Damsel of Distress

Rin and Itsurō walked side by side.

The old woman barely glanced at them, just two polite-looking high-schoolers with both arms full of grocery bags, walking towards the lobby door she was about to let swing shut.

“Ah—excuse us,” Itsurō said, chin tilted just slightly downward to sell the politeness.

“Oh—of course, dear,” the woman said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside.

They slipped in smoothly, the door clicking shut behind them.

Rin blinked once, almost a double-take.
“That… worked?” she whispered, wide-eyed, her hands nearly trembling with how tight she held the bags.

Itsurō didn’t break stride.
He didn’t even bother lowering his voice.

“Of course it did? Half of manipulation is knowing the frame people expect and capitalizing on it,” he said casually, as if discussing the weather. “Two students with groceries? We’re socially invisible. Courtesy does the rest.”

He adjusted his grip on the bags, filled not with groceries but with folded tarps, duct tape, gloves, and some more things that Rin had been convinced would be useful later.

“She won’t remember us,” he added. “Not our faces, not our voices, not even that we spoke to her.”

Rin gave a tiny frown. “How can you be so sure?”

Itsurō smiled faintly as they reached the elevator.

“Because,” he said, pressing the button without looking, “nothing about us threatened her worldview. We were exactly what she expected to see.”

The elevator dinged.
They stepped in.

“And people tend to forget anything that fits neatly into their expectations.”

Rin shifted uneasily. “You make it sound like people are more like robots.”

“Oh, they aren't,” Itsurō said, voice softer now, almost amused. “Just… predictable within certain circumstances.”

He glanced sideways at her.

The elevator doors slid shut in front of them.

At first Rin had expected… something shabby. Maybe some hoarder-level mess. Maybe some edgy delinquent squalor. Something that looked like trouble.

Her impressions were challenged when she saw the building from outside.

And even more so when they walked down the hallway, which looked like a model brochure for “Urban Serenity Living™.”

Warm LED lights. Fresh white walls. Everything stable, clean, normal.

Even Ai Suishi's door. At a glance? Perfectly normal.

Slate-gray. Clean surface. Modern lock.

Then they approached, and the illusion began to peel.

The missing nameplate. Torn off. No adhesive residue.

The doorknob, coated in a greasy film Rin instinctively shied away from touching. Not filth, exactly… more like nervous sweat layered over months. A record of trembling hands. The lock area scraped repeatedly, in frantic zigzags.

Rin swallowed.

“Are you sure this is a good idea…?” she whispered.

Itsurō tilted his head, taking everything in, as if observing a specimen.

“All of my ideas are good.”

Then he leaned closer, inspecting the knob.

“You can always tell a person’s mind by their personal space,” he murmured.

Rin wasn’t sure if he was joking.

She stood back. “Should we wait—?”

Then the smell seeped through the small gaps under the door.

A confusing, nauseating mixture: sour menstrual iron, rotting protein, unwashed fabric, plastic melt and cloying artificial lavender trying—and failing—to mask it.

Rin lifted a sleeve to her nose.
“God… it’s like something died in there.”

Itsurō didn’t react at all.

“Who knows,” he said. “Something might have.”

Rin glared. “Not funny.”

“Her schedule matches what you said,” he replied absently. “She should still be at school.”

He pulled out a thin tool from his pocket—a lockpick set. Small and discreet.

Rin’s hands fidgeted around the grocery bags they used as cover.
“…So why are we here again?”

Itsurō didn’t even look up as the lock clicked.

“Because I already told the others we were going to do our part."

The door swung inward with a reluctant, tacky groan like peeling back a scab that didn’t want to come off. Itsurō didn’t hesitate.

Rin froze at the threshold, every instinct in her body screaming turn back**, turn back, turn back—but Itsurō was already stepping inside as if entering a museum exhibit.

She had no choice but to follow him into the entryway.

Calling the surface they stepped in a floor was optimistic.

Rin had seen a hoarder nest once on TV—an old man buried under newspapers—but that was quaint compared to this.

Ai’s genkan was a graveyard of everything a human life sheds when the person living it stops seeing themselves as human.

The floor was not visible, covered by layers of half-collapsed convenience store bags and bento wrappers flattened in sticky strata. There were broken chopsticks jutting out like splinters of bone, greasy karaage containers with congealed film inside and tissues yellowed, curled and pretty much fossilized

The mess formed a topography with small hills where trash collected, valleys where she must’ve walked until clearing a path through sheer pressure.

When Rin stepped inside, her shoe made a wet skkkrrrtch sound, like peeling a sticker off skin.

The smell intensified instantly.

Rin gagged.

He put on plastic gloves handed her a pair.

“You’ll need these,” was all he said.

“…She lives like this?”

“Of course.” Itsurō said lightly. “Compulsive retention of waste. Very common in self-loathing spirals.”

How could he even speak like that? She was feeling nauseous from breathing in there.

It wasn't a single odor, but a collapsing tower of them. Humid and sour and sweet and rotten all at once. Unwashed fabric. Old oil. Blood-that-wasn’t-fresh-anymore. Bleach that had won some fights and lost others.

Underneath it all, the faint, cloying sweetness of air freshener, like someone spraying perfume on a corpse.

They stepped forward and their shoes made that obscene, peeling noise, like pulling duct tape off.

Scattered through that carpet of trash were things that didn’t belong in any sane person’s entryway. A shampoo bottle crushed flat as if someone had squeezed it until their fingers hurt. Pads, papery and dark, stuck to a corner of the wall where they’d been flung and forgotten. Rusting razors with something clotted between the blades. Juice boxes caved in on themselves. Plastic forks snapped neatly in half. An empty deodorant stick twisted so far up it had snapped off its own base.

A bra strap, severed cleanly at one end, hung limply from the doorknob. It brushed Rin’s sleeve as the door eased shut behind them and she flinched like she’d been burned.

“Careful,” he said mildly. “It’s easy to lose track of where you’ve put your feet.”

The hallway. The ceiling light technically worked, but the plastic cover was caked in dust and the bodies of tiny bugs, giving the illumination the color of old nicotine.

The floor here wasn’t as buried, but it wasn’t clean either. No rugs, no mats, just linoleum worn to a dull shine in some places and drowned in filth in others. Flat packaging and bent receipts had been ground into it. A torn hair tie lay fossilized into a sticky patch. Corners of notebook paper curled upward, their edges rubbed gray by countless passes of a foot.

Some pages still showed writing.

Rin glanced down, then stopped walking.

Scrawled sentences clawed back through the grime in uneven handwriting:

love me love me love me
i’m sorry
forgive me
too filthy too filthy too filthy

die die I have to die but

On one scrap, the ink had been pushed until the pen died and was pressed harder anyway—Shu’s name written again and again and again in red. The strokes dug so deep they’d warped the board beneath, as if someone had tried to carve him into the floor by sheer repetition.

The smell was denser here. The rotten-sour note sharpened, undercut by something sterile and biting.

Somewhere along the hallway, something had spilled and been left to stew, and someone had tried, once, to erase it. The result was worse than either alone.

“How does management not do anything?” Rin whispered without meaning to.

“They probably don't even know, at most they think it’s a long-term tenant with depression,” Itsurō murmured back. “She pays rent and doesn't bother others. People are very good at not looking too hard unless you give them a reason to.”

He wasn’t wrong.

The patterns on the floor changed as they walked. There were shallow trails where shoes had tracked through grime and trash, but they weren’t straight lines. No normal walking pattern. Long, uneven streaks suggested knees. Scattered patches of smeared sweat and oil outlined the shape of fingers splayed against the ground.

The bottom corner of the left wall was dented inwards, plaster crushed under repeated blunt force. Rin stared.

“Head, probably bashes hers againts there” Itsurō observed softly, following her gaze. “Same spot over and over.”

Rin swallowed hard.

From somewhere ahead, the faintest sound trickled through with the thin, tinny quality of a cheap speaker.

“Good morning,” a male voice said.

Rin stopped dead.

It sounded like...

Silence.

Then, thirty seconds later:

“Thank you.”

Same warmth. Same cadence. Clipped, looped.

“Recording,” Itsurō said, stepping over a collapsed cardboard box without breaking stride. “She probably walks up and down listening to it.”

Rin imagined Ai, hunched, binder squeezing her ribs, bare soles smearing the floor, shuffling back and forth in this hallway while a disembodied Shu greeted her every half-minute.

Her skin crawled.

Rin stopped at the threshold before the living room. Itsurō didn’t. He stepped forward with the casual, almost idle confidence of someone walking into a thrift shop instead of a shrine to human collapse.

The floor still wasn't visible.

Just clothing, if it could still be called that, spread across the tatami and warped wood like discarded skins. Ai’s entire wardrobe, past and present, sprawled in layers: wrinkled school blouses stained yellow at the armpits, stretched-out bras with snapped straps, gym shirts stiff with old sweat, skirts stiffened at the hem where spills had dried into glue. Every scrap was fused to the next with grime, the starchiness of long-dried bodily fluids holding folds in unnatural shapes.

Discarded binding wraps, gray with mildew, curled at the edges like dead leaves, slashed through the mess in bands.

And at the center of it all, half-buried beneath a used bra and a pair of panties so yellowed with old discharge they looked brittle enough to snap…

…lay a perfectly arranged stack of photocopied student ID photos of Shu Jinkō.

Not one copy.

Dozens. Maybe hundreds

Bound with red yarn, each page notched with small bite marks around the edges as if she chewed them when she couldn’t breathe. The top page was stained with something glossy, some fluid dried into a warped sheen. Saliva. Sweat. Tears. Rin didn’t want to know which.

Itsurō crouched, studying the stack with the mild, academic interest of a man evaluating an art installation.

A water bottle sat beside it. Shu’s name was scratched into the surface so many times the plastic was nearly worn through, thousands of anxious little pen gouges layering over one another until the letters were a storm of lines.

“See?” he murmured. “Raw obsession. Undiluted. You won’t find a stronger emotional imprint anywhere else for your rituals.”

Rin’s stomach tightened. She tore her eyes away.

Everywhere she looked, the apartment reeked of intensity, of someone who didn’t merely feel emotion, but drowned in it.

Behind the couch, partially hidden, lay ropes coiled neatly, a roll of duct tape, and metal handcuffs. Clean. Meticulously maintained. No dust.

Rin stared.

Those items were the only things in the room that looked cared for.

“So, aren't I right?” Itsurō said quietly. “The density of emotion here. It’s practically saturated.”

Rin could only nod.

The television wasn’t in working condition, dust-covered and draped in a half-melted doily whose lace had fused into the plastic from proximity to some heat source.

Instead, an old stereo taped together in places cycled through recorded voice clips:

“Good morning.”
“Thank you.”
“Sorry.”
“Excuse me.”
“Are you okay?”
“See you later.”

All in Shu’s voice. Some clipped from conversation. Others likely stolen from announcements. Carefully curated into a looping fantasy.

Every thirty seconds.

The probably once-white couch facing the stereo had been reduced to a grave marker. Its fabric was mottled gray and brown with sweat outlines, dust prints, and residues Rin did not investigate.

Mold clustered along the seams like little constellations. The armrest closest to the hallway had been shredded open, stuffing spilling out in claw marks. Not chewed. Not torn by accident.

“Even so… emotionally charged objects for rituals,” she murmured, trying to keep her voice steady. “I can do that, sure, fine. But… what do we do about her?”

Her eyes flicked to the pile of rope and tape.

Ai Suishi, the fragile, filthy, shaking, mumbling, staring weirdo of Higan. After seeing this, dangerous was firmly added to that list.

Itsurō didn’t answer at first.

He moved toward the couch, studying the room as if piecing together equations instead of someone’s unraveling humanity. He reached out, touched nothing, then tucked his hands behind his back.

Finally he said, calmly,

“We get her to work with us.”

She clenched her jaw. “Are you dumb? She’ll never betray Shu-kun. You know that. She’d carve your lungs out if you touched him.”

“Exactly.”

Rin blinked. “…that’s… not the argument I expected.”

Itsurō stepped around a pile of clothes.

“It's not that she won’t betray him,” he repeated. “That's debatable... But what's for sure is that she might betray herself.

Rin didn’t understand.

Itsurō did not rush to clarify. He looked at the photocopied shrine of Shu photos, at the bite marks, the stains, the red yarn, and a thin smile touched his lips. Not mocking. Not gleeful.

“With this level of fixation…? Devotion becomes vulnerability.”

Rin felt a chill crawl up her spine.

“She’d die for him,” Itsurō continued. “She’d kill for him. She’d abandon sense, safety, and morality for him. That kind of person isn’t exactly controllable.”

He tapped lightly, almost thoughtfully, on the ruined edge of the couch.

“But they can be guided.”

Rin stared at him.

“You’re saying we use her? Wow, talk about cliche villain speechs.”

“I’m saying she is the most volatile, most powerful, most emotionally saturated force in this city,” he murmured. “And forces like that don’t need direct manipulation.”

His eyes flicked to the stereo. Shu’s voice looped again:

“Are you okay?”

Itsurō smiled faintly.

“They just need the right context.

Rin swallowed.

“What context?”

Itsurō glanced at her, eyes sharp in the dim light of the broken apartment.

“The one where she loses the person she worships.”

Rin felt the floor tilt under her feet.

“She won’t turn on Shu,” she whispered.

“No,” Itsurō agreed. “But she might turn on everyone else.”

Rin didn’t want to go to the next room.

Every instinct in her body, every tiny, animal-shivering nerve told her that whatever lay beyond would be worse than the living room. The living room was madness. This would be the core.

There was no door.

The hinges had been unscrewed cleanly, stacked neatly in the corner like discarded molars.

Still, following Itsurō, Rin stepped through.

The walls were once pale blue. It was visible only in small slivers where paper had peeled away. Every other inch was layered, taped, pinned, glued with Shu Jinkō.

Not just photographs.

Cropped stills. Student pamphlets. Yearbook fragments. Blurry captures of him walking with Madoka, handing papers to Yae, laughing with Ran. Drawings, hundreds, of shaky charcoal and colored pencil depictions of his face in all the ways Ai remembered him. Some were meticulous attempts. Some looked like frantic scribbles done at 3 a.m. with tears still drying on the paper.

The images overlapped so densely they formed a kind of skin. A second layer of wallpaper built entirely from one boy’s existence.

The bed stood untouched in the corner. Pristine sheets. unused pillow. A thin layer of dust on the comforter. Ai did not sleep there.

The mattress on the floor told the real story. Dragged to the center of the room, stripped bare, the foam exposed and discolored with old sweat and darker stains Rin recognized but refused to name. The smell coming from it was animal, raw, private, unfiltered humanity pressed directly into its fibers.

A single oversized pillow sat at the head of that mattress.

It sent shivers down Rin's spine

It had a face stitched into it.

A crude, lopsided approximation of Shu, sewn by hand in uneven thread, button eyes, a wobbly red mouth. The fabric was warped and swollen from years of clutching. The seams frayed from teeth marks. Some bites were deep enough to have torn the batting underneath.

Hundreds of used tissues carpeted the floor around the mattress. Hardened yellow ones crunching underfoot. Damp fresh ones sticking to the soles of Rin’s shoes. The corners were piled high with balled-up tissue mountains. Some were stored in jars with neat labels.

One jar said: The day he looked at me.

Ew.

And then she saw the shrine.

At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at. And she was the resident expert on weird rituals.

A table, covered in red velvet stained with old wax drips. Wooden crates stacked to create tiers. Lace cloths draped over the structure like altar banners. Charred candle stumps. Torn necklace cords dangling like prayer tassels.

But the objects arranged on the velvet—

Hair clippings. Sealed in tape, flattened like pressed flowers. Dark, glossy strands of hair that could only be Shu’s. Some clumped together. Some taped into little cards. Straws bent at the tip from his lips. Some specked with condensation stains. Others slightly indented where he’d bitten down. Each wrapped in tissue and labeled. Chopsticks from his lunches. Clean ones. Sauce-stained ones she refused to wash. All tied with red thread. Snack wrappers he threw away. Or that she believed he had thrown away. Crisped flat. Laminated. Some still oily.

A hoodie, vacuum sealed. The plastic was fogged from where Ai had pressed her face to it too many times. Inside, Rin could see the faint shape of fabric ruffled by humidity. A sock. Folded and placed in a heart-shaped ceramic bowl.

A lacquered box Rin had no desire to look into.

Itsurō had wandered into the center of the room, careful not to step on anything of “emotional value.” He didn’t look disgusted.

He looked thoughtful.

“Tell me, Rin,” he said softly. “What’s the worst thing working against our goals right now?”

She forced her eyes away from the shrine.

“The Student Council.”

“Wrong.” His voice was almost gentle.

She looked at him, bewildered.

“It’s resources.”

Rin stared.

He continued, “As we are now, we’re outnumbered. Outexperienced. Underequipped. The Council has a hero, an ace detective, a tacky swordswoman, a bancho, a genius, and the entire infrastructure of Higan behind them.”

He stepped to the shrine, examining it with almost priestlike reverence.

“And we? We have four teenagers and a dream.”

Rin’s hands tightened reflexively around the gloves Itsurō had given her.

“So we need more awakened on our side,” he said. “More power. More everything.”

He turned to her fully.

“And Ai Suishi represents the largest, densest, most volatile concentration of emotional and psychological energy in all of Kageoka.”

Itsurō stepped closer to the life-sized collage effigy at the shrine’s center, the grotesque, loving patchwork of Shu’s face. The hollow cavity carved into its chest. The stuffed panties inside.

He looked at it like a mathematician examining an impossible proof.

Itsurō went on, voice low, controlled.

“Continuing what I was saying before, someone who worships that deeply will never betray their god. But if their god is threatened—” his eyes glinted, “—they will burn the world down to protect him.”

Rin stumbled back.

“You’re saying,” she whispered, “she’d… attack the Student Council? Well she hasn't done it yet, and I doubt you can make her worse to the point she would. Or that you can even convince her.”

“I already told you, we don’t have to convince her of anything,” Itsurō replied.

"Anyway, while we're here why not look for objects of emotional weight?” he said. “You said you used up most of your stock right?.”

Itsurō seemed to feel nothing at all.

He meticulously examined the drawers near the altar, the makeshift shelves overflowing with labeled trash and sacred refuse.

“Hair clippings,” he murmured.
“Used straws.”
“A sock. How does she even get these things?” He sounded genuinely amused.

Rin swallowed back bile.

Her gaze glanced around for anything that was not a shrine object — anything that might be useable in ritual. Anything that might not be saturated with this overwhelming… disgust.

Then—

Rin noticed something.

A gap under the pristine untouched bed.

“Here,” Rin whispered, pointing.

Itsurō crouched, peering into the shadow.

“Good eye.”

He lay on his side, reaching into the murky space beneath the bedframe. His glove brushed something hard.

He pulled.

Trash scraped the wood. Something heavy bumped against the underside. The box emerged slowly into the light.

A plain cardboard container, tape yellowed and curling.

Itsurō peeled the tape back with methodical care, pulling open the flaps.

A smell seeped out. Metallic. Old. Intimate.

At first she didn't understand what she was looking at.

Inside lay two artifacts so deeply steeped in Ai Suishi’s emotional gravity that everything else in the apartment—every shrine relic, every hoarded scrap, every obsessive creation—felt small in comparison.

The first was a cloth bandage.

Old. Fraying. Its once-white surface was soaked through with a rust-brown bloom of dried blood. Not splattered but absorbed, as though it had been tightly wound around someone’s skin while they bled profusely. A personal, intimate wound. The cloth was stiff, mummified with time, and yet Rin could almost feel the residual heat of whatever memory had imprinted itself in it.

The second item…

Heavy-duty scissors. Large. Industrial. Thick steel blades.

Itsurō’s eyes gleamed with the slow satisfaction of a treasure hunter discovering a relic worth more than empires.

“These,” he whispered, “are perfect. Aren't they?”

Rin hugged her arms. “Well, yeah, I mean, as far as ritual materials these are good, but I don't think we should take them.”

He reached out, gloved fingers brushing the edge of the bandage—but not touching, not yet.

“Ah,” he breathed, “She'd probably notice they're gone right? Too bad, the trauma so concentrated they almost became ritual-ready on their own.”

Before Rin could frame a reply—

The front door clicked.

The soft metallic sound of a key entering a lock.

Rin froze. Her eyes darted to the bedroom threshold.

Itsurō didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe. He grabbed Rin’s arm, pulling her into motion with a fluidity that suggested he’d already planned for exactly this scenario.

They slid under the bed.

It was not a comfortable space. Dust and dead skin clung to Rin’s hair as she pressed herself close to Itsurō, the both of them curled into the shadows like animals hiding in a burrow.

Footsteps entered the apartment.

Soft ones.

Dragging ones.

They were unmistakably Ai’s. A slow, uneven shuffle—her distinctive gait, the sound of someone who forgets to fully lift their feet, half-crawling across the floor from exhaustion or hunger or both.

They heard keys drop to the floor.

Then the rustle of plastic bags.

The crunch of trash being stepped on.

Rin held her breath until her lungs ached.

Ai moved through the living room, humming something… tuneless, low, like a cracked lullaby. Then her footsteps came down the hall.

Closer.

Closer.

She was speaking to herself. Words blurred by dehydration, each syllable half-whispered and half-mumbled.

“…need to…no… no time… he—he needs…”

The steps paused in the bedroom doorway.

Rin felt her pulse become a violent drumbeat.

Ai stood there for a long moment.

Rin closed her eyes.

She entered.

Her bare feet padded across the layers of tissues and crumpled notes. She went to the shrine first. Rin could see her toes from under the mattress, pale and smudged with dirt. Ai knelt, almost reverently. Plastic rustled as she unpacked something.

The sound of her breath tightened—sharp, excited.

Then a wet sniffle.

Then soft, hysterical giggling.

Ai whispered something to the shrine. Words too quiet to decipher. Then she stood again, moving toward the mattress—the one above their heads.

Ai dropped something onto it.

The springs of the exposed foam groaned.

Rin pressed both palms to her mouth, heart in her throat. Itsurō’s hand tightened on her shoulder, squeezing once in warning.

Stay silent.
Stay still.

Ai’s breathing was slow. Deep. A sigh escaped her lips, long, trembling.

She stayed there a long time.

Minutes.

Rin’s muscles cramped. Her lungs burned. Sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat.

From beneath the untouched bed, Rin and Itsurō watched Ai’s feet move across the floor, bare, dirty, toes bent inward like they were used to gripping surfaces.

By the sound coming from above the bed they could finally guess what she'd put there. She was opening a large duffel bag.

Something heavy inside shifted with a dull thud.

Then she began adding to it.

One object at a time.

A glass clink.
Another.
The faint slosh of liquid moving inside a bottle.

Rin recognized the smell even from here: gasoline, stale and sharp. Ai was filling empty beer bottles with it, using a cut-off piece of towel for the wicks. She worked in absolute silence except for the faint glug-glug of the funnel and the soft rasp of cloth being twisted.

Ai tied the first finished Molotov with red thread—like labeling a charm.

Then the second.

Then she hefted them into the duffel with a grunt that trembled through the floorboards above Rin’s head.

Next came the toolbox.

Ai flipped the latches open with a snap. Metal clattered.

She lifted out a hammer, a battered thing with rust creeping toward the head, and placed it into the bag.

Then a crowbar.

She pressed it down with both hands until it disappeared beneath the bottles.

Ai zipped the bag halfway, then unzipped it again, checking everything twice. Her breathing grew rougher, more excited, her mutters unstable and wet-edged:

“Good… good… yes… yes… need more… can’t go unprepared… he deserves—deserves—deserves—”

Her voice broke into a hiccup, then steadied, then dissolved into a small breathless laugh she tried and failed to swallow.

She stood abruptly.

Rin flinched.

Ai leaned over the mattress directly above their hiding place. The springs sagged under her weight. More dust rained down over Rin’s hair.

Then Ai rose again and padded out of the room toward the kitchen, her uneven gait recognizable in every dragging step.

A cupboard opened.
Something clattered—metal on metal. Plastic rustled. A cap twisted off. A faint sizzle as she tested a lighter.

Rin exhaled shakily.

Itsurō didn’t.

His eyes were fixed, alert, not on the door Ai disappeared through, but on the bedframe above them.

He moved first.

Silent as a shadow, he gripped Rin by the forearm and pulled her out from under the bed. She barely had time to register the shift before he dragged her toward the closet on the opposite wall.

Her knees hit the floor hard, sending a shock up her thigh, but Itsurō pushed her inside and closed the thin sliding door just as—

Ai’s footsteps returned.

She entered the bedroom again.

Rin’s breath hitched so sharply she felt lightheaded.

Through the thin slits of the closet door, Rin and Itsurō watched Ai stride straight toward the bed—no hesitation, no wandering. She knelt down and shoved her hand beneath it.

Her fingers brushed dust.

Trash.

The hollow underside of the frame.

She paused.

Her breath sharpened.

A tiny, irritated sound tore from her throat—barely a whimper.

She pulled her arm out and leaned farther, both hands reaching, groping under the bed.

She was searching.

Searching for the box.

The box Rin and Itsurō had moved.

Rin’s heart clawed at her ribs.

Ai pulled back suddenly, sitting upright in one sharp motion. A thin strand of saliva hung from her lip as her breathing grew harsher.

“Where… where… where… I put it here… here… always here…”

A tremor ran through her whole body, tiny, violent, like she was trying to keep from screaming.

Her nails scraped the floorboards.

She rose abruptly and began tearing through the piles of trash beside the bed—papers fluttering, plastic bags crackling, wrappers bursting under her hands.

Then—

She froze.

Her eyes turned.

Directly toward the closet.

Rin’s entire body locked.

Ai took one step toward them.

Another.

Her hand reached out—slow, trembling, fingers twitching.

Her fingertips brushed the closet door.

Pressed.

Slid downward.

Her nails made a faint dragging sound.

Then she abruptly turned away, breath hitching, and stomped toward the bed again.

She lifted the entire thing and tossed it aside, againts a small drawer, throwing out old clothes, broken combs, a snapped hairband, clotted tissues—until she found the box containing the scissors and bandage, tucked away in the far corner under where the bed had been.

Ai pressed the box against her chest, breathing in sharply—almost shuddering.

“Yes… yes… they’re here… with me… I kept them safe… always safe…”

Her voice dipped into a throaty whisper.

“Thank you.”

She slipped the items into the duffel bag.

Then, after she zipped it closed, Ai began to undress without warning.

One moment she was muttering and rummaging, the next she was unzipping her sweater and peeling it off her shoulders with slow, exhausted motions. The stained fabric hit the floor with a soft, wet thud.

Itsurō’s hand clamped over Rin’s mouth before she even had time to gasp.

Her whole body jolted.

Rin’s face went red instantly. She reacted on pure instinct: her hands shot upward and slapped over Itsurō’s eyes.

Which only resulted in the two of them frozen in an absurd tableau:

Itsurō crouched behind her, one hand firmly over her mouth Rin twisted awkwardly in front of him, hands over his eyes, both of them balancing inside a closet barely big enough for one person.

It was a miracle the door didn’t rattle.

And Ai kept going.

Her fingers hooked under the hem of her skirt and dragged it downward. Her silhouette shifted through the thin slats of the closet door—pale skin, long hair sticking to her back, the outline of her curved figure stark against the filthy backdrop of her room.

She stripped down to her underlayers—sweat-stained, stretched, clinging to her ribs—and then began pulling on the dark jumpsuit she’d prepared earlier. The fabric was stiff, utilitarian, the kind one would wear for industrial labor.

She tied her hair back.
Zipped the suit.
Pulled on gloves.
Laced sturdy boots.

Piece by piece she constructed a silhouette with no identity.

When she lifted her bag, the weight pulled her to one side, but she didn’t so much as grunt. She dragged it toward the hallway, panting through clenched teeth like a beast of burden.

The front door opened.

Closed.

Her steps faded down the corridor outside.

Only when her voice looped faintly from the shrine—

“Good morning.”

“Are you okay?”

“See you later.”

—did Itsurō finally exhale.

He released Rin’s arm.

She collapsed against the inside of the closet wall, ripped her palms away from his eyes, stumbled out of the small space, and nearly tripped over a pile of tissues.

She spun on him, furious whisper exploding out of her:

“What the hell was that!? What was she—what—what WAS that!?”

Itsurō brushed dust off his vest, unbothered.

“Well,” he said mildly, “that appeared to be a murder kit.”

“Murder kit,” Rin echoed, staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “She had Molotov cocktails, a crowbar, rope—! If she had known we were here—!”

“Well she did not,” Itsurō corrected calmly. “She was focused. Hyper-fixed. Predictable patterns are useful like that.”

Rin clutched her head.

“You wanted to recruit that thing?” she hissed.

Itsurō gave a small, thoughtful hum.

“She’s awakened, I'm almost sure of it. Certainly capable. Dangerous, yes, but so are we. With direction—”

“With direction!?” Rin nearly shrieked, then slapped a hand over her own mouth in case Ai had lingered outside. “She’s a monster! A monster!”

Itsurō tilted his head, unconcerned.

“Exactly.”

Rin stared.

Itsurō ignored her panic and moved to the shrine. He examined the empty space where the scissors and bloody bandage had been.

“Ai Suishi’s threshold was clearly crossed long ago,” he murmured. “But this… this escalation… What drove her over the edge tonight? Who is she going after?”

Rin’s voice trembled.

“Does it matter?!”

“Yes,” Itsurō said simply. “Because if we know what pushed her… we can avoid becoming targets. Or”—his eyes narrowed thoughtfully—“we can use it.”

Rin backed away from him slightly.

Itsurō barely noticed. He knelt, touching the floor where Ai had dragged her bag. The thin smear of grime confirmed the direction she’d gone.

He stood.

His expression remained calm.

Analytical.

Almost pleased, composed, focused. His gaze distant and sharp—thinking.

Always thinking.

He did not speak for a long moment.

Rin finally whispered, trembling:
“W-What… are we gonna do? Was she really—You said she she was packing a murder kit. A murder kit, Itsurō. Ai Suishi is—she’s—”

“Unstable,” he answered quietly. “Extremely.”

He leaned back against the closet wall, one knee raised, eyes half-lidded in thought.

“What about it, anyway?” he added.

Rin stared at him. "Huh? What do you mean 'What about it'? Who do you think she's after? Is she onto us? Does she know about our group plotting against the Student Council?!”

Itsurō didn’t answer directly. His expression was distant, almost absent, but Rin could tell his mind was grinding at full speed.

He wasn’t panicked.
He wasn’t shaken.

He was… assembling something.

A structure, a pattern, a story.

Finally he murmured, almost to himself:

“There has to be a trigger.”

“A trigger?” Rin echoed.

Itsurō’s gaze tracked faintly across the room, toward Ai’s shrine, toward the mattress, the near-manic violence simmering under her skin.

“Yes,” Itsurō said. “A mind, even hers, wouldn’t flip into homicide without incentive. She isn’t random. Not like this.”
His voice was soft. “Someone or something pushed her. Or threatened something she cares about.”

Rin flinched. “It—it has to be Shu-kun, right? She only ever acts like that because of him.”

Itsurō’s silence was the kind that meant yes.

“So… someone must have done something to Shu-kun,” Rin whispered. “Recently. Bad enough to set her off.”

Itsurō didn’t answer.

Instead, he tapped one finger thoughtfully against the side of his jaw.
Once.
Twice.

“Someone who hurt Shu,” he said finally.

Rin’s eyes widened as she began piecing together the same line of thought—except she thought it was her deduction, not his.

“Then… then you think she’s going after…?”

“She’s going after whoever attacked him,” Itsurō finished gently.

And Rin paled. There it was—the clean, neat, believable conclusion he needed her to reach on her own.

A conclusion that required no lies spoken aloud.

A conclusion that would make everything that happened next look organic.

Itsurō let just a hint of quiet realization slip onto his face.

Not too much.
Not theatrical.

Just enough.

“…Yes,” he murmured. “If Ai found that out somehow, if she pieced that together… she would go after him. Kentaro fought Shu, and the Student Council is most likely investigating that. And with Yae Zennami around Ai would have access to any amount of possible deductions or notes on the case. She might have figured out Kentaro's identity and was preparing to hunt him down.”

Rin swallowed.

“She will kill him.”

Itsurō didn’t nod.
He didn’t need to.

He only let the silence settle, his eyes lowering as if contemplating the grim implications.

Inside his mind, the pieces clicked cleanly into place.

Rin whispered, frantic, “We—we need to warn him. Or stop her. We need to go, Itsurō. She’s dangerous, she—”

Itsurō stood with smooth, quiet certainty.

“Yes,” he said, voice calm. “We’ll go.”

His tone carried the perfect amount of concern.

Rin didn’t know she had just watched a lie take shape. A lie Itsurō would ride straight into the role of rescuer, driving his influence deeper into their hearts.







Kentaro’s eyes fluttered open.

For a moment—just a moment—he thought he was dreaming.

Everything was white.

The tiled walls.
The fluorescent light overhead.
The floor, the sink, the cabinet handles—every inch of the bathroom had been covered in layers of translucent plastic sheeting. The kind used by painters.

Then the rest of his senses caught up.

His wrists were bound behind the chair— no, inside the chair— threaded through loops of rope, then cinched with metal cuffs so tight they bit bone.
His ankles were tied separately, duct-taped to the chair legs. His chest was wrapped around and around again until breathing felt shallow and thin.

The air smelled like antiseptic.
And something sweet.

His head pulsed. His vision doubled.
He forced focus—

And saw her.

Ai Suishi.

She stood in the center of the small bathroom, fully suited:
plastic raincoat, gloves, boots, hair pulled tightly back.
Every inch of skin hidden.
A surgical mask over her mouth.

She was checking a set of tools laid out on a plastic-covered countertop:
scissors, a hammer, twine, a box cutter, duct tape, a large ziplock bag… and beside them, a set of different knives wrapped neatly in cloth.

Ai peeled the duct tape off Kentaro’s mouth in one smooth, swift motion—unceremoniously, without flinching at the skin she tore away with it. His grunt of pain was small, choked, barely a sound at all.

Because she’d already struck the nerve cluster in his neck. A single knuckle driven into the carotid sheath at just the right angle.
Enough to weaken his vocal cords, enough that even a scream would come out as a strained, breathy rasp.

Kentaro tried to swallow.
His tongue felt swollen.

“…S…Suishi…” he rasped.

She didn’t turn.

She adjusted the angle of a lamp instead— a cheap bendable-neck desk lamp stolen from his living room, pointed directly at his face.

Kentaro struggled. The chair didn’t even creak. She had bound him like she expected him to break steel.

“Ai—”
He coughed. Pain shot through his ribs. The burns, the bruises—every nerve screamed.

Ai finally paused.

Her head tilted just slightly, just enough to acknowledge his voice existed.

She didn’t step closer. Didn’t speak. Didn’t explain.

She simply went back to work— tightening the knots on the plastic sheeting along the walls, securing them with duct tape.
Making sure the place would be spotless.

The only sound was plastic crinkling under her hands and the soft scrape of her boots against the floor.

Kentaro felt something colder than fear.

It was the certainty— the absolute certainty— that she wasn’t angry.

She wasn’t even emotional.

Ai Suishi was calm.

Before him was a person who had decided, completely and utterly, that he shouldn’t leave this room alive.

“…you’re… fucking insane…” he whispered.

Nothing.

She didn’t react to the insult.

She didn’t react to anything.

She knelt beside her tools, unrolled the cloth that held the knives, picking one, and inspected its edge beneath the harsh lamp light.

Her breath fogged faintly against the inside of her mask.

Kentaro’s pulse hammered so loudly it drowned the hum of the light.

Then Ai finally broke her silence.

Her voice was low. Quiet.

A whisper carried more by breath than sound:

“…you hurt him.”

That was all she said.

She placed the knife gently on the plastic floor.

She didn’t move the chair. She didn’t lean down to meet his eyes.
She simply stood—to his side, not too close, not too far—head bowed slightly as she unscrewed the cap on one of the chemical jugs she’d brought.

Clear liquid sloshed. Sharp scent. Caustic. Corrosive. She set it next to the tub she had already lined with heavy plastic.

Kentaro stared at her, breath hitching, throat too tight to even curse.

Ai wasn’t paying attention to him.
Not to his breathing, or shaking, or the faint sounds he made.

She was going down a mental checklist.

Drain the blood.
Cut the body.
Dissolve the flesh.
Burn the bones.
Crush whatever remains.
Dispose of everything else.

Nothing else existed.

Then, finally, she turned toward him.

Ai lifted her mask just slightly—only enough to clear her voice—and spoke:

“…there were others… watching, that night.”

Her tone was quiet, flat. No tremor. No fury.

“Yae said so. And Kao-kao agreed.”

Her fingers tightened slightly on the mask’s edge before she pulled it back down into place.

She stepped closer, the plastic crinkling softly beneath her shoes.

“Tell me,” she said softly, “who they were.”

Kentaro tried to glare. His face twitched.

His voice came out ruined, breathy, thin:

“…go…to hell…”

Ai blinked once, slowly.
Not offended.
Not frustrated.

Just acknowledging input.

She reached out—not for a knife, not for a blade—but for a long, thin syringe filled with a cloudy solution. She held it up to the light, tapped the side, pushed the plunger a little so a bead formed on the tip.

Then she slid the needle delicately beneath his jawline, into the soft tissue near the mandibular nerve.

Kentaro seized— a strangled noise forced out of his throat— his muscles spasming, then going slack.

Ai didn’t inject. Not yet.

“I will start,” she murmured, almost gently, “by removing small pieces.”

Her voice was the softest it had been yet. Almost tender.

“You don’t need all of them.”

Her empty hand settled lightly on the back of the chair, steadying herself as she leaned in close enough that he could feel her breath through the mask.

“Tell me their names.”

She could take him apart slowly.

Piece by piece.

A quiet moment passed.

Then Ai tilted the syringe a single degree.

“…Kentaro Tachibana.”
Her whisper was almost affectionate.

“Who else hurt him?”
She injected him with whatever that syringe contained.

Kentaro’s breath rasped in and out like air forced through torn fabric.
The drug Ai had injected into his neck worked its way through his bloodstream in a slow, nauseating bloom—feverish heat rising beneath his skin, pulses of pain amplifying with every shallow heartbeat.

He could feel everything.
He could feel too much.

She knelt in front of him with the stillness of a surgeon preparing for the first incision, gloved fingers moving gently as she rummaged through her bag.

A faint clink.
Metal against metal.

Ai set down a small set of iron nails beside her knee.

Long ones.
Thick.
Old-fashioned, crude, meant for fencing or woodwork.

She picked one up delicately between two fingers, holding it upright, examining the tip. Like she was checking a paintbrush before a stroke.

Then she placed it over one of Kentaro's fingers.

With deliberate slowness, Ai raised a hammer high above her head, then brought it down with merciless force onto the makeshift stake through Kentaro's fingernail all through the other side of the fingertip.

What would have been a blood-curdling scream instead came as a pained whimper from his throat due to the drugs and nerve damage as bone gave way beneath the crushing blow.

The pain was excruciating, white-hot and unrelenting as shards of splintered nail pierced tender flesh alonside the metal.

Kentaro writhed against his restraints, eyes rolling back in their sockets as he fought against unconsciousness. But Ai wasn't finished yet.

He pulled against the bindings until his wrists bled anew, but the ropes didn’t even strain. He could feel the chair digging into his spine, feel his pulse throbbing in the hammered-through fingertip—sharp enough to blur the edges of his vision.

"Who else?" she demanded, her voice devoid of empathy as she held up the hammer once more. "Tell me their names."

Ai waited patiently for him to speak, but when no answer came she got at it again, the hammer poised ominously above its next target.

Kentaro tried to shake his head, but his neck barely responded. The drug numbed nothing. It only drowned him in waves of hyper-awareness.

Ai placed the nail flat against the next finger. Lined it up carefully with his fingernail.

Her movements were slow. Absurdly careful.

Kentaro wheezed, “D-don’t…”

But Ai wasn’t listening.

She lifted the hammer.

And paused.

The breath she took was quiet, controlled.
A soft inhale.
A softer exhale.

Then—
A single, swift, downward motion.

The impact tore through the room like the crack of a snapped bone.

Kentaro didn’t get to try to scream this time. The sound died in his throat—caught, strangled, choked into a wheeze by the nerve pinch still numbing his vocal cords.

That somehow made it worse.

His body shook violently against the restraints, muscles seizing in helpless spasms. His vision jittered, blurred, then doubled.

Ai stood perfectly still.

Waiting.

“…you poor thing,” she whispered, leaning slightly to observe his reaction. “You must be in so much pain.”

There was no cruelty in her voice. No malice.

She lifted the hammer again.

Kentaro instinctively jerked back, but he had nowhere to go. His chest hit the bindings; the chair nearly toppled. Ai reached out and steadied it with one hand—lightly, gently—before resetting the angle of the nail with her other.

“Names,” she reminded him softly.

Kentaro’s breath hiccuped, shaking. His eyes rolled toward the ceiling, toward anything except her face.

Ai leaned closer, the plastic of her raincoat whispering against itself. He could feel her breath warm the edge of his ear even through the mask.

She waited a moment.

A heartbeat.

Two.

When he didn’t answer, she reached for another nail.

Kentaro began shaking his head violently—small, frantic motions, his whole body spasming.

Ai only tilted her head, puzzled, as if studying a strange lab animal.

“…I tried to ask nicely,” she said.

Her hand closed again around the hammer.

Kentaro managed a ragged wheeze—part sob, part plea.

Ai brought the hammer down.

Again, and again.

“Names,”
"Who are they?"
“Names,”
“Names,
“Tell me their names,"
“Names,”
“Names,
“Names,”
“Tell me who they are,”
“Names,"

Time blurred.

It became a stuttering sequence of:

Ai adjusting a nail.
Ai lifting the hammer.
Asking.
Striking.
Kentaro choking on pain that wouldn’t let him faint.

Her rhythm was flawless.
Not too fast, not slow.
Each impact spaced just long enough for the pain to spike, crest, and settle before she resumed.

She checked her watch once—calmly—like someone pacing out baking instructions.

“…if you tell me the truth,” Ai murmured, lowering her mask a fraction, “I can stop.”

Her tone was gentle. Soothing.

It made the terror worse.

Kentaro shuddered. “I…I don’t know—!”

Ai blinked, confused.
Then she nodded to herself, like she’d miscalculated.

“…I see.”
Her voice softened even more, almost apologetic. “You need more time.”

She stood up.

Walked past him.

Opened the cabinet under the sink.

Kentaro strained to follow her with his eyes.

The sound of glass clinking together.

Bottles. More chemicals. Things that smelled sharp enough to burn just from proximity.

Ai returned with a bottle of clear solution and a roll of cotton pads.

She soaked a pad and pressed it lightly to one of the bloodied, nailed fingertips.

The reaction was instantaneous.

His entire body arched so hard the chair nearly snapped backward.

Ai didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

She held the pad there, hand steady as stone, watching the way the pain tore through him.

Kentaro’s breaths had thinned to trembling, broken gasps—the kind that weren’t even real breaths anymore, just his body trying to keep from shutting down.
Not from courage or resolve.
But calculation.

He wasn’t resisting because he trusted Kenji, or Rin, or Itsurō.
He wasn’t resisting because he believed in loyalty.

It was survival math.

If he gave up a name—any name—Ai would cut his throat the moment it left his lips.
And if he somehow escaped afterward? If he crawled away, half-scorched, half-beaten?

Then the others would know he talked. And he’d spend the rest of his short life waiting for one of them to slit his throat in the dark. Or the Student Council would somehow catch wind of their little conspiracy and they'd be done. Or worse, Ai Suishi would personally hunt them again.

Better to endure.
Better to wait.
Better to gamble that they’d come for him out of their own desperation, because whether they liked it or not, the four of them needed each other.

Needed him.

It was the only consolation he had left.

And then—

Knock.

The sound echoed through the small apartment.

Ai froze.

The hammer hovered mid-air above Kentaro’s blood-slicked hand. Her whole body stilled—every muscle going rigid, every tendon pulled tight like wire. Her eyes widened—not in fear, but in sudden, razor-precise alertness.

Kentaro’s breath caught. He tried to speak but the hammer slid instantly across his lips, hard and cold.

A silent command.

Don’t make a sound.

Another knock. Harder. Not tentative. Not polite.

Ai’s expression didn’t change. She simply reached with one hand, tore a strip of duct tape with her teeth, and slapped it firmly over Kentaro’s mouth. His strangled grunt died beneath it.

More knocks.
Three this time.

Ai moved fast and silent, snatching up the large scissors lying neatly among her tools.
The metal glinted sharply under the lamp—industrial-grade, the kind meant to cut heavy cloth or wire. She held them inverted, a makeshift dagger, blade angled inward like someone who’d practiced this grip.

She slipped out of the bathroom without a word.

Ai walked down the hallway with the soundless grace of a stalking animal. Her boots whispered over layers of trash. The plastic raincoat creaked faintly, tension pulling the material taut across her shoulders and chest.

She approached the front door.

Another knock, closer this time. Firmer.

Then a muffled voice, distorted slightly through the wood:

“We know you’re in there.”

Ai’s eyes sharpened to needle points.

She stopped directly beside the door.

Raised the scissors.

One gloved hand slowly wrapped around the doorknob—fingers tightening with surgical delicacy around it.

She leaned in, her ear almost brushing the door’s surface.

Her breathing slowed. Her pupils dilated. Her muscles tensed in that eerie, unblinking stillness of something that could commit violence without thinking, without blinking, without even remembering to breathe.

She waited for the slightest shift.

The faintest sound.

One cue—just one—and she would open the door with those scissors already mid-strike.

Meanwhile Itsurō stood alone before the door Ai Suishi pressed herself against on the other side, poised inches from an ambush kill.

He kept his voice low.

Because one wrong tone—even one—and that blade would punch straight through his throat.

He placed a hand lightly on the door. Not pounding. Not knocking now.
Just making contact.

“…Ai Suishi,” he said almost conversational. “Do not open the door.”

Inside, Ai remained perfectly still.

Itsurō continued:

“If you open it, everything fails.”

Silence.

Not a rustle. Not a breath.

It seemed she was listening.That was all he needed.

Itsurō swallowed once—quietly. Then he dropped the hook.

“We’re trying to save Shu Jinkō.”

Inside the apartment, Ai’s fingers tightened around the scissor handle.

He pressed in, voice steady and tone carefully neutral:

“The man you have tied up inside—Kentaro Tachibana—did fight Shu.”

A pause.

He let that sink in before twisting the knife of his lie just slightly:

“But he wasn’t Shu’s enemy. Not really.”

Inside, Ai blinked. Her breathing hitched ever so slightly.

Itsurō continued smoothly, effortlessly crafting fiction into something that sounded like gospel truth:

“He fought Shu to test him. To see the truth of his luck. His instinct. His talent.”

Itsurō could almost picture Ai’s reaction on the other side—that violent, yet reverent tremor in her shoulders whenever Shu was invoked with praise.

“And… he became convinced,” Itsurō went on. “That Shu Jinkō is the type of person worth following. Worth believing in.”

The scissors lowered a single inch.

Itsurō pushed.

“Which means we need him alive. Every asset we can get. The situation is… delicate.”

He let the word linger.

Delicate. A complex state of affairs, something only a chosen few would know.

“And every moment he’s dying in there,” Itsurō said gently, “Shu’s chance of surviving what’s coming gets worse.”

Inside the apartment, Ai’s grip loosened. Her stance softened, not relaxed, but no longer in the killing coil.

Kentaro, taped and bleeding, gurgled faintly behind duct tape.

Itsurō lowered his voice to a whisper, voice like velvet sliding over razor wire:

“If you open the door to kill me, or if you kill Kentaro Tachibana” he said, “you kill Shu’s chances.”

She rested her forehead lightly against the door—close enough that Itsurō could hear the shift of skin on wood.

“We can't bring this to the attention of the Student Council either,” he murmured, “for now we're on our own, but if you want to save him...”

Itsurō exhaled silently.

Hook sunk.

He slipped the folded note through the door’s mail slot, a thin rectangle of paper that whispered as it slid to the floor on the other side.

“This location,” he said. “Meet us here in two days and we’ll tell you everything.”

He stepped back, then turned and walked away from the entrance as if he weren’t risking getting stabbed through the door at any second.

Down the dim street, tucked in a pool of shadow beneath a broken streetlamp, Rin waited, arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes flicking nervously between Itsurō and the apartment door.

The moment Itsurō reached her, she hissed under her breath:

“What the hell do you think that accomplished? She’s not—she’s not someone you can reason with.”

Itsurō didn’t look at her. “She’ll come,” he said.

“How can you possibly—”

“She will.”

Inside the apartment Ai stood motionless in front of the door, the note at her feet.

She did not pick it up.

Her chest heaved once. Twice.

For a moment—

—for a long, trembling moment—

—the only sound in the apartment was her breath.

Her wrists flexed.
Her shoulders trembled.

Then the crack hit her.

Her entire body snapped forward as if a wire inside her spine had been tugged, and she tore away from the door—
slamming through the hallway, back into the bathroom.

Her breath came out in a quiet, broken sound.
Not a sob.

Something more like a plea she didn’t fully understand.

She slammed her fist once—hard—into the doorframe beside her.
Then again.

Then she staggered back, ripped the mask off her face, gasped for air, and clawed at her own scalp as if to tear the indecision out by the roots.

She didn’t want to leave him alive.

She didn’t want to believe the stranger.

But—

Ai wiped her face with the back of her wrist, pulled herself upright, and stoof in front of Kentaro.

He lifted his head groggily— just in time to see Ai raise the metal scissors over her head.




Itsurō and Rin, hidden a dozen meters down the block, watched Kentaro’s front door for almost half an hour.

It finally opened.

Ai stepped out.

Dark cap, neutral jacket, clean pants, hair tied tight, with a large bag, and stepped out the door without looking back.

She scanned the street once as if mapping the entire scene, then walked away.

Rin let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“…holy shit,” she whispered.

Only after Ai had been gone for several minutes did they dare approach the apartment.

Rin and Itsurō slipped inside the unlocked door. At first glance, the apartment looked… normal. Almost untouched.

Living room untouched. Trash bin upright. Shoes aligned.

No sign of a struggle.

Until they reached the bathroom.

In the empty tub—

Kentaro Tachibana, unconscious and pale.

Half-drowned in his own sweat.

Bandages wrapped haphazardly around his mangled fingers.
Duct tape still around his ankles.

Rin’s stomach twisted.

“Oh my god… she really—”

Itsurō crouched beside the tub, checking Kentaro’s pulse with two indifferent fingers.

“He’s alive,” he said.

Barely.

Rin stared at him, horrified.

“…She believed you,” she breathed.

Itsurō stood, brushing dust from his knees.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

He turned toward the door Ai had walked through minutes ago.

“And now,” he murmured, “she’s part of the plan.”




Tomaki Warumachi was, without question, the most conspicuous person in Higan Academy, and yet somehow the easiest to overlook.

Maybe because everyone already knew he was weird. Maybe because his presence had become normalised as a kind of school-tier urban legend.

Or maybe because Tomaki himself walked through life with the serene confidence of someone who had never once considered himself strange.
He was impossible to miss even from a distance.

Even if he wasn't a stump-armed, tusk-toothed wildman built like a boulder in a fur vest, he carried himself with the kind of chaotic presence that made people instinctively step aside.

Whatever the case, following him without drawing attention was proving… challenging.

Not because Tomaki was perceptive. Far from it. He wandered like a dog sniffing everything interesting, stopping suddenly, veering abruptly, doubling back to stare at vending machines for no reason, and generally moving in ways that made tailing him an exercise in compromised sanity.

At one point Tomaki spun around so fast Rin nearly ducked behind a fire hydrant, only for Tomaki to squint at a passing crow instead and wander off humming.

Itsurō and Rin kept a careful distance, pretending to chat casually as they trailed behind him through the thinning crowd outside the main building.

“Okay but—he’s definitely awakened, right? I mean, come on. No arms, giant fangs, necklace with what looks like a— No way, I swear if it is..."

"Yeah what even is that? A wolf fang? A bear?” he asked.

"Let's just say it looks like something from the other side."

Tomaki lumbered forward with a rolling gait, feet heavy, shoulders loose. He muttered to himself, head bobbing with every step.

“Tue-shday… Tue-shday ish good day. Might get later from Sishter…”

The words were chopped by the fangs in his mouth and the crooked rhythm of his speech, but the sentiment was unmistakably cheerful.

Rin leaned closer to Itsurō.

“Anyway... We really… really shouldn’t be doing this today,” she whispered. …We should be, I don't know, regrouping, not scouting.”

“We can’t waste time,” Itsurō murmured calmly.

“She almost killed one of our members!”

Itsurō didn’t break stride.

“And I bought us two days until we have to meet her again,” he repeated. “Kentaro is alive, he’s hidden, and Kenji is attending to him. We have a gap before the meeting. We fill that gap.”

Rin glared at him sideways.

“And Tomaki is next on your list of potential Awakened?”

“Kenji suggested him strongly,” Itsurō said. “And Kenji is… eccentric, but not stupid.”

Rin snorted softly.

Tomaki strolled across the courtyard toward the west wing, humming something primal and arrhythmic.

“Ah. There they are.”

Itsurō’s expression didn’t change. He’d already spotted them.

Tomaki Warumachi was now walking towards Shu Jinkō, Ran Nejima, and Takaishi Kuroda. The group stood in a loose circle near the courtyard.
Shu looked animated.
Tomaki was swaying foot-to-foot with wild energy.
Ran and Takaishi both had that stiff, “please don’t make me do something weird” look, specially the latter.

Tomaki leaned forward, grinning wide with those tusk-like lower canines showing, and stamped the ground twice with his foot.

“Shu!” he declared, voice booming. “Do the—do the thing! The new salute for today. The—uh—fighter greet! Fighter greet!

Shu, of course, obliged immediately— he stepped forward, bumped his forehead to Tomaki’s, then stomped the ground twice, mimicking him perfectly.

It seems their salutes evolved weekly, if not daily.

Tomaki beamed. “Yesh! Exshactly! Shu Jinkō do almosht better than me—Shu born to be hunter!”
He then spun to Ran. “Now you do!

“Heh. No way,” Ran muttered.

Takaishi murmured, “I—I don’t think I have the posture for— uh—hero greet…”

Shu patted Takaishi’s shoulder enthusiastically.

“Come on, you got this! Look, it’s easy!”

Tomaki began demonstrating again
forehead bump
stomp
stomp
then a wide-legged stance like a wrestler announcing a challenge to the heavens.

Rin watched, torn between amusement and dread.

“Okay,” she whispered, “so. He’s totally in their circle.”

“Of course he is,” Itsurō replied. “Shu collects strays like divine providence. It was inevitable.”

“So, is this enough evidence for you?"

"Tomaki Warumachi—Awakened? Undoubtedly.”

Rin nodded. “Physical mutation alone says a lot. But the fang—there’s something in it... It's probably worth looking into if we get the chance."

They fell silent as Shu attempted, for the third time, to coach Ran into performing the ritual greeting.

Ran leaned in—
their foreheads barely tapped—
but Tomaki burst into laughter so loud it made two passing classmates flinch.

“Too soft!” Tomaki bellowed. “Shu bonk harder! Ran must bonk like man!”

Ran practically snarled, getting riled up. “I’ll show you a bonk—!”

Takaishi caught him by the collar before he could attempt to commit homicide-by-headbutt.

Itsurō observed quietly.

“Anyway,” he said finally, “recruitment is impossible. There’s no reality where Tomaki isn’t already allied with the Student Council. He’s practically orbiting the president right now. Well, that's that.”

Itsurō veered away from the courtyard spectacle and headed toward the classroom wing. Rin quickened her pace to keep up.

“Where are we going?” she whispered, half-exasperated, half-wary.

“Info gathering,” he murmured. “No need to waste time trying to maneuver around Tomaki… but having some contingencies in place never hurts.”

They slipped into Tomaki’s classroom.

It was empty. Quiet. Dust motes drifting lazily through the muted afternoon light.

“I’ll watch the door,” Rin whispered, sliding to her station like she’d done this a hundred times.

He knew which desk belonged to Tomaki, he had seen him sitting on it, reading something.

And if his memory was right (it always was) then today, the second Tuesday of the month, he'd have one of those around here, which he'd bring home wiht him later.

He crouched and began methodically going through the storage space beneath the seat.

Tomaki’s belongings were a mess. Textbooks crammed in sideways with pages folded wrong. Worksheets wrinkled from being gripped between knees or teeth. Notebooks that looked like they had been written in by holding a pen between toes or clenched under the chin.
Margins filled with bold, energetic scribbles, some in broken childish scrawl, others impressively meticulous.

“He really does take notes with his feet…” Itsurō murmured with a faint admiration. “Or his mouth. Or both. Remarkable adaptability.”

Rin glanced back at him.
“Not sure if that’s what I would call it.”

Itsurō ignored her tone. He knew what he was searching for. He had seen Tomaki clutch letters with his toes. Always on the second Tuesday of each month.

And then—

“Here.”

Folded carefully beneath a battered math notebook was an envelope.

Rin noticed it instantly.
That quiet click in his mind, the one that meant he’d just constructed a new angle, a new maneuver.

“…What is it now?” she whispered warily.

For him thee letter wasn’t just a sentimental trinket, but a blueprint.

Namida Warumachi’s handwriting—bold but soft, rounded strokes with a gentle upward tilt. Her phrasing. Her rhythm

The letter ranged from purely cheerful to a little childish, with stuff like laughter spelled phonetically at times.
But she wrote with joy.

Itsurō memorized every detail the way a counterfeiter memorizes a signature.

Rin watched him, suspicion growing.

“…Come on,” she muttered.
“What are you planning to—”

“Someday,” Itsurō murmured, half to himself, half to her, “we may need Tomaki to conveniently be somewhere else.”

He traced the air with his fingers, imitating the strokes of Namida’s writing.

“A last-minute request. An urgent warning. A subtle nudge in the direction we need him to go.”

Rin stared at him, cringing slightly at his theatrics.

“Oh! You want to forge letters from his sister.

Itsurō didn’t confirm and didn’t deny.

He simply smiled—a calm, unreadable expression that made Rin’s stomach tighten.

“Namida is very expressive,” he said softly. “Her handwriting is distinctive, but not difficult to mimic with practice. Not for me at least.”

He straightened, slipping the letter into the envelope and under the desk.

“I don’t intend to use it unless the right moment comes, and I still need to practice until I can mimic her. But in war—especially one where we are outnumbered—every piece must be movable, even the enemies.”

“Won’t, I don't know, Shu notice if Tomaki acts weird?”

Itsurō gave a small, almost fond exhale.

“Shu Jinkō is perceptive in the ways that matter. But he is not suspicious. He does not look for betrayal. It isn’t in his nature. I'd be more worried about Yae Zennami if anything. That's another reason why this is more like a card up my sleeve.”

He stepped toward the door.

“My guess is that Tomaki will obey any request his sister makes. Specially one that arrives unexpectedly. Late. Tear-stained. Written from somewhere ‘far away’—”

His eyes briefly gleamed with a frightening sort of artistry.

“—begging her little brother to do something… for her sake. Now imagine that, incidentally, that this also lines up with any important fight where the Student Council needs as many allies as they can get. But Tomaki must choose, either his sister or his friends.”

Rin followed him out,.

“I guess,” she whispered, “But what if he shows up to help his friends anyway?”

"At least we would be sure that his heart and spirit aren't all there for the fight."




They walked side by side as Higan faded behind them, the school’s lights shrinking into a soft glow beyond the residential blocks.

Itsurō and Rin kept to side streets, weaving past shuttered storefronts and empty bus stops, disappearing into pockets of shadow as if they’d practiced it for years. Neither spoke for a long while. The silence between them was comfortable for him, tense for her.

When they reached a quiet stretch beneath a dead streetlamp, Rin slowed.

“Here?” she asked.

“Here.” Itsurō nodded.

Rin raised her hand, drawing a curved sigil in the air with two fingers. The space in front of them twisted like fabric pulled from opposite ends. A soundless tear opened— a Garganta— revealing the shimmering silver-blue distortion of the nearest bleeding zone far from their location.

Cold, otherworldly air drifted out.

Itsurō was ready to step through when Rin reached out and caught his sleeve.

“Wait.”

He paused.

Rin’s eyes were steady but troubled.

He lifted a brow.

“If… Kenji or I had been in Kentaro’s place—” she swallowed, “—would you have saved us?”

Itsurō said nothing at first.

Rin pressed on, voice low. “You acted so fast for Kentaro. You risked approaching Ai, risked getting yourself killed. And I know why. I know Kentaro’s… more like you? And easy to point. Easy to use as you say.”

She looked straight at him. It was the bravest she’d sounded all night, and of all things she was asking the possible, no, almost surely psychopathic member of their group if he'd actually risk not just his anonimity, but his life to a degree, saving them.

In light of recent events, Rin was somewhat more aware of the danger they were in. The risks around them felt more real. So far they had been the ones with the initiative, hiding and doing as they pleased. But having one of her comrades, the most physically capable member of their group, hunted down and hurt like that really made the idea of punishment grow in the back of her mind.

What would they do if they were caught? What would happen to them? Would they leave her behind if she was the one caught? They were going to sacrifice countless lives after all, so what's one more?

“Would you have done the same for us? For me and Kenji? Or… did you help Kentaro only because he fits your style?”

A long, silent second.

Two.

Itsurō didn’t avert his eyes.

He considered her quietly— not with annoyance, not with warmth, but with a kind of clinical honesty that was, in its own way, more frightening than either.

He thought:

Would I incriminate one of my own comrades? Would I frame them, risk their lives, just to set up a rescue that benefits me? To earn trust, to recruit new assets, to keep the narrative under my control?

Of course he would.

He’d do it elegantly, efficiently, and without hesitation. In fact one of the reasons he had decided to use Kentaro for it, besides wanting to worm his way as a trustworthy figure in Rin and Kenji's minds, was because he was frankly annoying. For that simple reason he had framed him to be hunted, maimed and tortured, even if he was planning to rescue him later.

He didn’t say all that.

He simply answered with the truth.

“Of course I would.”

Her grip on his sleeve loosened.

“I see,” she whispered.

Itsurō stepped through the Garganta first, the distorted light washing over half his face before he faded into it.

Edit

Pub: 19 Nov 2025 22:07 UTC

Edit: 22 Nov 2025 20:10 UTC

Views: 182