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They said she died under the willow tree.
They said it softly, as if saying it any louder would make it more true—or maybe just harder for me to deny.
“Peacefully,” Yosano had murmured, her voice a strange mixture of clinical detachment and genuine sorrow. “No trauma. No signs of violence. It must’ve been her choice.”
I remember staring at her like she had spoken a language I didn’t understand.
Naomi. My sister. My baby sister. Gone?
No.
No, she was not.
She couldn’t be.
I went to the tree that evening, after the sun had dipped low behind the grey sprawl of Yokohama’s skyline, when the sky bled faintly with twilight hues. The air was wet—not with rain, but with the memory of it. The ground squelched under my boots. The wind whispered like it was carrying secrets.
And there it was.
The willow tree.
It stood tall, ancient, rooted in loamy soil near the water’s edge—its limbs sagging like the arms of something weary beyond comprehension. The branches swayed, long tendrils brushing the ground in slow, sorrowful arcs, like the fingers of some great spirit caressing the place where she had laid down and never risen.
I dropped to my knees at the base of the tree.
My fingers dug into the damp earth. I pressed my forehead to the roots, the bark rough against my skin. I could still feel her here. The memory of her. The echo. The phantom scent of her shampoo—vanilla and mint—lingered in my mind like it was embedded in the bark itself.
This is not where she ends, I thought. This cannot be where she ends.
The Agency tried to help. They sent food. Left flowers. Yosano stopped by a few times, always calm, always watching me the way she watched patients she couldn’t quite save. Atsushi came by with quiet, hesitant footsteps, like a child afraid of waking a sleeping monster.
Kunikida came once. Just once. He stood in the doorway for nearly five minutes before finally muttering something about grief counseling and scheduling.
I never answered him.
Eventually, they stopped coming.
The silence was easier.
The quiet let me hear her.
In the stillness of our apartment—my apartment now—I sat in the centre of the living room, surrounded by her. Her books were still stacked on the end table beside the couch, open to dog-eared pages. Her mug—the stupid one with the cat holding a fish—still had the stain of her last cup of tea at the bottom. Her schoolbag was slumped over in the hallway like a tired animal.
She was everywhere.
And yet nowhere.
The silence screamed.
I couldn’t stand it.
I turned to the only thing I had left.
Light Snow.
My ability. It had always been about perception—hiding things from sight, bending light, manipulating perspective.
But what if I didn’t use it to vanish?
What if I used it to see?
It started as a flicker.
I closed my eyes and focused, pouring every ounce of energy, every ragged breath, every memory of her laugh and her scolding and her warmth into the activation of the ability.
And then—
She appeared.
Not suddenly, not like magic. No. It was like watching a photograph develop in the old darkrooms Naomi used to love. Slowly, she took form—first as a shimmer in the corner of the room, then as the curve of her cheek, the fall of her hair, the light in her eyes.
She stood in the kitchen, barefoot, tousle-haired, wearing the oversized hoodie she always stole from me.
She was beautiful.
“Seriously,” she said, arms crossed, eyes narrowing. “You let the dishes pile up again?”
Her voice. Her voice.
I let out a sob—raw, involuntary, strangled.
She turned, eyes softening. “Hey… hey, it’s okay. I’m here now.”
I stumbled forward like a man in a dream, and she caught me in her arms.
Her warmth was real. Solid. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.
“I missed you,” I whispered. “I thought—I thought you were—”
She pulled back and looked at me with that familiar, exasperated affection. “Dead? Don’t be stupid. You think I’d leave you with this mess?”
I laughed. God, I laughed. A broken, heaving, breathless sound that didn’t feel like it came from me.
She was back.
I didn’t question it.
I couldn’t.
Days passed.
Or maybe weeks. Time meant little when I had her.
We ate together—even if I barely tasted the food. She teased me about my hair, stole my socks, hogged the blankets. I heard her humming in the mornings again, that tuneless little melody she always defaulted to when she was brushing her teeth.
She was perfect.
But something was wrong.
She never left the apartment. Never touched the front door. She never changed clothes. Never slept.
Sometimes I caught her just standing in the hallway at night, still and silent, staring at nothing.
The illusion was beginning to crack.
And deep down, I knew it.
The rooftop was the only place that felt remotely real anymore. The wind there had teeth. The cold bit through my jacket. The sun burned too bright. It reminded me that I was still human.
Naomi sat beside me on the edge, legs swinging.
“You think clouds get tired?” she asked absently.
“I think I do,” I murmured.
She turned and looked at me, her expression suddenly strange. Distant. “You can’t stay here forever.”
But I wanted to.
I turned to her. “You’re all I have.”
And then came the voices.
“Tanizaki,” Yosano said gently behind me. “You’re not alone.”
I stood up too quickly, my pulse spiking. “She’s here. You don’t have to worry anymore. Look—look at her.”
Atsushi's eyes filled with pity. “There’s no one there, Tanizaki…”
The wind howled.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t say that.”
Yosano stepped closer, but Naomi did too—suddenly panicked.
“They’ll take me from you,” she hissed. “Don’t let them. Don’t you dare.”
I backed away from them, toward the edge. “You don’t understand. If she’s not real, then nothing is. You’re not. This world isn’t.”
I began clawing at my arms. Anything to wake up.
Blood. Pain.
Kunikida tackled me from behind. “Stop it, Tanizaki. You’re hurting yourself.”
“I need to wake up!” I screamed. “LET ME WAKE UP!”
And then—
Darkness.
Nothingness wrapped around me like a burial shroud. I floated in silence, suspended in a void that neither hurt nor healed. There was no up, no down. Just the hum of oblivion.
Was this death?
Had I finally broken my mind so completely that I’d slipped away forever?
And then—
“Brother… wake up.”
A whisper. Delicate, yet unmistakably hers.
My eyes fluttered open to a grey mist. A half-realm. Not life. Not death.
“Who are you?” I croaked.
The shape before me laughed. Familiar. Fond. Annoyed.
“It’s me, your sister, you idiot."
Tears welled again. “No… you’re not real. You’re not—”
SLAP.
A sharp sting across my face.
I gasped.
And woke up.
I was in bed.
Warm sunlight filtered through the curtains. A breeze stirred the window. I heard something clatter in the kitchen.
And then—
She walked in.
Naomi.
Alive.
Her uniform was wrinkled. Her hair unbrushed. She had toast in her mouth like a cliché anime protagonist and was mid-rant.
“Are you seriously still asleep? You’re gonna be late for the Agency, dumbass. I’ve got school, y’know!” she huffed, dropping her bag onto the table. “Unbelievable. I leave for two days and everything goes to hell without me?”
I stared at her, completely still.
She froze. “What?”
“You’re real,” I whispered.
She blinked. “Of course I’m real. What, did you have some melodramatic illusion while I was out for two days?”
“I thought you were dead.”
“You’re dumb.”
I lunged forward and hugged her—fiercely, desperately, like she might dissolve.
“I love you,” I whispered into her shoulder, tears hot against my cheeks.
“I love you too, weirdo,” she said, her voice softening. “Now don’t make me late.”
I watched her walk away.
The illusion was gone.
But this time, it hadn’t revealed a lie.
It had peeled back the veil of grief.
Because the willow is not where endings happen.
The willow is where exhausted souls come to rest— and then rise again.
And this time, mine did.