Riku returned home just past dusk. The apartment was quiet, save for the faint hum of Tokyo's winter pressing against the windows.
Steam curled around his collarbone as he stepped out of the shower. He dried off without hurry, the heat still clinging to his skin like armor. Just as he reached for a clean shirt, there came a knock.
Three, short and precise.
Riku paused.
Still half-damp, he walked barefoot to the door. The hallway outside was deserted, the usual chill coiling up from the floor. His gaze dropped. Sitting squarely on the welcome mat was a cardboard box, taped neatly shut.
No smell. No sound. No presence. His senses told him nothing was wrong.
Still, his fingers twitched slightly as he picked it up.
Back inside, Riku set the box down under the ceiling light and crouched beside it. A whisper of condensation rose off his back. His movements remained deliberate, quiet. He took out a utility knife.
"It should be that..." he muttered in Korean. He had ordered books. Textbooks on this world's politics, religions, fragments of history—scraps he could use to build context. The supernatural was real here. Woven into its past. But hidden. Filtered through media blackouts, digital silence, and disinformation. Videos vanished. Accounts deleted. The government didn't just cover things up—they erased them.
With a straight face, his Japanese shell knife—slit through the tape.
A hiss of plastic. He peeled back the flaps.
Ten pale fingers stared back at him.
Two human arms. Clean. Scrubbed to the bone. Nails trimmed. The skin pale and slightly wrinkled as if they had been soaked in something chemical.
They lay there like offerings in a shrine.
He said nothing. Not a flinch. Just took in the sight, one breath at a time.
A message.
Whether a warning, provocation, or claim of ownership—Riku couldn't tell.
But it didn't matter.
He exhaled softly.
"...For them. Or for myself. Either way, this ends soon."
Whoever did this had reached into his home. Left death on his doorstep like a signature. They were telling him not to resist. That he could be touched. That his friends could be touched.
The message was received.
Outside, snow began to fall again. It was eight sharp. On the television, a replay of Kōhaku Uta Gassen—Japan's New Year's Red and White Song Battle—played on low volume. Laughter, music, and clapping.
And then—
"So why, on a night perfect for drinking, am I getting dragged out by a thick-headed brat like you?"
Yoshiko's voice cut through the silence as she took a swig from a convenience store beer can. She wore her coat unbuttoned, tie loose, the red flush on her cheeks already rising.
She had started drinking before arriving.
Riku said nothing. Just reached out and nudged the box toward her.
The moment she saw the contents, Yoshiko's eyes sharpened. The beer lowered from her lips.
"What the hell is this?"
"Take it to forensics," Riku said flatly. "It's probably from the woman's body found this morning. They delivered it to my house."
Crash.
Yoshiko's beer spilled across the table as she leapt up. Her face changed in a snap.
Two uniformed officers stormed in from the hallway, weapons half-raised.
"Ma'am! We heard—"
"Shut up!"
Her voice exploded.
"I told you two to keep watch outside! What part of that sounded optional?! You want to spend New Year's back at the academy scrubbing toilets?!"
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
The rookies scrambled out, shoes squeaking on linoleum.
Yoshiko swore under her breath. Her eyes narrowed at Riku.
"You've been marked."
Riku didn't blink. "I want you to assign protection. For Mirai."
Yoshiko studied him. His tone didn't match the gravity of what he was saying. As if he were discussing the weather.
She nodded. "Fine. I'll assign four to your unit—"
"Not for me," he interrupted. "All four for her."
Yoshiko froze.
This boy—no, this man—was too calm.
She searched his face for emotion. Fear. Anger. Anything.
But Riku simply stared back. His dark eyes were clear, cold, and utterly focused. The line of his jaw set firm.
"You're being hunted. And you want to give up your own security?"
"I can run. She can't. I'll manage."
Yoshiko couldn't suppress a shiver. For the first time, she felt it.
Not resolve. Not stoicism.
A complete rejection of fear.
She looked down at the arms again. Clean, white, almost ceremonial.
And she understood.
This wasn't a game. This was war.
"Don't be stupid," she said softly, voice roughened by something more than alcohol. "This isn't something a civilian can handle. I don't care if you boxed in the ring or fought gangsters with your bare hands, this guy isn't normal."
Riku tilted his head slightly, the ghost of a smile flickering—mocking, unreadable.
"Then I'll stop being a civilian."
Yoshiko stared at him.
In that moment, she couldn't tell if he was still a boy from the streets trying to survive in Tokyo...
Or if something else entirely had come home with him.
Yoshiko Yuka felt something shift inside her.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly. Closer to an echo—something half-forgotten vibrating in her bones.
She wasn't talking to a teenage boy.
Not anymore.
The way Riku stood, calm in the face of violence… the way his words landed with quiet certainty—it wasn't the tone of a child. It was the kind of presence she'd only ever seen from men who had walked through killing fields and come back changed.
But more than that—it felt familiar.
Riku's words carried a weight, like they'd been lived before. And the way he said them reminded her of someone she'd once known, long ago.
"You little brat…" Yoshiko muttered, irritation and nostalgia tangled in her throat.
She reached into her coat and rustled for a lady's cigarette. Mint-sweet, slim. Found one. Lit it with a thumb-worn silver lighter.
Then, without another word, she grabbed the half-empty sake bottle from the table and walked out of the house.
Riku followed, silent.
Phew—
She exhaled white smoke into the night. Her breath misted in the air. The snow had grown heavier now, soft flakes catching in her short hair.
Her hands were cold, stiff inside her gloves. She crouched down by the curb, unladylike, elbows on her knees. The tip of the cigarette glowed like a coal in the dark.
"Forget it," she muttered. "Asking someone like you won't get me any answers anyway."
The words weren't bitter. Just tired.
She gazed up at the snow-filled night sky. The clouds had thinned, revealing stars—not common in Tokyo this time of year. The indigo above shimmered like the ocean.
"Someone I knew used to talk like you," she said at last, voice low.
She took a slow drag from the cigarette.
"It was a long time ago. But that person… she was the opposite of you. Naïve. A bit dim. Always smiling at the wrong time."
A pause.
"She was like those two rookies earlier. Flailing around, getting in the way. But somehow… you wanted to believe in her anyway."
Riku, quiet until now, finally spoke.
"I know."
Yoshiko's head snapped toward him.
"You know nothing!" she barked, suddenly flaring with heat.
She spat into the snow, her breath coming sharp. Then her expression shifted—something in her eyes turning inward. Not grief. Not rage.
Just the quiet, aching disorientation of memory.
"She had parents. A life. And then—she just died. Gone. Like it was nothing."
Her voice trembled slightly, just once.
"It was a narcotics job. Investigating a new synthetic on the streets. Department said she shouldn't be assigned—she was too green. So they told everyone to watch out for her."
Yoshiko's jaw tightened. Her cigarette burned lower in her fingers.
"But she didn't listen. She took over her senior's position. Transferred me to a support role. Said it was her responsibility."
"Kept going on about 'honor' like it was a badge she could bleed for."
She gave a short, ugly laugh.
"And she did. We found her body at the edge of the harbor. That miserable concrete district in Tokyo Bay."
"The night was just like this. Cold. Still. Stars were out too."
She tilted her head, looking up again. Her breath wreathed the air.
"Her name was Kasai Yumiko," she said, her voice quieter now. "She always had this long, glossy hair she hated tying up. Always tripping over it in training."
For a moment, the silence returned.
Then Riku spoke.
"Kasai Yumiko... She was beautiful. Kind. Stubborn. She's still with you."
Yoshiko froze.
Turned to look at him.
Really looked.
She searched his face—not for mockery, not for deceit, but for something else. Something unspoken. His eyes met hers. Steady. Deep.
She stared for a long while.
Then exhaled slowly and let out a small, broken laugh.
"...Damn it. Look at me. Pouring my heart out to a kid."
She took another cigarette out.
This time, she didn't smoke it.
Instead, she planted the lit cigarette into the snow.
The smoke twisted up in delicate trails, curling like incense in a shrine.
Yoshiko raised the sake bottle. With a murmur too low to hear, she poured it out into the snow before her.
Ahh…
Yumiko… if you're really still here.
Then watch over this strange boy.
She looked up once more.
The night sky above Tokyo glittered quietly. Snow fell soft and unfeeling, catching in her lashes.
And just for a moment—
Just a flicker—
She thought she saw Yumiko smiling down at her again. That same clumsy grin. That same warmth.
Then the moment passed.
Only snowflakes remained, cold against the tip of her nose.
Tokyo's sky, as always, did not laugh.
It did not cry.
It simply watched.