Chapter 2
Part 1
Yuriko woke before the sun reached the windows, though no alarm had stirred her. The room was still as breath, cloaked in a predawn pallor that made every shape look softer, older, not quite fixed. The blankets were tangled at her ankles. Her mouth tasted faintly of ash.
She sat up slowly, half expecting the silver photo frame to be missing.
It wasn't.
It sat upright on the dresser, facing her, unassuming in the gray light.
She rose, padded across the wooden floor, and pressed her palm flat against the glass. Cold.
The photograph still showed the same girl—the white dress, the bowed head, the taller boy whose face remained turned away. Only now, something strange: a tiny smudge on the girl's cheek. Like a fingerprint, faint and pale.
Yuriko drew back her hand.
She opened the door to the hallway and stepped out barefoot. The corridor no longer smelled of cedar and rosewater. It smelled of nothing. Absolute, perfect stillness.
But the dust had changed.
Yesterday, the floor had been evenly coated, undisturbed.
Now there were footprints—her own, trailing back and forth from her door down to the mirror and back. But there were others too. Smaller, lighter, leading nowhere, as if someone had walked in circles until they vanished.
The mirror was gone.
Where it had been stood a small lacquered cabinet, empty on top.
She walked carefully, noting how the air seemed denser at certain turns, how her shoulder brushed cold near walls that should have been warm.
Downstairs, the manor opened up like a scroll unfurling.
Rooms appeared where she hadn't remembered them. One hallway bled into a sitting room crowded with faded portraits and covered birdcages. Another turned suddenly into a tea salon lined with dried wisteria and empty cups on doilies.
She passed a narrow staircase leading downward.
There was no light at the bottom.
Just a chill that seeped up and kissed her toes.
Yuriko backed away from it, slowly.
She found Maboroshi in what might have once been a conservatory.
The ceiling was glass, dusted over from time. Vines clung to its edges like curious fingers. A small round table was set with two cups, a steaming kettle, and a plate of sliced fruit.
He stood at the window, looking out at the fog-cloaked garden.
"You don't sleep deeply anymore," he said without turning.
Yuriko didn't ask how he knew.
He turned to her then, pale hands motioning toward the table. "Would you join me?"
She nodded. Sat.
He poured the tea without asking. The scent was unfamiliar—earthy, with a trace of citrus and something more floral underneath. Something that reminded her of the photo.
She sipped. Warmth spread through her chest like soft ink.
"I walked through the house this morning," she said. "It feels… different."
"It breathes better when someone is watching," he said.
She looked up at him.
"The house?" she asked.
He stirred his tea once, twice, then rested the spoon on the saucer without tasting it. "It remembers who touches it," he said. "It keeps still for strangers. But you're not a stranger anymore."
"I'm not?" she asked.
He looked at her gently, yet with weight behind his gaze, like he was posing her with his eyes alone.
"No," he said. "You're the reason it stayed asleep."
Yuriko set her cup down with deliberate care.
"I don't understand what you mean," she said.
"You don't have to yet." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small silver key. "But when you're ready, I'd like to show you the ones who still wait to be seen."
Her breath caught slightly.
He extended the key across the table.
She took it.
The metal was warm.