Baki Yamamoto — "Beck" to his friends — wasn't the type to worry.
He'd known Kai since they were kids. If anyone had a crush that could spiral into something strange, it was Kai. But lately… even Beck could feel it.
Kai wasn't just acting weird. He was scared.
So when Kai stopped answering texts after school, Beck did what any best friend would: he cut class and went to Kai's apartment.
---
The lights were off. No sound from inside.
Beck knocked. "Yo, Kai? You alive?"
No answer.
He tried the knob. Locked.
Then — from the alley beside the building — a soft scraping sound. Like something dragging.
Beck's heart jumped. He peered into the narrow passageway.
Something moved.
A shadow… long, crooked, and wrong.
He backed up. "Not funny, dude."
Then it lunged.
A flash of black. A blast of cold. Beck stumbled back as the shape swiped past him — not with claws, not with teeth, but with emptiness. As if it wanted to erase him, not kill him.
He fell into the street. A car screeched.
Everything went white.
---
Beck woke up in the hospital with a fractured leg, bruised ribs, and a pounding headache. The nurses said he was lucky — the car only clipped him. They found him unconscious in the road, rambling about shadows.
But Beck remembered. The shape. The cold. The voice that whispered in his ear:
"You were warned. Stay away from him."
The doctors thought he was hallucinating. Maybe he was.
But when Kai finally visited — pale, shaken, a thousand-yard stare in his eyes — Beck grabbed his arm and said:
"What the hell is going on, Kai? What is she?"
Kai didn't speak for a long time.
Then he whispered, "I don't think she's alive."