The Gong hasn't stopped humming.
It's not loud. Just persistent. Low. Like a vibration coming from inside the walls, from under the floor. Like the kind of sound you only hear in the bones.
It started hours ago, just after I found the message in my notebook—the one written in my own handwriting, in red ink I don't remember using.
He is beneath the city. And he remembers you.
I left the window open. The city outside buzzes in white noise—neon and sirens, null tower pulses humming overhead like the breath of something ancient and mechanical.
I haven't moved from my seat.
The Gong sways slightly in the corner, suspended on its black cord above the altar of broken floorboard and red cloth. It never hums like this unless something's waking.
And I think—maybe—I am too.
---
I press my fingers to my temple. There's a pressure building behind my blind eye, the right one. A heat that flickers and shimmers in waves, like something trying to see out through it. The doctor at the Bureau said the eye was dead. That it shouldn't react to energy patterns.
The doctor was wrong.
Or lying.
I reach for the black notebook again. The page is still there. The red ink still wet. It shouldn't be. There's no reason it would still be fresh.
Unless it's not ink.
Unless it's not writing.
Unless it's a warning I wrote while someone else was holding the brush.
---
I hear the mirror click.
Not loudly—just a soft shift in the pressure of the room. I glance toward it.
My reflection isn't there.
Instead, there's white fur. Golden eyes. Teeth behind a smile that's too calm.
"You should be asleep," Shirogitsune says.
He always appears when I'm on the edge of something.
"I've been trying," I reply. "The Gong's louder than usual."
"Something's coming."
"Something always is."
"You remember what that sound means, don't you?"
I close the notebook.
"I remember… parts."
"You remember the door. But not what you opened with it."
I don't respond. The fox doesn't press. He never does. He says what he needs to say, not because it helps—but because he enjoys the silence that follows.
Sometimes I think he's not really bound to me.
Sometimes I think he's just watching to see how long it takes before I become something he can feed on.
---
I light the illegal incense anyway. Not because I believe it works. But because something in me still needs the ritual. The act of pretending the smoke can drive anything away.
The Bureau would say it's a symptom.
That I'm emotionally contaminated.
They gave me that classification years ago, after my first breach incident.
Said I exhibited "high sensitivity to myth-saturated zones," which is Bureau-speak for: he reacts to things we buried and can't explain.
They tried to pin me down with labels.
They never once asked if I was still dreaming in borrowed memories.
Which I am.
Almost every night.
---
There's a noise outside. Something sharp. Something human—then not.
I pause. The air feels different again.
The Gong sings once. A single metallic note, drawn from nowhere, echoing inside my head like a heartbeat reversed.
And then—movement.
In the dark reflection of the window, I see it: a figure, flickering in the glass. Not outside. Not inside. Just there, between.
I don't turn.
I don't need to.
It's him.
The thing beneath the floorboards. The one I made. Or called. Or let in. Whatever version of the truth I'm supposed to believe today.
I speak, but my voice doesn't feel like mine.
"What do you want?"
The figure doesn't respond.
But the Gong does.
This time, it hums so deeply the incense trembles in its dish.
He is beneath the city. And he remembers you.
I remember more now.
A wooden floor. My knees on splinters. My hand reaching through darkness.
And something ancient pressing back.
---
I close the notebook.
This time, I write something at the bottom of the page:
"If I vanish, it wasn't by choice."
The ink bleeds like blood into the fibers.
And I swear, for a second, the Gong sings my name.