Chapter 1 Part 3
✦ Part 3: The Village Beneath the Fog
The train ends. A bus takes her to a lone road, then she's forced to walk through fog and forest. She arrives at dusk. A tall man in a black coat waits at the village gate. He calls her by name. His face is ethereal, familiar, too beautiful. "Yuriko-chan," he says, "You came back to me. Just like before."
A rusting minibus waited beyond the platform, driverless, door open. Yuriko boarded without question, instinct guiding her more than logic. Her bag rested on her lap, camera sealed within, untouched for months. As the bus rattled forward through tree-laced switchbacks, she realized it made no engine sound—only the whisper of gravel and leaves, like something being buried.
The forest closed in. Towering cedar and bare branches laced together overhead, filtering the sky into gray lace. No signs. No fences. No birdsong.
Only the fog, thick and slow as breath.
Eventually, the bus stopped at a split in the road. A faded wooden sign marked the trailhead: Iromori.
No village listed. No route number.
She stepped off.
The bus vanished before she turned around.
Yuriko walked the path, each step muffled by moss and dead leaves. Her shoes sank slightly, like the earth was softening to take her in. Wind pressed against her skin—not cold, but expectant. She passed crumbling torii gates and stone Jizō statues crowned in lichen and silence.
As the light dimmed, the fog parted like a veil.
A wrought iron gate appeared between twin stone pillars.
Beyond it: Iromori Village, sunken into the landscape like it was trying to forget it existed.
The roofs were steep, the windows narrow. Smoke rose from only one chimney.
Standing at the gate was a man.
Tall, pale, clothed in mourning black. His coat brushed the tops of his boots like it had been tailored for wind. He stood with one hand on the gatepost, the other folded behind his back.
When he saw her, his mouth curved faintly—not a smile, exactly, but the memory of one.
"Yuriko-chan," he said softly.
The voice made something contract inside her ribs.
"You came back to me," he said. "Just like before."
Yuriko froze. She had not told anyone she was coming.
He stepped forward with the fluid grace of someone practiced in silence. His face was too smooth, too symmetrical, the kind of beauty that felt sculpted rather than born.
She couldn't speak.
"I'm Maboroshi," he said, voice like smoke. "You wouldn't remember. But we were children here once. You made me a promise."
The word promise landed like a drop of ink in her chest.
She tried to ask him what he meant—but her tongue stayed still.
He reached for her bag.
"Let me carry that. The house isn't far."
And with that, the gate creaked open.