Archive of Our Own

“Be careful.”

“I know, I know.” 

The two orbs of white light shining from Gojo Satoru’s and Geto Suguru’s flashlights bounce with each of their steps. Suguru grimaces when he feels his shoe step into mud, the sludge squelching onto his ankles. 

“If you had told me we were going to the woods, I would have dressed differently.”

Satoru looks over to him, grinning wide enough Suguru can see where he’s missing a tooth. 

“It wouldn’t have been a surprise,” he explains, before flashing his light at Suguru’s dirty shoes. His socks are dirty, too. “Suck it up, they’re just your old sneakers, anyway.”

“They’re my favorite sneakers,” Suguru corrects, before shoving him. His flashlight slips from his hand, and Satoru groans. 

“Now there’s mud on my light.”

“Sucks.” 

“Jerk.”

“You started it,” Suguru taunts, and then aims his light at Satoru’s hands once the boy bends to pick up his flashlight. He looks around after and uses some fallen leaves to wipe the mud off the lens. 

“But seriously,” Suguru continues as they start to walk again, Satoru a few steps ahead of him now. “Where are we going?” 

“There’s this cave where I heard some of the older kids talk about going tonight.”

“What?”

Satoru twirls his flashlight, the orb of light spinning dizzyingly against the ground, tree trunks, and treetops. 

“Yep, it’s like a cool hang-out spot. I wanna check it out.”

“Do you even get along with the older kids?”

Satoru turns around to face him and starts to walk backward. Suguru waits for him to trip.

“I mean, I get along with some of them. They’re two guys in the same piano lessons as me.”

“What are their names?”

Satoru groans, “Does it matter? It sounds cool, Suguru. Not like you were doing anything else tonight.” 

Suguru shines his light in his face, and Satoru swats at it as if he can bat the brightness away.

“We have homework,” Suguru reminds him. “I was planning on doing it tonight.”

“Not homework!” Satoru shouts, pressing the back of his hand against his forehead. Suguru rolls his eyes, but the traitorous slant of his mouth curls into a smile. 

“Let’s just hurry up and—”

Satoru yelps as he falls backward, flashlight spinning in an arch through the air. 

“Satoru!” Suguru yells, rushing forward to the sound of leaves crunching erratically, but skidding to a halt at the drastic slope he feels in the ground. He shines his light down and catches Satoru’s curled body rolling to a stop meters below, back covered in mud and leaves. 

“Ow,” Satoru groans, rolling onto his side. 

Carefully, Suguru starts making his way down, using the thick, exposed root of trees to guide his footing. 

“Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”

Satoru slowly moves to a kneeling position, pressing a hand to the back of his head. 

“Yeah, but I think it’s fine.”

Once Suguru reaches him, he outstretches a hand, and Satoru uses it to heave himself up to stand. He winces when he puts his weight onto his left leg. 

“Ow,” he hisses. “I think I busted my leg against a rock or something.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been walking backward.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he huffs. 

“Let’s just go home,” Suguru suggests, and he knows Satoru is about to complain given the glint in his eyes, but then it’s replaced by something else. Something curious that Suguru knows can’t mean anything good for them.

“Dude,” he says, pointing past Suguru, behind him. “Check it out.”

Suguru turns his head. 

Satoru’s flashlight landed far from them, and now it rests against the base of a tree stump, its light illuminating the mouth of a trail in the forest, the woods curving around a dirt path. Faintly, Suguru can make out some type of far away building in the outskirts of the stark, white circle of clarity. 

“No way,” Suguru says. “That’s creepy.”

Satoru groans, throwing his head back. 

“When did you get so boring? Let’s check it out.”

“You’re hurt, Satoru. We should head back—”

“I’m fine, look,” and he shoves Suguru away, taking three prideful steps towards the flashlight before looking back at him. “See?”

“I don’t think we should.”

“Please?” the boy asks. “Just this and then we can leave, we don’t have to check out the hangout.”

When Suguru sighs, Satoru grins victoriously, goes to pick up his flashlight at a suspiciously slower speed than before, and steps towards the trail. 

Turns out Suguru was right, it is creepy. 

When they reach the end of the trail, the two boys are met with a farm. 

“Woah,” they both mutter, though Satoru sounds far more delighted than he should be as they approach the half-torn and warped wire fencing. He flashes his light at the first building once they duck under the fencing, a far-off shed with a caved-in entrance, pieces of broken wood jutting out. Then he flashes it at the second: a barn house. The spot the flashlight shines on looks like wood with chipped red paint, but the rest of the building looks like a featureless shadow. Suguru doesn’t even want to shine his flashlight on it. 

“Let’s leave,” he says, just as Satoru says, “Let’s go in.”

They both jerk their heads to look at each other. 

“No way,” Suguru says, shaking his head. “No way, Satoru.”

“We’re already here,” he protests. “Besides, it’s obviously abandoned. No-one’s gonna be here.”

“You sure you didn’t hit your head?”

Satoru huffs, “Well if you don’t come with me, you’ll just be here alone.”

“Wait, what—”

But it’s too late. 

Satoru rushes to the building, hurt leg and all, and Suguru stares after him, the light cast from his flashlight bouncing up and down wildly along the barn’s entrance. 

There’s a moment where he considers leaving, that Satoru can be by himself if he’s so okay with leaving Suguru alone, but then the sprouting of the guilt he knows he’ll feel if Satoru gets hurt—and the fact that he’ll have to cross the trail and the forest alone—push him forward.

“Hold on!” he shouts, and he hears Satoru’s knowing laughter. 

The inside is a cluttered mess.

There’s rusted over and broken farming machinery inside, from smaller, handheld tools like wheelbarrows filled with shovels and pitchforks, to large machines like a combine with its rotatable blades stationed up in the air, and a tractor with no wheels attached. Spread out in between are boxes, both open and taped shut, with random things inside, resting against them, and scattered on the ground. 

“There’s so much junk,” Satoru says. 

Suguru sneezes at the dust that swirls into the air when Satoru kicks a box and rubs at his nose. 

“We’re gonna get mold poisoning or something.”

“Don’t be such a baby.” 

Satoru steps away to search through the mess, Suguru huffing to himself when he hears him sneeze from somewhere behind him, and then grumble something under his breath. 

“Look at this,” he calls out, and Suguru steps over a series of smashed phones and what looks like glass shards from beer bottles to get to Satoru. 

He’s holding onto a small cube with one hand, closed eyes molded onto it to mimic some type of gross-looking dice. 

“That’s weird,” Suguru says. “Stop touching it.”

Satoru, instead, throws it in the air and catches it. 

“Why’s this in a farm?” 

Satoru shrugs, “Don’t know. Might keep it though.” 

“Dude.”

Suguru splits up from Satoru again, avoiding him and his newly found creepy box that he refuses to put down, and peers his flashlight into other boxes he comes across. Some are filled with tattered clothes eaten away by pests, and others are empty when he peers into them, with the exception of a dehydrated dead lizard or a cobweb. 

But in one, he spots a cube, similar to the one Satoru found. He hesitates but decidedly scoops it up, turning it around in his palm awkwardly as he holds the light to it. It feels light despite its clay-like appearance and texture, and instead of shut eyes, there are stitches across one of its planes. He touches their grooves and then hears a crack in front of him. 

He feels his heart stammer as he jerks the flashlight in front of him, only to have the light bounce back. There’s a mirror he missed a few boxes away, and though the light blows out a portion of what he can see in the dark, he can still make out bits of the barn in the reflection and can see his dirty legs, the mud starting to crack as it dries. He sighs, places the cube back in its box, and steps over towards the mirror. 

Up close, it’s surprisingly in good shape in comparison to the rest of the junk in the barn, its ornate metal frame covered by dust but free of rust. There’s only a splintering crack on the glass itself towards the top curve that splits his face when he looks at it closer. 

“Do you think any of this is worth anything?” Satoru shouts, and Suguru looks away to see him holding up what looks like a quilt. 

“I doubt it,” he says, looking back to the mirror. 

Someone is standing behind him, dark silhouette half hidden by the clutter. 

Suguru gasps and shuffles back, knocking over the mirror. He hears it shatter against the ground as he raises his flashlight in the direction of the stranger he saw and Satoru yelps as a result of the noise.

There’s no one.

Suguru’s breathing quickens. 

“Are you okay?” Satoru asks, making his way towards him, but Suguru’s had enough. He rushes forward, panting, and grabs Satoru’s wrist to drag him forward. 

“Suguru, what—”

“Shut up, shut up, just run,” he spits as he surges towards the exit, and Satoru doesn’t question it. 

They run, and neither looks back. 

Suguru tells himself that if he looks anywhere else except in front of him, the silhouette will be there, waiting. 

But it doesn’t appear again, and miraculously, they clear the treeline. 

Suguru’s chest feels like it's caving in by the time they stop. His legs wobble as he hunches over, hands gripping his shaking knees. Satoru is wheezing beside him, sweat drenching the back of his shirt. They’re outside of the woods now, and though they aren’t near any streetlight yet, the moonlight illuminates them enough that Suguru feels safe. 

“I don’t get why you were, hah, ” Satoru wheezes. “Freaking out, we were alone in there.”

Suguru shakes his head, “We weren’t.”

But Satoru isn’t listening. 

“My leg hurts more now, ugh.”

Suguru motions towards him, “Let me see it.”

Satoru holds onto his shoulder as Suguru leans down to roll up Satoru’s pants as much as he can. Before he starts, he can already make out a tear in the fabric. Once he slowly folds the pant leg up, he sees the edge of a bloody gash peek out.

“You have a bad cut,” Suguru says, carefully rolling down the pants again, plucking out a small piece of a broken branch he had missed before. 

“That’s not good,” Satoru says, though there’s no real indication of worry. 

“My mom has first aid stuff,” Suguru offers. “Just tell your mom you’re sleeping over.”

Later, once the comfort of home envelops Suguru, the glacial sensation that someone was hovering by him, watching him, begins to fade. 

Suguru’s mom is quick to chastise them for getting so dirty, insisting that they shower, and then upon seeing Satoru’s gash, barrages them with questions like Where did you two boys even go? How did he get hurt? that Satoru and he barely manage to swerve around. While she sets up a place for Satoru to sleep in Suguru’s room, Satoru calls his mom in the living room to tell her that he’s sleeping over. 

“Ma,” Suguru asks as he sits on his bed, brushing through his damp hair. “Do you still have my old night light?”

“Night light?” she repeats, curious. “It’s been years since you used it.”

“I know,” Suguru says, embarrassed. “But do we still have it?”

She slips a new pillowcase onto a pillow before plopping it down onto the lump of blankets Satoru will be sleeping on later, and props a hand on one of her hips. 

“We do,” she replies. “But did you watch another horror movie? I told you, some are too scary for you.”

Suguru imagines the silhouette, imagines it behind his mother, behind Satoru as he talks on the phone to his. With a sigh, she steps over and pinches the skin of his cheek gently. Suguru scrunches his nose but doesn’t move away. 

“I’ll go find it, alright?” she says. “But no more horror movies if you’re getting this scared.” 

“Thank you, and okay.” 

Satoru doesn’t comment on the manta ray night light, despite having slept over dozens of times before and never seeing it out. Only half of it lights up, one of its pectoral fins doused in darkness for eternity, but Suguru is thankful for the gentle blue light all the same. It softens the shadows of his room from onyx to something with lines and familiar textures he could make out: his desk, the figurines on his bookshelf, his stack of dirty clothes in his hamper. 

Still, he can’t sleep. 

Satoru falls asleep easily underneath the mass of blankets on the floor beside Suguru’s bed, his snores muffled by the pillow Suguru drops on top of his head. 

But Suguru stays awake until the exhaustion becomes too much to bear, losing the fight for his eyes to stay open as they keep watch of the light. 

He can’t stop thinking about the silhouette. 

It’s been days, and he still sleeps with the night light. Days and he still looks behind him when he finds himself alone in a hallway just to be sure, or while washing the dishes at night, when his parents are in their rooms. Days and he can’t shake off the feeling, randomly remembering throughout the day, his body sent back momentarily into the panic and adrenaline he felt looking back into the mirror.  

When Satoru’s about to tell some of their classmates about the so-called “adventure” over one of their lunch breaks, Suguru jabs his elbow into his side. 

“What?” he coughs, nearly choking on his food. “I’m just saying, we’re pretty badass—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Suguru replies, coolly. 

But Suguru can’t help it, he has to know. He refuses to return, but he has to do something. 

So, he turns to the school library. 

He isn’t a stranger to the library, after all, he and Satoru like to comb through the comics and adventure books and sit for an afternoon at one of the wooden tables trading them between one another, but he’s never looked through the LOCAL section. He hadn’t even thought that a town like theirs would have history important enough for someone to sit and write down but thinking on it, and remembering the bits of writing he has stashed away in his desk, he guesses anyone could just write stuff down. 

He pulls out localized books like Unbeaten Tracks in Japan and Village Japan: The Four Seasons of Shimukappu in hopes that one will mention the farm, but by the time the librarian reminds him that they will be closing soon and if he would like to keep reading he’ll have to check out the books, he finds nothing. Defeatedly, he pulls out a few more books, though his hopes aren’t high with them being a travel guide and one a photography book, checks them out, and thanks the librarian as marigold sunlight trickles over them from the window. 

“This is new,” his mom says, looking over his shoulder as he sits at the kitchen table. He’s claimed the circular wooden table with his backpack and scattered books, a cup of watered-down juice from ice melting in the middle of it all. He had to take it off the top of one of the book covers when he realized the condensation was leaving a raised humid ring behind. 

“Yeah…” he mumbles as he turns the page of his book. 

His mom sits at the other side of the table, reaching for one of the books from the pile he determined as his read section. 

“Mom,” he says, after a beat. She doesn’t look up from the book but does hum to acknowledge him. “Have you ever gone into the woods?”

She nods, spreading her fingers against the page, “I grew up here, of course I have.” 

“Satoru and I found a place.”

Now she lifts her gaze to him, her brows dipping. 

“Alright?”

Suguru pushes the book in front of him away marginally.

“It was weird,” he says. “There was a lot of junk inside of this barn—”

Her expression deadens. 

“A barn?” she repeats, slowly, sampling the words. 

 “Yeah,” Suguru explains, though now he’s nervous. He scratches at the edge of the table with his dull nails. “It was at an abandoned farm, and Satoru wanted to look through stuff—”

“Suguru,” his mom interrupts, and he feels his ears warm the way they do when he knows he’s in trouble or about to get grounded.

But then his mom says,  “I don’t think you should go back there, ever.”

“Why?”

Suguru sees her cheeks tense as she thinks of an answer. 

“Just listen to your mother,” she finally mutters before standing up, closing her book.

Suguru stares at it, frustrated. 

Suguru’s bedroom door creaks open, and he turns onto his side to see his mother peering in, the honeyed hallway light flooding his room, illuminating the movie and tv show posters across from him. 

“Did I wake you?”

He shakes his head and scoots over when his mother steps over to sit on the edge of his mattress. It dips with her familiar weight. 

“Suguru,” she says, a hand on his. “Are you going to listen to me about not returning to that place?”

“Yes, ma.”

She scoots back to rest her back against the headboard, and cups her chin, hiding her mouth with her hand. Suguru sits up, worried. 

“Ma, I mean it—”

“This house belonged to your great-grandmother,” she blurts, rushed. “And then my mother, and now me. You know that, right?”

He nods. 

“When I was little,” she begins, before pausing. She inhales as if she were about to dive underwater. “I had a brother.”

Suguru stares. He doesn’t remember an uncle. Doesn’t remember his mother ever mentioning him, doesn’t recall any family photos hung on the walls with him. 

“Did he die?” he asks.

His mother’s lip quivers. 

“His name was Makoto. He was 16 the last time I saw him.” 

Suguru gulps, the door to his room starting to slowly drift to close, the light fleeting. 

“He told me his friends and him were sneaking out to the woods one night,” she explains. “Asked me to not tell our parents. And I didn’t, I always thought he was such a troublemaker—”  

Her voice cracks and the world feels heavy as she touches his shoulder, the air dense as she moves her trembling hand to brush his hair behind his ear, as she touches his cheek. 

“I woke up the next morning and heard our father talking to someone. I went and saw this stranger sitting at the kitchen table, wearing my brother’s uniform. I asked for his name and my father laughed. He said, ‘That’s your brother, ‘yumi. Are you still half asleep?’ I thought he was joking.”

Dread grips Suguru’s spine. 

“I went to school. I tried to find my brother. But then the stranger was still home when I came back, laughing with my brother’s friends.”

“Ma,” Suguru croaks. “I—”

“I need to finish, Suguru. I need you to believe me.”

But I do, he thinks. I do, I do. 

“All our photos, they had him now. My brother was gone. This new thing was everywhere, in all of our family albums, in everything, aging next to me, growing up next to me—”  

She wipes at her eyes, and Suguru moves to rest his head against her shoulder, staring at the sliver of light left in the room. 

“I didn’t say a word the whole time. It watched me grow up. I left home for college, and the one time I came back was when my grandmother passed. I asked where he was, and you know what my mother said to me?”

Suguru shuts his eyes. 

“‘What are you talking about?’ So, I asked again,” she runs a hand against Suguru’s forehead, her knuckles tender against his skin. Her skin still smells of the onions and garlic she cut earlier. 

“And she asked if I had a fever. If I was alright, that I had never had a brother.”

The last word is whispered after a crack, spoken like a secret. The not-quite silence of a room invades then as his mother grows quiet, the slight sounds of a family home whispering in her place. He can hear the muffled television from the living room where his father most likely fell asleep on his armchair, can hear the dryer rumbling in the hallway closet, the jerky breathing from his mother trying her best not to cry.

“He was gone,” she mumbles. “Like he never existed.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighs and shakes her head, “Promise me to not go there again. Promise me, Suguru.”

He nods, “I promise.”  

The mattress creaks when she stands, and Suguru slips back under his sheets to lie down. She leans down to kiss his forehead and then leaves, rubbing her eyes with a hand, shutting the door with the other. 

Suguru tells Satoru the moment he sees him again, which is the next morning. Satoru is sitting on his porch waiting for Suguru to step into view, and once he does, Suguru watches as a mop of spikey white hair bobs his way towards him. 

“No offense,” he says, rubbing at his neck as they walk to school. “But your mom is crazy.”

Suguru punches him in the arm, “No, she’s not. Take that back.”

“Okay, okay, sorry...but there’s no ghost in the woods, Suguru,” he argues, rubbing his arm. “No witch, no haunted farm—”

Suguru huffs, “Are you serious? You saw that place.”

Satoru holds onto the straps of his backpack, “Just because it’s abandoned doesn’t mean it’s haunted.” 

“I hope the ghost shows up at your house,” Suguru grumbles, and Satoru’s visibly taken aback, stopping on the sidewalk with his mouth unlatched into an offended 'O'.

He recovers quickly though, letting go of his bag’s straps and pointing a finger at Suguru.

“I’m not the one who saw it,” Satoru reasons, smug.

But Suguru whips around and jabs a finger into Satoru’s chest, “So you believe me, you believe there’s a ghost!”

Satoru visibly reddens, “Shut up, no I don’t.”

“Okay,” Suguru’s mom announces in their living room, splaying out her hands to reveal two DVD cases like one would playing cards. “We have two options tonight.” 

She hides one case behind her back, and holds the other out front, but close enough to her face that she can rephrase the movie summary on the back. Suguru snorts. 

“Our first runner up—” she clears her throat and starts to impersonate a thoughtful narrator's voice. “A boy moves away from home and has to make new friends in his new town, but meets a youthful baseball prodigy and gets into adventures along the way.”

Suguru frowns, “That sounds boring .”

His mom pouts, “It’s a great movie, Suguru. One of the kids even reminds me of you.”

“What’s the second option?” 

She sighs, dramatically, and hides the rejected movie behind her back. When she reveals the second option, Suguru doesn’t even give her time to speak. 

“That one, let’s watch that one.”

She taps the case, “Do you even know what this movie is about?”

“No,” he admits. “But there’s a cool underground monster on the front.” 

She shakes her head, “This is my fault. I should have known you would vote for this.”

“Dad doesn’t like when we watch horror movies,” he argues. “And he’s not here right now because of his job, so.” 

“So,” his mom parrots as she turns to set up the movie, inserting the disc before reaching behind the television to check the DVD player’s cables when switching the television’s input doesn’t work.

“So, ” he continues. “It’s the perfect chance.”

The screen flickers and his mom peers over the edge to see it finally connect. Suguru reaches for the remote by him and presses skip until he’s met with the movie menu. On her way to the couch his mom turns off the lights, and Suguru unfolds one of the blankets piled on his lap for her. 

“You’ll have to keep it a secret,” she teases as he wraps his own blanket around him. 

Suguru laughs, “It’s just a movie, Ma.” 

The movie is about killer worms. Half the time, Suguru can’t tell if he’s supposed to be laughing at the survivors calling them megaworms and suckoids, or feel anxious watching the subterranean creatures start to break through the floors and walls. 

But his mom is loving it. 

She’s jerking each time the monster breaks through the earth, grabbing onto Suguru’s arm and quickly muttering ohnoisitgoingtokillher?ohnoIdon’twanttosee but staring at the screen anyway. When the movie ends and Suguru helps her pick up, dumping out the last bit of uneaten popcorn kernels in their shared bowl, he overhears her asking questions like but they never really explain where they come from, do they? 

“That’s because it’s a bad horror movie,” he answers, rinsing out the bowl. 

Her hands come into view as she places their cups in the sink, too. 

“Well, I thought it was fun.” 

He snorts, “Of course you did.” 

“At least we won’t lose sleep over it,” she says. 

To his embarrassing surprise, Suguru does lose sleep over it. 

It’s not that he can’t sleep thinking about the worms. He’s quick to rationalize that they wouldn’t just materialize in their town; the ecosystem and landscape are drastically different from the tiny desert town setting of the movie. But every time he falls asleep, lulled to sleep by the rattling of the air conditioner shuttering on, the stupid worms find a way into his dreams. 

He jolts awake with panic each time, sitting forward to grip his sheets or outright gasping. 

It’s annoying. He’s not even afraid of the worms when he’s awake. It’s just when he’s asleep, his dreams turn the worms into a malleable thing, creeping underneath his floorboards and reaching for him through shower drains and sewers. 

In one, they go for his mother. 

He nearly falls off his bed when he wakes up, her screams still ringing in his ears. He groans, rubs his eyes, and throws his legs over the bed. He might as well rinse his face in the bathroom and drink some water—

“Stop it!” his mother shrieks. “ Suguru!”

He forgets how to breathe. 

His chest constricts and Suguru sprints out of his bed, groping at the walls of the hallway to propel himself forward as he bolts to his parents’ upstairs bedroom. He misses a step on the stairs and lands on his chin, yelping as he bangs his knee against an edge. An outburst of aching pain shoots through his skull and his eyes water but he rushes to his feet regardless and runs. 

“Mom!” he shouts, finally getting to the bedroom and shoving the door open with his shoulder. “Mom, what’s going on—” 

His mother is standing on the tips of her feet, arms motionless by her sides. 

Standing in front of her is a blot of shadow shades darker than the rest of the darkness in the unlit room, swallowing the moonlight that’s oozing in through the window whole with its silhouette. It’s holding onto her, a warped shape of a limb swathed around her neck. Suguru can make out the form of a person, of a head, of arms, of legs, even a face. 

He can see the wisps of where eyes would be, the swell of an unfinished nose, and the indent of a mouth. Somehow, it’s so familiar—

“Suguru, please,” his mother rasps, but she isn’t looking at him. 

She’s looking at the thing. 

“Let go of—”

His voice is stolen by the air he can’t manage to breathe when it turns its head to look at him. 

Suguru starts to tremble uncontrollably, his knees buckling under his shaking weight as he crumbles to the floor. He starts to scamper back, afraid as the thing takes a sluggish step towards him. The floor doesn’t creak underneath its weight, but Suguru can hear his mother’s feet drag against the wood. 

He starts to scream. 

“Stop,” his mother pleads, shouting. “Please —” 

Suguru shuts his eyes, and his mother goes silent. 

He hears a dull thump smack the floor, feels the quick vibrations reach him, and his screams quiet down to whines until finally, the world is muted. 

He does not dare open his eyes to see if the thing is waiting for him. 

He does not dare to move, to run. 

He curls up on the floor, quiet and still.   

His father finds him the next afternoon. 

Distantly, Suguru can hear his car arrive. He can hear the two beeps of the car alarm as it locks, can hear the front door creak open, can hear his father call out to him and his mother, voice ringing throughout the hushed house. He can hear the suitcase rolling to a stop, can hear his father ascend the stairs, uncertain. He can hear his steps getting closer, and closer, and closer until finally—

“Suguru? What’s the matter—oh, oh god, oh my god—” 

Satoru calls him when he finds out. At least, Suguru figures that’s why he calls five times in a row and sends him text messages with varying degrees of urgency. Suguru lets the phone ring, and after he reaches over to silence it, lets it vibrate against the surface of his nightstand until it falls off and clatters to the floor. 

“He’s in his room,” he distantly hears his father say from the front door, followed by Satoru’s quiet thank you. He considers getting up to lock his bedroom door but then decides not to. He pulls the blanket around him tighter, closing the gap he had left for his nose to breathe. When his door creaks open, he doesn’t move to look. 

He waits for Satoru to sit on the bed, but he doesn’t. 

Suguru pulls the blanket tighter around him. 

“My parents told me,” Satoru says softly. 

Suguru chews on his lip. 

“I’m sorry.”

He feels the chapped skin split. 

“I saw it,” he says. 

“What?”

“I saw the ghost.”

Satoru sounds like Suguru’s father when he says, “...Suguru.”

He sits up, the blanket half resting on his shoulders as it slips off his head. He looks at Satoru, and Satoru at him. His eyes feel tired, and his nose burns as he rubs it, the skin dry and pleading. 

“If you don’t believe me,” he warns, though his voice cracks, prey to exposed fissures that rupture as he continues to speak. “Then go away, my dad doesn’t even believe me—”

Satoru’s mouth starts to tremble.  

“I can’t,” Suguru rattles. “I can’t, I didn’t—”

When his eyes start to water, he hides his face away from Satoru, looking down at his hands on his lap that are slowly freckled by tears. 

He thinks Satoru starts to cry, too. 

Suguru hears whispers after his mother’s death. 

Real, carnal mutterings that torment him far more than the apparition he fears now lurks for him in the dark. They all hold an avid interest in him and his father, salivating as they peer over the wooden fence when Suguru is hanging clothes to dry in the yard, waiting for the next fragment of suffering to drop for them to devour. They’re at his school, coiled in the curious stares from his classmates that only dissipate once their teacher interjects to start class. They’re in the skittish eyes that follow him from storefronts as he walks home, scurrying away when he glances over to finish sweeping the porch or wiping down a window. 

He didn’t call for help, not even his own Father. Isn’t that strange? 

Now that you mention it…

The family next door said they heard her screaming his name. 

You don’t think—

“They don’t get it,” Satoru says after shooting a glare at the two old ladies that gather in front of the convenience store during the afternoon to sell roasted almonds and ice cream to the school children heading home. Suguru had to hold him back from saying something.

“Neither do you,” he says, and Satoru pouts. 

Some of the other kids in their class, if not most, have stopped talking to Suguru altogether. The adults speak to him less, keeping any interaction with him whittled down to the necessary exchanges to remain societally polite. 

But Satoru doesn’t care. 

When an older classmate leans his hip against Suguru’s desk during lunch break once, taps the top of Suguru’s lunch box and asks— So, did you do it?— Satoru kicks his knee. 

Satoru thinks it's something that can be avoided, that it’s something wrong and Suguru should really say something about it to someone, but it feels pointless. 

When he goes home, his own father doesn’t believe him. 

Two months after his mother’s death, his father gets the position he was away the weekend of, for. He tells Suguru joylessly, hand squeezing his shoulder underneath the kitchen light, in front of the trash bin slowly overrun by the plastic skeletons of microwavable meals and dented metal of cheap energy drinks. 

“I’ll have to be away more,” he explains. “The role requires meetings in different cities.”

“That’s okay,” Suguru says. “Congratulations.”

“Mm.” 

“Do you want to do something special for dinner—”

“I already ate,” his father interrupts before letting go of his shoulder. “But thank you, Suguru.”

Six months before he’s set to start at the junior high Satoru is also attending, he starts to dream of his mother. 

Five months before, he wakes up from the dreams in the bathroom, steaming hot water from the sink running over his carmine hands. He wakes up in the kitchen, arms spread as he opens both the cup ware and plate cupboards. He wakes up in the yard, mosquitoes caressing his unprotected calves as dewy grass itches his ankles. 

Four months before, he jolts awake in his parent’s bedroom, by the empty side of the bed, when his father yelps. 

“Are you sleepwalking?” his father grumbles, hand blindly swatting at his nightstand to find his glasses. 

“I think so,” he admits. 

Three months before, it stops. 

Two months before, Satoru starts talking about their new uniforms and how he hopes there will be new, “not-boring” people in their class though both he and Suguru know there most likely won’t be given the size of their town. 

One month before, Suguru wakes up screaming. 

He had dreamt of the shadow, and now it lingers in the corner of his room, bleeding onto the wall towards him as it seeps out from the curling edge of one of his posters. 

He jumps when his door swings open, hitting the wall. He jerks his head to see his father standing in the doorway, glasses crooked and pajamas disheveled as he stares at him, chest heaving. 

“Why were you screaming?” he asks, reaching to turn on Suguru’s bedside light. “Are you okay?” 

Suguru’s throat feels sore as he gulps. The shadow is gone. 

“Suguru, why were you screaming?” he repeats, and Suguru knows he won’t believe him, he knows but what else can he say? 

“There was someone in my room—” his father’s eyes widen “—the ghost I told you about when Mom—” 

“I told you,” his father says, frigid. “There is no ghost.”

Suguru looks over at the corner, at the expanse of his wall where it had crept towards him silently. 

“There is—”

“Suguru,” his father interrupts, halfway to a shout. “That’s enough.”

Suguru’s lips cement into a line. He tightens his hands into fists underneath his bedsheets. 

“We’re moving.”

Suguru blinks and his heart plummets, “What?”

His father runs his hands down his face, dragging the skin of his cheeks down until Suguru can see the rim of his eyes. He looks older suddenly to Suguru, like the pictures of his grandfather in their family photos. 

“I meant to tell you in the morning,” he explains. “I received the confirmation from work earlier today, but we’re moving to Tokyo.”

“But—”

“I can’t be in this house anymore, Suguru. We can’t, not after—” 

He can’t bring himself to say it, and Suguru doesn’t ask him to. 

Instead, after a nervous inhale, Suguru quietly asks, “Do you think it’s my fault?”

And his father regards him with weary, jaded eyes, considering his question with strained lips and a creased chin. For a moment, Suguru thinks he will answer, that his mouth will finally put to words what he knows has plagued his father’s thoughts since he found him curled up on the floor.

But then he turns away. 

He leans in to switch off Suguru’s light, an instantaneous eruption of shadow engulfing the room, before he leaves him alone, the door left ajar. 

He loses some of his things in the move.  

Some he has to throw out. Those are easier. He knows where they are, he knows what trash bag the poster he tore off a chunk of when peeling away the infuriating tape went into, knows where the old candy wrappers Satoru had balled up in his desk were heading to after they’re thrown in the trash. But the things that seem to be eaten by cardboard boxes are hard. 

A figure of a western cartoon he won with Satoru at an arcade is nowhere to be found once he starts to unpack his boxes. 

A stack of movie tickets with faded ink that Suguru had kept together on his desk with a hairclip he thought he had slipped into his backpack is gone. 

His manta ray night light is also gone.

Suguru’s thinking about the thing as he walks the length of his new neighborhood, hands shoved in his pockets. His father had offered to buy a new one, and Suguru had reminded him that his mother had bought it for him during their summer vacation to Okinawa. 

He didn’t say anything after. 

His mother has become a sort of ill-kept secret between them. Her absence is a shared sore, one Suguru cannot ignore and one his father pretends has not been inflicted onto them. He lets the wound fester, leaves it open for flies to invade and infest. Suguru tries to stitch it close, tries to alleviate the pressure and lessen the infection, but his father is persistent. 

There are no family photos hung in their new home. No framed memories nestled beside a living room lamp or on top of a nightstand. The expensive dining ware Suguru knows his grandmother had left to her as inheritance is hidden, replaced by an empty cupboard shelf underneath the plastic bowls and paper plates his father now insists on buying. 

The few times he’s in his father’s new bedroom, it feels like a grave. The curtains are drawn close, the bed is unkempt, and his dirty clothes litter the top of his dresser and spill onto the floor. 

At times, as he watches him drowsily get ready for work, slipping on his shoes and looping his tie with a dreary sigh, Suguru wonders if he wishes he was dead too. 

“Watch where you’re going, brat!”

Suguru jumps out of the way as a man riding a moped speeds past pathetically. He grimaces when he steps into a pearlescent puddle with his slip-on sandals, shaking out his feet to dry them out. He looks up at the man’s retreating figure and smacks his tongue in his mouth. He’s not even going that much faster than him.  

The city, Suguru has come to learn, is as overwhelming as it is unforgiving. 

The foreign streets are narrow in his neighborhood, and the soured sky is pierced by slender buildings and street lights, power lines serving as dividers, sectioning off the world into grids as clouds drift by, unrestrained above. When he explores it, he imagines his father telling him not to get lost, to be careful, but earlier today, when Suguru announced he was going for a walk, he had given him some money and simply said “get some lunch.” 

It’s how he finds himself walking back to his house now with a plastic bag stamped with a repeating pattern of smiling faces dangling off his wrist. He hadn’t bought lunch outright, but the soda and three-chip varieties he bought would tide him over until dinner. 

There’s been a girl with long, dark hair divided into two braids thrown over her shoulders walking in front of him the whole way since the convenience store. She glanced over when the moped driver yelled at him, but said nothing and looked away just as fast. 

 He’s curious, but he keeps enough distance between them for her to not feel creeped out. He was used to walking the same way with others for a long while in his hometown, but he had imagined the city was different—

The girl pivots on her heels to look at him when they’re two houses away from his. 

“Are you stalking me?” she accuses. 

Suguru stares, “What? No, I’m going to my house.”

The girl props her hands on her hips and cocks her head, “Yeah? Where’s your house?”

Suguru points and she twists to look over. 

“Oh!” she blurts. “You’re the new family.”

Suguru hadn’t felt like he was part of a family in a long time.  

The plastic bag rustles as he rubs at his elbow.

 “Yeah. It’s me and my dad.”

The girl tilts her head, the motion curious now rather than judging.

“Where are you going to school?” 

“Nishishinjuku.”

She makes a peace sign with a hand, “Hey! I’m going there, too. What’s your name?” 

“Geto Suguru,” he says. “What’s yours?”

“Amanai Riko.” 

Amanai reminds her of Satoru. 

It makes Suguru’s chest hurt in a weird way sometimes, makes him imagine what Satoru would say or want to do if he were hanging out with them. 

But there are also things about her that are not Satoru-like. 

She’s lived in a city her whole life. When he talks about his hometown, her eyes glisten and she acts like it’s something as surreal as the sky curdling with blooms of pollution above them, asphalt canals guiding them through concrete hillsides. She asks questions about his hair, about his old school, about his old friends, to which she nods when he says he really only has one. 

“That’s okay,” she reassures as if Suguru had found it to be a flaw. “I only have like, two.”

She tries to show him how to play badminton, which Suguru finds boring but at least it’s something to do after school when none of the clubs catch his eye. 

“I wanna go pro,” she confesses one day, breathing hard as she rests the racket against her hip on the court. 

Suguru snorts, “Is that even a thing?”

When she whacks him with the racket, he laughs. 

His desk at home starts to clutter with keepsakes and trinkets that his hands would not have touched had he not moved; a jar of light blue sticky notes folded into stars that Amanai had made during lunch break once, new movie tickets with time stamps and prices that had yet to fade, sticky, gummy hands that stick to the ceiling when Suguru swings them. 

He also starts to collect little-known things about her the way a friend does, things that can’t be physically kept but linger all the same.

Amanai likes school. She talks about college like it’s a dream that Suguru hasn’t even seriously considered yet, the idea of leaving his father and moving again beyond the current expanse of his mind.  She hasn’t seen a lot of movies. When Suguru tries to show her horror movies, she squirms and covers her eyes. 

“There are some that aren’t scary,” he tries, pointing to the pile of DVD cases by the foot of his bed. “Just pick one that looks cheesy. I have a bunch.”

It’s weird having someone in his room beside his father, but Amanai walks through the space with certainty, picking up one of the cases and holding it out.

“What about this one? The worms look dumb.”

Suguru stiffens. He thought he had thrown away that movie. 

“Not that one,” he manages to say, voice tight, the words rushed. 

Amanai notices and furrows her brow, “Why not?”

All at once, he hears his mother.  He sees his mother behind Amanai, head turned towards him in this house that was still not quite a home. 

He blinks and it’s all gone. 

“I just don’t want to see it.”

Amanai doesn’t press further. 

He finds out her parents died when she was four in a car accident, and now she lives with her grandparents. 

“I miss them,” she says once, their legs looped through a dome jungle gym as they sit on top of the curve. “But it’s weird, you know? Like, I miss them but I have a hard time remembering them. I just see photos and videos and get sad. If I was older I think it would be different—oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.” 

Suguru shrugs, “It’s okay. It is weird.”

“Do you miss your mom?” 

“Yes,” he answers thoughtlessly, as natural as breathing, as blinking and his heart beating. 

The warm metal they’re sitting on groans as Amanai shifts, scooting closer to him. 

“You should start coming over,” she suggests. “I talk to my grandparents about you, they’d love to meet you.”

“Really?”

She smiles, “Duh.”

The first time Suguru visits, her grandmother cooks dinner for them. 

 The house smells of warmth, of a simmering, savory meal, of snuffed, half-burnt candles left uncovered, of a timed air freshener in the bathroom, of herbal incense burning at the shrine in the dining room. 

The home feels warm, too. There are photos of Amanai’s family hanging on the walls. She’s absent in some; a family vacation before she was born, her parent’s wedding, her mother’s college graduation. In most though, she’s a baby. In one that Suguru looks at, she’s cradled by her grandmother in an orange blanket as her mother stands beside her. 

Suguru decides Amanai looks like her mother. Though one wouldn’t be able to tell that the shrieking, red-faced infant depicted in the photograph would grow up to have a similar hairline, a similar set of cheekbones, a similar slant to her smile.

There are more decorations spread out through the space, hanging on the wall or kept on tabletops. Decorations and the evidence of lives lived, of pasts kept and nurtured. 

Suguru feels lonely looking at it all. But Amanai is right, her grandparents do like him. While cooking dinner, a plaid yellow apron tied around her waist, her grandmother asks him questions about school, about any clubs he’s involved in, about his dad’s job. Her grandfather is a bit quieter, but when Suguru mentions his newly found interest in martial arts, he nods eagerly, sharing his own experiences, even going as far as to mention trophies he’s won. 

He leaves that night with leftovers, the bottom of the tupperware warm in his hands as he waves goodbye at their gate. The lid is skewed slightly off, one corner lifted to avoid condensation since Suguru hates when his food gets soggy. 

At home, his father peers at the tupperware once it’s on their kitchen counter like it's an alien thing. 

“Did you cook that?”

Suguru shakes his head, “No. Amanai’s grandmother made it.”

“Ah,” his father hums. “Don’t make it a habit. You have plenty of food here.”

The microwave beeps twice, his father stepping away to open the door to slide out his instant package of noodles before the third beep. When he retreats to his room, Suguru puts away his food in the fridge. 

He starts to call Satoru less. 

The act of calling him, of reaching out, feels daunting now. It carries importance to it now. Before Suguru could call for him to come over, to see if he wanted to get a snack and watch a movie, but now he calls to ask how he is, how school is, questions he had not pictured himself having to ask Satoru before. 

But once he calls, once Satoru picks up and starts talking, the pressure lessens, and they slip into a normal conversation. Suguru tells him of Amanai, and Satoru in turn tells him that he’s steadily working on befriending a transfer student named Shoko. 

“She doesn’t think we’re friends, but I’m getting there.”

“Of course you are.” 

He slips into a routine easily. He goes to school, he sees Amanai, he joins the martial arts club, he talks to Satoru, and he watches his movies. It’s doable. It’s accessible, and while Suguru isn’t scrutinizing or looking, it becomes almost enjoyable. 

And then the nightmares come back. 

Nothing eventful takes place the night that they do. 

Suguru lays his head down to sleep and wakes up with a raw, flaming throat and his father’s hands on his shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, and his father lets go. 

“What did you dream of?” he asks. 

Suguru sits up, hunching over to hold his face in his hands. 

“I don’t remember,” he says, and it’s the truth. 

Suguru’s nightmares are leadened things. They are visceral as he dreams them, but when he wakes up, when he sheds their murky weight behind to be cloaked by reality, they’re formless. They’re lost to him as sleep is, the only evidence of their fleeting tormenting existence incarnated in his shouting voice. 

“Liar,” his father says, low. “You were calling out for your mother.”

Suguru drops his hands and cocks his head to look at him. 

“Am I supposed to call for you?” 

Living with his father, Suguru imagines, is similar to what it would be like living alone. They both take care to strategically avoid one another, and if their daily schedules hiccup and they, unfortunately, intersect in the kitchen or at the front door as one departs and one arrives, neither says a word. 

But the night that Suguru wakes up in their kitchen, staring out at the dimly lit living room, his father in pajamas illuminated by the faint glow of a reading lamp, they talk. His father is tense, eyeing him cautiously with one foot positioned forward, and one behind.

“Suguru,” his father says, slowly like he’ll mispronounce the neglected syllables. “What are you doing?”

“What—” Suguru hears something clank against the floor and looks down to see a knife by his feet. He licks his lips and rubs at his face. “What, was I holding that?”

Suguru’s father doesn’t answer, and that’s enough to know. 

He asks, “What were you doing?” 

Suguru’s head hurts, and he starts to rub at his eyes with the meat of his palm, pressing in until he sees shapes. 

“I was sleepwalking,” he admits. 

“Again?” 

He nods, “Yeah. Again.” 

After, when they leave to their rooms, Suguru somberly follows behind his father. He stares at his shoulders with each of their unsynchronized steps and realizes that he’s almost taller than him now. 

When his father steps into his bedroom and Suguru passes the door, he doesn’t say a word when he hears the door’s lock click into place. 

“There’s a place I want to check out.”

Suguru tilts his head, one headphone off to listen to what Amanai’s saying. 

“Where?”

She fidgets with the plastic straw of her soda, bending it. 

“The abandoned school near Yubari shrine.” 

Suguru looks over at her, brow perched. 

“Alone? ” he questions, disbelieving. Amanai in turn puts her drink down on the public bench in between them. 

“No,” she says. “I’m going with Haibara and Nanami, from the supernatural club I told you about, which I still don’t get why you don’t join.” 

She reaches for his bag of chips but Suguru is quick to hide them away. 

“Because it’s dumb.”

She frowns, “Don’t be rude.”

“Are you even close with them?”

She snorts, “I don’t have to be close with someone to investigate a haunted school. I just have to trust them.”

He brings the bag of chips back into view, and Amanai sinks her hand into it immediately. 

“And do you?”

“I do,” she murmurs, mid-chew. “But, I trust you, more. And I’m close with you, too.”

He sighs, “Amanai, I’m really not into this kinda stuff.”

“But you watch all those horror movies,” she protests. “Are you too scared? It’s fine if you are but you don’t have to act so tough.”

Suguru leans back against the bench, “If you’re trying to convince me, it’s not working.”

Amanai groans and slumps against him. 

Quietly, she says, “What if I tell you I’m scared?” 

The top of Amanai’s hair smells like rose. 

Once, after getting caught in a sudden thunderstorm, her grandmother had insisted that Suguru take a hot shower and change into dry clothes. He felt embarrassed as he undressed in Amanai’s bathroom, pointedly refusing to look at the pack of feminine hygiene products he spotted, most likely hurriedly hidden, behind a face towel. Suguru hadn’t recognized any of the brands in her shower and even opened some of the bottles just to smell their exuberant scents. 

His hair smelled of rose until he washed it again. 

“I’ll go,” he sighs, and Amanai springs off of him, grinning. Quickly, he adds on, “But only if you really mean it that you’re scared.”

“Oh, I do,” she reaffirms. “Trust me, I think we’re all scared.” 

He wants to ask Amanai if there’s an unsaid rule in the supernatural community that requires them to go to abandoned places at night. If they were really haunted locations, then the time of day shouldn’t play a role in the haunting. Suguru thinks it would make perfect sense that the locations would be haunted throughout the day, 24/7 365 days a year.   

But Amanai and her clubmates Haibara and Nanami insist they visit the abandoned school at night. Well, Nanami doesn’t really say much of anything. He lingers behind Amanai and Haibara, walking in step with Suguru. Suguru had admittedly sent a snide text to Amanai in secret about his hair cut earlier when they met up by a 24-hour convenience store, and Amanai in turn had berated his bangs in the brutal, intimate way only a friend could do. 

“Why here, by the way?” Suguru asks, just as they start to ascend the outdoor cracked cement stairs that lead to the entrance of the school. There’s not even a street light nearby, their only guiding light are the three flashlights they officially requested funding for a week ago. 

“It’s creepy,” Haibara answers, turning around to face him once he steps off the stairs and onto the empty court. He points the flashlight skyward underneath his chin, his features lighting up dramatically. 

“It’s perfect for amateur investigators,” he continues to explain. “Plus, we got dared.”

Amanai failed to mention that. 

“By?” he asks. 

Amanai knocks her elbow into his and Haibara laughs. 

“Doesn’t matter!” she decrees, and Suguru hears Nanami huff beside him, mumbling something suspiciously close to the name of the upperclassman girl he knows Amanai finds “cool.” 

As they walk up to the entrance, stepping over shards of glass from broken windows and a DO NOT ENTER sign, Suguru sees something move to his left, towards a mass of what looks like overgrown bushes and weeds. He looks over, shining his flashlight, and feels his stomach lurch. 

Standing in front of the overgrown community garden that is slowly stripping the archaic white paint of the school building, is a silhouette that is meant to have been a thing left behind in his old home. 

“Geto, are you alright?”

He whips his head around to see Amanai peering out from the entrance, Haibara and Nanami further inside if the circle of light that moves seemingly on its own behind her is anything to go by. 

He doesn’t answer her. His chest heaves when he turns his light back to the shadow.

It’s gone. 

“Geto?” Amanai says again, stepping towards him. 

“We should leave,” he blurts, and he wishes he didn’t sound as windless as he does. “Like, right now. We need to leave.”

Amanai crosses her arms in front of her chest, “If you’re scared, it’s okay. But we can’t chicken out now, we’re already here—”

“You don’t get it,” he tries. “I’m not scared—”

Her mouth is a slant, “That’s a lie. You’re totally freaking out. Come on—”

She reaches for his hand, and Suguru pulls away, eyes scanning behind her, searching for an outline darker than the night. 

“Geto, seriously, what’s wrong?”

“I just don’t think it’s safe here.” 

“What’s taking you guys so long?” Haibara’s voice calls out. 

Amanai groans, “Look, I get it, it’s creepy. And honestly, some of the structure probably isn’t safe, but we’re here! I’m not leaving until we get some pictures or videos to prove it.”

Suguru doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He can’t bring himself to tell Amanai, to beg her to believe him. She’s looking at him expectantly, and Suguru’s hands start to shake. 

“Hey,” she says, stepping closer. Her voice is soft, quiet. “Seriously, we can leave after. We can watch some funny movies if it’ll make you feel better. But please? We’re already here. If you saw something, it was probably just your imagination.”

Suguru shuts his eyes. 

If he leaves, it’s not certain that it will leave, too. It might linger, might lurk and wait for Amanai to meet with him again later tonight, or tomorrow, or in a week. 

A part of him, a pathetic, minuscule part of him, starts the process to try to convince himself that maybe, just maybe, it is his imagination. 

“Okay,” he says, and he hates the word. He hates the supernatural club she joined, even starts to hate Haibara and Nanami just a little, too. 

They decide trying to go to the second and third floors is too dangerous. There are exposed support beams in the concrete walls littered with torn and frayed posters and photographs of students Suguru figures are now full-blown adults and teachers who he wonders are alive or not. Portions of the ceiling are crumbling, wires and plaster out on display like structural innards. Some classrooms, though they can look in through the broken glass or rotten wood, are inaccessible. The doors are either blocked by a mass of turned-over desks and chairs or locked.

Haibara leads them to what must have been a classroom meant for art. There is a rusted sink cluttered with bowls and glass jars with darkened, chipped paint on their sides. The scant desks in the room have been pushed against one of the walls, the only things scattered throughout are the wooden and metal easels still set up. Most are empty, but some have canvases still positioned, a few drawn and painted on. 

Suguru can hear Amanai’s phone clicking with each of the photographs she takes, the flash illuminating the space in front of her a second later. He’s about to ask if they can leave yet, when Haibara plops down on one of the wooden stools Suguru is surprised doesn’t instantaneously fall apart, and beams.

“Scary storytime.” 

As the stories progress, Suguru’s nerves ease minimally. He’s still cautious, paying attention to the broken window behind Haibara and Nanami as they all sit on the floor, and listens for any sounds in the corridor they came from. 

But minutes pass, and they’re safe. 

Amanai’s first story is so bad that Nanami stifles a laugh at the end politely. 

Haibara follows with something minimally better, though Suguru struggles to follow along with what’s going on. 

Nanami tells a surprisingly scary story, Amanai and Haibara both leaning towards one another as he goes on, and shouting when it comes to an end. 

Suguru manages to avoid sharing a story altogether. 

“Come on, ” Amanai whines. “You have to have something.” 

Suguru shrugs, “I don’t. I'd rather just listen to you guys.”

“But you look like you’d be into some real spooky stuff,” Haibara adds. 

 Suguru snorts, “What does that mean?” 

“Evidently Haibara thinks you’re creepy,” Nanami interjects.

“That’s not what I mean—”

Something crashes. Something loud enough that Suguru feels his spine vibrate.  

They all move away from the door and stare at one another. Amanai leans towards Suguru and reaches for his wrist, and Haibara steps towards Nanami. 

“What the hell was that? Was that in the building?” Nanami asks. 

Amanai follows with, “Should we check it out?”

Haibara shakes his hands in front of him, “No way, that’s dumb. That’s how you die in horror movies.”

Amanai frowns. 

“Then let’s go,” Suguru says. “We got pictures, we got videos. Let’s leave.” 

“Fine, fine,” Haibara gives in, turning his flashlight towards the darkened entrance of the classroom. 

Something tall skirts away from the light immediately.

 Suguru feels the world sharpen and narrow as the sounds of Haibara screaming and urging them to run become muddied as Amanai lets go of his wrist to run. 

He can’t tell if there are footsteps other than their group rushing through the corridor, but it doesn’t matter, because he knows not to look back, knows inherently, that they are meant to run. 

When they clear the building safely, Suguru is panting, catching his breath with a burning chest. Haibara is to his left, and Nanami is in front, on his phone.

“No signal,” he announces. 

Haibara looks towards Suguru, confused.

“Where’s Amanai?”

The ground tilts. 

Suguru’s lungs collapse, the privilege of breathing lost to him. 

He whips his head around to look behind him, where he swore Amanai had been a moment ago and sees no one. He was holding onto her, he knows he was—

But she had let go, hadn’t she? 

“I—” he wheezes. 

“We thought she was with you,” Haibara says. “Did she stay behind? Geto, wait, let’s call for help—”

But he’s already running. 

He holds out his phone with the flash on for a source of light as he runs back into the building, though the clarity pales in comparison to their flashlights from earlier. 

“Amanai!” he calls out as aims the light to his left, and then right. “Amanai, where are you?”

“Suguru!” a voice responds. 

It’s not Amanai. 

It’s his mother. 

He starts to tremble, his teeth grinding against each other. He can’t tell if the spasms in his chest are because he wants to scream or cry—

“Suguru! I’m over here—” 

This time it is Amanai. 

Her voice is enough to get his taut limbs to move as he rushes forward, following the sound of her voice. She sounded like she was above him somehow, yelling through the concrete ceiling. 

“Where are you?” he belts, cupping around his mouth. “Riko!” 

He doesn’t think twice about using her name. 

“Here!” she calls, and he’s right. She is above. 

He thinks he hears Haibara and Nanami somewhere behind him, towards the entrance, as he goes further into the building. 

But there’s no time to group up.

He passes the art classroom they were originally in and reaches an abysmal stairwell. He aims his phone skyward and sees that a portion of the stairwell, where it leads from the second to the third floor, is torn down. It looks like there was an attempt at tearing the building down, the wall crumbling apart at the center, where something wide had hit it. 

“Riko?” he calls out, and his voice echoes less here, eaten by the invading outside air. He can see easier, the edges of foreign structures and shadows lightened by moonlight. When he climbs up the stairs, reaching the second floor, he sees a silhouette turned away from him, at the edge of the third floor, where a portion of the stairwell has given away. 

“Riko!” he shouts. “How did you even get up there?”

“Suguru.”

 It’s his mother again. 

The night that encases him is cold. It’s so glacial that his eyes sting and his spine throbs and he feels the tips of his fingers and toes go numb. 

The silhouette turns towards him, the faint light from his cellphone’s flashlight dismantled by its being. Suguru knows it well, though he has never been able to recall it in its complete physicality in his nightmares and memories. But in front of him, as it outstretches one, singular arm to point down at the first floor, Suguru knows that this is his ghost. 

His phantom. 

His curse. 

He steps closer to the railing of the stairs to peer down at where it points. 

Where before there was confusing and disorienting darkness, it seems that moonlight pervades the school building now, blessing Suguru with clear sight. 

Or perhaps it was the figure, showing him its gift. 

Amanai Riko is on the first floor, body bent in a strange, deathly manner over a desk, her head cracked as her eyes stare heavenward, lifelessly, at Suguru. 

He cannot look away, nor does he have to. 

He knows if he were to look, the shadow would be gone. 

So, he stares at Amanai Riko. 

He stares until Haibara and Nanami find her, their shouts whisked upward into the stairwell, resounding in his ears.

The police find no evidence, proof, or likelihood that Suguru murdered Amanai Riko.  

Suguru knew that there would be no evidence, knew that their investigation would be a colossal waste of time and resources, yet when her death is ruled an accidental death the untruth to the words sickens him. 

The proximity Amanai Riko had with Suguru was not accidental. Her trust in him was purposeful, a direct result of recesses spent together, of weekday afternoons and weekend nights spent huddled around a television, or out and about finding something to do, somewhere to go. He had granted himself an exception, had convinced himself that it would be alright, that it would be safe even, to lure someone else into the pit he found himself in.

Suguru might as well have pushed Amanai off the ledge himself. 

“What’s wrong with you?” his father asks him once, two days after Amanai’s wake, when he comes home to every light in the house turned on. The television in the living room is on as well, though the volume is low, just enough for Suguru to faintly make out the words spoken by the news anchor from the couch. 

Suguru doesn’t know how to answer. 

“Hey, Suguru!” Satoru’s voice says, clear as day through Suguru’s cell phone. “It’s been a while. How are you?”

Suguru is staring at his ceiling fan, his breath stale. 

“It happened again,” he says.

He hears shuffling from Satoru’s end of the line.

“What?”

Wisps of dust are gathered along the length of the fan’s wooden blades, and Suguru thinks he has not cleaned the thing since he had moved in. 

“It happened again. What happened with my mom.”  

“Oh.”

Oh, Suguru thinks. Oh, oh, oh, he doesn’t believe me.

“You don’t believe me.” 

“I do,” Satoru is quick to argue. “I do, Suguru.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Satoru sighs. 

“Maybe you can talk to someone about it?”

Suguru huffs, “What, like a psychic?” 

There’s a pause.

Suguru imagines himself cleaning the fan, imagines the dust and grime sliding off and falling onto his bed. 

“No, Suguru, like,” Satoru hesitates. “Like maybe a therapist or something.”

Suguru sits up, “Are you serious?”

“What is happening is affecting you, I’m just saying—”

“I can’t believe you.”

“Suguru, come on—”

When he hangs up, he’s not even angry. 

He wants to be, though. 

He wants to feel indignation as he hears his phone vibrate as Satoru calls him again, but the riptide of an emotion that sweeps him is not rage. 

It’s guilt. 

It’s a well of guilt that has surged over, saturating his soul with powerlessness and grief.

Suguru can’t do anything. 

He couldn’t protect his mother.

He couldn’t get his father to believe him.

He couldn’t protect Amanai. 

And now, he can’t even ask Satoru for help. 

When his phone vibrates again, Suguru knocks it off his mattress. 

He decides what he can do is get up. What he can do is wash his teeth, shower and bathe, and change his clothes. Tomorrow, tomorrow he can call Satoru again. 

Stepping into the warm water of his bath minutes later, immersing himself until he feels water lapping at his jaw, feels surprisingly grounding. Suguru tilts his head back against the cool tile as he settles, and though the angle is ultimately uncomfortable for his neck and water occasionally enters his ears, he tries to ease his exhaustion. 

He hasn’t been able to sleep in days. 

Maybe it’s his debility, maybe it’s the comforting steam rolling off the peaks of the slight waves he causes when he shifts in the bathtub, or maybe it’s the faint, clean scent of soap that envelops him, but slowly, Suguru is lulled asleep. 

He doesn’t sleep long enough to dream. 

When he opens his lumbering eyes, it’s an act that requires concentration. 

He does not jolt awake, does not feel his throat ache with muted screams.

He just wakes up in his bath, the cold water lapping at his nose. 

Removing himself from the contained body of soapy water and getting dressed for the night is troublesome. Suguru feels he should be concerned at how fatigued he feels, but he finds comfort in the assumption that surely, this means he’ll pass out easily in his bed. 

When he passes the living room, he spots his father watching television. The back of his head is blacked out by the light from the TV, and only then does Suguru realize he doesn’t even have his reading lamp on. 

“Goodnight,” Suguru decides to say. He waits for a response, for a mumbled reply, but his father doesn’t speak. Instead, a man from the show he’s watching starts yelling at another. Suguru grimaces. The television’s volume is far too loud. 

“Can you at least turn it down?” 

Still no response. 

Suguru grinds his teeth. 

“You know,” he says. “No matter what’s happened, I’m still your son. I’m still your blood.” 

He doesn’t know what compels him to speak so plainly suddenly, but when his father doesn’t answer, he snaps. He steps towards him, walking around the armchair to face him. 

It’s difficult to believe the man sitting there is his father. 

He’s staring straight ahead with a flaccid, blank expression, bloody foam by the sides of his open mouth. 

“Dad?”  

No response. 

From behind him, he hears a fight break out in the television show. The light flashing quickly around the silhouette he forms on his Dad’s bod—

“Dad, come on,” he pleads, reaching forward tepidly. 

When he touches his shoulder, his father is rigid. 

Suguru peels back his hand as if it were scorned. He scurries backward, but when the coffee table hits his legs, he stumbles to the ground. He has to call for help, he has to get help right now. He searches his pants for his cellphone but fails to find it, repeating shitshitshit to himself as he stands to use the phone in their kitchen instead. 

But he doesn’t move when he looks towards their kitchen. 

The shadow, the ghost, the phantom, the specter, the darkness, it’s standing in their kitchen, watching him. 

With it there, with it tilting its head as it observes him, Suguru knows his father is dead. 

And for the first time, rather than run, Suguru steps forward, angry.  

It’s as if he steps into a vacuum, the sounds from the television and his footsteps silenced. 

“What do you want,” he shrieks. He doesn’t recognize his own voice, has never heard it carry such rancor. “What do you want ?” 

When he gets closer, Suguru starts to see details. 

Where before, he recalled the figure to be nearly shapeless with only hints of humanity, now Suguru sees. A lacerated skull, the upper half misaligned with the lower, causing a skewed appearance. The left side of its body is misshapen, its shoulder jutting out grotesquely as the torso concaves strangely.

But still, no discernable face, just a dreadful sense of familiarity. 

“Answer me,” he shouts, and the thing does not react. “What do you want from me? What the hell are you—”

“I need you to calm down.”

Suguru blinks. 

The shadow is gone. 

The world is a disorienting swirl of flashing red and blue, and Suguru grimaces, his head pulsing with a developing migraine at the jarring light. A man in uniform is speaking to him with one hand on his hip, though he is watered down, muffled in Suguru’s ear to just repetitive, meaningless sounds. When he cranes his neck to look towards his father, there are two more strangers with him. 

The ceiling spins as Suguru feels his head swell, and the world goes black. 

The official reports say that his father was poisoned by Geto Suguru.

Unofficially, it is assumed that Suguru murdered his friend, Amanai Riko by pushing her off the ledge, as well as his mother somehow, years ago. 

Suguru argues otherwise. 

After his last encounter with the ghost, Suguru speaks of it freely, as if testing its limitations, testing to see if it’ll emerge, unlike the cowardly thing it is. 

But he speaks of the shadow, and it does not return. 

As a result of his bold declarations and claims, he’s to spend a minimum of two years at Matsuzawa Hospital’s psychiatric ward, with a maximum of being able to leave when he turns 18. 

He figures it’s better than juvenile prison. 

He’s able to devote his time to research. He finds himself reading books he had thought not to before, and when his main caretaker questions the subject of his research, he claims it as healing.  But as Suguru reads more articles featuring words such as bodysnatcher, doppelgängers, shadow people, there is no solace to be found, only further confusion. 

The only droplet of information that feels tangible is the mentioning of whoever is “chosen” disappearing. He remembers his mother’s story, how the existence of her brother was overwritten seamlessly, sewn into the fabric of reality. According to some stories, there is always one stray string left behind, one thread left to reference. 

During one of his binges, he’s told he has a phone call. 

There is only one person in this world he thinks would elect to speak to him. 

“Satoru?” he says into the receiving end of the phone, and he hears a tired laugh from the other. 

“How’d you know?” 

“Who else?”

“Yeah,” Satoru says, humorless. “Who else?”

Suguru moves past it, “Are you still coming tomorrow?”

“I am,” he replies. “Just calling ahead to remind you.”

“Can you bring photos?” Suguru blurts. “With us in it?”

“Suguru, you know these calls are recorded, right? Are you allowed—”

“I know, Satoru. It’s fine. But answer me, do we have any? Voice recordings work, too.”

If Satoru mutters something, Suguru can’t make it out.

“What was that?”

“Sure, yeah,” he answers instead. “I can do that, yeah. But are you alright? What's this for?”

“Just do it, I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Satoru looks misplaced in the visitor hall of the hospital. He’s wearing a vibrant purple shirt that looks like it belongs to a different dimension within this sterile space. 

“Here,” he says, reaching into his backpack resting on the table and pulling out a plastic folder, the type one could buy from a dollar store. It’s flimsy and bends as Suguru picks it up, and when he opens it, photographs spill out. 

In some, he and Satoru are candidly boys, the photographs taken by a parent catching a glimpse of a childish scene. In others, the frame is tapered, slim as they both look up at the camera, either smiling or contorting their faces into ugly expressions. 

“Did you print some of these yourself?” Suguru asks. 

Satoru nods, rubbing at his neck sheepishly, “Yeah. I transferred them to my new phone a while ago, but I figured you’d want them physically or something.”

In one, blurry in the background, he sees his mother standing by the sink, her head cut off by the angle. In another, his father’s leg stepping out of frame. 

Something constricts inside of Suguru, taunt and tight. 

“Do I look like me?” he asks, mulling over his words. “In the photos?”

Satoru regards him with a wretchedly sad look in his eyes Suguru can’t stand.

“Just answer the question, Satoru.”

He reaches forward and slides some photographs towards his end of the table, spreading them out beside one another. Satoru looks at each, considering, and then looks up at Suguru. 

Suguru gulps.

After a moment, Satoru says, “It’s you. It’s still you.”

Suguru leans his elbows on the table and holds his head.

“Is this about the…ghost?” 

Satoru whispers the last word, and Suguru licks his lips. 

“It is,” he admits.

“Ah.”

Suguru looks at him, at the way Satoru’s shoulders are hunched forward apprehensively. 

“I didn’t do it,” Suguru says, and Satoru meets his eyes. 

“I didn’t do it,” he repeats, and although he’s known, although he’s cradled this incessant need to have Satoru believe him through the years, it dawns on him as he speaks it within these baby blue walls, that if Satoru does not believe him now, then Suguru will truly have nothing left. 

“I know,” Satoru replies, and Suguru shakes his head. 

“Promise me, Satoru, promise—”

“I believe you,” he repeats, scooting forward as he says it. Suguru sees one of the attendants eye them dubiously. “When you get out, I’ll help you.” 

Suguru leans towards him, “That won’t be until I’m 18, at this rate.”

He doesn’t miss the affliction in Satoru’s voice when he says, “We can wait.”  

It’s raining when eighteen-year-old Suguru is released. Earlier, he had heard the sky rumbling as he gathered his few material possessions, heard the indigestion of a storm forming above growl and grumble. When he stepped past the automatic sliding doors of the front entrance of the hospital, the sky finally erupted, weeping and wailing. 

As the rain mists him from where he stands under the awning, Suguru wonders if Satoru forgot he’s supposed to pick him up. He shifts the overnight bag’s strap weighing on his shoulder and depressingly thinks to call Satoru when an unfamiliar car pulls into the roundabout and stops in front of Suguru. The driver’s side opens and Suguru sees Satoru stand, waving a hand at him. 

“Was I late?” 

Suguru shakes his head, “No, no. I just got out.”

“The storm just caught me off guard.”

“Me too.” 

It’s a little awkward. 

Not enough so that Suguru is uncomfortable or regrets having Satoru get him, but enough that Suguru doesn’t know what to say. Satoru seems to think similarly and doesn’t say much in the car. The nearly monochrome city passes by them, and Suguru rests his head back against the headrest to watch the blur. 

When Satoru reaches for his radio, raising the volume enough that the sounds of the rain start to disappear with the music, Suguru shifts, fidgeting with his seatbelt. 

Satoru clears his throat. 

“I can lower the music if you’re not into it.”

“It’s fine.”

“Is there anything you want to listen to?”

“I wouldn’t know what to listen to.”

It’s Satoru’s first and last attempt at communication until they get to his apartment. Once Satoru parks and shuts off the car, Suguru reaches to unbuckle himself but is intercepted by Satoru moving towards him, clumsily looping his arms around him as he leans on the center console. Suguru doesn’t respond for a moment, doesn’t know how to react, but when Satoru squeezes, Suguru loops his arms around him, too. 

“Fuck, man,” Satoru breathes into his shoulder, and Suguru laughs into his. 

Their plan consists of three components: wait until the weekend so Satoru can go with Suguru to their hometown without missing university classes, revisit Suguru’s childhood home that Satoru tells him his mother says has yet to be sold or demolished, and then return to the farm. 

When Satoru asks him what he plans to do at the farm, Suguru doesn’t really know. 

“It just feels like I have to go there,” he tries to explain the night before they’re due to leave, as they eat dinner. “It’s all I can think about.”

“Should we get like, anti-ghost stuff?”

Suguru snorts, “Like what?” 

Satoru shrugs, leaning back against his chair. 

“Like, salt or something.”

Suguru laughs so hard he nearly chokes on the noodles he’s eating. 

“I’m serious, ” Satoru complains. “It feels like we’re going in empty-handed.”

“I don’t think salt would help.”

“You’re such an ass, it doesn’t have to be salt”

Suguru pushes his plate away from him, “I don’t think we need anything. I just think I have to be there.”

“That’s not really comforting.”

Suguru nods, “It’s not.” 

His home is his home. 

Despite it all, despite the new NO TRESPASSING sign hung on the front door, despite the overgrown grass and dirty, opaque windows, despite the sun-bleached wood warping from neglect and humidity, rusting nails slowly pushed out of place, despite it all, Suguru feels at home. 

They aren’t able to enter the house from the front. They have to walk around to the back yard, climbing the fence and entering from the back porch. Suguru instinctively reaches to turn on the light, but the electricity has been shut off. They don’t dare pull open the curtains, so they’re guided by the fading, marmalade light from the sun setting distilling through aged and stained fabric. 

The house is barren, but as Suguru drifts through its halls and lingers in its rooms, it bloats with remembrance. Though there are no relics left behind, no forgotten antiquities, Suguru remembers in a way he has not in years. He’s glad Satoru is steps behind him as he does because at times he feels his mouth attempt to form words, moving on its own to coagulate his forlorn thoughts into something substantial, something coherent, but nothing comes out. 

When he steps into his bedroom, eyes cast towards the dent in his wall where his headboard had been rubbing against for years, he’s a boy again. 

He’s a boy, and he misses his mother, his father. 

He’s a boy, and he’s afraid.

When they’re done, they sit outside on the back porch steps. Satoru is sitting beside him, their shoulders brushing against one another as Suguru wraps his arms around his knees. 

“Thank you, Satoru.”

Satoru blows out air.

“Don’t do that.”

Suguru looks over at him, “What?”

“Don’t get that tone.”

Suguru frowns, “I’m just saying thanks.”

Satoru lolls his head towards him, “No, you sound like you’re saying goodbye.”

Suguru looks away from him, towards the sky. The selfish dark blue of the night is settling over their town, the gooey sunset from before reduced to smears on roof stops and the tops of trees. The pinpricks of stars start to poke through the inky veil, and Suguru thinks that there are far fewer stars now in the sky than when he was a child. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. 

“Well, whatever does,” Satoru argues. “We’ll get through it.”

“Yeah?”

Satoru nudges his shoulder.

“Yeah. And then you can write a book or something, make money from people into this shit, and then we move somewhere cool.”

Suguru looks away from the sky to him and laughs. There is a star of his own sitting beside him on these dirty steps. 

“No one would buy my book,” Suguru reasons.

Satoru raises a brow, “I’m surprised that’s your only complaint about the plan. Also, not true.”

Suguru wants to ask him if the flustering, impending sensation he feels frothing behind his stinging eyes is okay. He wants to ask if he were to break down and cry, if he were to step off the porch and sink his hands into the rotten ground, if Satoru would judge him. If he were to beg for them to go home, if he were to wail and plead, if Satoru would indulge him. 

But he doesn’t. 

He swallows down the urge to cry. 

Satoru’s face softens, “What is it?”

“You’re my best friend,” Suguru discloses. “The only one I’ve ever had.”

Satoru blinks, startled, but sentiment steadily moves his mouth to respond. 

“You’re the only one I have, too.” 

Suguru nods, and then stands up, hands tensed into fists by his sides resolutely. 

“Let’s go,” he says, and Satoru follows. 

The farm has not changed. 

The disastrous and cluttered material entrails remain within its hazardous walls, and as Suguru steps inside, Satoru close behind, he looks around, remembering it all. He had repainted this place in his mind countless times, attempted to recall where the ruined farming machinery was specifically, but the images he curated in his mind pail in comparison to the actual thing.

Everything feels larger, despite him growing taller. Everything feels alive. 

“I think we should check out the second level,” he whispers, turning his head back to speak to Satoru. 

“Yeah, yeah. Sounds good. Just don’t split up.”

“I feel I should be telling you that.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, before sniffling and rubbing at his nose. “This place blows. My allergies are flaring up.” 

The safest way they find to the second level is a ladder resting against the further wall of the barn; the wooden stairs in the center feel too fragile when Satoru grips the railing and shakes it. 

The two have to clamber over strewn over boxes, loose junk, and a mysterious puddle of discharge from one of the machines that causes Suguru to scrunch his nose. They maneuver the ladder together to rest against the edge of the second level and climb up carefully. As a child, Suguru had thought barns to be small buildings, meant to only house a few animals at a time, but this second level is long. He thinks that the disarray of the first floor deceitfully made the barn feel smaller and more compact. 

 The second level isn’t a complete floor, more like an upper deck built in the barn itself. Suguru stands by its ledge to peer down at the first floor and steps back when he feels the start of vertigo and hears wood splinter. 

“Don’t step near the edge,” he says. “I don’t think it’s safe. Okay, Satoru?”

He doesn’t get a response. 

He turns around immediately, but instead of Satoru, he sees Amanai, standing by the ladder. 

“What—”

He hears the floor creak behind him and turns quickly, hands out in defense, and sees his parents. 

There is something wrong, Suguru feels it everywhere in his body, feels it in his trembling hands, and feels it in his chest but there is also something else that starts to sway his senses. 

As his parents step forward, there is comfort. 

As he hears Amanai step forward, there is familiarity. 

He’s back at home. He and his father have moved back to his childhood home, and his mother greets them as they return with open arms. She says they must pick up the house soon, that Amanai is visiting for the first time, and Satoru will be there as well to meet her—

The vision ruptures with the sound of Suguru’s sob. 

“I’m sorry,” he snivels. “I’m sorry—”

“We know,” his parents respond, and then Suguru feels arms wrap around him.

He glances down to see Amanai holding him, nuzzling her head against him. He places a hand on the top of her head, is about to apologize to her as well, when pain blooms from his side. He grimaces, tasting the tears that dribble onto his lips as he bares his teeth. 

“Amanai,” he says, “you’re hurting me.”

He removes his hand from her head, and something is wrong. 

He can’t see her face from this angle, only her whirlwind of dark hair, but it does not feel like Amanai against him, it doesn’t feel like a person at all, just a mass of flesh with bones that nearly puncture him. 

He knows what it is, but it’s too late. 

It’s his ghost.

His phantom.

His curse. 

He opens his mouth to scream, to warn Satoru, but he feels something snap in his left arm, and suddenly, he’s weightless. 

He’s flying. 

There is no ground underneath his feet. The air whips his hair against his face, and whistles along his body, singing. 

With a grim comprehension, just as his head splits against metal, he realizes that no, he is falling.

He is dying. 

He doesn’t feel pain. He knows something has been irreparably broken as he stares at the roof of the barn, knows that finality approaches as he fights to remember how to breathe. 

His eyes slip shut, and death carries him. 

As it carries him, it wears his skin, it borrows his voice and his life. 

He is dying alongside his mother in her bedroom, watching her child scream and cry out. 

He is dying above Amanai, watching as the same child, now a teenager, stares at her silently. 

He is dying in his kitchen, awaiting the teenager’s recognition, awaiting his wrath at finding his father. 

He is dying on the disgusting floor of an abandoned farm, watching as his life bleeds out onto the ground and drips from the metallic edge of the combine he had hit on as he fell. His eyes linger on the sleek, dark liquid, and then he hears Satoru. 

“Suguru, you okay? what was that sound?”

He tries to speak but is only able to croak out a miserable sound. 

“Suguru?” Satoru calls out again, panic edging into the name.

He tries to speak again and hears a gurgle. 

It’s here, he thinks of shouting. It’s real. 

Satoru finds him before Suguru can see. Instead, he hears a strangled sound emerge from Satoru, but it’s incomprehensible. Suguru doesn’t know how to describe it, can’t articulate the words to rationalize the desperate, woeful noises that come from Satoru as he steps into view, crouching by him. 

Suguru wants to turn his head to look at him but he can’t. 

“What happened,” Satoru keens. “What happened?” 

Suguru does not wish to see such a terrible thing, does not want to die a witness to Satoru’s mourning, to his horror. He wants to beg him to leave, to run, but Satoru lingers, reaching for his phone. It falls in his trembling hands, and Suguru gulps, tries to swallow down the metallic blood that is clogging his throat and nose, but then he sees. 

He is dying, and he is standing on the second level, staring down at himself and Satoru. 

“R—”

His voice croaks and Satoru shushes him.

“Don’t talk, just, just don’t talk. I’m calling for help.”

Suguru wants to close his eyes to all this, wants to feel his life give and slide away from him, but he knows, he knows if he looks away, then it’ll move. 

But death is a heavy, tiresome thing, saddling his eyelids. As they slip shut, as Suguru fights to stay conscious, he tries to speak again.

He knows, he knows, he knows—

His eyes close and he rasps out, “Satoru.” 

Satoru’s breath spikes. 

For a blissful moment, he thinks it's enough. There is no sound, no noise, not even his own heart beating or his breathing.

There is only silence welcoming him.

He thinks Satoru has made it, he thinks his death has quelled this nightmare of his and Satoru has left him behind to survive. But as life fluctuates within him still, ebbing and flowing, his eyes scrape open agonizingly, enough to see a sliver of Satoru’s wide, terrified eyes and a shadow behind him.

Grief unfurls itself for just one, singular all-encompassing moment, and then it’s over.

All at once, beside each other on the floor of this miserable barn, the two boys who stepped onto this rancid land together years ago finally rest.