possible way. You could’ve just quit the game on your own. But Shu, he’ll be left alone forever, mourning the loss of you, still playing Space Wars by himself.”
Still gripping Rinko’s arm, Hinako forced her down to the ground. Rinko writhed desperately to escape, then burst into manic laughter.
“—You really are the worst. Even if it was just a kids’ game, you bailed out and ran away on your own? Too pathetic to even hate properly. Well, today is Hinako Shimizu’s funeral. Maybe now he can finally let go. At least give him a proper show, let him see Hinako Shimizu die and turn to ash!!”
“That’s what I’ve been saying—I’ll die—”
She tore Rinko’s arm free with a series of wet snaps,
“—I’ve been saying this whole time!!”
And shoved the severed limb straight into the crater of Rinko’s face. Breathing hard through her shoulders, Hinako stood and smiled down at Rinko, who writhed on the tatami.
"I never wanted to… see you like this, Rinko! But I’m very happy…!"
Rinko struggled to rise, as Hinako raised a massive fist formed by her beast arm overhead.
"That in the end, we finally got to tell each other how we truly feel!"
The descending fist pierced straight through Rinko’s head. Her limbs spasmed upward once, then laid stilled forever.
"And now… the name Hinako Shimizu means nothing to you."
Rinko’s body melted into sludge, crumbled like sand, and vanished without even leaving a speck of dust. Hinako looked at the empty place where Rinko had been.
" I hope you find peace, Rinko…"
It was done.
She exhaled.
And in that moment the world turned crimson. Thought and mind melted like wax. Edges of sight and memory blurred, ran and dissolved. The outline of it all grew vague, distorting more and more.
She clutched her head and dropped to her knees.
“…Hinako… Shimizu?”
The name rose to her lips.
Hinako Shimizu.
Hinako… Shimizu…
“Hinako… Shimizu… I’m not… Hinako Shimizu…”
“What’s wrong, Hinako?”
The fox-masked man was beside her. He crouched, took her hand, and peered anxiously into her face.
The tatami and pillars showed no sign of burning. Everything had returned to normal, as though nothing had happened.
“No… I’m not…”
“You are Hinako, aren’t you?”
“Shimizu… Hinako Shimizu… aren’t I?”
Hinako no longer knew who she was, or whose name belonged to her.
“Ha…”
“You are Hinako.”
The fox-masked man’s gaze and voice soothed her confusion.
“…Yes. I’m not…Hinako…Shimizu… I’m…”
Hinako lifted her face and looked into the fox-masked man’s eyes.
“I am Hinako.”
“That’s right… you are my Hinako.”
Her consciousness drifted away.
Hinako leaned against the fox-masked man’s chest and closed her eyes.
The memory of being hurled remained sharp enough. She pushed up on one elbow, raised her torso, and turned her head slowly to survey the gloom.
The fog monster didn’t seem to be nearby.
Hinako lay sprawled before the Iwai house’s work-shed, quite a distance before the doorway. The force that had flung her had carried her this far across the yard.
Her clothes were in tatters. When she reached behind her back she felt the great tear in the fabric, a ragged hole torn clean through. The cobbled pavement had bruised her, scraped her raw, yet she was lucky to escape with only these marks. She couldn’t understand why the monster had spared her life and simply left.
The fog monster. That was what she called it, but it had substance. Yet even though she had seen it right in front of her, she couldn’t recall its exact form. All she remembered was the long silver fur growing on the arm that had seized her.
Nearby lay the key, its flying-saucer fob glinting dully where it had fallen when she was flung.
“Shu… Rinko… For now, all I can do is wait.”
She used the key to let herself into the Iwai house. In the genkan she slipped off her shoes. No sooner had she done so than the telephone rang.
It was the one near the entrance, an old black rotary set upon a low stand.
In the dim corridor, a flying-saucer-shaped ceiling lamp with a shade remained lit, casting its yellow eerie glow. Beneath that light, the black telephone kept ringing, an unsettling sight all by itself, in a house not of her own. There were plenty of reasons to hesitate, but still she picked up the receiver.
She didn’t announce herself; she simply waited for the other person to speak.
“—Hinako, is that you?”
“—Mom?”
Something was wrong, and she knew it.
“Come home soon.”
“…Where are you?”
“At home, of course. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
Behind her mother’s voice came the murmur of many people chatting and laughing.
“Waiting… for what?”
“It’s a celebratory day. Everyone’s delighted about you, Hinako.”
“…Everyone… who?”
“Everyone! Your friends came too—”
“Huh? Mom??”
A creaking, grinding noise cut in.
“Hey! Let Rinko go!”
“Huh… Shu…? Is that you, Shu?”
“—ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh!!”
Shu’s scream pierced her ear; she dropped the receiver in shock. The coiled cord swayed back and forth like a hanged man. While she stared at it in a daze, a figure took shape at the far end of the corridor.
Chirin
A small bell rang.
“Hinako. Have you had enough?”
The shadow began walking toward her from the far end.
Chirin.
“—Junko.”
Even when the darkness peeled away the black remained. Black mourning silk, a formal kimono of deepest night. Her older sister Junko stood there, a bell tied with vermillion cord dangling from her obi.
“Have you decided? To kill, or be killed?”
“I can’t… decide something like that.” She shook her head furiously. “Because… who would I kill? Who would kill me?”
Her sister tilted her head, as though saying 'You don’t even understand something so simple?'
“You, Hinako. If you want to live, then you have to kill yourself.”
Still, her sister continued.
“Be killed, Hinako.”
Why would her sister say such terrifying things so calmly? She really had changed after getting married.
“…Why? Are you killing everyone? Did you kill my sister too?”
“Yes. I killed myself too.” Her sister fixed unblinking eyes on Hinako. “I killed Father, Mother, and you—my precious little sister. I killed all my friends too.”
That’s what it means to become someone else’s, she said.
“I don’t want to be killed…”
Hinako stepped toward her sister as though drawn, but Junko evaded her and drew back.
“Why?” Hinako’s face crumpled with sadness.
“Hinako. Do you understand how terrifying it is to say those words today?”
“Of course…”
“I’ve already told you countless times already, haven’t I—”
Junko stepped down into the genkan and glanced briefly back at Hinako.
“Choose your own life.”
“I’m… allowed to choose?”
“I know you better than anyone. I could never be like you, but I respect that will. So don’t ask me. Decide for yourself.” And then her sister said: “Your sister wants you to be happy, Hinako.”
Junko left, leaving only the ringing of the bell behind.
That bell, Hinako had given it to her sister when she was still in middle school, a parting gift before the wedding. Compared to those days, Junko had begun to change so much. Now the eyes stared lidless from sockets carved too wide; half the face seemed swallowed by a single, gaping mouth; deep furrows scored the cheeks like the work of cruel blades. She had worn a mask crafted for such features but the parts that were flesh were worse.
Pale skin so thin the blackened veins showed through like ink beneath rice-paper. Once Hinako had visited her sister in hospital, when Junko was in a difficult pregnancy and racked by endless morning sickness. The beautiful sister of memory had been reduced to a gaunt stranger—skin sallow, lips cracked, vomiting until there was nothing left, hands rough as old bark. She had looked decades older. Another person entirely.
That mask, Hinako understood now, had not been worn to conceal. It marked the moment when Junko ceased to be her sister.
Hinako left the Iwai house.
She had to return home.
“Shu… Rinko… Hang on, you two. I’m coming for you.”
Near the Iwai house, atop a modest rise, lay a vantage from which the entire town can be seen at a glance.
All of Ebisugaoka had already been swallowed by red. A world scoured red. The hell of crimson lotus, where flames bloom as flowers.
Sakuko had said it.
There are many hells.
Fall into this one, and the cold splits the skin open, and those fissures look like red lotuses. Indeed, the plants drenched in what looked like blood resembled nothing so much as the grasses and flowers that grow in hell. Hinako had never seen a true hell. Yet this place felt like one. Or perhaps the town itself had been cast down into it, root and stone and roof.
This was no longer a place fit for humans to live. Ebisugaoka had become a town of monsters.
There was no home left to return to.
Still, she must go. First she would head south along the mountain path, then near the center of town to find roads still spared from the red infestation or places with fewer monsters, and move from there.
Along the way, she came upon a spot completely untouched by the red contamination.
A park.
Was it mere coincidence? Or did the soil here contain some substance the red plants hated? Perhaps there was some hopeful thing here that could save the town but she had no time to ponder miracles. The park offered only a shortcut, a swifter path through the dying town.
As she passed through, the sight of drainage pipes, seesaws, and slides abruptly summoned fragments of childhood memory.
Being left out of the girls’ games of house. Sitting alone atop one of those pipes, staring at nothing. When a baby fox darted into the park for refuge. Soon, the boys came and one of them got bitten by the fox and made a huge fuss over his injury.
To keep the adults from finding out, Hinako had secretly helped the little fox escape back into the mountains.
She wondered how it was doing now.
Did it think humans were frightening? Did it come to hate humans after that?
She walked on, leaving the park behind.
She did not call out “I’m home.”
Such words do not belong to a hand clenched around an iron pipe.
In truth, for the past several years she had never once longed or eager to hurry back home. To most people a house is a place of peace and refuge, but not this house. To her it had become—after Junko married and left—something else. Not quite hell, perhaps, but close kin to a prison cell.
Yet even so she had wished, praying, that the house would still be safe.
Iron pipe at the ready, she placed her hand on the handle of the sliding front door. If what she had heard over the phone was happening here right now, then someone or something should be inside.
She slid the door open with a rattle.
“Huh??”
A bewildered, almost comical sound escaped her.
Beyond the entrance, the familiar sight of her own home was gone.
The fusuma panels that should have stood there were gone. Doors she had never seen before waited in their place. Worst of all, the hallway stretched far too long, impossibly so, vanishing into shadow.
The entire floorplan was completly wrong.
The telephone rang.
The sound was ominous. Nothing but bad premonitions, yet she kept her eyes sharp on the surroundings as she lifted the receiver.
“…Hello?”
“Is this the Shimizu residence? This is Okamoto Fisheries! We are most grateful for your patronage on this joyous occasion! I’ve brought the celebratory maguro as requested, but I seem to have gotten lost on the way—”
“Wait? Um, hello?”
The line went dead.
Had they ordered maguro for something at home—?
It’s a celebratory day. everyone’s waiting for you.
Her mother’s words from the phone echoed in her mind. So everyone really was here?
“Shu! Rinko!”
She called out as she moved deeper into the house. There was no sign of anyone ever present.
“Mom! Where are you?”
On the telephone there had been the murmur of many voices, laughter overlapping like waves. Where had they gone? In this oppressive silence, she even began to doubt whether the call had truly come from this house.
And yet there was no mistaking it: this was the Shimizu home.
The layout was utter chaos, but the pattern on the fusuma, the ill-fitting doors that always stuck, the scratches on the hallway and pillars, the cracks in the walls, the stains on the ceiling. These were the things Hinako saw and touched every single day.
This place was her home, yet remade. A haphazard patchwork stitched together from pieces of the Shimizu household. The corridors twisted and doubled, so that even a moment’s inattention could send her circling back to where she began. She, who had known every inch of this cramped house since she could walk, now lost her way in it. Lost inside her own tiny, cat-forehead-sized house.
Worse still, from navigating this labyrinthine version of the Shimizu residence, one thing became clear: not only had the arrangement of rooms changed, but entirely unfamiliar ones now existed.
Even so, upon closer inspection, those strange rooms were not wholly alien. Household items, appliances, and other elements unmistakably belonging to the Shimizu family were mixed in among the furnishings. Perhaps fragments of the house as it had existed before Hinako was even born had been stitched into the fabric of this place as well.
How long had she been wandering? It felt like she would never arrive anywhere. Half-desperate and half-resigned, the girl opened every fusuma sliding door or drawer she came across without the slightest caution or hesitation.
One such door yielded with its familiar, reluctant scrape.
And there it was: the living room she was sick of seeing every single day.
The low kotatsu table, sake bottles, ashtray, the family photo hanging on the nagaita shelf. This was the room where her dad would grumble complaints about the food her mother had made and hurled things. The room where he would yell at Hinako and threw things. The room where her drunk father would rampage and threw things. In this room, where the pillars, tatami mats, and doors were covered in “scars” from all the objects her father hurled whatever lay nearest to hand, there were only the most nauseating, repulsive memories, not a single grain of good recollection.
Deciding there was nothing for her here either, she turned on her heel—
“What’s that supposed to mean? I never heard any such thing!”
The voice came suddenly from behind her.
…What is this?
Hinako was in the living room. Her father was there, and so too her mother.
The three of them were sitting around the low kotatsu table.
“You don’t need to think about anything! We parents will handle everything from here!”
“Why do you get to decide everything about my life, Dad? What about how I feel?”
“Shut up!”
Her father slammed his fist down on the kotatsu.
This wasn’t an illusion.
It was a re-enactment of something that had actually happened. Hinako remembered this day very clearly. The re-enactment played like a series of still images—some parts blurred or distorted—but the voices and sounds came through with painful clarity.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer! There won’t be another chance like this! Could there possibly be anything happier for you? Of course not!”
“Hinako, dear. A woman’s greatest happiness is to marry, bear strong, healthy children—”
“My happiness is different! Stop deciding it for me!”
As the father and daughter began to argue, her mother would always step in to mediate and soothe. A scene she had witnessed so many times it made her sick. Her mother was never truly on her side. She would smile and support even of his most outrageous claims.
“Your father is only thinking of what’s best for yo—”
“Spare me the pretty words! It’s the debt, isn’t it? I’m being sold off to pay dad's debts!! Once this deal goes through, a huge sum of money comes in, right? Why do I have to be the sacrifice for the debts you created all by yourself?”
“WHAT?! What did you just sayyyyy?!”
Her father's voice trembled with rage. The muscles under his right eye and at the left corner of his mouth twitched violently; his upper lip curled up in that loathsome, familiar expression.
On this day, Hinako had finally let out everything she had bottled up inside.
“Isn’t that exactly what this is? You got swindled by your so-called friend or your little brother figure or whoever they are and they ran off with all the money. That’s your responsibility! Mom had to cut all expenses, she had to scrimped and saved so much! Junko had to put up with being laughed at by her friends for wearing the same old clothes. We all saved that money together so our family could just afford a little bit of happiness! Before you act so high and mighty, apologize! To me! To Junko! To Mom! Apologize for all the trouble you’ve caused us!”
“HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT?!”
Her phantom father snatched the decorative kitchen knife he always kept close by, pulling it from its paulownia box. Even though his dream of running a restaurant had long since been crushed, he still clung to it sentimentally, treasuring that knife.
He raised it high, ready to hurl it at Hinako.
Hinako collapsed onto the tatami, curling up and shielding her head with her arms.
“Dear, please stop! Please, I beg you!”
Shoving aside her mother, the woman who desperately tried to intervene, her father threw the decorative knife straight at Hinako.
Thunk.
The blade struck the mat inches from the girl’s side and stood quivering.
The illusion vanished.
In the suddenly silent living room, Hinako had sunk to the tatami in exactly the same way as her phantom self, arms wrapped protectively around her head. Her lips trembled uncontrollably. Her gaze dropped to the spot where the knife had struck. There, still embedded in the tatami, was the old “scar” back then.
What kind of intention or purpose gave birth to this space?
In the now-labyrinthine Shimizu house, the phenomenon of past events being replayed as vivid images occurred repeatedly. It didn’t happen in every room, but it seemed that particularly memorable incidents for Hinako would re-enact themselves in the very room where they had originally taken place. Time and again, Hinako saw her past self.
When she entered her own room, there she was: Hinako.
No matter how many times she saw it, her room was always stark and sparsely furnished. A far cry from Rinko's rooms or that of Sakuko's. The only thing with any splash of color was the poster for a track-and-field meet pasted on the wall.
Hinako sat at her desk in front of an open diary, gripping a pencil with a troubled, earnest expression.
“Hey, partner.”
Shu entered the room. His outline was slightly blurred.
The Shu from the past.
Hinako hurriedly closed the diary and replied, “Hey.”
“Here,” Shu said, handing a box labeled “cold medicine” to Hinako.
“Thanks. Really appreciate it.”
As she spoke, Hinako sniffed audibly through her nose.
“Smells kinda sweet.”
“Overusing over-the-counter stuff isn’t good for you. Herbal medicine puts less strain on the body, and I figured this blend would suit you best—so I mixed it myself.”
“Thanks. Your medicines always works wonders.”
She took one capsule from the box and sniffed it closely.
“Smells a little like peach.”
“Your headaches are classic tension-type—stress-induced. Especially lately, they seem more frequent… You okay? You’re not pushing yourself too hard, are you?”
Hinako gave a tired smile.
“I’m not. I’m just… trying to think things through properly.”
“I see,” Shu nodded. “You’re at your best when you’re being yourself. Going along with what everyone else wants. That’s not like you at all, partner.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought too.”
“If there’s something you’re hesitating over right now… talk to yourself more. Have a real conversation with the person inside you.”
Shu placed his hand on the sliding door’s handle.
“Well, I’m heading out. No need to see me off.”
“Thanks for coming all the way here, partner.”
“See you tomorrow. Make sure you take the medicine.”
Before he could fully leave the room, Shu vanished and with him, the re-enactment of the past ended.
An odd loneliness lingered in the room. On impulse, Hinako opened the desk drawer, took out the diary, and flipped to the last entry she had written.
Tomorrow is finally the day.
No, since the sky is already starting to lighten, it’s today.
Today is the day of my funeral.
No, it's the day of my execution.
Hinako Shimizu disappears today.
No one will ever call me Hinako Shimizu again.
The iron pipe dragged along the floorboards with a low, grating rasp, echoing throughout the house. The only sound in the house that answered her footsteps.
Exhaustion had long since passed from limbs to spirit. Shu and Rinko weren't here, were they? If so, then why was she still here? She'd been lured. Used as bait, Shu and Rinko as the lure to draw her to this place. To wander her own home eternally...
There was only the past here. No future.
She was Hinako. Yet here, she would remain forever as a "Hinako", a fletchling unable to spread her wings and fly away.
“…Shu?”
She stopped, straining her ears.
It was Shu's voice.
She could never mistake her partner's voice. But his voice was a groan. A voice in pain.
“Shu… are you there?”
This wasn't the voice of Shu from the past. There was no memory of Shu ever suffering like this in this house. Which meant… right now, somewhere in these walls her partner was hurting, crying out.
Guided by her partner's moans, Hinako pressed deeper into the labyrinthine depths of her own home.
How long had her partner been suffering like this? She hadn't noticed. Perhaps Shu had been crying out in pain for far longer, and she'd simply failed to hear.
“Wait for me, partner.”
A long dark corridor stretched ahead. At its farthest end was a lattice door leaking crimson light. There was no mistake, the voice was coming from that direction. From beyond that light. That's where Shu was.
Would Rinko be there too?
Perhaps everyone… was waiting there beyond that light—
Hope pushed at her back; her steps quickened naturally.
Partway down the corridor, a slightly ajar sliding door leaked white light from the room within. Right now, she should focus only on Shu and the others. Keep her eyes fixed on that crimson glow and press forward.
She reached the room leaking light.
She had resolved to look ahead, yet her gaze slipped sideways, peeking into the room.
This was my room.
In this labyrinthine Shimizu residence, it was no surprise the same room could be there multiple times.
Inside was Hinako.
Lying face-down, kicking her feet playfully toward the door. Reading a book, perhaps. She looked so carefree. What had happened on this day? What past event was “recorded” in this room?
No, Shu has to came first.
Yet before she realized it, Hinako had stepped into the room.
The other Hinako was reading a letter. A small stack lay beside her elbow. The stationery was heavy, cream laid paper embossed with a crest of three leaves.
The sender’s name was written in precise, familiar strokes.
Kotoyuki Tsuneki.
The letter carried the scent of sandalwood.
That's weird. This should be a past memory. Why can I smell it?
With a start, she turned her gaze.
There she was.
Facing this way.
But that couldn't be. By sheer chance, the eyes of her past self had met those of the present Hinako. She tried to slip backward, out of the line of sight.
But the other gaze followed.
Slowly, Hinako stood. She turned her face—and her eyes—directly at Hinako.
“You can see me, can't you?”
Hinako was speaking to Hinako. She now faced the situation of being addressed by her own past self.
“Now you can even hear my voice.”
As Hinako approached, the present Hinako raised the iron pipe in both hands and backed out of the room. Hinako narrowed her eyes at her retreating figure, then turned and withdrew deeper into the room.
“Don't just stand there. Come in. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
With that, Hinako faced the wall.
Slowly lowering the iron pipe, Hinako stepped inside. And misread—wait, no—stumbled over her words.
“You… who are you…?”
Hinako turned around.
“Please, die.”
The tone was as casual and cheery as that of a morning greeting.
Hinako took half a step back.
“—If I said that, would you die for me?”
“…Why do you want me to die?”
“Because maybe, just maybe, you could be reborn from Hinako Shimizu.”
A faint smile played on her lips.
“Why don't you want to live as me?”
“Why?”
Hinako's back teeth ground audibly.
“Stop playing dumb with me! Why are you acting like this, like you don’t know what’s going on?!”
Clang—the iron pipe fell to the floor. Hinako clutched her head in both hands.
“Hey, look at me—look at me! Use your head and think! Think about it!!”
Pressing her head down as if to bury it, Hinako curled smaller and smaller.
“What's that supposed to mean…? You know, I could’ve killed you off at any time! But I didn’t! Any idea why?!”
Staring fixedly at an empty point, Hinako shook her head violently.
“Because I wanted to talk seriously—with you! With Hinako Shimizu!”
Suddenly, Hinako's expression turned weary.
“— We have to fight. You and I, with everything we've got. A fight to the death as equals! Yet all you do is run away. Worse, running and running… You’re not even trying to take any of this seriously. About us! If you're going to keep running… then fine. This time, for real—”
She looked at her like an insect carcass.
“—I'm going to kill you.”
Hinako's shoulders jerked with a twitch.
“If you don't want that, then show me your resolve to live!”
The hands clutching her head fell limply. Groping, she seized the iron pipe at her feet and stood.
“Show me your determination! Not by running, not by covering your ears. Kill me properly, and you stay alive—”
“You too.”
Hinako thrust the iron pipe toward the other's face.
“You too! Can you swear, absolutely, that you'll kill me and become happier than I ever could? You're scared, aren't you? Deep down.”
“…Yeah… I'm scared.”
Her eyes welled up; her voice trembled.
“I'm terrified… but…”
She seized the iron pipe in a fierce grip.
“Being paralyzed by fear isn't a choice.”
Open your eyes!
“Don't stop thinking! Don't let anyone else dictate your happiness!”
Hinako shouted, pulling the other one close along with the pipe she gripped.
Hinako's face drew near—right in front of her.
Hinako watched as the skin of the other Hinako's face slowly peeled back from the forehead.
“Hey, Hinako Shimizu! You hate it, but you have wings! I'll give you courage… so give me your wings!”
The face of Hinako, who desired difference—
Fell away from this world.
The reunion with Shu came to pass. Rinko was there beside him. Sakuko too. All three waited beyond the lattice door, just as she had hoped.
Only they hung from the ceiling.
Necks stretched to grotesque length, heads lolling forward. Bodies charred, still smoldering, and their faces locked forever in the rictus of final agony.
Hinako collapsed to her knees.
“…Why… why did it have to come to this…”
No one would call her partner or Hinako anymore. She couldn't fight the Galactic Imperium together with them, couldn't stay by their side forever. No more real fights, no more anything.
“…Who… who did this to you…?”
The fusuma sliding door in front of her burst open with a violent rattle.
She picked up the iron pipe, stood, and advanced toward it.
“Hinako's home!”
“The star of the show has arrived!”
“Heyyy, we've been waiting—!”
Laughter erupted, coarse, drunken, overlapping in a roar of mirth. Guests clapped and cheered, faces flushed, voices slurred. The hall rang with cries of drink, sing, and revel.
The feast spread before them: filthy sake cups and dishes, thick bile-like soups, gall, rotting flesh, carrion. Flies and snakes swarmed over the grotesque array of "food."
“Hinako-ooo!” Her father's off-key, slurred voice made Hinako flinch and stiffen. “You're late! We’re about to get started here!”
He narrowed his eyes, twisted his mouth into that grotesque Ebisu grin he never showed sober. The reek of liquor and the press of drunken heat lifted him into unnatural good humor. Mother proffered the maguro knife. He seized it eagerly, turned to face the crowd.
“Now then, honored guests, behold the sharpness of my blade…” His high-pitched announcement suddenly dropped into a hollow, soulless expression. “…Please… please, watch! IYYYOOOOO!!”
The knife flashed upward.
Hinako stared, stunned.
In its dull steel she saw the old terror overlaid: Her father's voice booming like hammered copper, and pounding on a flat pot; his face lit sickly white beneath the bare bulb; terror branded into her since childhood.
A whoosh as it sliced the air. The maguro knife struck point-first into the floor at Hinako's feet.
Hands planted on the ground, gasping in hyperventilation, Hinako shuddered.
“Hinako-oooo!”
Her father's body convulsed. His belly swelled, face bloated, limbs ballooned—his whole form expanding. Countless bruises surfaced on the giant mass of flesh, bursting open to expose raw red innards. His haori tore apart, ragged strips clinging to his body. His right hand gripped the huge decorative knife; his left had become a tentacle.
“Hinako, dear…”
Her mother called gently then her forehead split open down the center, peeling outward. From the gash, vivid red flowers bloomed and proliferated wildly. Her face, now crowned with a cluster of crimson blooms, still held a mother's tender expression.
“Even if I'm a bad daughter… it doesn't matter…”
Hinako gripped the iron pipe tighter.
“I don't want to become like you!”
Her father raised the massive knife, big enough to carve up an entire building.
Her mother advanced, gripping the everyday kitchen knife she wielded daily.
“How dare you, shaming your parents at a gathering like this!”
“The shame is having parents like you!”
The descending blade met iron with a shower of sparks. The heavy impact sent Hinako flying backward, slamming into the banquet hall wall.
”Agh!”
Her father grabbed nearby ashtrays and beer bottles, hurling them. She rolled right and left, weaving and dodging. Seeing his old habit of scarring the pillars and tatami of the Shimizu household, it looked so pathetic now.
But for little Hinako back then, it had been terrifying.
Shards from a shattered beer bottle flew, cutting her mother.
Hinako kicked over the round kotatsu table, using it as a shield against her father's throws. Dodging while closing in, she drove the iron pipe into his massive gut.
“Owwooo—!”
The blow seemed to split his giant body down the middle! But that was just his slack-jawed mouth gaping wide. The teeth matched his's vile crooked mouth perfectly. The maw exhaled a thick reek of strong liquor as it roared.
“You’re a woman, act like one!”
“That's the one phrase in this world I fight hardest against!”
As she raised the pipe for another strike at his belly, her mother slid in from the side, thrusting her knife forward with the momentum.
“Hinako, come here a moment.”
“What is it?! Mom, stay out of this—!”
“I cannot. Please, your mother wants to clear up your misunderstandings.”
She slashed the air in repeated X patterns with the knife. Occasionally mixing in sharp stabs or upward slashes from below.
“You think your mother's always being bullied by your father, don't you?”
“This morning he spilled the miso soup on me, right?”
“That was because my cooking was bad. I can never beat your father in the kitchen.”
“Bad? With knife work like that?”
The rapid thrusts accelerated until they blurred. Dodging took all her focus. Her mother was no poor cook. It was the opposite. Quite good, actually.
She was propping up her husband.
Her father charged with heavy footsteps.
Hinako tried to back away, stepped on a rolling beer bottle and fell backward.
Her mother leaped, raising the knife in both hands to plunge it into her face. Rolling sideways to evade, Hinako drove the pipe into her mother's side.
“Ugh, Hinako…!”
The knife clattered from her hand; she dropped to her knees on the tatami, then collapsed face-first.
“Hey, Mom. I want to know—seriously.”
Swinging the pipe one-handed, Hinako approached Mother, who clutched her side.
“Why did you marry such a barbaric man who yells and throws things? What was so good about him? You were fine with spending your life to someone like that?”
“—Your father had a dream.”
“A restaurant, right? I know, his dream was crushed.”
“Yes. It hurt him deeply. There was a time he was very broken.”
“That doesn't give him the right to hurt his family.”
“But once he calmed down, he apologized to me.” Her mother stood, brushing off her apron as she continued. “He just couldn't show his weak side to his children… Men have so much pride.”
“So what?! Because of Dad's pride and his dream, the rest of us has to suffer?”
“I did something terrible to you, Hinako. And to Junko.”
She slowly picked up the dropped knife, wiping the blade on her apron hem. She ran a finger along the edge, nodded. Lowering her stance, she pointed the tip at Hinako.
“But your mother still wants to support him. Your father hasn't given up his dream yet. You saw it earlier—the smile when he shows off his knife skills. When he tries it again to make that dream come true… I want to be by his side—!!”
Her mother slid forward.
Hinako focused on her movements to dodge at the last second—but suddenly her father barreled in from the side. The violent impact slammed her to the floor, leaving her dazed with a mild concussion. Glaring up at his massive form, she ground her back teeth.
Shu had told her once: one cause of her headaches was unconsciously clenching her jaw from stress. And the source of that stress was him.
“Why should our whole family be dragged and chained around by this man's dream?”
“That's how it is. Supporting a man's dream, that's a woman's role.”
“Women have dreams too.”
“—Yes. Your mother had it once.”
“Really? What was it?”
“To be a wonderful bride.”
Hinako shook her head, raising the iron pipe.
“—Terminal case.”
Her mother leaped, closing the distance in an instant. The flashing blade grazed her cheek and earlobe, stinging sharply.
“Hinako, you know, married women aren't as weak or helpess as you think we are.”
“I'm feeling that right now.”
“Between us… your father? He's just big. Your father might put on a tough face in front of his daughters, but when it's just your mother and father, he's a whole different man.”
Cornered against the wall. Her mother tilted her head; the red plants covering the upper half of her face rustled.
“Did I ever tell you… Your mother and father got into a real fight once?”
“You did?”
“That time, I ignored him completely until he apologized.”
“…Really?”
She glanced at her father standing there. And her mother's gaze turned toward him as well.
“He gave in after just three days. After you and Junko went to bed, he groveled, head to floor. Whenever your father and I got into a serious argument, he knew that against me he never had a chance.”
Black lips smiled beneath crimson petals.
“But that's life between husband and wife.”
Her mother gently took Hinako's hand.
“I'm truly sorry for making you worry, Hinako.”
Hinako squeezed back.
“—This morning, when I said I didn't want to become like you… I'm sorry.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Thank you for telling me. But even so… I still don't want to become like you.”
“That's fine too.”
They gripped each other's hands tightly.
Her mother's upward thrust and Hinako's downward swing clashed in a ringing metallic screech. Seconds later, the spinning knife fell and stabbed into the tatami.
Hinako's iron pipe was buried in her mother's head.
Pulling it free, her body swayed.
“Kimie!!”
Her father charged like a raging bull. Before she fell, his arm caught her. He cradled her tenderly, laying her gently at the edge of the hall.
For the first time, Hinako saw her father tended to her mother so devotedly.
“Now, dear… it's time you apologized to Hinako.” Her mother's head was slightly caved in, but still she spoke normally. “You know—if you don't get Hinako to forgive you, I won't let you see her off.”
Her father, lacking a visible head, bowed his whole torso forward. Slowly, heavily, he approached and stopped before Hinako.
She raised the iron pipe in both hands.
“…What do you want?”
“I... I wanted to apologize to you.”
“Now? After all this time?”
“I've been a horrible father.”
He swept the huge knife sideways. Hinako leaned back to dodge, then reset her stance, only for the reverse sweep to come from the other side.
“For the longest time… I yelled at you and Junko, I scared both of you. I'm sorry.”
“You're apologizing for that now?! It doesn't erase anything!” she shouted, darting behind him to target his legs. Shu had said that for big opponents was to go for the legs but this was no sport; Her father's's legs were rock-solid.
“All that time! Causing trouble for everyone! Terrifying us! And you think one 'sorry' wipes it all away?!”
She hammered the massive back, ass and arms. One painful blow for every year of pain they endured. It seemed to hurt; he dropped to one knee.
“No, I know it's not enough. It doesn't erase anything.”
A tentacle seized her weapon, swinging her—and it—around. Torn between letting go or holding on, she was slammed to the ground along with the pipe. An elephant-like foot descended; she rolled aside just in time. Her mother's knife lay stabbed in the tatami before her.
“Considering how you feel… there's no way you could forgive me. I know that truly. I do.”
The tentacle whipped down; she rolled again. It lashed the tatami repeatedly, splintering wood flying.
“Even so… at least let me apologize. It's okay if you don't forgive me.”
“You're pathetic. You're just apologizing because you want to feel better about yourself?”
Rising right after dodging the whip, she swung the pipe at where her father's face should be. But the tentacle caught it again. However, this time, Hinako let go.
“Even now, I'm terrified you'll blow up and throw that knife at me again! It's unbearable!”
“I'm sorry… I'm sorry…”
Her father advanced, swinging the huge knife wildly. He smashed through walls, tore tatami, destroyed anything nearby. A small but destructive tornado.
“I believed—that a proper father should be feared by his own children.”
Sorry and sorry—
Apologizing while destroying, keeping nothing close.
“I'm truly sorry, Hinako!”
“Whether or not I forgive you is up to me.”
Hinako leaped straight into the storm of slashes. Weaving through the gaps—
She thrust out her arm. And In her hand: the kitchen knife she'd secretly picked up earlier, her own mother's. The blade sank easily, deeply into the buried mass that was her father's's face.
“Guh… gaaaaahhh!!”
“…But I won't ignore your wish to apologize. Still, I don't have to forgive you. I dont have to listen and hear your excuses or accept your apologies.”
Her father quietly lowered his own maguro knife.
“…You don't have to forgive me. Break free from my curse… and live happily. I'm sorry… for everything, Hinako.”
He collapsed; his bloated body spread limply across the tatami.
“But… I'm Hinako Shimizu. Our family ties can't be severed. So, I won't forgive you, but I'll listen! Just your feelings, you and Mom… you can be happy together forever.”
Exhausted, Hinako leaned against the wall.
There was no banquet hall anymore. No guests nor food. Just a vast room overgrown with red plants covering walls and ceiling and floor.
At the sound of a door, she looked. It was a black double doors opening. From them, her bloated giant father and her flower-crowned mother walked out arm in arm. At the threshold, she seemed to nod toward Hinako.
A little later, Hinako stepped through the door, into a familiar corridor near the house's entrance.
Wet, heavy thuds—like clumps of mud falling.
Around the corner: a horrific pile of entrails-like masses scattered on the floor. Beyond, at the entrance, her now human-shaped parents were leaving.
The sliding door closed, yet her chest suddenly tightened painfully.
“Dad… Mom…”
Running to the entrance, Hinako slid it open and looked up.
There stood a huge monster in white wedding robes. Silver fur on its arms, and no face.
It gripped her father and mother's heads in both hands, hoisting them up.
They dangled limply, simply resigned with their limbs hanging.
Hinako tried to rush forward but there was nothing she could do.
Right before her eyes, the white-robed monster crushed her parents' heads.
Blood rained across her, as her screams tore through the fog.
Consciousness returned from afar, slow as a tide creeping back over black sand.
Hinako gently lifted her eyelids by. The gagaku court music still sighed through the air, thin and distant.
“Please, drink this. It will ease your pain.“
A small cup was offered before her, its contents clear as mountain water, without color or scent to betray what lay within.
She took it from the fox-masked man’s gloved hand. The porcelain was cool against her lips. The man accepted the cup again when she lowered it. He drained what remained in a single unhurried motion.
“I… What… happened…?”
“Your body is still acclimating. But you’re doing well, so far.“
He offered another cup, a much larger one now. She reached for it with the beast-hand, but her strength faltered, spilling a few drips. She changed hands, took the cup in human fingers, and drank again. Once more he received it from her, finished what she had left.
“At this rate…”
Hinako voiced her worry in a frail, thin voice.
“At this rate… won’t everyone grow tired of me…? I feel like it’s only a matter of time…”
“I will not allow that to happen.”
He set his lips to the rim once more. She drank after him, their mouths sharing the same cup.
"You’ve got some of your color back. It’s beginning to take effect."
This time he took a sip from an even larger cup before passing it to her.
“…What is this?” Hinako asked, peering into the cup.
“A filtered mixture of the rice and water offered to ancestral spirits. It contains a divine power.“
She drank. He finished it. When she made to rise he placed a steadying hand against her back.
“I can stand now… Thank you…“
“Very well. Be careful.“
She rose. Mist drifted across the floor of the worship hall. Row upon row of fox statues regarded them.
“Now, I have one more thing to show you, if you’ll follow me."
She placed her hand over the one he extended.
“Yes.”
Walking as if across the tops of clouds, Hinako felt a pleasant buoyancy as she moved forward.
The corridor encircling the shrine hall was steeped in an air of venerable, inviolable sanctity. Under other circumstances the solemnity might have bound her limbs with dread, forced her spine straight with reverence or fear. But now her senses were dulled, Hinako lacked the sharpness to even register such pressure. Screens painted with bold depictions of ancestral fox figures in their heroic forms. Hanging scrolls mounted with magnificent calligraphy whose brushstrokes were breathtaking. Exquisite objects engraved with the three-leaf crest. All of it was new to her eyes, Hinako felt a gentle, almost distant sense of wonder, as though she were slowly reading a tale from some far-off foreign land. She walked on, cradled in that reverie.
In a small chamber she paused before a mural that rose behind the altar.
"Hinako."
The fox-masked man inclined his head in greeting.
Her older sister Junko approached.
“Forgive me for interrupting.”
The mask she wore stared down at Hinako with its carved, unblinking eyes, then turned toward the man.
“I wish to speak with Hinako for just a moment. May I?“
The fox-masked man looked at Hinako. When she gave a small nod, he said, “Very well,” bowed to Junko, and withdrew.
“Junko…”
“So you’re still alive, then?”
Hinako gave a timid nod.
“Yeah.”
“Pull yourself together.”
The words were stern.
“…Pull myself together? ...How?”
“Lingering attachments cannot be severed hastily. I thought as much, so I gave you time—”
The mask she wore stared down at Hinako with its carved, unblinking eyes, then turned toward the man.
“But surely you’re not thinking it’s all right to go on living?”
Those eyes refused to let Hinako look away.
“I won’t allow such indulgence.”
From behind the mask came a muffled voice, yet those words alone burned with vivid intensity.
“Kill her. Without fail.”
“Shall I give you two a bit more time?”
The fox-masked man stood at a slight distance.
“No.” Junko bowed to him “You've given us plenty. Thank you for your time. With that, I’ll take my leave…”
As Junko departed, the fox-masked man returned in her place.
“Did you have a good discussion?”
“…Yes.”
“Then let us continue.”
Hinako nodded, though her gaze lingered on the darkness into which Junko had vanished.
The chamber was small, yet it felt unmistakenbly special. If this was a treasure hall, then what was kept here would be objects without equal in the world. At the farthest end stood a stone statue: a black fox and a white fox entwined, bodies pressed close in eternal repose.
The masked man gestured her forward. Before the statue waited a low table draped in cloth-of-gold. He lifted a small but beautiful box of lacquer from a nearby stand.
“This is yours.”
Hinako accepted it. Her fingers trembled faintly as she held it. He took a second box and moved to stand before the paired foxes. Each fox had a spiral-shaped hollow at the base of its tail.
“Now, you as well.“
Beckoned closer, she approached. Standing before the white fox, Hinako followed his lead: she opened the lid of her lacquered box and lifted out a ring sunk in golden tangerine leaves. It was a heavy, solemn golden ring.
“Now then, let us begin.”
“Yes…”
She lifted the ring, tried to set it into the white fox’s hollow. It would not seat, and refused to settle.
The fox-masked man’s mouth curved in the faintest smile. He extended his palm. On it rested another ring, slimmer, more delicate, its surface etched with fine and graceful patterns. Feminine where hers had been stern.
He took her ring; she took his.
An exchange of rings.
When Hinako brought the ring close to the white fox’s hollow, it was drawn in as if by suction. A mechanical click sounded—like an ancient device awakening—and slowly, the door set deep behind the black-and-white statues began to open.
“This is the final rite. You have done well to come this far.“ The man said.
“It’s because of you… that I made it here…“
She looked up at the mask as she spoke. For the first time her voice carried a faint, returning sharpness—as though she had stepped, just barely, from dream back into flesh.
“Just a little more.”
“Yes.” She nodded, eyes fixed on the slowly opening door. “Until the very end.”
In the heart of the red she stood.
Hinako lowered the hands that had clutched her skull. She raised her face.
A pool of blood lay before her, wide and still, mingling with the crimson of the hell-flowers until no one could say where the blood ended and the petals began. She crawled into it on hands and knees. There, half-submerged, floated her mother’s zōri sandals and her father’s geta clogs. Looking closer, there were other fragments—shreds of cloth, splinters of bone—floated in the gore in all shapes.
Clutching the blood-soaked zōri to her chest, she wailed aloud in the middle of the pool.
From the thicket of blood-drenched, ever-redder flowers, a shadow rose.
It picked up the fallen iron pipe.
“…Enough already…”
It trampled the showy, blood-colored petals blooming extravagantly at its feet.
Hinako, drenched in her parents’ blood and flesh, had become part of this red world. Yet this red filled her with unbearable loathing. A grotesque, human-shaped thing approached with comical, jerky movements. Grinding her back teeth, she raised the iron pipe high.
“What the hell… are you?!”
Her downward swing crushed the monster’s face; as it froze, a second blow from the side smashed its head. It flipped backward onto the ground, limbs curling and twitching like a dying spider.
“You took everything! Every—EVERYTHING—from MEEEEE!”
At Hinako’s scream, from every corner, every tangle of red vines, more grotesque shadow rose—head after head lifting, bodies uncoiling, leaping upright in hideous imitation of the living.
“My parents, my friends… my partner! My house, Chizuruya, the town, the memories, the future. You stole all of it!”
She ran and weaved through their ranks. A dancing flower-faced thing capered toward her; she swept its legs from under it, waited for the fall, then brought the pipe down again and again and again. Another lunged from behind; she spun without breaking stride and crushed its head mid-turn.
“Try to take it from me! Go ahead, try it!!”
Down the red-lotus mountain path she fled.
Through the fog-choked streets of the town she ran.
Every monstrosity that barred her way she shattered until it moved no more.
Behind her trail lay only motionless wooden puppet corpses.
“How much more do you have to torture me before you’re happy?!”
A monster stepped unknowing from a private house; one strike from the running Hinako snapped its neck and sent it crumpling.
“I know! There are people using us as pawns for something!”
She crushed the joints of its limbs to immobilize it, then smashed its head.
“Where are you?! Where are you hiding?! Where’s the mastermind who’s toying with us?!”
Smashing, snapping, shattering, trampling.
“I won’t dance for you anymore! I will choose my own way of living!”
Bathed in monster blood, roaring with a terrifying voice, she took on the visage of a red demon god.
A violent headache struck.
A pain unlike anything she had ever felt before. It felt as though her skull were cleaving open, her body tearing along invisible seams, entrails spilling outward, flesh inverting until inside became outside and the self was turned wrongside-out.
And then—as if guided—she arrived.
The place where it began.
Chizuruya.
The sweetshop that all the children in town adored. It no longer existed.
Every inch was overrun by red plants. Inside the shop there were no cheap candies, no ramune bottles, no menko cards, no marbles—only writhing masses of organ-like vegetable growths.
The children would never come back.
Neither would her friends, nor her partner.
But Hinako alone had returned.
Drenched in blood, she had come back here—
And as though it had known she would come, the white-robed monster was waiting.
Its face collapsed like rotting flesh, arms clad in silver beast fur—the monster that had appeared with the fog and brutally killed Sakuko.
And this monster was—
“Your face… you're from back then…”
It was Hinako, the one she had met inside the labyrinth her home had become.
Her consciousness flickered, on the verge of fading from the mind-shattering headache, but she gripped the iron pipe tighter so it wouldn’t fall from her hand.
“Why do we always have to be… treated like toys for them…?!”
Her legs felt weighed down as though chains of lead were wrapped around them; her head weighed more than iron.
Even so, she had to go forward. Even if she have to crawled like an insect.
“You said it, didn’t you? ‘Give me your wings…’”
Dragging her feet, one step, half a step, any distance at all. Inch by tortured inch, move this body forward.
“I’ll give you my wings… so take… my anger… and my sadness…”
She kicked off the ground, hurling her body forward.
Raising the iron pipe high.
“Take ALL of ITT!!”
The blow never fell.
The white-robed thing seized her throat in its beast-claws and lifted her from the earth. Within that grip, the creaking, grinding sound was Hinako’s neck bones protesting.
“Guh…”
Chirin.
A bell rang.
“Is this how you want to live your life?”
From the shadow of Chizuruya, her older sister Junko appeared.
“I know that when you look at me… all you see is a dumb little girl… a dumb little girl who pushes happiness away herself…”
The words came crushed from a collapsing windpipe, barely voice at all.
Yet she felt it reached her sister. Felt it arrived.
“But I want to live the way where even if I have to crawl and suffer, I want to find happiness in my own way…than accept it like feed thrown to livestock…and coddled like a pet. THAT'S happiness! THAT'S how I want to live.”
“…You feel no regret, do you?” Junko asked for confirmation. “You vow you can own this decision and never blame anyone else for the consequences, no matter what happens?”
She could no longer breathe; her vision darkened.
But she had to answer.
“This… is the choice… Hinako Shimizu makes… Our fate… we ourselves… we…”
Beyond the trembling vision, the white-robed face loomed. A face peeled away like a honeycomb of flesh, utterly ravaged. The child who had torn herself away from this world.
What emotion was it looking at her with now?
“We… have agonized over it long enough… after truly accepting it… we have made our choice.”
Hinako spoke those words directly to the white-robed figure before her.
OOOOOOOOO—
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—
UUOOOOOOOOOAAAAAHHH—
At Hinako's scream, the white-robed monster answered with a howl.
“We will not be anybody's little puppet...ANY LONGER!!”
Their two cries overlapped.
A dull, final crack of breaking bone.
It ended.
The fox-masked man and Hinako with her beast arm, stood within the altar chamber.
This was the place where the ancestral spirits were enshrined. Two shrine maidens approached, bearing ornately decorated deer antlers before the fox-masked man and Hinako.
They bowed in unison.
The maidens turned the antlers, presented them to the man and Hinako, then withdrew from the space.
Together they ascended the shallow steps to the altar. Once more they bowed low. Together they lifted the antlers and laid them before the divine presence.
White smoke rose then from the altar itself, thin at first, then thickening, coiling like breath from unseen lungs. It drifted toward Hinako, as the fox-masked man watched from several paces away.
Hinako sensed something strange and looked down at her beast arm. Between the silver fur, red grains appeared—emerging, blooming into crimson grasses and flowers. The flowers climbed her human arm, her shoulders, her back. They bloomed across her throat, her cheeks.
The fox mask slipped from her face and clattered to the tatami. Petals opened across her skin, her features vanishing beneath a mask of scarlet bloom.
The man observed the sight without moving, utterly still.
After a time—
She rose, shedding the red grasses and flowers that had grown upon her body like so many fallen leaves.
What emerged was a faceless figure clad in white wedding robes.
The same white-robed figure that had stood before Chizuruya.
At its feet lay Hinako’s corpse, throat crushed only moments before. The corpse did not turn to ash or soil; it simply dissolved, leaving nothing behind, simply scattering hatedly from this world.
“Now say your farewells.”
From inside Chizuruya, Junko's voice called out.
“I sincerely hope you find happiness.”
The white-robed figure began to walk.
To bid farewell—
The crimson grasses flowers that wreathed it were beautiful beyond bearing. Yet no name for such beauty existed within her, for the old words and feelings have long been killed.
She no longer recalled the former appearance of this town; the old things were no longer needed.
Before the house that once was hers, her parents waited.
Her mother narrowed her eyes happily in welcome. Her father held his expression rigid, as though to keep any emotion from showing.
“Hinako… you’re beautiful—look, dear, your father—”
“…This is no longer your home.”
Her father’s voice trembled; tears he had fought so long slipped free and traced slow paths down his cheeks.
“Even if you came back alone… don’t expect to be let inside.”
The white-robed figure quietly bowed its head. Then, with all the gratitude that it had ever been owed, it reached out, and took both parents’ heads in its hands.
And crushed them.
Guided by blue will-o’-the-wisps that drifted low and sullen, Hinako passed beneath arch after arch of torii gates, each one darker than the last. Never had she walked so deep into shadow. If this were the road to the land of the dead she would not have questioned it.
Wandering a garden lit by gloomy, snow-lantern glows, she pushed open the massive doors of a damp, heavy building. Beyond lay a vermilion-painted bridge; crossing it led to a dim corridor lined with countless fox statues glaring down at her. At the very end, past a door bearing a three-leaf crest staff, opened into a vast hall.
Numerous fox statues stood in a ring around the chamber, all facing inward. At the far end was the altar; the light from lanterns and votive fires reflected off the mist at her feet, bathing the entire space in a hazy glow.
Here, she knew at once. This was the place.
“—Hinako.”
From behind a pillar stepped a figure in deepest black mourning silk.
Junko.
“Hinako…? Are you Hinako?!”
Her voice carried disbelief.
“I am Hinako Shimizu.”
“…Why are you here?”
Hinako let her gaze travel the shadowed ranks of foxes, the drifting mist, the waiting altar.
”Junko. I think I understand now.”
“What?”
“You and me… everyone… Someone is toying with all of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of them wants to marry me off… the other one wants to stop the wedding. They’ve torn me in two and made me sing their song. I know that now.”
Junko fell silent. Perhaps she thought her little sister had lost her mind. It was all right if she wasn’t understood now. All that mattered was proving it from here on.
“Forcing unwanted choices on people, rushing them into it, and then accepting those choices…These are battles that we both have to fight! It’s been an awful, agonizing ordeal. But I think… I think I get it now!”
Junko turned half away, shoulders stiff beneath the black silk.
Hinako had not meant to accuse. She wasn’t criticizing her sister for marrying as their parents wished. Yet the words must have sounded like accusation all the same. How many times had she spoken, no matter how she phrased it, against the path her sister had chosen?
And the doll.
The celluloid girl she had carried as a child, her little proxy. Through that painted mouth she had voiced every complaint, every spite, every cruelty she dared not speak face-to-face. Children are unconsciously cruel. Perhaps, in her childish words and thoughts, she had struck at Junko’s happiness, mocked her choices, spat upon the life her sister had taken up.
“I’m sorry, Junko.”
You always protected me. And I loved you for that, so much. Yet even now, I’m completely rejecting the happiness you chose.
She had wanted to apologize to her sister again and again.
“I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. I-I… I know I’ve been a terrible daughter. I can’t show you my bride’s figure.“
The iron pipe scraped along the tatami as she dragged it forward. She walked toward the altar.
“But… if you truly want nothing more than for me to be happy… then please… let me do this!“
She ascended the steps. On the altar lay offerings arranged to appease the gods.
“This is… my decision to make. I’ll never be… just some puppet to be toyed with and tossed aside“
She raised the iron pipe like a bat.
“NEVER!! UAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”
The swing was wide, savage.
Offerings flew. A scowling fox idol toppled and rolled. Bottles shattered. The candle-stand fell; flames hissed out in the mist. Something mummified, frog or lizard or worse, tumbled free; she crushed the relic beneath her heel.
Junko neither stopped her nor scolded her. She simply turned and walked away, quietly withdrewing herself from the hall.
To smash these things would change little, perhaps nothing at all.
It was only declaration. Therefore it must be loud.
Loud. Dramatic. Violent. Unmistakable.
Half-measures would never reach them. Let the ones who moved them like pieces on a board grow angry. Let them come. She would break whatever this iron could break.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!”
Hinako Shimizu swung the pipe high with all her strength.
The festival hall was lost. What remained was only the ruin of what it once had been.
Hinako Shimizu turned back, breathing heavily through her shoulders.
In the direction of her gaze stood Hinako, wearing a half-mask of a fox, one arm transformed into something beastly.
That Hinako asked: ”Why must we fight to the death…”
Hinako glanced once at the wreckage she had made of the altar, and descended the steps with the weariness of a woman who had already carried too much for too long.
The iron pipe scraped behind her like a lame hound following its master.
”Why do we have to bleed… just to begin seeing eye to eye?”
The air grew taut.
Hinako dug her beast claws into a vermilion-painted pillar and slowly raked them downward. Hinako Shimizu bounced the iron pipe lightly on her shoulder.
The two girls confronted each other.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The voice came from the direction of the altar. The fox-masked man stood there, stunned by the sight of the destruction. Then his gaze sharpened as he understood the greater wound was unfolding before him.
“…Hinako!? What is this…”
Unable to find the words to explain, Hinako faltered.
The man stepped in front of Hinako Shimizu, face carved into lines of stone behind the white mask.
“You were supposed to have shed all worldly impurities. What is this?”
He looked at the masked Hinako, then shifted his gaze to Hinako Shimizu.
“Surely you… no—perhaps I should say both of you.”
The fox-masked man hesitated several times before speaking.
“—You too… are Hinako?”
Hinako Shimizu bowed her head.
“I am Hinako Shimizu… Kotoyuki.”
Kotoyuki's gaze darted wildly, back and forth between Hinako and Hinako Shimizu, from the beast-armed girl to the girl with the iron pipe.
Then he sighed.
“Today is the day of our wedding ceremony. To reach this day, to make you happy. I have gone to great lengths, I have spared no effort. I have learned of your world and its customs, etiquette, scholarship—everything.”
His eyes moved to the ruined altar; his lips twisted in anguish.
“I endured long, bitter days, rising even to become the heir of a distinguished family. Wealth, status, reputation—I gathered everything to ensure you would never have to suffer hardship in the human world.”
Kotoyuki’s eyes began to gleam strangely. His shadow on the floor writhed and twisted, taking the shape of an enormous jet-black fox.
“But…now, I see. You never gave me your whole heart. What I thought I had obtained… was only half.”
“Kotoyuki, wait. Please, don’t think that way.”
Kotoyuki gently placed both hands on Hinako's shoulders.
“It’s all right. This isn’t complicated. If you simply take the life of the old you, the Hinako Shimizu who refuses to become fully ‘my Hinako’ then everything will be as it should.”
“Why does it always come to that…?”
Backing away while raising the iron pipe, Hinako Shimizu stepped on a fallen candle and fell. Kotoyuki, now at a distance from Hinako, walked toward Hinako Shimizu.
“I will take the life of the old you. Then you will be mine.”
“Wait!”
Hinako stepped between them to stop him.
“I… I don’t want to kill myself.”
”Hinako, step aside. If this continues...huh? What…?”
He stooped and lifted something from the mats.
A red capsule.
The medicine Shu had compounded for her. She had left it in the workshop at Shu’s house, but perhaps a few had spilled into her pocket. They must have fallen out when she tripped just now.
Kotoyuki sniffed the capsule.
“This peach-like fragrance. Kakura-makakura.”
He showed the capsule to both of them.
“So this drug is what split you in two.”
“But… that is just medicine for my headaches…”
Just a few hours ago, Hinako Shimizu had still been taking it. Yet she had never experienced any particular side effects.
“A headache remedy—yes, it can serve that purpose. But that is not its original use. This is a drug brought to Nagasaki by the Bataren missionaries. It is also known as a meditation drug.”
“Medit…ation drug?”
Hinako Shimizu had never heard of such a thing. Shu sometimes told her about unusual medicines or herbs, but this name was completely new to her.
“Meditation. To close one’s eyes and let the mind wander through imagination. It is said that during meditation, individuals able to delve into their innermost selves, and converse with your 'inner self.’”
The man looked at Hinako Shimizu.
“In your case, the drug caused a splitting.”
“Inner self…”
Murmuring, Hinako looked at Hinako Shimizu who looked back at herself.
“Dialogue with oneself is not inherently wrong. But if impurity attached itself and exploited your heart—”
The man suddenly cut himself off and scanned the surroundings, eyes sweeping over the shadows.
“Be on guard.”
“What is it?”
Hinako also assumed a defensive stance.
“Something has infiltrated this place. It is not one of our clan.”
Hinako Shimizu looked around and noticed it too.
“That’s—”
Behind the ruined altar sat a celluloid doll. A girl doll wearing a red dress with lantern sleeves.
“What… When did it slip into the sacred place?”
“It looks like just a doll, but…”
“It is a familiar of a tsukumogami. Old objects are said to gain divinity but this one harbors not holiness, but impurity. Yet without a vessel to possess, they are no more than rotten wood; they can barely move. Someone has brought impurity into our clan’s sanctuary.”
Something leaped out from behind a pillar.
It lunged at the fox-masked man.
“Watch out!”
Hinako moved first, throwing herself over Kotoyuki.
“G-Get off!”
The “intruder’s” voice was shrill.
Hinako Shimizu stared in shock.
“Why are you here—”
It was Shu.
Bat gripped in both hands, eyes wild and clothes torn in a dozen places. He looked somewhat thinner. His glared stabbed at Kotoyuki with naked hostility.
“Hinako, move! Why are you protecting him?!”
This time Hinako Shimizu stepped between Shu and Hinako.
“Shu, what are you doing here!?”
“That’s my line, partner.”
Shu’s bloodshot eyes shifted between Hinako and Hinako Shimizu.
“…What the hell is going on with you two?”
“Shu, just calm down.”
Shu pointed the bat at Kotoyuki, who was now standing and brushing dust from his hakama.
“No—after I take him down! This nobody is—”
“That is my problem!” Hinako Shimizu bowed her head deeply. “Please, partner.”
Reluctantly, Shu lowered the bat.
In front of the destroyed altar, Shu sat cross-legged. On his lap rested the celluloid doll, perfectly still.
“Why are you here, partner?” Hinako asked.
Shu shook his head once.
“I don’t know either.”
“You drank it as well, did you not?” The fox-masked man’s voice carried open hostility now. ”Kakura-makakura.”
Shu glared up at the fox-masked man towering over him with an oppressive aura.
“—I found it in Grandma’s secret medicine notebook. The recipe and the ingredients. A drug that lets you talk to yourself? It sounded interesting. But the reason I actually made it… was because of you.”
One day, Shu heard from a gossipy old lady in the neighborhood that Hinako had received a marriage proposal. The husband-to-be was the heir of a prominent family. Rumor had it that the proposal would be accepted. If it were solely Hinako's decision, Shu thought she’d refuse. But if her parents were pushing it, the marriage might actually happen. Still, he figured that without her own consent, it wouldn’t go through.
“Hinako would never get married. She hated being treated like a girl since forever. I’ve never once thought of my partner as a girl either.”
And yet Hinako was going to marry.
When Shu first heard the news, he couldn’t focus on anything.
I should’ve talked to her more. She’s surprisingly easy to sway sometimes. I should’ve been there to listen and advise her.
But it was too late.
“That’s when I found Kakura-makakura in Grandma’s notebook. It listed all sorts of effects—‘conversing with the gods,’ ‘visiting their lands'—stuff that sounded like folk tales. But among them was ‘conversing with your inner self.’ If that was real, it was exactly what I needed then. The notebook also mentioned that among our ancestors’ research materials was a description of the plant used to make it.”
As a pharmacist, Shu’s grandmother had kept a vast collection of pharmacology texts, herbology documents, and rare medicinal plants. Shu located the ancestral records mentioned in her notebook and learned that the legendary plant called “Hakokusou” was the source material for Kakura-makakura.
His grandmother, a secret collector of rare herbs, would never have ignored this kind of plant. She had plenty of illicit specimens hidden away. He searched the house and finally found the seeds of Hakokusou.
From there, he followed the recipe in her notebook and completed Kakura-makakura.
He immediately experimented on himself.
“I was half out of my mind back then.”
After taking it for about three days, the lucid dreams began to shown. In a pleasant darkness, he could think clearly until morning.
“Yeah. A darkness like this place. It was comforting but if that was all it did, it would be a letdown. Old pharmacology books are full of that, claims of miraculous effects, but in reality, meh.”
But after two weeks of continued use…
Another version of himself appeared in the dream.
“He spoke to me. So I talked back, consulted him about everything. And what we concluded together was that Hinako needed to do the same: to talk to the self inside her.”
Right now, Hinako had lost her senses. She was being swept along by the atmosphere into an unwanted marriage. Even if Shu tried to convince her, she wouldn’t listen.
But if she could be convinced by her other self, she’d come to her senses.
It wasn’t too late yet.
She’d notice. She had to.
“You… gave that to me as a headache medicine…?”
Hinako Shimizu was stunned.
“And why is a tsukumogami familiar here with you? And why did you ruin my most important day?”
Those seemed to be the only questions Kotoyuki cared about.
“As I kept taking it, this guy started showing up in the usual dark.”
He tapped the celluloid doll’s head on his lap with a light bonk.
“That’s how I learned about it. In this world, Hinako was about to be taken by some shady guy. At first I couldn’t believe it—” Shu shot a piercing glare at the fox-masked man. “But you were even worse than I imagined.”
Kotoyuki met the glare head-on.
“So you aren't even the real Shu, just a split created by Kakura-makakura?”
“Partner…”
Hinako Shimizu wanted to cry out.
“I remember that doll. When I got left out of pretend play, it was often my talking partner. But I couldn’t stand the assumption that doll play was ‘for girls,’ so I threw it away… But why this combination? Why you and the doll…?”
“Yeah. This one used to be your buddy. But you didn’t throw it away. I—”
Shu lifted the celluloid doll in both arms, showing it to both Hinako Shimizu and Hinako.
“I got it from you.”
“Why would I have given you a doll?”
“You really forgot, huh? You were about to throw it out, so I asked for it.”
“Why?”
“You remember the Space Wars training course you took? All of it?”
“What are you—oh.”
Right. There had been a segment that incorporated “doll play” into the Space Wars setting.
It was first-aid training for the wounded. Back then, school lessons, time at the candy store. All part of Space Wars activities.
“I thought you’d hate seeing it, so I never showed you. But sometimes I’d do the training sessions.”
“That’s creepy, partner…”
“Yeah, well. Then the doll shows up in my dream saying, ‘Hinako’s in trouble, lend me your strength to help her. You used to play with me every day.’ Wants to save you even though you abandoned it? Pretty cool, right? No way I could refuse. So, of course I lent it power.”
“Hahaha…” The fox-masked man let out a mocking laugh. “I see. Shu, was it? You prattle on so comically, unaware you’re being used by those wooden puppets. I don’t dislike it.”
Shu stood up, visibly annoyed, doll tucked under one arm. Since Kotoyuki was much taller, Shu had to glare upward.
“Objects don’t have hearts. What accumulates in old things is only impurity. Even if something possesses them, its intent is malicious. You people call them tsukumogami and worship them as if they’re divine familiars—but you’re jealous of truly sublime, sacred beings. You fear that rare blood entering our kin would amplify their divine might. That’s why once in every few hundred years, whenever our clan holds an important ritual or ceremony, they try to interfere. This time, it seems they wanted to ruin my wedding with Hinako. Quite the jealous partner, aren’t you?”
Hinako was surprised to see this side of Kotoyuki. No matter the situation, he always kept his emotions in check, acting with calm judgment—a reliable figure.
But seeing these hidden feelings leak out made her feel a strange relief.
“You’re the real puppet here. You fed Kakura-makakura to Hinako. Look at what you did, your sin is grave.”
“Kotoyuki, that’s—”
“We—”
But both Hinako and Hinako Shimizu understood.
The drug alone wasn’t the reason the “two of them” existed.
They had done that to themselves.
“—Yeah. Giving her the drug… I’ve got no excuse. I plan to apologize properly to her. No words can justify it. But you’ve got no right to lecture, either. You aren't clean. I saw it. You making her inhale some weird smoke, and put her under hypnosis.”
The masked man’s eyes flared red. His shadow twisted again, darkening the floor and pillars on the shape of a fox.
“After that, Hinako looked dazed, ready to do whatever you said.”
“Nonsense.”
The fox-masked man openly displayed his displeasure.
“Indeed, our clan possesses such secret arts and medicines. But I would never stoop so low as to use them to obtain Hinako. If I relied on such things, I’d be as guilty as you. I sacrificed everything to have this day. Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for it?”
His voice layered now, multiple tones woven together. The voices of the clan’s familiars heard during the sacred rites. She could feel it in the air. Their rage for the desecration, for the mockery against their holy place.
“For a mere wooden puppet to recklessly profane our clan’s sacred ritual. The penalty is severe, and you will answer for it.”
The fox shadow stretching across the floor grew more solid; with a sudden flip, as though the floorboards themselves inverted, Kotoyuki and the shadow exchanged places. Where Kotoyuki had stood now loomed a giant red fox, with seven tails fanning behind it. Its appearance was far more terrifying, and more beautiful than any of the stern fox depictions painted throughout the dark shrine halls, the ones meant to strike fear into those who passed beneath the gates.
“Your greatest sin is shaming me in front of the Hinako who belongs to me.”
“Hinako doesn’t belong to you! She’s my partner! Mine!!”
The celluloid doll in Shu’s arms suddenly tilted its head with a clack; its eyes glowed eerily. Everyone’s gaze was drawn to the light. When vision returned—
Shu was no longer Shu.
What stood there was a towering demon of wood and wrath. Black half-coat and hakama, horned helmet, limbs multiplied like an Asura statue, protected by horse-riding armor. Countless wooden puppets, ancient brances and roots twined through its body. Beneath the white under-layer were multiple masks—demon, woman, warrior. Its extended arms gripped a sword, a seven-branched blade, a halberd. Most disturbing of all: at its chest was Shu himself, still cradling the celluloid doll.
The Shichibi.
The Tsukumogami that commands the lesser tsukumogamis.
The two beings that split the faith of Ebisugaoka now faced each other, the air crackling with imminent violence—
“Enough!!” Hinako shouted. “Stop talking about me like I’m an object!”
Hinako Shimizu raised her voice in fury, then continued:
“It’s the both of you! You’re the ones trying to make the ‘two of us’ kill each other!”
Hinako enlarged her beast arm threateningly and yelled at the red demon fox:
“Kotoyuki! You said you didn’t use hypnosis. But now… now I feel awake. Doesn’t that mean I was under some kind of hypnosis? Why would you do that? Where did my real feelings go? Was everything in that letter you gave me a lie? Was I blinded by an illusion of love? Why didn’t you believe in Hinako's true intentions? why use a technique?!”
Hinako Shimizu raised the iron pipe and shouted at the Shu incorporated into the Tsukumogami:
“And you! You have a lot to answered for, Shu. And depending on your answers, you might just find yourself disqualified as a member of the Space Army… no, as my partner.”
Both Hinako and Hinako Shimizu had mountains of things they wanted to say to the other.
But—
The fox-masked man wanted to take Hinako’s life in order to possess her completely.
Shu wanted to awaken Hinako from the daze of marrying the fox-masked man.
Their enemies were each other. And their true opponets they should be fighting… were reversed.
The sound of the shakujō staff rang out with a deafening clatter.
Shu's first swing came down hard; Hinako twisted aside at the last instant. The staff’s rings clashed right beside her ear, robbing sound itself. The world narrowed to silence and the rush of her own blood.
From the back of the Tskumogami, where more arms sprouted like branches from a dead tree, arrows flew in rapid succession. Soon enough, she felt three shafts hissing down. One she dodged, and the other two she met with the instantly enlarged beast-arm.
Gradually, sound returned to her ears.
“Shu, can you hear me—?”
At the center of the Tskumogami’s chest, where Shu had been incorporated as part of it, he slowly opened his closed eyes.
“…Yeah, I can hear you. Damn, I’ve really turned into something insane, huh.”
“You can still talk? In that state?”
“We fought aliens that fused with humans like this before, didn’t we?”
“—So you came all this way to save me.”
“I always show up when my partner’s in trouble. But what's going on? Weren’t you in danger?”
The Tskumogami swung its sword downward. A bronze blade, so thick and heavy that the attack felt slow in comparison, easy enough to dodge. Focused on evading, she missed the low strike. A wooden arm rose from below, wrapping around her neck like an embrace, tightening with a grinding creak. But perhaps the wood had aged; a single blow from her beast arm snapped the limb clean off.
Hinako circled the Tskumogami in a wide arc. She needed to map out where the limbs sprouted, how many attacks it could launch, and which parts looked vulnerable.
“Hey, Hinako. Why… why do you trust that guy more than me? I swore that I’d keep you safe!”
“Shu… I…”
“Don’t think about it! Just give it to me straight!”
“So I just say whatever comes to my mind right now? As my reason for trusting?”
“Go ahead.”
“I wanted… for us to be together… like we always were…But we can’t. Don’t you see that? Things won’t always stay the same for us.”
“You don’t think I know that?! But why do you trust this nobody…? Why him…?”
“Shu… You always say you want things to stay as they are… but Kotoyuki. He says he wants to build a future together with me. Both ideas scare me… but both of them fill me with hope!”
An arrow flew at her feet. One grazed her right foot; carried by her running momentum, she tumbled hard.
Something was off. The arm holding the bow hadn’t moved.
Another arrow came.
The hakama. There were more hands hidden underneath.
She had dismissed the idea of wooden puppets wearing kimono as pointless but it could sprout limbs anywhere. They exploited the preconception of “human shape” to hide weapons in unexpected places.
“I see… I’m no good…Even my partner thinks I'm worthless.”
“Yeah. Let’s hear your story.”
“But know this: I wanted to smile, celebrate this day and wish you well! But I couldn’t! I couldn’t. What a small vessel I have.”
“…Keep going.”
“…Instead of celebrating, on the very day of your happy occasion, I gave you those capsules… Pretending it was just for the headaches.”
“Why would you give me something like that…?”
Hinako leaped. Her beast-arm lashed out, seized the tangled mane of the wooden giant, and tore. A wet, ripping sound, as one of the old-man masks peeled away like dead skin. She wasn’t sure if it mattered, but its movements seemed to slow slightly.
“Because I didn’t want you to get married!”
“Shu.”
“ I wanted you to see it! I care about you so much! …Ahh, what the hell is wrong with me… How could I not be happy for my partner…?… What kind of partner am I… Damn it…”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t! Don’t apologize! I didn’t come here to make you say sorry!!”
The arms on the Tsukumogami’s back and the hands hidden in the hakama simultaneously loosed arrows upward in a continuous barrage.
They arced, then fell like iron rain.
“Ah—ugh—!”
Guarding with her beast arm while rolling across the ground, she still took one in the shoulder.
“Partner!! You okay?!”
“I'm fine! Just keep talking. Shu, we’ve known each other since we were kids. Always close by, always the same conversations, always the same ordinary days ahead. These unchanging days, maybe that’s our happiness. But we weren’t happy. The changes happening to us… the changes in our lives… We could not ignore them.”
“I knew good and well every time you hated being treated like some helpless girl. I carried that like a badge. My friendship. But in middle school… I realized I’ve been seeing you in a way you can’t stand…. The way you hated.”
Please. Partner. Please.
“You should hate me!”
“I could never hate you!!”
So the weak point really that thing.
But that weak point was being held by Shu. How could she—
“Shu. I am a girl. That’s an unchangeable fact. I just hated people telling me I had to act a certain way because I’m a girl. But I didn’t actually hate that I was born a girl or anything like that.”
“So... I got it all wrong… I’ve been driving you into a corner… It was obvious how you were feeling by the look in your eyes, but I still didn’t get why you were struggling.“
“No! You helped me OPEN my eyes. You helped me understand feelings I don't even know myself!“
Hinako glared at the celluloid doll protected in Shu’s arms.
At the Tskumogami itself.
“Shu! That thing is an agent of a new Galactic Imperium, an alien scum trying to invade our world! But now the Space Army are just the two of us.”
The muscles of Hinako’s beast arm swelled to their absolute limit.
“—Partner, I’ve said everything I needed to say. It’s time to say goodbye. I’ve found the enemy’s weak point. It’s that doll you’re fused with. So starting now, I’m going to beat you with everything I’ve got!”
Shu grinned.
“Yeah. If it’s to protect Earth, I’ll offer this life anytime.”
“Shu, remember: your partner is Hinako Shimizu.”
“My partner is Hinako Shimizu.”
“That’s right, Hinako Shimizu will always be with her partner! Let’s go!!”
She kicked off the ground.
Hinako leaped, Raising her maximally enlarged beast arm. Toward the center of the Tskumogami—toward Shu and the doll.
She brought down the greatest beast fist.
With a tremendous crash—
The ancient tools that had formed the Tskumogami’s body scattered before the altar. Lead weights, several masks, bottles, tall stands, swords, taiko drums, and countless other implements. So many old objects had gathered to create a being capable of such combat.
From the wreckage fell Shu, whose face was swollen and droplets of blood threaded from his nose. Among the wreckage was the broken celluloid doll.
“Y-You really came at me full force…”
“I held back.”
Right before impact, she had shrunk the beast arm back to normal size.
A full-power strike from the enlarged arm would have killed Shu. The doll had also assumed Hinako could never truly attack Shu. That’s why she destroyed it—along with him.
“Consider it payback for the Kakura-something.”
She picked up the half-destroyed celluloid doll. She intended to take it home and give it a proper send-off. To the even more battered Shu, groaning “Ugh…”, Hinako spoke.
“ If only I could split myself in two. If there were two of me… then one could stay… The me that would be your partner.”
“…Yeah. Hearing that from you… makes me happy.”
Shu’s gaze turned toward Hinako Shimizu.
Hinako Shimizu ran. Beside her loped a crimson shadow, seven-tailed, red as fresh-spilled blood, eyes burning like coals in the mist.
“Kotoyuki, I accept the depth of your desire for me. You’ve done so much for my sake.”
“Do not acknowledge me—”
The red fox leaped. It sailed over her head in a single graceful arc and landed behind. Hinako spun, pipe already whistling through the air but the space was empty. Only mist curling where the fox had been.
“Your friend—”
Across the mist-carpeted floor of the worship hall, the red-furred fox approached, seven tails fanned out like banners.
“—what that man did, I will never forgive. Yet I cannot condemn him. Even though it is our clan’s custom, I now realize I was doing the very same thing to you.”
“Was it… really hypnosis…?”
“It was one of many methods. Incense, wine, breath, voice, gaze. Since ancient times, our clan has taken human brides in such ways. Unknowingly, I subjected you to arts that should never be used. Through that loathsome drug’s effect, I killed the most precious thing. Your will.”
“Everyone have sins. I’m glad you acknowledged yours.”
The red shadow bounded forward, and Hinako Shimizu charged to meet it. The instant their paths crossed, the red fox veered sideways, raking claws across her arm.
“Agh…!”
The Shichibi now stood behind her.
“Does it hurt? We can stop this.”
“—I won’t stop.”
She finished the words even as she spun, anticipating the dodge. Midway through the swing she released the pipe. It flew straight, flashing through like a spear of iron. The fox, leaping back exactly as she had foreseen, caught the blow full in the right eye.
GUOOOOOON—
“Does it hurt?”
The Shichibi grimaced, baring its teeth in what might have been a smile.
“…I see. Even without that ‘arm,’ you are still Hinako.”
“No. I am Hinako Shimizu.”
She picked up the rolling iron pipe. It had become completely familiar in her hand, yet now it bent noticeably, metal weeping from the strain. This fight would finish it.
“My apologies. Then, Hinako Shimizu—for a little while, let us speak.”
The Shichibi came slithering forward in a serpentine run. Hinako Shimizu dashed to intercept.
For a split second, the approaching fox lowered its head. Sensing the leap, she braked hard the moment the fox anticipated her stop. Reversing direction, she sprinted back toward the predicted landing spot, raised the iron pipe high, and leaped—slamming it into the fox’s hind legs the instant it touched down. The red fox lost balance and toppled sideways.
Staggering back to its feet, it exhaled pale blue breath.
“I had forgotten my own sin. How can I atone for it?”
Baring fangs, the Shichibi lunged. Hinako Shimizu dodged sideways and immediately rose.
It's gone?!
She gripped the pipe in both hands, scanning the surroundings. The fox was nowhere.
“What must I do to be loved by Hinako?”
The voice whispered at her ear; she whirled.
“What am I missing?” Again at her ear. She didn’t turn, only swung the pipe backward blindly. “What is it that you wish for? Whatever it is, say it.”
The voice came from above.
The moment she looked up, something massive struck her full-force. She tumbled across the ground, crashing into a vermilion pillar and coming to a stop. Her back slammed hard; pain bloomed across her spine. She forced herself upright. The thing that had struck her shrank before it coiled back into the red fox’s tail.
“I am speaking to you, Hinako Shimizu.”
The Shichibi approached, dragging its hind leg. Using the iron pipe as a staff, Hinako Shimizu. stood and answered.
“What I want… What I’m after is the same thing as you..”
“And what is that? I implore you! Tell me!”
“What I wish for…”
She regripped the iron pipe in both hands.
Staring straight at the red fox, she took one step then another. Stilll, the fox’s eyes seemed to ask as it exhaled drifting blue breath.
Hinako Shimizu broke into a run, and the Shichibi ran to meet her.
The iron pipe lay twisted and spent upon the floor, its length bent beyond any use.
Hinako Shimizu sat leaning against a pillar, breathing hard through her shoulders. Behind the same pillar, the fox-masked man sat in a similarly exhausted state, utterly spent.
Both of them looked battered beyond measure.
“What I wish for—”
As though suddenly remembering, Hinako Shimizu spoke.
“Tell me.”
“To spread my wings as far as they will go, and to use them to fly wherever I want to go. To choose my own destiny with my own hands.”
After a brief, thoughtful silence, the fox-masked man asked:
“—What does that mean?”
“You fell in love with a human girl named Hinako and devoted yourself to pursue her, pouring your entire heart into winning her hand. I, too, want to devote myself… to living my own life.”
The man peeled his back away from the pillar and turned his face toward Hinako Shimizu’s side.
“Isn’t a woman’s greatest happiness is to be given a man’s love??”
“Some women may want that. Probably most people in my family think so too.” But, she continued. “But my happiness is something I decide. It isn’t something a man, or anyone else, can hand it to me.”
Supporting herself against the pillar, Hinako Shimizu stood, circled around, and leaned against the same pillar beside the fox-masked man.
“At first… I wasn’t interested at all. But as I got to know you better, I realized I had to think just as long and hard as you did.”
“Earnest feeling… was that enough?”
“You didn't have to use any tricks. Your emotions alone were what moved me. But if I accept your love, I will never experience the joys and hardships of learning to fly on my own.”
“…So that was it.”
The man lifted his mask. Though there was no sky, he narrowed his eyes as though gazing upward.
“So… it was enough for me to simply let you remain as you are.”
Hinako Shimizu nodded, then let out a small “Ah.”
“And there’s one more thing I want.”
He looked up at her face from his angled position.
“Tell me. What else do you wish for?”
“A quiet place… somewhere I can quietly worry—”
The worship hall was in an uproar everywhere.
The familiars were in a frenzy. Tree branches swayed. Candle flames flickered. Mist writhed through the darkness. Silent footsteps hurried back and forth; whispers and rumors flew thick and fast.
Around the ruined altar, something white surged and roiled like rising vapor. The voices that reached her were hard to make out, yet their tones of anger, of lamentation and mockery. Such tones were unmistakable. What had happened here was probably an unprecedented catastrophe in their long history, one that shook the very foundations of the clan.
Gathering what little strength remained, Hinako Shimizu rose and walked to the center of the great hall. She slowly turned, sweeping her gaze around. Standing back-to-back with her was Hinako.
Both sets of eyes fixed on the ring of fox statues encircling the hall.
“Today’s ceremony has been called off.”
Hinako announced it clearly. The murmur died as though a blade had been drawn across every throat at once.
“But if any of you ever think of trying to marry me off again, then know this.” Hinako raised her voice so it carried. “No one and I mean NO ONE gets to laugh at Kotoyuki. My heart has accepted his feelings. Your tricks no longer work on me. These words right now are coming straight from Hinako's own heart, no longer something fabricated by any of you!”
Together they walked to where the fox-masked man still leaned against the pillar, resting his battered body.
“I’m a little tired,” he said with a faint smile. “I thought I had given you everything… yet I failed to realize the one thing you wanted most.”
The “you” in his words. These words were for both of them, Hinako and Hinako Shimizu. His gaze and his voice had always been directed toward them.
“I, too, have come to want the same thing.”
Hinako and Hinako Shimizu exchanged glances and nodded to each other with their eyes.
“Hey.” Shu arrived. His clothes were in tatters, his face swollen and bruised. “Man, I really got wrecked.”
“We’re all in pretty bad shape.”
Shu sat down beside Kotoyuki.
“I remember playing Space Wars with you back in the day.”
“Chizuruya, huh. Feels like a lifetime ago.”
“You were so tense back then. I thought you were kind of a weird dude.” Shu’s eyes drifted slightly away before returning. “Well… a lot’s happened since then, but you’re one of us. Our comrade in arms!”
And so, Kotoykui continued.
“As I see it, You and I are the only two in this world who truly understand Hinako and care for her. Perhaps we could become good friends.”
Seeing the offered hand, Shu raised a fist instead.
“Hey, you forgot? In the Space Army, we do it like this.”
With a soft huff of laughter, Kotoyuki met fist with fist.
The days have grown warmer where I am. What is it like in Ebisugaoka? I can still recall the startling beauty of dandelions peeking out through cracks in stone walls.
I would like to express my appreciation for the letter you sent me. It was quite enlightening. I will follow in your footsteps and start by simply trying to enjoy life.
As per your recommendation, I purchased sauce-flavored senbei for the first time just the other day.
I must have been a quite a sight to see—a man dressed in a suit, buying cheap rice crackers and eating them with children outside the candy store.
The children laughed when they saw me, saying that real grown-ups don't buy such cheap snacks. And so, I explained to them how I wasn't able to eat many treats as a child, which is why I am eating them now.
When they heard that, they began swarming around me and telling me all the different, delicious ways you can eat sauce-flavored senbei. (Though I must say, I was taken aback when a child suggested I try putting strawberry jam on it.)
Imagine such a scene. A full-grown man, eating snacks with children.
While I was rather embarrassed, I felt like I had regained part of my lost childhood.
I intend to become reacquainted with my inner child, discover my own dreams, and live life to the fullest.
And once I have done so, I hope to reevaluate my feelings for you.
“So, our lives, how should we live them?”
Perched atop the old grand torii gate, the two gazed down at the white, misty expanse of Ebisugaoka. Hinako read the letter in her open lap. The silver fur that cloaked her right arm caught the pale morning light like hoarfrost on a winter pelt, each long hair gleaming with droplets of morning dew that had not yet chosen to fall.
“I want to live a life like Kotoyuki.”
Lifting her face from the letter, Hinako narrowed her eyes against the brightness.
“I want to grow deeply in love with someone. To pour my whole heart into them. To live with a single-minded, wholehearted passion, and pour all my fervor into one person.”
She carefully folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope.
“To live with such a passion, that in time, I might actually be the one to propose to Kotoyuki—and you?”
“I, uh…”
The Hinako beside her thought for a moment.
“I haven’t decided, but… I want to pour my whole heart into something. Not sure what yet, though. ”
“Very specific.”
Far off, the mountains rose in ranks of slate and shadow, their edges softened to smoke by the fog. The town beneath them, sunk in fog, like a dream seen in shallow sleep. The feeling was unreal, a memory so ambigious that to approach for it was to watch it recede.
No wind stirred. The pines stood motionless. No bird broke the silence with song.
There was no bustle, no conception, no death.
Nothing changed, and nothing flowed; only the mist drifted lazily about.
“It’s so quiet here…”
“No one to tell us what to do or bother us. No one to rush us.”
“It’s nice. Just the two of us here.”
“Yeah, just us two, to decide where to go.”
“I don't think it's ever been this quiet in Ebisugaoka before.”
“And it's all ours. Our Ebisugaoka. A silent Ebisugaoka that belongs only to us.”