I slipped into my seat in the first row — somehow the universe always sat me directly in front of Mr. Tomodachi. He didn't bother hiding his impatience.
"Hurry it up, Natsuo. You're interrupting the class," he snapped, flat as ever.
I pasted on a smile that felt like plaster. "Message received."
He let out a long, theatrical sigh. "Very well. Let us continue."
He launched into his lecture with that same disturbingly cheerful cadence. "As I was saying, there have been cases of surgeons administering the wrong dosage of anesthetic. Too much will quickly lead to hypoxia and death unless there's immediate intervention. Too little… and the patient can remain conscious during the operation — paralyzed, unable to move or cry out as the surgeon cuts and will eventually die of hypoxia. "
He smiled while he said it. Smiled.
A cold prickle ran along my spine like an invisible hand. The words were clinical. The grin was not. Something in the room shifted: a hairline crack of warning beneath the ordinary.
Is this his kink? Does he—like talking about drugs that can torture people? A little, involuntary giggle threatened to escape. Masochist? Sadist? What even—
Mr. Tomodachi stopped, turned that slow, deliberate teacher-turn toward me, and fixed me with a look that could curdle milk. "Is something funny, Natsuo? Care to share it with the class?"
I swallowed the laugh back down. "No, sir. Nothing."
He adjusted his round glasses with a practiced finger. "Since childhood, I wanted to be a surgeon," he said to the students, eyes gleaming. "But I couldn't pursue it, so I teach chemistry instead. Close enough to the things I love: drugs. They can heal, and they can harm."
The class nodded like they'd heard an ordinary anecdote. I sat there with my face doing a bad job of looking normal on the outside while my brain filed the moment under definitely off.
When the bell neared, he shuffled to his desk and produced a neat stack of papers. "Please complete this worksheet and hand it in tomorrow," he said, dropping the pages as if they weighed nothing.
Half-asleep, I reached up to take one, fingers still sticky with morning toast. His hand intercepted mine. He wore that same slow smile again — the one with no warmth.
"You won't need to hand it in tomorrow," he said softly.
My brow creased. "Why not?"
He leaned in a fraction, eyes too steady. "You'll see soon enough."
My brain went on a short, panicked sprint: I will absolutely not see soon enough. Is he predicting my death? I left the class with my stomach doing a little flip, the kind you only get when a bad premonition refuses to leave you alone.
The rest of the day crawled. The unease clung to me like damp clothes. I passed through the school gates and felt a light tap on my back. Haruki.
He was there like clockwork, smiling bright enough to be a streetlamp. "You're free, right, Natsuo?"
"Yeah," I remembered promising him tea. Practically a civic duty at this point. The snarky response in my head — "You're a freak, get outta here" — buckled under something else. Maybe pity. Maybe curiosity. Maybe just not wanting to be the asshole who sent a kid back to whatever loneliness he had.
"Fine. Ten minutes of tea. I'll survive," I told myself.
We walked. The route dipped into a part of town that looked like it had stopped trying to be tidy long ago. Homeless people, stray dogs, the air heavy with the sour rot of something dead. The houses sagged and leaned on each other for support. Every now and then a window stared like a dark eye.
Then Haruki's place appeared, and the neighborhood's ugliness folded away. The house itself was small and ordinary — no boarded windows, no sagging porch. It looked stubbornly intact, like a plant that refuses to die in a cracked pot.
"Welcome to my home," Haruki announced with pride. "It may not be much, but it's a home."
I forced a smile. It's normal. Too normal. Which is worse than weird. I resolved, mentally, to stay only ten minutes and then vanish like a polite ghost.
Haruki's phone rang as we approached the door. He frowned, then spoke quickly, "Oh—my dad. You go right inside and wait in the basement, okay? I'll be right back."
Basement. The word landed like a small stone in my gut.
"Uh… okay." I tried to keep my voice casual.
The front room was cozy and—surprisingly—clean. The welcome vibe eased something tight in my chest. I wandered, half relieved, half still on edge. Then I spotted a black door with a simple sign: Basement.
Curiosity is a dangerous muscle. I pushed it anyway.
The stairway was narrower than it looked and smelled of old concrete and forgotten winter. I clicked my phone's flashlight on and descended. The beam trembled in my hand. About halfway down, my phone slipped out and clattered to the floor. I crouched to pick it up.
And then I saw it.
A table under a bare bulb, instruments arranged like surgical devotion: rust-specked scissors, stainless trays, syringes. Beyond the table, shapes huddled on shelves. Animal corpses. Rotting. Open. The smell hit me full-force, acid and iron and something older. I vomited in my mouth but didn't let a sound escape—because the basement had a sound of its own: the ticking of my pulse.
My feet refused to move.
A narrow needle slid into my neck — not forceful, but precise, clinical. My limbs unlocked for a single second, and I turned.
Haruki stood there, face washed in lamplight, holding a syringe like a child with a toy. His grin split his face wide enough to look like two different people. Cute, earnest kid on one side; something else entirely on the other.
Panic flooded me loud and hot. Get out. Run. Run now.
I tried to sprint up the stairs, but each step felt like wading through honey. My muscles lagged, slow and betraying. My vision smeared at the edges.
BAM.
I hit the floor near the staircase. Sound went distant. The light thrummed and then tunneled. I fought eyelids that felt as though they were lined with lead. I will myself open them. Twice. Three times. No use. The world folded. My last coherent thought, stupid and small and furious, was: I said ten minutes… damn Haruki, you creep—
Then black.