Itsuki adjusted his chair, the wheels giving a soft squeak against the floor, as he stared at the messy scrawl of notes filling the open page. Lines, arrows, half-finished questions—all of it stared back at him like a wall he couldn't climb. He was trying. But no matter how many lines he drew, no matter how many times he circled the same words, nothing about what had happened to him made sense.
He let out a sigh, the music in his headphones brushing against his ears like a tide against the shore.
"I'm rushing it,' he said to himself as he slowly hit the pen to the rhythm of the music.
"I need to stop trying to connect everything at once. Look at each occurrence individually. One piece at a time.'
He flipped to the next blank page, the paper crisp under his fingers.
"I'll start with the vision,' he murmured inside his head, pen poised. "I saw it about a week ago after school. I'm not sure if the time had any significance though it was around four p.m., I think. And since I haven't touched anyone else since then, I can't test whether it happens based on time or not. But nonetheless…' He wrote the words down.
"And from what I remember,' his thought process continued, "when I touched her… it was almost like time froze. When I came back to my senses, she was still in the exact same spot, even though inside the vision it felt like ages had passed.'
He stopped. Closed his eyes. The image crept back as his chest tightened—the flashes, the screams, the pain.
"Relax," he whispered aloud, his voice a fragile tether. "You're fine. She's fine."
He opened his eyes again, forcing the pen to move.
"And then there's the vision itself. All I saw at first was darkness. Just like the dream. But it lasted for a moment before the darkness cracked open, showing scenes where she…' His fingers trembled. "Where she died.'
The pen clattered softly onto the desk as he pressed his elbows down, lowering his head into his hands. For a few seconds, he stayed like that—motionless, eyes squeezed shut, fighting back the sting at the back of his mind.
Slowly, he raised his head and picked the pen back up, his hand steadier than he felt.
"Every single moment, it felt like I was there. Every single pain… I could feel it. It wasn't the exact sensation of how she died—it was like the echo of it, the essence. But it was real.'
He paused again, letting what he had written settle on the page like a confession. "And right when the vision was about to end, even though each death happened so fast, I could see the details—every tiny thing. It was always during the day, and a few seconds after she died, the rain would begin to fall.'
His eyes lifted to the window, watching the last glimmer of sunlight bleed into the skyline. "In every single scene, her hair was up. I've never seen Mom put her hair up. Not once. That should be a clue I can use. All I have to do now is watch her. Wait for when she puts her hair up and make sure she doesn't leave the house when it happens."
He leaned back, staring at the dusky orange glow as it slipped behind the buildings.
"It's not the rainy season yet," he whispered. "So if the vision is something that's meant to happen, it won't happen anytime soon. That's more than enough time to figure out how to stop her from leaving me."
He pushed himself up from the chair and let his body collapse on his bed, arms folded behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
"I shouldn't dwell on it too much," he muttered, drawing in a breath before he let it out. "My life used to be simple—wake up, go to school, hang out with Seiji in my own awkward way, come home for dinner, flip through a few manga, then crash. Now, I'm stuck trying to figure out a million things at once."
A quiet chuckle slipped out of him. "Probably the universe's way of kicking me in the ass."
The chuckle lasted for a moment as a thought clicked into place. He suddenly sat upright, speaking as if he'd just uncovered a missing puzzle piece. "It wouldn't be crazy to say I'm one of the laziest people I know. I'm not perfect, after all."
He got up in an instant and sat on his chair as he rolled it back to the desk, pen in hand. "Amane said the demon feeds on corruption. Our teacher being a pervert meant, at least to some extent, he had some level of corruption in him—and that's what attracted the demon. It didn't make sense why one was attached to me at first, but I think I get it now.
I'm the lazist person I know. Maybe it was feeding off that."
A small smirk tugged at his lips. "They must seek out people with some sort of flaw. The teacher's perversion, my laziness… and that man on the train probably had something of his own that demon fed on."
He paused, eyes drifting over his notes.
"But then there's Amane. The demon with her isn't attached like the others. Even the first time I saw it, it was just… behind her. Not feeding, not clinging."
He tapped the pen against the desk. "Maybe it's because it's bigger than she is. No… that doesn't explain why it only came out from that hole when she called it."
He leaned back, scanning the web of scribbles he'd drawn across the page. "I'll have to ask her about it tomorrow. For now, I've learned enough."
He set the pen down and returned to the bed, exhaling a thin laugh. "Kinda pathetic, it took me this long to figure even this much out. A toddler probably would've caught on after seeing a demon twice."
His gaze drifted back to the ceiling.
"I wonder how many others can see them. I can. Amane can. But who else? No one in class seemed bothered by the one on our teacher, or the one on the man in the train.
Maybe it's tied to the vision, or the dream. Maybe Amane's had one too like I did…'
He pressed his palms over his eyes, letting out a long, tired sigh. "All this thinking isn't helping as much as I want it to. I'll stop here for today.'
He rolled off the bed, padded to the door, and opened it—heading out to eat the dinner his mother had left for him.