The walk to school was a pilgrimage through fog. Not the mist that clung to the morning streets, but the thick, suffocating haze of Yuki's own grief. Every step felt heavier than the last, the phantom stickiness of blood still clinging to his palms despite their cleanliness. He kept them shoved deep in his pockets, a useless shield against the world.
School. The word itself was a mockery. How could he sit in a classroom, listen to lectures on quadratic equations or the Meiji Restoration, when his sister's ghost wept shadow tears in his bathroom? When a creature made of shifting hunger had watched him from behind his own reflection?
He slid into his homeroom seat just before the bell, the scrape of the chair unnaturally loud in the pre-class chatter. He kept his head down, focusing on the grain of the wooden desk. Avoiding eyes. Avoiding questions. The concerned glances, the whispered "Is he okay?" – they were like needles. He wasn't okay. He hadn't been okay since the night Hana died. Since the night he'd seen it happen.
The teacher's voice droned, a distant buzz. Yuki's thoughts spiraled back to the bathroom. Hana. Her empty sockets. The silent scream frozen on her translucent face. The way she'd pointed, not at him, but through him, towards that… thing. The memory of the shadow-thing's presence lingered, a cold knot in his stomach. It hadn't just been watching Hana. It had been watching him.
A hand touched his shoulder. Light, tentative.
Yuki flinched violently, jerking away as if burned. He looked up, heart pounding, into the worried face of Aoi Sato. She sat beside him, her expression a mixture of concern and hurt at his reaction. Her dark eyes were wide, searching his face.
"Tanaka-kun?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the teacher's lecture. "Are you… alright? You look pale."
Pale? He felt like he'd been bleached from the inside out. He tried to form words, to offer some platitude, some lie. "I'm fine." But his throat was tight, constricted by the memory of Hana's ruined throat. The phantom taste of copper flooded his mouth again. He managed a tight, jerky nod, looking back down at his desk.
Aoi hesitated, then withdrew her hand. The brief contact had left a faint warmth on his shoulder, a stark contrast to the icy dread that permeated his being. He felt a pang of guilt. Aoi was kind. She didn't deserve his coldness. But how could he explain? Sorry, Aoi, I just saw my dead sister pointing at a shadow monster in my bathroom mirror. Also, I keep tasting blood. The absurdity of it was horrifying.
The rest of the morning blurred into a haze of meaningless noise and suffocating dread. Lunchtime was a relief only in that it meant escaping the classroom. He didn't go to the cafeteria. The thought of the noise, the crowds, the forced normality, was nauseating. Instead, he found himself drawn to the old, disused storage shed near the athletics field. It was quiet. Isolated.
He pushed the heavy door open, the hinges groaning in protest. Dust motes danced in the weak sunlight filtering through the grimy window. The air inside was stale, thick with the smell of old canvas, cleaning chemicals, and something else… something faintly metallic, like old blood. It made his stomach clench.
He sank to the floor, leaning against a stack of rotting gym mats. The silence pressed in, amplifying the noise in his own head. The phantom scent of decay from the bathroom seemed to follow him here, clinging to the dust motes. He closed his eyes, trying to block it all out.
And then, he heard it.
Not with his ears. It was inside his skull. A sound that vibrated through his bones, a silent scream of pure, undiluted agony. It ripped through him, tearing a gasp from his own lips. His eyes flew open.
Hana stood before him.
She was clearer here, in the dusty gloom, than she'd been in the brightly lit bathroom. Her shredded uniform hung in tatters. The gaping wound across her throat pulsed faintly with a sickly, internal light. Her empty sockets wept thicker, darker shadows that pooled at her translucent feet like spilled ink.
She wasn't looking at him. Her head was tilted back, her mouth stretched wide in that eternal, silent scream. But this time, it wasn't silent to him. It echoed in his mind, a cacophony of terror, pain, and a desperate, wordless plea that clawed at his sanity. Help me. Find me. Stop it.
The sound wasn't auditory; it was psychic, a direct assault on his nervous system. It felt like his brain was being scraped raw. He clapped his hands over his ears, a useless, instinctive gesture. "Stop," he choked out, his own voice a ragged whisper. "Please, Hana, stop!"
She didn't stop. The silent scream intensified, filling the small shed, pressing in on him from all sides. The air grew colder, heavy with despair. The metallic scent of blood grew stronger, overpowering the dust and chemicals. Yuki felt a wave of dizziness, the edges of his vision blurring. He was going to be sick.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, focusing on his own breathing, on the rough texture of the gym mat against his back. It's not real. It's not real. It's just in my head. But the cold was real. The smell was real. The agonizing pressure in his skull was real.
When he dared to open his eyes again, Hana was gone.
The shed was just a shed again. Dusty. Quiet. The only sound was his own ragged breathing and the distant shouts from the sports field. The scent of decay faded, leaving only the familiar smells of disuse.
But the echo of the silent scream remained. It vibrated in his teeth, hummed in his bones. It was a wound that wouldn't heal, a sound that couldn't be unheard. He was alone in the shed, but he felt more haunted than ever. The emptiness of the room was no longer a refuge. It was a vacuum, waiting to be filled by the next horror. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than any ghost, that this silence was temporary. The screams would come again. They always did.