The envelope arrived on a Tuesday.
No sender. No stamp. Just the crimson seal of Kurokawa Technical Institute, blurred by moisture—a crescent moon with jagged wings. Faint, but unmistakable.
Aoi Himura stood motionless at the mailbox, the envelope trembling in her grip. It had been six years. Six years since the accident. Six years since the school gates were shut, welded, and condemned. Six years since Ayaka vanished.
She didn't open it right away.
Her thumb traced the cracked wax seal. The paper felt wrong. Not old—recently aged, like it had been pulled through time itself. It smelled like damp concrete, rust, and faintly of ozone, like the aftermath of a lightning strike.
She opened it with a kitchen knife.
Inside was a single student ID card. The edges were worn, the plastic cracked, and a small chip was missing from the top right corner.
Himura, Ayaka
Year 3 — Engineering Division
Expiry: 2019
The photo was faded, discolored. But unmistakably her sister—the same quiet gaze, the same braid over her left shoulder. Aoi felt her chest tighten. The ID that should have burned in the fire was in her hand.
No note. No explanation. Just a relic of something that shouldn't exist anymore.
She stared at it for a long time.
---
The train to Kurokawa only ran on Tuesdays. One round trip. No other passengers.
The platform was deserted. The vending machines had long stopped working. Grass pushed through the cracks in the pavement. A crow perched on a broken sign, watching.
The conductor didn't speak. He didn't check tickets. He simply nodded when she stepped on.
Aoi sat alone. Her suitcase rattled beside her. She held the ID in her lap like it might vanish if she let go.
Out the window, the forest rolled past—dense, quiet, too still. The sun hung pale in the sky, like it was watching from behind thin glass.
---
The school lay beyond the woods, where the map ended and the asphalt gave up. Rusted fences encircled the grounds. Weeds choked the path. The sign out front had rotted, its warning illegible.
The iron gate remained chained. A faded placard dangled from it:
"Condemned Property. Entry Forbidden."
She approached anyway.
The air changed.
Thicker. Colder.
Aoi hesitated, then pulled the ID from her coat. The moment it faced the gate, something shifted.
Click.
The chain dropped to the ground. The gate creaked open just wide enough to let her through.
She entered.
---
The courtyard was frozen in time.
Cracked pavement. Lockers rusted shut. A toppled bench split down the middle. The main building stood tall, windows intact but darkened like cataracts. Wind rustled through the trees, but it didn't reach her skin.
Aoi stepped onto the front steps.
The door opened for her. Not wide. Just enough.
She passed through.
Inside, the silence was thick. Dust blanketed everything. A single desk lay overturned near the front hall. Posters for club activities peeled from the walls, names of students long since blurred.
And yet—
The lights flickered on.
Pale yellow. Flickering.
She turned slowly. No sound. But a blackboard nearby bore new chalk marks:
"Don't look at it too long."
Aoi blinked. She hadn't seen anyone. She hadn't heard chalk.
From the lockers came a sudden clatter. One door swung open on its own. Inside, only shadows.
A crackling sound emerged from a speaker high on the wall. Static, broken syllables, the rhythm of a voice without form or language. Then silence.
She reached into her pocket.
Ayaka's ID was warm.
Not glowing. Not pulsing.
Just warm.
---
She moved deeper into the school. Her footsteps echoed too long, as if bouncing down hallways that didn't exist anymore.
Past the main stairwell. Past the old science room, its glass doors still smeared with fingerprints.
Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang. Three times.
She checked the wall clock.
The hands didn't move.
And behind her, the door she entered from shut.
Softly. Deliberately.
She was inside.
And the school was no longer empty.
---
Aoi didn't flinch. She had come prepared. A flashlight. A journal with Ayaka's sketches. And the ID. Nothing more.
She made her way toward the Engineering Wing.
The hall grew darker as she approached. The lights didn't follow.
Halfway there, she passed a shattered vending machine. Its contents still lined up perfectly, as if frozen in time.
A classroom door opened slowly as she neared. Inside, desks were arranged neatly.
Except one.
Her sister's seat.
Marked with a single rose. Wilted. Fresh.
Aoi stepped back.
The radio static resumed.
And then, very clearly:
"Why did you come back?"
Her throat dried. She couldn't answer. Not out loud.
Because I never left, she thought. Not really.
Something moved past the doorway.
Just a flicker.
Not a shadow. Not a shape. A memory too sharp to be real.
She took a breath, gripped the ID tighter, and pressed onward.
---
Deep inside the school, something waited.
Not a ghost.
Not quite.
But the place remembered. And it was remembering her back.