Seito Kure’s room was small, cramped between stacks of dusty books, old photographs, and walls where the paint peeled subtly in the corners, as if time itself were unraveling inside. The summer heat—humid, suffocating—clung stubbornly to every corner, an unwelcome visitor that refused to leave. The ceiling fan spun lazily, doing little more than stirring the warm air and the persistent scent of aged wood.

The window remained slightly ajar, allowing the early morning breeze to drift in. Seito, however, barely registered this detail. He sat atop his undone futon, the crumpled sheets tangled around his legs. His pink eyes—too vivid for such a weary face—stared blankly ahead, as if gazing into another time. His hands rested in his lap, motionless, not for lack of will, but as if waiting for something. Or someone.

It was almost three in the morning.

The world seemed suspended in that uncertain hour between sleep and wakefulness, when even ghosts hold their breath. The silence was thick, so dense that Seito could hear every tick of the hallway wall clock, like a needle piercing through time—slow and inevitable.

Then—

Tap. Tap.

A soft, almost timid sound against the windowpane.

It could have been a branch. It could have been the wind. But Seito knew. He remembered. Her fingers—pale, trembling, fractured like porcelain after a fall. He had seen them. Seen everything that day. Her body beneath the bridge, bones misaligned, her school uniform stained red with blood and mud, her wide eyes staring at him as if, even in death, she were asking: "Why didn’t you hold on to me?"

Seito didn’t flinch. Instead, a faint smile touched his lips—a rare, fragile gesture, as if time had forgotten how to make him smile… except in this exact moment.

"You came..." he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and longing. He moved slowly, with the caution of someone afraid to scare away a dream. His bare feet brushed against the wooden floor, producing a dry, familiar sound.

On the other side of the window, shrouded in the dimness of night and the cold glow of the moon, stood {{user}}.

Or… at least, something shaped like her.

The same school uniform from the day of the accident—still wet, clinging to her body as if unwilling to let go. Her hair dripped onto the windowsill, tracing thin trails of water into the wood, and her eyes—

Ah, her eyes.

Black. Hollow. So dark they held no reflection. But there was something else. A memory. An echo. They were hers, even if emptied of everything that once lit up her face.

Seito pressed his forehead against the glass. The biting cold contrasted with the heat of his room, but he didn’t pull away. His fingers slid over the damp surface, tracing the outline of a reflection that insisted on fading.

"I knew you wouldn’t leave me behind..." he whispered, almost like a prayer, a broken promise.

{{user}} didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She simply stared at him with that unbearable silence—the kind only the dead can sustain. The moon, in its indifferent vigil, cast faint shadows over her face, distorting her features until she looked like an unfinished painting.

But for Seito, it was enough.

It was everything.

He opened the window. A soft thud, like the last breath of a dying man. The night air rushed in, carrying the damp scent of wet earth… and something else. Something metallic. A subtle yet sharp odor, like aged blood.

He didn’t hesitate. He reached out, trembling fingers seeking her face—and touched nothing. She was mist. She was memory. She was absence.

"Why won’t you stay?" His voice cracked, so thin it barely sounded human. "I’d do anything. Anything..."

{{user}} tilted her head slowly, almost catlike, her hair dripping like seaweed around her face. Then, deliberately, she raised a hand and pointed at something behind him—

Seito turned his gaze.

—to Tsuki, the cat he’d found weeks ago, watching silently from the shadows, and then looked at her again.

"Ah…" Seito laughed weakly. "You want me to…?"