The laugh didn't belong on a rooftop.
It was too sharp, too broken, too alive with a kind of pain that never healed.
The sound cut through the cold night air, slicing deeper than Nakamura's ragged breaths. He froze on the concrete where I'd left him, clutching his ruined arm, his eyes rolling like a man who already knew damnation had found him.
Mayumi swore under her breath. Reina's flashlight trembled in her grip, the beam swinging wildly until it landed on the far corner of the roof.
That's when the shadows started to move.
They crawled upward, pooling together like spilled ink climbing against gravity. Hair spilled out first, long and wet-black, clinging to a form that hadn't belonged in this world for years. The outline of a girl bled into existence, her uniform tattered, her limbs bent in angles that whispered of a fall that never ended.
And then the face came into focus—pale, lips split, eyes hollow and too dark.
Saki.
