The letter sat on her table for three days.
Aika didn't touch it.
She had tucked it deep in her bag after her shift, told herself it was a prank, a mistake, a sick joke. She threw her bag under the table when she got home that night and hadn't looked at it since.
But she hadn't thrown it away either.
It was still sealed. Still marked with that wax crest—round and deep red, pressed with a design she hadn't dared to inspect too closely. Every time she glanced at it, her stomach twisted like a knot being pulled tighter.
It felt alive. Watching. Waiting.
On the morning of the third day, Aika stood barefoot in her apartment, half-dressed for her next shift, holding a spoonful of instant miso soup she no longer remembered making. The letter sat across the room. Her gold eye twitched involuntarily toward it, even though she fought it.
Her phone buzzed.
She flinched.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
No message. No missed call. Just… the number. Then it vanished.
She stared at the blank screen, heart hammering.
Just a wrong number.
Just nerves.
Just fatigue.
She grabbed her coat and keys and shoved the letter deeper into the drawer beside her bed.
⸻
The station was busier than usual. Crowded bodies pressed against her like static, and Aika kept her head low, hood up. Something about the air felt heavier—like eyes were crawling along the back of her neck.
She boarded the train. Chose the corner. Plugged in her headphones. No music played.
Across from her, an elderly woman stared.
Aika tried to ignore it.
But the woman didn't blink. Didn't move. Just stared at her face, as if trying to read something beneath her skin.
When the train doors opened at the next stop, the woman shuffled past her.
As she passed, she whispered.
"You were supposed to die."
Aika's blood turned to ice.
She turned— "What did you say?"
But the woman was already gone, swallowed into the crowd.
⸻
Later that night, during her cleaning shift at a law firm downtown, Aika worked silently between cubicles. The building was mostly empty, but something felt off.
She passed a conference room—dark inside, curtains pulled halfway open.
Someone stood in the reflection of the glass.
She turned.
No one.
She looked again. Gone.
That was the moment she knew.
She wasn't being paranoid.
She was being watched.
⸻
Elsewhere
"Leave her alone," Daizen said without looking up.
The man across from him—young, cocky, all leather and nerves—froze mid-sentence.
"She's already marked," Daizen added. "No contact. No warnings. No pressure."
"But—"
"She will open the letter when she's ready." His voice was quiet, but final. "The story chooses when to begin."
He lit a cigarette with one hand and waved the other toward the door.
The man backed out quickly.
Daizen sat alone again, surrounded by silence, his eyes turned toward the rain-covered window. He could feel her.
Her fear. Her denial.
But also… something deeper.
She was unraveling.
And once the unraveling started, there was no going back.