The air outside the tunnel was damp with morning fog, the kind that clung to clothes and hair like unseen fingers. Rika wiped her nose with the back of her hand, smearing the thin trickle of blood that had begun to drip again. Her chest still burned with the echo of Kayako's croak, but she pushed it down, steadying her breathing.
The book pressed heavy against her back, as though each step she took carried the weight of a hundred corpses. But it wasn't just heavy. It was restless. The new spirits writhed against the old ones, their presence bleeding into her skin. She could almost taste them on her tongue.
She shook her head. "Control. Control."
The tunnel behind her lay silent, emptied of its restless dead. But not of its secrets.
Far down the slope, half-hidden in the trees, two figures watched.
Keizo leaned lazily against a cedar trunk, cigarette glowing faintly between his lips. His coat hung loose around him, but his eyes were sharp, unblinking, tracking every twitch of Rika's movements.
Beside him, Tamao sat crouched on her heels, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She stared at Rika, not blinking, not moving, her braids still and perfect despite the damp air.
"She's changing," Tamao whispered. Her voice was soft, but it carried.
Keizo exhaled smoke, watching it curl upward through the branches. "I noticed."
"She used it." Tamao's gaze was fixed on Rika's throat. "The ghost's power. The croak. It's inside her now. She's not just sealing them anymore… she's absorbing them."
Keizo's eyes narrowed. His lips curved into the faintest of smirks. "So it's true. The book doesn't just trap—it feeds. And now it's feeding her."
Tamao's braids swayed as she tilted her head. "She'll lose herself."
"Maybe." He tapped the ash from his cigarette. "Or maybe she'll become something new. Something no ghost, no hunter, no god has ever seen before."
For a moment, the two sat in silence, the forest alive only with the sound of dripping dew.
Then Tamao spoke again, her voice flat, almost lifeless. "The book is awake. It watches her when she sleeps. And sometimes… it watches us."
Keizo flicked his cigarette into the damp earth, grinding it out beneath his boot. "Good. Let it watch. Let it wonder. The question is—" his eyes followed Rika as she walked further down the road, her form slowly fading into the fog—"whether she'll use it to end this world… or save it."
Tamao finally blinked. Once. Slowly. "Either way… she's already marked."
Keizo's smirk faded into something darker. "And if she loses control, Tamao—"
The girl's eyes shifted toward him, sharp and knowing. "You'll kill her."
The silence that followed was an answer in itself.
---
Rika returned to her apartment that night. Exhausted, yet her body thrummed with energy that wasn't hers. She could feel the croak lodged in her throat, waiting to be released. She could feel the boy's eyeless sockets pressing against her skin, the woman's lullaby humming faintly in her ear.
Each ghost she had captured was bleeding into her, whether she wanted it or not.
She lay on her futon, staring at the ceiling. Sleep wouldn't come. Only whispers.
"Rika…"
The voice again. Louder. Amused. Mocking.
Her hands gripped the futon tight. She forced her eyes shut. Control.
But in the darkness, her dreams were filled with teeth.
---
The next day, she woke before dawn. She didn't eat. She didn't need to. Something else fueled her now, something restless and hungry.
She slipped on her black dress, tied her hair back, and strapped the invisible weight of the book to her spine.
There was no hesitation. She already knew where she was going.
A tunnel was one thing. But what waited for her next was worse. A creature that prowled graveyards and desolate villages, feasting on severed heads like fruit. Its laughter was said to drive men insane before their throats were torn open.
The Kubikajiri.
Rika's lips curled into the faintest smile.
If she could capture it, if she could make its power hers… then she would no longer be prey to the voices in her book. She would be their queen.
She whispered to herself as she slipped out into the gray morning, the city still half-asleep around her:
"Head eaters… let's see if you taste fear."