The flicker of a ceiling fan greeted me as I blinked awake. My hand, rough, pale, drifted into view.
Another morning. Another breath I never asked for.
My room was cold. The walls were stained with time, and the only window let in a dull gray light from a sun I hadn't really seen in years.
I sat up carefully, not daring to look toward the corner where a hunched figure waited—red eyes fixed on me, watching.
I didn't scream. I wouldn't.
I wasn't supposed to see it, so I didn't.
I shuffled through my tiny house, brushing my teeth with stale water, sliding into a worn-out school uniform. In the cracked mirror, my reflection looked tired.
Cursed, they said.
Maybe they were right.
Outside, the street buzzed—not with life, but with whispers. Real and otherwise.
I walked to school with my head facing the ground, my body lost in the crowd, yet somehow more noticeable than ever.
I saw them. Twisted shadows. Yokai. Spirits. Ghosts.
They prowled like stray dogs, under benches, in doorways, clinging to backs.
No one else noticed. I ignored them too, as I always did.
After a half-hour walk, the school gates came into view.
There, I saw her.
My ex.
She laughed with her friends as if I'd never existed. Maybe she wished I hadn't.
I remembered the moments we shared… and how it all ended the day she saw the faint shadow hovering behind me. Since then, she avoided my gaze like everyone else.
Class passed in a blur of words I didn't absorb. The final bell rang, and I walked out.
On the way home, I felt them again. Not the yokai—people. Real ones.
Eyes like daggers. Whispers sharper than knives.
"That's the cursed boy." "His parents died in that fire." "He's still alive… somehow."
They didn't say it loud. They never had to.
The day it all happened still lives in my head as if it were yesterday. I was only four. That memory never fades. That night is still crystal clear in the pages of my mind.
The day my parents died.
A fire tore through our home. Everyone said it was a gas leak.
But I knew the truth.
That night, as flames devoured the rooms and smoke choked the air, as I walked out unharmed, like I was part of the destruction, I saw it.
My first yokai.
From ash and fire, a tall figure emerged, wrapped in black rags and bone. It had no eyes, only hollow sockets glowing dark red, almost black. A jagged grin was carved into its skull-like face.
It stood in the ruins. Watching me. Smiling.
I couldn't move. Couldn't scream.
And then nothing. Just black.
I was found days later, alive beneath broken beams.
They said I was lucky.
I wasn't.
I was cursed.
Since that day, the yokai never left me. On trains. In alleys. At school.
I saw them hanging, watching, crawling.
But I acted like I didn't, because that was the only way to survive.
When the whispers finally faded, I reached home away from those people.
Dinner was a pack of stale bread. I was full. Full of silence, of memories, of shadows.
That night, I walked alone down a narrow street lit by flickering lamps. The silence was so deep it felt alive, as if even the wind held its breath.
The crescent moon hung above like a cracked smile.
And I jumped into the river.
A hand caught my wrist. Warm. Soft.
Yet firmer than iron.
It wrenched me back from the fall.