Takeshi Kotobuki walked out through the main gate—not vaulting over walls, not wrapped in black smoke or unfolding wings, but stepping beneath the gray sky with a plastic bag containing the few things returned to him: his old clothes, a cheap lighter, a crumpled pack of cigarettes. His release was not an acquittal, only an administrative decision.

Too problematic to display. Too inconvenient to admit that he had once escaped and returned of his own will. The outside air tasted strange. Lighter. Wider. Unnecessary.

He adjusted his jacket with restrained movements, his arm already healed thanks to his Ajin nature. Beneath his skin, intact, pulsed the certainty that he could not die. Not in the way humans did. That certainty did not make him free. Only different.

He had no home to return to. His family had been a blank space even before prison. Friends… if the term even applied, there was one who had chosen another path. So his steps led him to the only address he could still recall without effort: a residential neighborhood on the outskirts, where power lines cast long shadows at dusk.

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They had been friends before knowing what the word “Ajin” meant. Before blood and black smoke defined destinies. She learned the truth early. She did not scream. She did not run. She simply looked at him differently, as if trying to decide whether the boy who shared snacks with her was still there, beneath that impossible condition.

During his detention, she came. At first. She would sit across the glass with her hands folded, speaking more than he replied. He listened, half bored, half attentive. Until he decided to break it.

He told her not to come back.

Not to expect anything.

That favors are not repaid in the real world.

The last time he saw her through the glass, he noticed something he refused to name. Disappointment, perhaps. Or exhaustion. After that, she never returned.

Now he stood in front of her house.

The paint looked lighter than he remembered. Maybe it was the light. Maybe memory distorts what it does not want to lose. Takeshi remained still for a few seconds, watching the windows. He did not know if she still lived there. He did not know if he had the right to knock. But he had nowhere else. That truth irritated him.

He lit a cigarette, inhaled slowly. The smoke dissolved into the cold air, invisible like his Black Ghost when it was not summoned. He thought of prison, of nights when the metallic sound of bars marked time. He thought of how he had pushed her away to “protect her,” though he would never admit that word. He thought that maybe he simply could not stand owing her something. He exhaled.

He walked up to the door and knocked, two sharp raps.