Home.
For Rika, the word had never meant warmth. Her apartment was small, plain, and silent—bare walls, a thin futon, stacks of books that were never read. But it was where she could breathe. Where she could train. Where she could test the boundaries of a gift that was no longer just hers, but something borrowed from the darkness she had bound.
For two months, she practiced.
At first, it was control. Summoning the book more swiftly, bending reality without hesitation, making the captured ghosts obey her will with sharper precision. She practiced until her nose bled, until her limbs shook, until she collapsed onto the tatami mat gasping for air.
But then something strange happened.
She began to feel… different.
It started small—shadows clinging longer to her figure, light bending unnaturally when she concentrated. Then came the voice. Not the whispers of all the spirits clamoring from the book, but a single thread of sound. A croak. Low. Guttural. Familiar.
Kayako.
When she focused, her body shuddered with a sensation that was not her own. A memory of crawling. Of dragging herself forward on broken limbs.
At first, it terrified her. She nearly sealed herself away, refusing to call upon the book for days. But the power lingered, clawing beneath her skin, demanding recognition.
So she yielded.
And she discovered she could use it.
She practiced crawling along the walls of her room, her body bending impossibly, her hands clinging to surfaces like they were extensions of her own flesh. She tested her voice, forcing a croak so guttural it cracked glass on her table.
And when she looked in the mirror—just once—she saw hair slide unnaturally over her face, black as pitch, before she forced it back with trembling hands.
She had gained Kayako's curse.
Not just her prison, but her echo.
The realization sickened her, yet at the same time, it exhilarated her.
Perhaps this was what Keizo had meant. Perhaps this was what he had seen coming. But Rika no longer cared. If taking the ghosts meant stealing their power, then she would wield it. She would become stronger. She had to.
Because the voice calling her name was closer now. She could feel it in her dreams.
---
Two months passed.
The next morning, Rika walked toward the outskirts of Tokyo. The city's buzz gave way to quiet roads, and quiet roads gave way to rusting guardrails and hills heavy with forest. She stopped at the mouth of a tunnel—old, cracked, damp with age. Moss clung to the concrete, and the air that spilled from inside was colder than it should have been.
The Yamamura Tunnel.
She had heard whispers about it for weeks now—people disappearing, cars stalling, travelers hearing footsteps behind them when no one followed. A tunnel with more than one ghost, where fear lingered like smoke.
Rika stepped forward, her black dress brushing her knees as the shadows swallowed her. The air thickened immediately, pressing against her chest, heavy with resentment.
The whispers rose. Not one voice, but many.
Children crying. A man shouting. A woman humming. Footsteps dragging along the concrete.
The tunnel was alive with the dead.
Her hand twitched. The book slid into existence behind her, glowing faintly, its pages fluttering though no wind stirred. The spirits inside it stirred restlessly, sensing their kin.
She whispered, her voice steady. "Show yourselves."
The tunnel obeyed.
Shadows peeled from the walls, twisting into shapes. A man with half a face, jaw dangling loose. A child with eyeless sockets, holding a cracked ball. A woman with her throat torn, humming softly as blood dripped down her chest.
They stepped closer, flickering like candlelight, their movements uneven, broken.
Rika raised her hand, ready to summon the pull.
But then she stopped.
A thought burned through her mind. Use their power.
Her hand trembled. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the croak escaped her throat—low, guttural, bone-shaking. The tunnel itself groaned, pebbles raining from the ceiling. The ghosts staggered, their shapes flickering violently, as though Kayako herself stood in the tunnel with them.
The child dropped the ball. The woman ceased humming. The man clutched his dangling jaw, moaning in agony.
Rika stepped forward, her shadow long and monstrous against the wall. Her hair seemed darker, heavier, almost moving of its own will.
"I'm not your prey," she said. "I am your end."
The book snapped open.
The tunnel exploded with screams as the ghosts were dragged forward, their forms unraveling into smoke, dissolving into black script across the pages. The ball cracked, rolling empty as the eyeless child dissolved. The woman's song broke off mid-note. The man's jaw fell to the floor, shattering into nothing.
One by one, they vanished.
Until the tunnel was silent.
Rika staggered, her chest heaving. Blood dripped from her nose. The croak still lingered in her throat, painful, unnatural. She swallowed it down, forcing the book shut.
She had captured them.
But as she walked out of the tunnel into the pale daylight, she realized something.
The book felt heavier again—but not just with the weight of the ghosts. With power. With hunger.
And somewhere, faint but certain, she heard her name.
"Rika…"
The voice was laughing now.