“You know, I’ve been thinking for a while,” the boy with raven hair said, turning his head toward me. His dark eyes, always dimmed like waning moons, made it impossible to guess whether he carried good news or something far worse.

“About what…? You know you’ve been keeping me on edge, right? You’re enjoying my misery, I swear to god.”

I sighed loudly in defeat, swinging my legs while lying on his bed. My spine screamed at me to sit upright, but I stayed stubborn, arms propped behind my head as I tried to read the open book resting on the blanket.

“Haha, now I don’t know if this is the right time to say it!”

He curled in on himself with a laugh, hugging his body as if he had to hold it together. Swiping an imaginary teardrop from his cheek, he pushed himself up enough to cross his arms on the mattress. When I tucked my hair back, he leaned forward suddenly and blew a puff of air into my ear, watching my concentration shatter into pure shock.

I slapped his hand away and covered my ear, jolting upright.

“What the hell was that for?”

In his eyes, I caught a clear reflection of myself— my golden-brown hair lit by the sun, my cheeks warming red from embarrassment. He crackled into laughter and buried his face into his arms, muttering just loud enough for me to hear:

“You’re way too cute, Shu.”

My heart lurched into a slow, painful beat. A sharp ache threaded beneath my ribs.

Clutching my shirt, I broke into a cold sweat, my toes curling against the blanket for some nonexistent anchor.

But I didn’t open my eyes.

Because I heard his voice too clearly for it to be a memory. Too close. Too real.

As if he was kneeling right beside the bed I was sleeping in.

I’ve never been scared of anything. I don’t even have the curiosity to question things that feel wrong. But Mrs Yamada’s words hit me like warnings, and what if… what if she wasn’t exaggerating?

And yet, believing in something I couldn’t prove meant making it real.

It meant admitting something was here with me.

The bitter cold and creeping chills twisted into a thought I didn’t want to acknowledge:

What if I’m hallucinating?

In the middle of my spiraling panic, I croaked out something, anything, to remind myself where I was.

“I don’t even smoke… or drink much anymore.”

It wasn’t a complete sentence. The syllables tangled. But it was enough to ground me.

Until a distorted, low voice responded from the darkness beside me:

“You do?”

I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe.

I launched upright and screamed, “What the fuck?!”

My voice cracked hard enough to hurt, and I clutched the blanket to my chest, feeling my heartbeat slam through my ribs. The room, the same room that once held the two of us, wasn’t hosting just memories anymore.

It was hosting something else.

“Entity” was the closest word my mind could find; anything else felt like it might offend it.

Marred with swirling spirals and a thumbprint-twisted face carved from ragged, aged skin, it loomed in a suit that stretched all the way to the ceiling.

The sight emptied my lungs, forcing my body to simply shut down.

—

When I finally managed to twitch my fingers, fragments of the night resurfaced. I hesitated to open my eyes, but the reddish warmth behind my eyelids told me morning had arrived.

Somehow, I survived the night.

My body felt refreshed, unnervingly so, as if I’d had the best sleep in years and yet my mind trembled under the weight of what had happened. I threw the covers aside and checked myself quickly, relieved to see I was still intact and not possessed.

Cracking my neck, I stepped out of bed and opened the door slowly. The house looked the same as yesterday, except lighter, washed with sunlight that softened the decay and made everything feel less hostile.

‘Ugh, maybe I’m just being paranoid because of Mrs Yamada’s stories. What if I read too many creepy manga and scared myself?’ I laughed under my breath.

I simply had too much time on my hands to overthink.