The day had been ordinary, almost painfully so. Morning chatter in the classroom, Haruto cracking dumb jokes about the math teacher's hairstyle, and Noa sliding her eraser to Itsuki whenever his own mysteriously disappeared. For a moment, Itsuki felt like life was… normal.
But as the sun dipped and the sky turned a deep orange, a strange unease tugged at him.
That evening, when the clock hands aligned at 7:00 PM, his room grew colder. The cicadas outside seemed to hush at once. Itsuki sat at his desk, pen hovering over the open notebook where he had been scribbling fragments of a new poem.
The air shifted.
Pages of his notebook fluttered though no wind came through the window. His pen rolled on its own, stopping at the very edge of the desk. Itsuki froze, heart thumping.
He didn't dare turn around, but he felt it—someone was there.
A shadow stretched across the floor, faint yet real. His throat tightened, every instinct telling him to run, yet his body remained rooted in place.
The silence broke. A soft scrape, like chalk dragged against a blackboard, whispered near his ear. His notebook flipped to a blank page, and the pen lifted just slightly… before falling.
Itsuki swallowed hard."...You again," he muttered, voice trembling.
No reply came. But the presence lingered. Stronger than before. Close enough that he could almost imagine a hand reaching out.
And then, as suddenly as it came—everything stopped. The air lightened, the sound of cicadas returned, and the clock ticked on as if nothing had happened.
Itsuki leaned back, chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyes went to the notebook, where one sentence had appeared in shaky handwriting that wasn't his:
"Soon."
He slammed it shut, pulse racing.
For the first time, Itsuki realized—this was not just a passing shadow.It was waiting. Watching.
And it had chosen 7:00 PM.