The sound of cicadas had long faded, replaced by the soft hush of wind slipping through the trees outside. Yui slept on her side, one arm tucked under her cheek, her blanket curled halfway around her legs. Her window was slightly open, letting in the cool spring air. Somewhere outside, a car passed by, slow and distant. Then stillness.
Yui was deep asleep when the first jolt hit.
Her body bounced slightly on the mattress, and for a second, she thought she was dreaming. Her eyes fluttered open. Confused. Heavy. She blinked at the ceiling.
Then came the second jolt — harder this time. Her entire bed shook. Her window rattled like someone had slapped it from the outside.She sat up too fast, heart kicking up. Her brain hadn't caught up yet, but her hands were already gripping the sheets.
The floor started shaking beneath her. Something on her desk fell. Then her bookshelf creaked. Then it crashed.
Yui screamed and scrambled off the bed, instinct only — no thought. Her foot hit the cold floor just as another tremor made the whole room tilt. She fell hard on her knees.
"Yui!" Her mom's voice rang out from somewhere downstairs — frantic. "Stay put! Just stay down!"
The whole house was rumbling now. Not swaying. Violently shaking. Her lamp slid off the dresser and exploded on the floor. A picture frame hit the wall and cracked. The walls made this awful groaning sound, like they were breathing — or being pushed.
Yui crawled toward the wall and curled up tight. Her breath was coming fast now. She couldn't think. Couldn't move.
What's happening? Is this an earthquake?
It had to be. What else could—
A loud boom sounded from somewhere in the house. A cabinet? A TV? Something big.
The floor jolted again, like something underneath it had tried to push up and stopped halfway.
And just like that — it ended.
The shaking cut off, sudden and total. Like flipping a switch.
Yui didn't move. She was still crouched on the floor, breathing hard, arms wrapped around her knees. Her entire body was buzzing — like her blood hadn't caught up to the fact that it was over.
There was a weird kind of silence now. Not peaceful. Just… tense.
She looked down.
Her floor had a crack in it. Thin, running across one side of her room. Not huge, but not shallow either.
"Yui!" Her dad's footsteps were pounding up the stairs. "You okay?!"
"I—I think so," she called back, voice shaking.
She didn't mention the crack.
Mostly because she wasn't sure if it had actually been there a few hours ago…
Or if it was even real.
The Morning After
Yui hadn't really fallen back asleep after the earthquake. She'd laid in bed for hours, wide awake, staring at the ceiling with her blanket pulled up to her chin.
She still wasn't sure if it was over.
Her room was a mess. Books scattered across the floor. Her shelf on its side. Her window had a small crack running through it, thin but noticeable. Her ankle still ached from hitting the corner of her bed when she fell.
She sat up slowly, rubbing her face.
Everything felt off. Like the house was holding its breath.
She reached over to her desk, grabbed her flip phone, and flipped it open. 7:14 AM.
No texts.
But the moment she clicked onto Mixi, the notifications flooded in.
[Group Post] Airi Hoshino
is everyone okay?? my house is fine, we're all okay
[Comment] Kaito Tsukino
i'm okay. some stuff broke but nothing serious.
[Comment] Haru Tanaka
power went out but we're good.
[Comment] Ayumi Suzuki
yui isn't responding. someone check on her NOW.
Yui blinked, her heart jumping.
She quickly typed a reply with still-tired fingers:
[Comment] Yui Nakamura
i'm okay sorry!! i just woke up. i'm fine.
She hit send — and a few seconds later, her phone buzzed.
Once. Twice. Three times.
She didn't even have time to check who it was before the doorbell rang.
She hurried downstairs, still in pajamas. Her dad opened the door first — and Ayumi pushed past him.
"Yui!" Ayumi's voice cracked.
Yui barely had time to react before her best friend pulled her into a tight hug, nearly knocking the wind out of her.
"I thought your house collapsed or something," Ayumi muttered, voice low and tense against her shoulder. "I was seriously about to throw up. You didn't text. I thought—"
"I'm fine," Yui whispered back, hugging her just as tight. "I'm really okay."
Ayumi pulled away and looked her over. "You sure?"
Yui nodded, though she wasn't sure how convincing she looked. "Just shook up. That's all."
Ayumi let out a breath and pushed some hair out of her own face. "They're saying it was an earthquake."
Ayumi finally pulled back from the hug, her eyes still wide and worried.
"I wish I could stay longer, but my parents are furious. They caught me sneaking out to check on you," she said, biting her lip. "They said it's not safe to be out after because of possible aftershocks."
Yui nodded, understanding. "I get it. My parents are pretty shaken up too."
Ayumi glanced toward the street nervously. "I have to go back before they start yelling again."
Yui gave her a small smile. "Text me later, okay?"
"Always," Ayumi said, then hesitated.
She looked at Yui seriously for a moment. "If anything else weird happens… you call me right away."
Yui's heart tightened. "I will."
Ayumi took a step back, then turned quickly and disappeared down the street.Yui watched her go, feeling the weight of everything that had just happened settle in.
——-1 WEEK AFTER THE INCIDENT: SCHOOL————-
The library was dead quiet — unnervingly so.
Outside, the cherry blossoms were beginning to brown at the edges. It didn't make sense. It was spring. The flowers were supposed to be blooming, not wilting.Inside, Yui stared down at the article open in front of her. Something about "soil corrosion and unexplained plant death in residential zones." The word "unexplained" had started to lose its meaning. Every headline uses it now.
"Trees are dying," Haruka said, tone sharp. "In spring. You've seen them, right? All black at the edges, like they're rotting."
"And the water," Daichi added, his voice calm but serious. "My neighbor said his kitchen faucet ran brown this morning. Grocery store food going bad overnight."
Daichi leaned back in his chair. "This isn't normal," he said plainly.
Ayumi rubbed her arms. "No shit."
Kaito tapped the eraser of his pencil against the table. "My water turned brown this morning. Only for a minute. Then it cleared again like nothing happened."
"The ground behind our house cracked again," Haruka added, voice small. "I swear I heard something coming out of it last night."
No one laughed.
Airi shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "It's probably just… aftershocks. Right?"
No one answered her.
She didn't want to admit it, but her stomach had been hurting all day. Not the normal kind. The kind that whispered, something is about to go wrong.Haruka said what everyone was thinking: "Do you think it's the Limbo bleeding through?"
Yui's eyes flicked to the window.
For a second, she swore the glass warped, just for a breath of a moment.. like heat rising off asphalt.
Daichi closed the book in front of him. "We should go."
"What?" Haru frowned.
"The teachers aren't saying anything. The news isn't saying anything. But we all know this isn't normal. If something's coming, we should be together when it does."
"I checked the local forums," Daichi said, eyes narrowed as he scrolled through his flip phone. "People are starting to panic. But it's all rumors. Ghost sightings. 'Rot from the ground up.' Some idiot said the end of the world started last Tuesday."
Yui looked up. "What if it's not just rumors?"
No one answered.
Then suddenly, the speaker cracked.
"Attention all students and faculty, Due to ongoing unusual events in the local area, classes are canceled for the rest of the day. Please gather your belongings and prepare for early dismissal. Homeroom teachers will escort each class to the gates. Parents have been notified."
Everyone in the library froze.Airi was the first to break the silence. "They've never done this before."
"They're scared," Daichi said flatly. "They just won't say it."
Haru pushed his chair back, already standing. "Come on. Let's go."
The schoolyard was buzzing — not with energy, but confusion. Parents stood outside the gates, looking just as rattled as the students. Teachers barked instructions while checking clipboards, their usual strictness tinged with unease.
Yui stood with Ayumi, Haru, Haruka, Daichi, Kaito, and Airi under a cluster of trees. The air smelled burnt. No one said it out loud, but they all noticed it.
Ayumi glanced sideways. "You think something's going to happen tonight?"
Kaito was staring at the sky, unreadable. "Something already is."
Airi noticed she was the only one whose parents didn't come to pick her up. She didn't question it, maybe they didn't get the message from the principle? She decided to text both her parents and say she'll walk home by herself.
——————30 minutes later——————
Her stomach twisted as her house came into view. The front door was open.Her pace slowed. "Mom?" she called, her voice low, testing. No response. She stepped inside and toed off her shoes mechanically, her bag sliding off her shoulder. The door creaked slightly behind her as it drifted closed.
The air inside was stale. Too quiet. Her ears rang from the silence.
"Mom? Dad?" she tried again.
Her heart pounded faster. Her hands began to shake. her feet moved on their own. She peeked around the corner of the kitchen door. Blood. Thick. Wet. It covered the tile and soaked the bottom of the cabinets. Her mother was crumpled against the counter, her head bent at an impossible angle, eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Her throat was cut so deeply it barely looked human. Blood kept dripping from her fingertips. Her mouth was frozen in a half-scream.
Airi staggered back in shot, hitting the wall, Then she saw him, her father standing there unmoving. But it wasn't him, not really. His skin looked ashen, cold. His smile twisted too far up. His clothes were soaked with blood, Airi could feel her heart pounding almost out of her chest as he started to approach her.
Airi tried to run, She barely registered the scream that tore from her throat as she slipped in blood and scrambled toward the door. Her father, the thing wearing her father's body, let out a rasping growl and gave chase. She reached the front door just as a blast of gold light erupted behind her, knocking the hallway shelf to the floor.
The door was locked, Airi tried unlocking the door but her hands trembled too much. She turned around slowly…and her father was standing in front of her. Her father's hand trembled, the knife clutched in his blood-slick fingers. His eyes were wide, rolling like he was trying to fight something — like his body wasn't his anymore.
The blade plunged into his gut with a thick, wet chhk. The sound alone made Airi flinch violently. His body jerked forward from the force. It wasn't a clean stab, it was clumsy, brutal. The knife tore through layers of muscle, skin splitting open around the blade, blood gushing out in thick ropes that splattered across the floor and cabinets.
Her father grunted, his body twitching. He didn't pull the knife out. No — his hand pushed it in deeper, twisting slightly as it sank further, until the tip scraped something hard deep inside him.
His knees buckled. He collapsed forward onto them, still upright but hunched over, like a puppet whose strings had tangled. His mouth hung open, drool and blood dripping onto the floor, mixing with the spreading pool beneath him.
Suddenly with a sharp jolt, the spirit that had possessed him forced him to drag the blade sideways. sawing through his own stomach like it was a rope. Skin and fat peeled open, and something slick and pale slithered halfway out, a coil of intestine sliding over the edge of the wound and hitting the floor with a wet slap.
Airi covered her mouth, dry heaving, shaking uncontrollably. She couldn't look away. She couldn't.
He looked at her again. Just for a second.His eyes, her father's real eyes, were filled with agony…. with apology… With something human.
Then the spirit yanked again.
And the knife went in one final time, straight up into his chest, cracking a bone.His body finally gave out. He dropped forward with a dull thud, landing half on the kitchen tile, half against the cabinet. Blood pooled under his cheek, his mouth still open, eyes frozen wide.
And for a moment, everything was silent. Just the hum of a fridge. Airi sat there for a few seconds, until she let out a blood curdling scream, she quickly got up and unlocked the door, running as fast as she could. She didn't know where she was running to, she didn't care.
She didn't even grab her shoes. Her socks soaked in blood left prints behind her on the steps, on the pavement, smeared like a ghost trail. Her breath came in shallow gasps, her chest seizing as she sprinted, the scream still caught somewhere in her throat, too raw to come out.
The images were burned into her mind, her mothers body. Her fathers hands. The knife. The sound. She ran faster, She turned down streets blindly, hair tangled and stuck to her face, uniform soaked from the waist down in drying blood. People stared from their windows. One woman stepped outside, mouth agape.
"Airi-chan?!"
But Airi didn't stop. Her ears were ringing. Her hands were shaking so hard she couldn't feel her fingers anymore. She tripped on a curb, scraped her knee, kept going. Her limbs felt too long, too loose , like she wasn't in her own body anymore. Her vision blurred at the edges, dark and pulsing.She didn't realize she was crying until she tasted the salt.
She turned a corner too sharply and slammed into a fence, bouncing back and staggering. She hit the ground hard, her shoulder scraping concrete, her leg folding under her. But she didn't feel the pain. She barely registered it. She forced herself up, almost slipping again, and kept running.At some point her legs gave out.She dropped in the middle of the sidewalk, sobbing, clawing at her chest like she could rip out the feeling.
She curled in on herself, forehead pressed to the pavement, her mouth finally opening in a soundless scream — no words, just air and agony. Blood from her clothes seeped into the concrete beneath her.
"Airi-chan?! Sakura?"
Airi barely lifted her head, her breath still ragged. The voice belonged to an older man — gray hair, glasses, a suit that looked like it belonged to someone on their lunch break.
He approached carefully, as if not to startle a wounded animal.
"I know your parents—Reina and Takumi, right?" he said, kneeling beside her. "You're their daughter."
Airi blinked, her vision still shaking, blood drying in her eyelashes.
"W-what's wrong? Are you hurt? What happened to you?"
His voice cracked slightly at the sight of her uniform soaked in red, the haunted look in her eyes. He reached into his coat for a handkerchief, but stopped himself when he saw how she flinched.
"I—I think my dad killed my mom…" she whispered.
The man froze.
Airi's voice trembled as she explained everything in broken pieces—her hands waving, her body trembling, her words falling out between sobs and hiccups. The man pulled out his phone and called the police, keeping his voice steady, calm.
"It's okay. You're safe now, Sakura. You're safe," he repeated, even though both of them knew that wasn't really true.
The police had come. So had an ambulance. Tape surrounded the house now. Airi sat wrapped in a blanket, her hands still stained. Everything had been confirmed.Her mother was dead. Her father had killed her…and then…Airi didn't want to think about the and then part.
After hours of questioning and numbing silence, her grandparents arrived — her mother's parents. Her grandmother had tears in her eyes the moment she saw Airi. Her grandfather didn't say much, just held her close."You'll stay with us from now on," her grandmother said gently. "You'll be okay, sweetheart."
Airi nodded numbly. She didn't know what okay meant anymore.
The Next Morning
The newspaper headlines hit every convenience store and train station.
"Tragedy in Local Family: Hoshino Parents Dead in Gruesome Murder-Suicide."
Everyone in town was talking. Teachers. Students. The cashier at the store who used to give Airi an extra piece of gum when no one was looking. Everyone knew. And everyone stared.
Airi hated it.
She walked into school the next morning and felt the air shift the second her foot crossed the gate. Whispers. Eyes. The same question over and over.
"Are you okay?"
She didn't know how to answer that. What did okay even mean?
She hated living in her grandparents' house. Not because they were mean — they weren't. They were kind. Too kind. But it wasn't home. Her house had her father's slippers by the door. The stupid cracked mirror in the bathroom. The scuff marks on the hallway wall from when she tried rollerblading inside at age six. The house where her mother used to sing while cooking.
At home that evening, her flip phone buzzed non-stop. The screen showed a list of missed calls: seven from Ayumi, four from Yui, two from Haruka, and one each from Kaito and Daichi. She stared at the names for a long time, her thumb hovering over the keypad. Everyone was reaching out. She knew they meant well, but the weight of it all made her feel like she was drowning. Eventually, she clicked on one name—Haru—and let it ring.
He picked up after the first tone. "…Airi?" His voice was quiet, like he wasn't sure she'd answer.
"I'm okay," she said, though it came out thin and flat. "Just tired."
"Yeah. I figured." There was a pause, not awkward, just… respectful. "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I just wanted to check in. Everyone's worried."
Airi stayed silent for a moment, her hand gripping the phone tighter.
"I know I probably can't understand what you're feeling right now," Haru added, his voice gentler now, "but… if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here. We all are. I mean that."
Her throat tightened, but she swallowed it down. "Thanks."
There was a long, soft pause. Not uncomfortable. Just quiet.
"I'll let you rest now," he said. "Also… don't stress about everyone else blowing up your phone. I'll tell them to chill out a little."
"Please do," she replied with a tiny, dry laugh.
She ended the call, set her phone on the nightstand, and stared at the ceiling in silence. Her heart still felt heavy, her mind spinning with images she couldn't shake.
Meanwhile, back at Haru's house, the group sat in his room, scattered across the floor. The air was heavy, and no one was really saying much. When Haru finally set his phone down, everyone looked at him.
"She answered," he said. "She's… not great, obviously. But she's okay. Just tired."
Yui let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Haruka hugged her knees to her chest and said quietly, "I'll wait until tomorrow to call."
Ayumi looked down at her hands. "I'll apologize when I see her. I shouldn't have blown up her phone like that."
Kaito nodded, and Daichi just muttered, "Same here."
It was a different kind of fear now—one that settled in their bones. This wasn't a spirit they saw from far away, or something they fought and then left behind in Limbo. This was someone they knew. Someone who lived a few blocks away. Someone who had to walk through a house soaked in blood. It didn't feel distant anymore. It was right here. Real.