Morning tasted like iron. The air was heavy, swollen with mist that clung to my throat as I stepped outside. The gravel under my shoes was still damp from the night's rain, and when I looked up, the sky hung low and swollen, like it might collapse on the village any second.
Aunt Sayaka had left before dawn again. The house was quiet in that suffocating way I'd started to recognize — not peaceful silence, but the kind that waits, listening back. A single plate sat on the table with cold rice and a folded note: "Don't stay out after sunset. I'll be late." The letters trembled slightly, as if written with a shaking hand.
I didn't eat. The rice was pale, wet, and glistening like something that had been sitting too long. I wrapped it up, set it aside, and sat by the window instead, watching the gray smear of the road as students walked past in pairs. Their voices were hushed. I couldn't hear words, just that wet, dragging sound of shoes through puddles.
The village was still half asleep. But its sleep never looked peaceful — it looked feverish. The trees swayed without wind, and the air smelled faintly like rust and damp soil, the kind that sticks to the soles of your shoes and doesn't come off.
I left the house quietly.
When I passed the garden, the earth looked darker than usual — blacker, even. The flowers had withered completely, their stems bent down like broken necks. I crouched for a moment, pressing a hand against the soil. It was warm.
Warm.
As if something was breathing underneath.
A crow screamed from somewhere in the distance, its call splitting through the fog. I stood up quickly, my pulse echoing in my ears. The crow didn't stop; its cries came faster, more frantic — until suddenly, they were cut off mid-sound.
The silence after was worse.
I kept walking to school.
---
The walk to school had started to feel longer. The road always stretched a little further, the houses a little fewer. I passed an old well I hadn't seen before, half-covered by moss and wood. It hadn't been there last week. Or maybe I just hadn't noticed.
An old man was sitting beside it. His skin was almost gray, thin enough that I could see veins tracing like spiderwebs under it. His eyes followed me the whole way, but he didn't say a word.
When I bowed slightly, out of habit, he smiled.
That smile felt wrong — like it didn't belong to his face.
"Morning," I muttered, forcing myself to keep walking.
His voice came after me, low and rough.
"You shouldn't go to school today."
I froze.
When I turned back, he was still staring — but the space beside the well was empty.
There was no one there.
Just a faint damp patch on the ground, shaped like two feet.
---
The classroom was colder than usual. The fluorescent light flickered constantly, a stuttering pulse that made everything look a few frames out of sync. My classmates talked quietly, but their words didn't sound like words anymore. Just background noise — like static.
"Morning, Mizu," Yui said, forcing a smile. She was one of the few who still tried to talk to me.
"Morning." My voice felt thin.
She looked tired, her eyes rimmed red.
"Did you hear about Akane?"
I shook my head.
"She didn't come to school today," Yui whispered, glancing toward the door. "Her mom said she's been sick. But… my brother saw the police near their house last night."
"Police?"
Yui nodded. "He said they found something behind the shrine."
"What?"
"I don't know. They won't tell anyone."
Our teacher walked in, cutting the conversation short. Everyone went silent immediately. I watched her as she placed her books on the desk. Her movements were slower, heavier than normal.
"Class," she said softly, "there's a curfew now. You're to go home directly after school."
A murmur passed through the room.
She didn't explain why.
Her eyes flicked toward me for a second — just a second — before she turned to the blackboard.
The lessons passed like fog. I couldn't focus. The window beside me was fogged over, and behind the glass I thought I saw something moving — a pale outline, standing still between the trees near the back of the schoolyard.
It didn't move even when I stared.
Only when I blinked did it vanish, leaving nothing but the empty gray field.
---
At lunch, I went outside to breathe.
The courtyard was deserted. The air was thick, heavy with that smell again — the one like wet metal and rot.
I followed it.
It led me to the back fence, near the trees where the ground dipped slightly. The mud there was darker, and the grass looked like it had been pressed down by something heavy.
There was a sound.
Soft, rhythmic.
Digging.
I leaned closer. Behind a cluster of trees, I saw a figure crouched low to the ground, their back rising and falling slowly. Their hands moved in the soil, dark clumps falling between their fingers.
"...Hello?"
The figure froze.
When it turned, my stomach tightened.
It was a man — or what looked like one. His skin was dry and cracked, like bark. His mouth was full of dirt. He smiled, slow and wide, before pushing something small into the hole he'd dug.
Then he whispered, "The roots remember."
I stumbled back, my breath catching.
He didn't chase me. He just kept digging.
When I reached the building again, the teachers were gone. The halls were empty. The only sound was the hum of the lights and the faint creak of floorboards under my own weight.
Something had shifted.
And when I went back to class, Yui's seat was empty.
Yui's absence left a hollow space in the room. Her chair was pulled out slightly, as if she'd left in the middle of standing. The faint outline of her lunchbox sat open on her desk — rice untouched, an orange peeled but not eaten.
Nobody said a word about her.
Not the teacher. Not the others.
It was as if she had never been there at all.
When the final bell rang, the sound echoed too long in my ears, the tone bending just slightly, like the metal of the bell was melting mid-ring. The students packed up quickly, whispering to each other in tight clusters, eyes fixed on the floor. Nobody looked outside.
I did.
The fog had thickened again, rolling down from the mountains like smoke. It swallowed the street, the trees, the fences, until all that was left were faint silhouettes — moving, shifting, blending together.
When I blinked, I could swear one of those silhouettes blinked back.
---
The walk home felt longer.
It always did now.
Each turn of the road stretched further than I remembered, as if the village were quietly rearranging itself while I wasn't looking. Houses shifted positions; fences leaned in directions they hadn't before. A dog barked somewhere — a short, panicked sound that stopped too suddenly.
As I walked past the small convenience store, I noticed the old man from the well standing by the window again. This time, he was inside.
He was holding a packet of raw meat in his hands. Just holding it. Staring at it, unblinking.
I quickened my pace.
The mist crawled between my ankles. By the time I reached the house, the sun had already begun to sink — just a pale orange smear trying to burn through the clouds. I pushed open the door and called softly, "Aunt Sayaka?"
No answer.
The smell hit me before anything else — something faint but sharp, like rotten wood and burnt sugar. It came from the kitchen.
When I stepped in, I saw the pot still simmering on the stove. The liquid inside was dark, thick, and bubbling softly, sending up curls of steam. A plate sat beside it, half-filled with chopped vegetables and… something else. Something pale and soft that didn't look like any meat I knew.
There was a note under a cup of tea:
"Eat if you get hungry. I'll be back late again. Don't open the door."
I turned off the stove. The pot kept bubbling for a few seconds, even without heat.
That night, the sound came again.
---
It began softly — the scratching.
Somewhere under the floor.
I froze in bed, the blanket pulled up to my chin, listening. The sound wasn't loud, but it was steady — like someone dragging their nails across wood, slow and deliberate.
Then, a thump.
A quiet one, right beneath where my bed was.
I couldn't move. My breath came shallow and fast, and the air felt thick, damp, heavy.
The scratching stopped.
Then a voice, muffled, barely audible:
"...Mizu…"
I bit my tongue to stop myself from answering. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
Silence again.
But I could feel something — not hear, feel — moving under the floorboards, tracing a line beneath me, like a hand pressing gently through the wood.
It moved toward the wall.
Then stopped.
And everything went still.
---
When I woke, my window was open.
The cold air had soaked through the room, dampening the curtains and floor. Outside, the mist had returned, thicker than ever — so dense that I couldn't see the street.
Something was lying on the windowsill.
A flower.
Or what was left of one.
Its petals were shriveled and black, its stem twisted like wire. The roots were still wet, dripping faintly onto the floor. When I picked it up, the soil clung to my fingers like blood.
And beneath it, written faintly into the wood of the sill, carved by something sharp, was a single sentence:
"The garden remembers."
---
At school the next day, Yui still wasn't there. Neither was another girl — Reina, the one who sat behind me. Her desk was cleared, her name tag removed.
Nobody mentioned her either.
The teacher looked worse now. Pale, trembling slightly when she wrote on the board. Once, I saw her hand twitch, and a piece of chalk broke in half mid-stroke.
During lunch, I didn't go outside. I stayed by the window again, watching the fog press against the glass. It felt alive, like it was breathing slowly.
When I looked down, I saw something moving near the back of the yard — a dark figure bent over, hands in the soil again. The same motion. The same slow digging.
This time, there were two of them.
I couldn't look away from them. The two figures in the mist behind the school moved in perfect rhythm, side by side, clawing at the earth like beasts digging for something buried too shallow. Their clothes hung loose — school uniforms.
That's what made my stomach twist.
They weren't men this time. They were small. Thin. Their movements jerky, awkward, as if their bodies had forgotten what it meant to be human.
One of them lifted her head.
Even from that distance, I recognized the faint blue ribbon tangled in her hair.
Yui.
Her face was the color of paper, her eyes hollowed and wide, her mouth filled with dirt. She stared at me for too long before slowly sinking back into the soil, hands trembling, whispering something I couldn't hear through the glass.
The second figure stopped digging. Then they both vanished into the fog, leaving behind only the faint, shuddering impression of movement.
I pressed a hand to the window, but it was cold. Too cold. My breath fogged the glass instantly.
I waited for someone to come. A teacher. A voice. Anything.
But when the bell rang, the world outside was already empty again.
---
I didn't walk home that day. I ran.
The mist followed me down every turn. The houses looked the same, but not right. Their windows were black, their walls swollen with damp. The ground squelched beneath my shoes as though the dirt itself was trying to hold me there.
By the time I reached the house, my legs were shaking.
The door was open.
Just slightly.
The smell hit me harder this time — not rot, not exactly. Something sweeter, sharper. Like iron mixed with fruit left to spoil in the heat. I stepped inside, heart pounding.
"Aunt Sayaka?"
Silence.
The living room was dim, curtains drawn tight. The TV flickered with static even though it wasn't plugged in. The sound — that constant hiss — made the silence worse.
On the table sat a small plate. And on it —
Something pale. Small.
Fingers.
Just two. Dried. Wrapped neatly in a napkin.
The plate was labeled with one of Aunt Sayaka's little handwritten notes. Her careful handwriting curved like always:
"They keep coming back. The garden won't stay quiet."
I backed away slowly, my knees almost giving out. The floor creaked beneath my weight — but then another creak came, not mine, from somewhere deeper in the house.
I turned toward the hallway.
The door to the back room — the one Aunt Sayaka always kept locked — was open.
Light pulsed faintly from inside, like something breathing.
I stepped closer, drawn forward by that rhythm.
---
The smell grew stronger.
Inside, the room was filled with rows of flowerpots. Dozens of them. Each one cradled a wilted bloom, their roots tangled deep into black soil. The flowers looked the same — black petals, gray stems, weeping droplets of thick, dark water.
Something moved under the soil.
Not just one pot — all of them.
The earth shuddered, rippled, as if something underneath was trying to surface.
I bent down slowly to one of them, unable to stop myself. My fingers brushed the rim of the pot.
The soil twitched.
A faint sound rose from it — not a hiss, not a growl — something softer, wet, like breathing through mud.
Then a whisper.
"...Mizu…"
I stumbled back, my breath breaking in my throat. The soil shifted again, pushing upward. Something pale pressed against the surface — not a root. Not a bone.
A finger.
I froze, staring as the fingertip flexed slightly, curling like it was trying to reach out of the earth. Another one followed. Then another.
All around me, the flowerpots began to move — slow, shivering motions — as more pale shapes started pushing through the soil. Fingers. Hands. Faces, soft and broken, barely forming before sinking back in.
Their voices came together, layered, low, a sound too human to be wind.
"The garden remembers."
The pots began to crack.
The smell turned unbearable — like meat left in the sun, like something long dead forced to breathe again.
I turned to run — but the doorway was no longer empty.
Aunt Sayaka stood there.
Her face was pale, her eyes glassy, her hands trembling. Mud covered her sleeves, up to her elbows.
"You shouldn't be here, Mizu," she whispered. Her voice was soft, distant. "You'll wake them."
I tried to speak, but my throat wouldn't work.
Her gaze shifted to the nearest flowerpot. Her expression softened — almost tender.
"They grow better when you feed them," she said quietly. "Didn't you notice? They only bloom after someone's gone missing."
Something cracked beneath her foot. She looked down and smiled faintly.
"Your uncle started it. But he forgot the rules. He thought he could stop feeding them."
She turned toward me, her lips trembling between a smile and a sob.
"The garden doesn't forget, Mizu. It never does."
The soil in the pots began to writhe, the black roots spilling over the edges, reaching for her ankles.
She didn't move. She just closed her eyes as they coiled around her legs, pulling her slowly downward, her mouth still moving in a quiet whisper:
"Everything has to return to the soil…"
Her body sank halfway before I could even scream. The roots tightened, swallowing her up to her chest. Her eyes snapped open then — wide, terrified — and she reached toward me.
"Mizu—run—"
The roots pulled her under before she could finish. The last thing I saw was her hand disappearing into the earth, leaving behind only the sound of shifting soil.
---
I stumbled backward into the hall, my heartbeat a single roar in my ears. The walls seemed to bend, the air pulsing with that same whisper — the one from under the floor.
I ran. Out the door. Into the fog.
The house vanished behind me as if it had never existed.
When I looked back, all that was left was a field of dark, soft earth — rows of dead flowers swaying gently, their petals glistening as though freshly watered.
And at the center of the garden, a single flower bloomed.
White.
Untouched.
And beneath it, the ground still moved — slow and steady, like something breathing under the roots.