The fog swallowed everything.
I didn't know how far I ran — minutes, hours, maybe only seconds — but the world folded into itself, a blur of gray and soil beneath my feet. The air was too thick to breathe. It stuck to my skin, seeping in like smoke.
I kept running until my legs gave out.
When I fell, the ground wasn't the same. It was soft — not grass, not dirt — something in between. It pulsed faintly under my hands, like it was alive.
The silence pressed down on me from every direction. The kind that didn't just fill space but erased it. I could still hear my heartbeat, fast and shallow, but even that felt muted, as though the fog was trying to absorb it.
"Aunt Sayaka…"
Her name escaped before I could stop it. My voice didn't echo — it just fell, dead, into the air.
I turned back. There was no house. No path. Just an endless field of withered flowers stretching into the mist. The same ones I'd seen in the garden.
They were moving.
Not swaying with wind — there was no wind. They leaned toward me, all at once, their stems creaking softly as they bent, like bones under strain.
And then, faintly, beneath that sound, I heard it again — the whisper.
"Everything returns to the soil…"
I stumbled backward, hands sinking into the damp ground. Something slick brushed against my palm. I looked down.
A small, pale object half-buried in the mud.
A fingernail.
Then another.
Then the curve of a jaw.
The earth beneath the flowers wasn't earth at all.
I fell to my knees. The soil gave way under my weight, crumbling into a pit of soft, cold flesh — hundreds of pale, shapeless remains tangled together like roots. Some still had faces. Some were just parts.
The whispers grew louder.
"Feed the roots."
"Remember."
"Bloom."
My stomach turned. I crawled backward until my hand brushed against something hard — a stone marker, small, half-buried. There was something carved into it, faded and cracked:
"To those who gave themselves."
The fog pulsed.
Something moved behind it — slow, deliberate, tall.
I froze.
It stepped closer, one dragging step at a time. Its outline was barely human — too long, too thin. Its arms hung wrong. The closer it came, the clearer the sound became — not footsteps, but a wet dragging noise, like something heavy being pulled through mud.
When it stopped just a few meters away, I could see the face.
Or what was left of it.
Its features were smeared, melted into the shape of a blank canvas, except for the mouth — stretched, torn at the edges, filled with soil.
"Mizu," it said, though its lips barely moved. The voice came from everywhere at once.
I couldn't breathe. My throat locked, my mind emptying into static.
It reached out one hand — too long, too thin — and pointed behind me.
I turned.
Through the fog, I saw a flicker of light. Warm, orange, flickering like fire.
A house.
My house.
Standing exactly where it had been before.
The figure was gone when I looked back.
The light pulsed through the fog like a heartbeat.
It shouldn't have been there. I'd watched the house sink, watched it vanish beneath the roots, but now it stood perfectly still at the top of the small hill — faint and wavering through the haze, its shape shimmering like something reflected in water.
Every step toward it made the ground softer.
My shoes left deep imprints in the mud, and every time I lifted my foot, the soil made a faint, wet sound — like it didn't want to let go.
When I reached the front door, I could see that it wasn't really the same house. The wood looked swollen and pale, the walls breathing slowly, expanding and contracting in rhythm with the faint creaking sound inside.
The door was slightly open.
A strip of dim light leaked through the crack, painting a crooked line across the ground.
"Aunt Sayaka?"
Silence.
My hand trembled as I pushed the door wider. The hinges groaned — that slow, dragging sound, as if something alive was waking up.
The smell hit first — that sickly sweetness, thicker now, heavier. It crawled up my throat until I almost gagged.
Inside, everything was wrong.
The furniture was where it should have been, but it looked off. The table leaned slightly to one side, the chairs too small, the walls too close together. The wallpaper pulsed faintly, like the veins of something breathing just beneath it.
On the floor, a set of muddy footprints trailed across the wood — small, bare feet. They led from the door toward the kitchen, vanishing around the corner.
I followed them.
The kitchen looked exactly as before — except the pots on the stove were still boiling, though there was no fire beneath them. The lids rattled gently as if something inside was trying to push its way out.
The plate from before was gone. So was the note.
In its place lay something else.
A small, white ribbon.
Yui's.
My chest tightened. I reached for it with shaking fingers.
It was wet.
And when I lifted it, a small clump of black soil fell from it to the floor.
The garden remembers.
The words came back, not as a whisper this time, but as a thought that wasn't mine.
The floor creaked behind me.
I turned sharply.
Something stood in the doorway — tall, still, its face hidden in the dark. The shape of a woman, maybe. Or the memory of one.
"Aunt Sayaka?"
It tilted its head slightly.
Then it took one step forward — slow, deliberate.
Its foot pressed into the floorboards, and a line of dark liquid seeped up between the cracks. Another step. Another.
As it entered the light, I saw her face.
It was my aunt's. And it wasn't.
Her skin was gray, her eyes sunken, her mouth split open like cracked porcelain. Mud oozed from the corners of her lips, tracing lines down her chin.
She looked at me, and her lips moved.
But the voice came from behind me.
"Mizu," it whispered. "Why did you leave me?"
I turned — the air seemed to shift, thickening until I could barely move. The whisper came again, this time closer, directly beside my ear.
"I told you not to wake them."
A cold hand brushed against the back of my neck.
I spun around — but there was nothing there.
When I looked back toward the doorway, the figure was gone.
Only the muddy footprints remained, leading back toward the garden.
---
I should have run. I should have left and never looked back.
But something in me — maybe fear, maybe guilt — forced my body to move, to follow those steps.
They led out the back door, into the garden.
The fog had thinned, but only enough for the shapes of the flowers to show — tall, black, bending gently as if listening. The soil looked freshly turned. Wet.
And there, at the center of it all, stood a scarecrow.
I hadn't seen it before.
It was made from sticks and old clothes — a faded school uniform, dirt-stained and torn. A single shoe hung from one foot. And nailed to its head, like a grotesque crown, was Yui's name tag.
Her name written in red.
The wind shifted. The flowers leaned toward me again.
And for the first time, I realized something.
The sound they made — that faint, creaking murmur — wasn't the wind at all.
It was breathing.
The fog swallowed everything behind me.
The house. The path. Even the smell of smoke that had clung to my clothes.
All gone.
It was so quiet that I could hear the sound of my pulse, slow and uneven, like it too was trying to find its way out. The ground beneath my feet wasn't soil anymore — it was softer, almost breathing, as if something just below the surface shifted each time I stepped.
I whispered to no one, "Aunt?"
The word vanished into the gray.
The fog bent sound, twisting it back toward me, like the air itself didn't want to let go of my voice. It came back distorted — Aunt… t… t… — followed by a faint clicking noise that might've been branches. Or teeth.
I tried to move forward, though I didn't know where forward was. There was no sun, no wind, no sound of birds. It was as if the whole world had gone still.
When I blinked, I thought I saw a shape in the distance — tall, human-like, but unmoving.
I called again, softer this time. "Hello?"
Nothing.
I took one step closer. The figure didn't move.
Another step — and the outline began to waver, its edges peeling apart like threads being undone by invisible fingers.
When the fog thinned for just a breath, I realized it wasn't a person at all.
It was a scarecrow.
At least, that's what I wanted to believe.
It wore a high school uniform.
The same as mine.
The collar was turned wrong, the ribbon torn, and where the face should've been, there was only packed soil pressed into a rough oval shape, as if someone had molded it by hand and forced it to stay there.
The dirt had fingernail marks in it.
I stumbled backward.
My shoe caught on something, and when I looked down, I saw the edge of a concrete curb — a road.
Somehow, without realizing, I'd walked back into the village.
But it wasn't the same.
The houses leaned in strange directions. The power lines drooped like vines. Windows were open where they shouldn't be, and from one of them, I saw movement — a curtain swaying though there was no wind.
Every house had something growing from its yard. Not grass. Not flowers.
Thick, dark stems — like veins — reaching from the ground up to the walls, pressing into them, swallowing the wood.
I wanted to run. My legs didn't move.
My body felt like it was listening to something deeper than my own thoughts, something that whispered stay.
Then, a sound — faint, behind me. Footsteps, soft and wet.
I turned too fast.
No one.
The fog shifted. The scarecrow was gone.
That's when I heard her voice again — my aunt's, or what was left of it.
Not behind me. Not in front.
Inside.
> "Mizu… the garden remembers."
I clutched my head, pressing my hands over my ears, but the voice didn't fade — it echoed against my heartbeat, layered over the distant hum of something alive.
When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in front of the school gate.
I didn't remember walking there.
---
The gates were open, though they should've been locked.
A faint metallic squeal echoed each time the wind — if it was wind — moved through.
The schoolyard was empty. The swings creaked. The building stood still, every window reflecting the same pale sky, even though the angles made that impossible.
I took a step inside. The sound of my shoes on gravel felt too loud.
It wasn't until I reached the main door that I realized something was written on the wall.
Faintly.
With fingers dipped in mud.
"Welcome home, Mizu."
I stepped back, my breath catching in my throat. The handwriting was mine.
---
I don't remember entering, but suddenly I was in the hallway.
Fluorescent lights flickered overhead — the kind of cheap white glow that made everything look like it was underwater.
The air was damp.
Every classroom door was open, and inside, the desks were stacked against the walls, leaving the center empty, as if the rooms had been hollowed out.
Somewhere deeper in the school, I heard humming.
A slow, low, almost human hum.
It reminded me of how my aunt used to hum while cutting flowers, back before everything went wrong.
I followed the sound. Each step echoed too long, like the hallway stretched behind me each time I blinked.
When I reached the last classroom, the humming stopped.
The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.
Inside, someone was standing by the window.
A girl — long black hair, uniform discolored by dirt and dried blood.
She was humming to herself while staring at the empty garden outside.
On the floor around her, flower petals — gray, brittle, like ash.
I said her name before I could stop myself.
"…Yui?"
The girl turned.
Her eyes were hollow, rimmed with soil, and her smile stretched too long.
There was dirt in her mouth when she whispered,
> "You shouldn't have come back."
Her name left my lips again — slower this time, almost a prayer.
"Yui…"
The girl in front of me didn't move at first.
Her head twitched slightly, as if the sound of her own name had confused her. Then she smiled — small, soft, and horribly human.
> "You remember."
Her voice was dry, cracked — like the sound of roots breaking through soil.
It was her, and it wasn't.
I took a step forward, and the floor creaked under my shoes.
"Yui, I— I thought you were gone."
The words trembled out of me, the same way breath escapes when you've been underwater too long.
She tilted her head. The motion was wrong — too sharp, too precise.
Gone was the girl who used to share her lunch with me under the camphor tree.
The thing standing by the window had her face, but her eyes… her eyes were hollow wells of dirt.
> "Gone?" she repeated, almost amused. "You still don't understand."
I tried to speak, but my voice broke on the first word.
The air in the classroom thickened, like humidity made of dust.
> "We never go anywhere," she said. "We stay. We grow."
Her hand rose slowly — not in greeting, not in warning — just rose, like a flower bending toward the light.
Something shifted beneath her sleeve.
I saw the edge of a root curl out from her wrist.
I stumbled backward, hitting a desk that shouldn't have been there — I could've sworn the room was empty before.
The floor pulsed once, faintly, like something alive was breathing below the boards.
"Yui… what happened to you?"
Her expression flickered — for just a second, she looked like the old Yui again, eyes trembling, lips shaking.
Then she smiled again, wider.
> "You happened."
The lights overhead buzzed. Every bulb dimmed at once.
For a moment, the entire school felt like it was holding its breath.
Then, behind her — in the fogged glass of the window — I saw movement.
Shapes, dozens of them, pressed against the other side of the glass, as if buried in it.
Faces — blurred, distorted, but watching.
Yui turned back toward the window, humming again, that same low tune my aunt used to hum.
> "They're waiting for you, Mizu. The garden missed you."
I couldn't breathe. The room tilted slightly, the floor no longer flat.
The world was folding in on itself, and I felt like I was falling without moving.
I grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself, and when I looked down —
— the wood was rotting beneath my hand.
Not over time, but instantly.
It cracked open like dry skin, and inside, there wasn't splintered wood.
There was flesh.
Veins.
I screamed before I realized I had.
The room reacted — the walls shuddered, the windows pulsed, and Yui's humming rose until it sounded like laughter.
I ran.
Out of the classroom. Down the hall.
The lights overhead flickered wildly, each flash revealing glimpses of something chasing me — shadows shaped like people but dragging behind, like roots tearing through concrete.
When I reached the stairwell, I tripped — hit the railing, and pain shot up my arm.
I looked back.
No one there.
Just the hallway.
Empty.
The silence that followed was worse than the noise.
---
I sat on the floor, gripping my wrist, trying to steady my breathing.
My heart was still hammering so loud I could barely hear myself think.
I told myself — again and again — that I was dreaming.
That none of this was real.
But the ache in my wrist, the smell of rot in the air, the faint whisper that seemed to echo my thoughts — "dreaming?" — told me otherwise.
I stood, slowly, leaning against the wall for balance.
Every step I took left faint prints on the floor — black dust, like burned soil.
At the end of the hallway, the exit doors stood wide open.
I could see the fog outside again.
But before I could reach them, I heard a voice — not Yui's this time.
A man's.
> "You shouldn't be here."
I froze.
A teacher, maybe? But no — the tone was wrong.
Too calm.
Too knowing.
He stepped out of a doorway ahead — tall, thin, wearing a long black coat that didn't match any uniform I'd ever seen. His face was pale, his expression neutral.
> "You weren't supposed to see this part yet."
"…What?" I managed to say.
He smiled faintly, as though he found my confusion quaint.
> "The garden shows you what it wants you to remember. You shouldn't resist it."
I took another step back, and he mirrored it — perfectly, like a reflection.
> "Don't worry," he continued softly. "It only hurts the first time."
Before I could move, before I could even breathe — he was gone.
No footsteps. No sound.
Just gone.
The only thing left behind was the faint scent of soil.
---
I ran through the doors and into the fog again.
The air outside was thicker now, the whole world humming softly under its breath.
I didn't know where I was running to — maybe nowhere — but the further I went, the more I felt the earth shifting beneath me.
Then I heard it — faintly, almost kind.
My aunt's voice again.
> "Mizu… you're coming back to us."
I stopped.
Because this time, the voice didn't come from inside my head.
It came from beneath my feet.
The ground trembled — just slightly, enough to make the gravel rattle.
And then the soil split open.
Something pale and thin began to push through — not quite a hand, not quite a root, but something in between.
Fingers made of veins and dirt reached toward my ankle.
I stepped back — once, twice — but the thing followed, stretching upward, dragging the smell of decay with it.
The fog thickened again, swallowing everything, until all I could see was that reaching hand.
It brushed against my shoe — cold, damp — and then the voice whispered, quieter than ever:
> "Don't run, Mizu. You're already home."
The soil beneath me shivered again — slow, deliberate, alive.
It was breathing.
My instincts screamed to run, but the ground refused to let me.
Each step I took sank deeper, as though invisible hands clutched at my ankles.
The fog pressed in tighter, thick and warm, carrying the scent of rain and rot.
> "You're already home."
That voice again — my aunt's, clearer now.
Closer.
I dropped to my knees, hands pressing into the damp earth.
"Stop! Stop it!" I shouted, my voice breaking.
I dug my fingers into the ground, desperate to tear free — but the soil wasn't soil anymore.
It pulsed under my touch, a steady rhythm that matched my heartbeat.
And then, beneath the surface, I saw them —
faces.
Dozens.
Faint outlines of people, half-formed, their expressions caught between peace and agony.
Their eyes opened when I looked at them.
> "Mizu," they whispered together.
The fog rippled like a veil being lifted.
---
For a moment, I wasn't outside anymore.
The air changed. The smell changed.
When I blinked, I was standing in the middle of the garden.
The same garden behind my aunt's house — but wrong.
The flowers were taller than trees, their petals slick with something black and shining.
Their stems quivered like muscle.
The house itself stood in the distance, half-sunken into the soil, windows glowing faintly red.
Smoke rose from the chimney, but it wasn't smoke — it was fog, leaking from inside.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I took a step forward, and the flowers turned.
Not like plants moved by wind — but like heads.
Every stem twisted toward me, petals opening, revealing hollow centers filled with teeth.
Hundreds of them, clicking softly, almost in rhythm.
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
Soft. Bare.
> "You came back after all."
I turned.
Yui stood there again, her uniform darker now, her hair matted with soil.
Her hands were clasped in front of her chest, holding something small and pale — a seed.
"Why?" I asked, my throat dry.
"What is this place? What are you?"
Yui smiled, tilting her head in that same broken motion.
> "I'm just part of the garden. Like you."
"I'm not—" I started, but my voice cracked before I could finish.
I looked down. My hands were trembling — but worse, there was dirt under my nails.
Fresh dirt.
> "You planted me," she whispered.
"You helped them. Don't you remember?"
The world tilted again.
A sound filled my ears — the low hum of bees, or maybe breathing, or maybe the earth itself whispering memories I didn't want.
Flashes.
Hands in the soil.
The smell of blood and flowers.
My own laughter — younger, lighter — echoing somewhere deep.
I fell to my knees, pressing my hands over my ears.
"Stop… please stop!"
> "The garden never forgets," Yui said softly, walking closer. "We only wait for our roots to find you again."
Her feet left no prints.
She crouched beside me and pressed the seed into my palm.
It was cold. Beating.
Like a heart.
> "You'll remember soon."
---
The world fractured.
The sound of cracking glass filled the air — the sky above split open, showing veins of light pulsing behind the fog.
Everything blurred — the house, the garden, Yui's face.
When the world stopped spinning, I was lying on my back in the middle of the road.
The fog was gone.
The village looked normal.
I sat up slowly.
The air was crisp. Clear.
There was no sign of the garden, or Yui, or the man in the coat.
Just silence.
My hand still held something.
The seed.
I stared at it — small, harmless-looking, but faintly warm.
A single crack ran down its surface, pulsing with a dim, red light.
I heard footsteps approaching — real ones this time.
I turned.
It was one of my classmates — I recognized her vaguely from school.
She looked at me with wide eyes.
> "Mizu? You're okay. You were gone for days."
"…Days?"
> "Everyone's been looking for you. Your aunt said you—"
She stopped, her expression twisting.
"She said you went home. But you live with her, right?"
I couldn't answer.
Because behind her, where the road met the edge of the village, I saw the soil again — soft, breathing, spreading slowly over the asphalt.
And from somewhere deep beneath it, faint but certain, I heard my aunt's voice once more:
> "Welcome home, Mizu."