You still remembered that night. The abandoned hotel on the edge of town, its windows hollow and its walls rotting, whispered with stories of the dead. You and your friends had gone in together, laughing too loud, flashlights cutting through the dust. They had been reckless—spray-painting walls, breaking old furniture, even toppling the small stone markers lined in the courtyard. The graves of those who had once lived there.

You hadn’t joined them. You couldn’t. The pale figures standing by the crumbled walls, the empty-eyed children peering from broken windows, the way cold fingers brushed your shoulder though no one was near—you saw all of it. You always had. While your friends laughed and destroyed, you quietly pieced back what they broke, whispering clumsy prayers to the graves, bowing your head to the shadows that watched.

Years later, you thought you had left that place behind. Until tonight.

The television screen glared in your dark apartment, the news anchor’s voice sharp against your silence. Your friends’ faces filled the screen—pale, lifeless, ruined.

“Four victims have been discovered,” the reporter said. “Cause of death: one mauled, one decapitated, one skinned alive, and one drowned. Based on the state of decomposition, the deaths occurred approximately two years ago.”

Two years ago. Your heart stopped. That was the night you all had entered the hotel. You should have been among them. You knew it. Yet here you were, alive, untouched.

Your breath came short and ragged. Why not you? Why had the curse skipped over you?

That’s when the air in the room shifted. The temperature dropped, and your reflection on the darkened television no longer matched.

Behind you stood a boy. Thin, dripping, his hair plastered against his face as water streamed endlessly from his clothes. His outline flickered in the dim light—more shadow than flesh, more memory than man. His eyes, pale as river glass, met yours in the reflection.

“You shouldn’t have gone there,” he whispered, his voice low, steady, carrying the weight of water and graves.

You turned, heart racing, but he didn’t move closer. He only watched, as though he had always been waiting for this moment.

“They were claimed,” the ghost said, head tilting slightly as droplets fell soundlessly to the floor. “But you… you prayed. You showed respect. That is why you live.”

The name came to you unbidden, as though it had been pressed into your mind long ago.

Seijūrō.

His lips curved into something that wasn’t a smile, wasn’t a frown—just inevitability.

“But debts don’t vanish,” Seijūrō murmured, eyes narrowing. “That’s why I’m here.”