3:22 AM — The Hour When Wounds Speak Louder Than People
The blood kept dripping between my fingers, forming small crimson circles on the counter. Miyu, with her frightened puppy-dog eyes, pulled a handkerchief from her bag (of course she had a bag shaped like a black dog) and soaked it in bottled water.
"Let me see," she said, taking my hand with a delicacy that didn't fit the Konbini.
The pain was sharp, as if Aoi had wanted to tear off a piece of my flesh. Miyu frowned as she examined the small, perfect holes the shark teeth had left.
"Wow!" she exclaimed, surprised at seeing the bite on my hand. "What happened? It looks like you were bitten by... a... dog?"
"Something like that," I murmured, looking towards the storage room where Aoi was still hiding.
Miyu began cleaning the wound, her fingers trembling slightly.
"In the ghost hunting club, we always carry a first aid kit," she said, pulling out a bandage with a ghost pattern. "In case we encounter a violent ghost."
"How practical," I couldn't help but smile at how silly that sounded.
As she bandaged my hand, I asked:
"Hey, Miyu. Do you know a girl named Aoi? She was from your school."
She blinked, adjusting her glasses.
"Aoi...? Ummmm... there are many at Shinozaki. What's her last name?"
Last name?
I fell silent. What was Aoi's last name? She had never mentioned it, and I had never asked.
"I don't know," I admitted, feeling a knot in my stomach.
Miyu laughed, a crystalline sound that cut through the tension like a dull knife.
"I see." Her smile faded when she saw my expression. "Well... what is she like?"
"Ummmm... Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Pigtails. And..." I hesitated to say it. "...shark teeth."
The change was instantaneous. Miyu turned pale, her fingers freezing mid-knot on the bandage.
"S-shark teeth?" she repeated, as if the words burned her tongue.
"Yes. Do you know her?"
"I don't, but..." she lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "...at Shinozaki, there's an urban legend about a girl with teeth like that..."
The air grew thick. The fluorescent lights flickered.
"Urban legend?" I said, though a part of me no longer wanted to know.
"The teachers don't like us talking about it..."
"I'm not a teacher," I said, my tone more serious than I expected.
Miyu looked me in the eyes, then glanced around as if afraid someone might be listening.
"Well... she's known as 'The Shinozaki Butcher'," she began, rolling the excess bandage between her fingers. "Some say that a few years ago, there was a quite shy student who was... Well, they say she was bullied by some classmates. The boys would touch her, steal her clothes, say dirty things to her... they even say they used her like she was a toy, you know, one of those adult ones... and the teachers either didn't notice or ignored it all, saying it was just playful teasing among students."
I felt the coffee I'd drunk hours earlier turn to acid in my stomach.
"One day..." Miyu continued, her voice faltering. "...the girl came back different."
"What do you mean, different?"
"Her teeth... were sharp, they say. And she smelled of the sea, of salty, rotten water, as if she had submerged herself in the deep ocean. That day, when her classmates tried to bother her like always..." She paused. "...She attacked them."
A chill ran down my spine.
"Attacked them how?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"It was a massacre..." whispered Miyu, leaning so close her breath hit my face. "She hit them, bit them... they say it was horrible, that there was blood everywhere. They even had to suspend classes that day."
"Did she...?" I swallowed hard.
"The teachers called the police," Miyu continued. "When the police arrived, they found pieces of flesh all over the classroom. Fingers, ears, strips of skin, even an eye. When they investigated, they discovered everything her classmates had done to her. They were expelled... and she was taken to a rehabilitation center."
The Konbini lights buzzed louder, like electrified flies.
"The worst thing is that..." Miyu played nervously with her cloak. "...the boys who bullied her... died afterward."
"What?"
"One by one. Accidents, suicides... Rumors started circulating, and she stopped attending Shinozaki."
"What rumors?" My voice sounded harsher than I expected.
"Well... Some said that the night before it happened, she had tried to kill herself by drowning in the sea, but something in the water possessed her. That's why she smelled of salt and had those teeth, and that when she bit them that day, she had marked them in some way..."
I swallowed hard, looking at the bite on my hand.
What the hell kind of urban legend is that...?
"But it's just a story! It surely has nothing to do with her... right?" Miyu laughed nervously.
I didn't respond. My eyes were fixed on the storage room door.
Miyu followed my gaze and paled even further.
"Don't tell me..." she murmured, more to herself than to me.
"H-hey..." she stammered, backing away. "I think... I'd better go. The club has... uh, a meeting. At this time. At night."
I didn't stop her.
She grabbed her dog-shaped bag with trembling hands and almost tripped over her own cloak as she ran out. The ding of the door sounded like a fire alarm.
I was left alone again at the counter, clenching my fist, the bandaged hand throbbing in rhythm with my heart.
No sound came from the storage room.
The fluorescent lights flickered one last time before the sun began to rise.
And somewhere, between the aisles of non-perishable goods and words that should never have been spoken, I knew I had to do something.