The night air bit at her skin the moment she stepped outside the café. Her half-finished coffee still burned faintly in her chest, but it wasn't enough to stop the chill that crept under her coat and coiled along her spine.
The streets looked emptier than usual, drained of life. Neon lights flickered and hummed, buzzing faintly like flies around a corpse.
She walked.
The sound of her own footsteps echoed too loudly against the cracked pavement. In the distance, she noticed figures in the shadows, their cigarettes glowing like fireflies suspended in the dark.
The smoke curled upward, pale and skeletal, vanishing into the black sky. She thought about how easy it would be to mistake those glowing tips for eyes. Watching. Waiting.
One of the smokers peeled himself from the wall and approached her. His grin was all teeth, his eyes reflecting the sickly yellow streetlight.
"Cigarette?"
She shook her head. "I don't smoke."
He shrugged, lit one for himself, and stepped back into the dark. Gone as quickly as he appeared.
Her steps carried her farther without her really noticing where. The city's noise faded until all she could hear was the distant cry of a stray dog,
the rustle of the wind, and her own heartbeat. Then, almost unconsciously, she found herself standing before the Andersons' house.
It leaned forward like it might collapse, sagging with decay. Boards split. Windows hollow and dark.
The entire frame wrapped in old caution tape, brittle and frayed, fluttering in the night breeze. The yellow had dulled to a sickly gray.
Her throat tightened with anger. "Lazy bastards," she muttered, her voice sharp and bitter. "Case left to rot. They feed the public lies while they sit on their asses."
She turned away from the decaying Anderson house, her boots carrying her through the rusted gate of the graveyard.
The air grew colder there, heavy, as if the ground itself breathed sorrow. Frost clung to the grass in brittle silver strands, and the names carved into the stones seemed to glow faintly under the moonlight.
And that's when the memories came.
Her breath hitched, her body stilling in the night.
She remembered Mrs. Anderson's kitchen - flour dusted on the woman's cheeks as she laughed at her own mistakes, the smell of bread always thick in the air.
"Sit, eat, you're too thin," she used to say, sliding a plate across the table with warmth that could melt any winter.
She remembered Mr. Anderson's booming laugh, loud enough to rattle the walls, yet so full of life that even sorrow never dared to linger when he was near.
His arms were strong, but his hugs even stronger.
She remembered the eldest son teaching her card tricks, shuffling so fast her eyes couldn't follow, grinning when she lost again and again.
She remembered the daughter sneaking out into the yard at night, pulling her along, whispering secrets beneath the stars until their sides hurt from laughing.
And Shaun...
Shaun chasing fireflies barefoot in the summer, the glass jar glowing golden in his hands. His voice calling out to her - "Come on, Yurika! They're waiting for you!"
It had been more than friendship. The Andersons had been a patch for the gaping hole left inside her chest. Five smiles, five voices, five souls who made her feel like she belonged to something again.
Her throat burned as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
Then her gaze dropped to the earth.
One grave. Two. Three. Four.
She froze.
Her stomach churned, nausea gripping her as her chest tightened.
"...No." The word slipped past her lips, broken.
Four.
Not five.
Her breath came in shallow bursts, disbelief rattling through her bones.
"There should be five," she whispered, stepping closer. Her voice cracked, trembling in the quiet. "Always five."
The night shifted. The silence pressed in heavy and suffocating, as though the earth itself was holding something back.
And then-
"Those damn humans... always disturbing the dead."
Her head snapped upward.
A boy hovered above the graves. Pale.
Translucent. His form flickered like a candle on the verge of being snuffed out. He looked no older than twenty, features softened by death but sharpened by something unnatural.
The boy's voice lingered in the cold like smoke.
She staggered back, her boots grinding against the frost-hardened dirt. Her eyes locked on him, wide, unblinking.
He floated above the graves as if gravity had no claim on him, his body half-lit by the moon, half-swallowed by shadow.
The air felt wrong now. Heavy. Breathing.
Her throat tightened. "What... what the hell are you?"
The boy tilted his head, pale eyes narrowing.
"You can see me?" His voice wasn't human - thin, stretched, like sound forced through broken glass.
Her lips parted, but nothing came out. She blinked hard, whispering to herself, I'm tired. I'm stressed. This is just-hallucination.
But he didn't vanish. He stayed. Flickering, but there.
"You shouldn't be able to," he muttered, drifting lower.
His feet never touched the earth. His face twisted with something sharp - not malice, not yet, but confusion.
When he turned, as if to leave, panic cut through her chest. Instinct drove her hand upward before her brain could stop it.
Her fingers closed around his wrist.
Cold.
But solid.
The boy's scream shattered the night. It was not the cry of a human - high-pitched, hollow, carrying through the graveyard like a banshee's wail. The sound made the stones vibrate, the dead leaves scatter as if recoiling from him.
He twisted violently in her grip, flickering harder, his eyes wide with terror. "You-" his voice cracked - "you can touch me?!"
She held fast, her grip trembling but unyielding.
"What are you?" he hissed, his voice shrill, eyes blazing with panic. "Some kind of monster?!"
Her voice came low, steady. "Hey... are you Kael?"
The name seemed to stab him. His entire form froze mid-flicker, his pale eyes sharpening with recognition.
"...How do you know that name?"
A bitter laugh scraped her throat. "So it is you."
Kael stared at her like she had split the sky open. "Lady, shouldn't you be screaming right now? I'm floating in front of you."
"You're not the first nightmare I've seen." Her words fell flat, each one iron. "And you won't be the last."
His translucent features faltered. His voice, once sharp, softened almost to a whisper. "...What did you just say?"
Her grip tightened. "Too much shit has already happened to me. A ghost doesn't even make the top five."
Kael's gaze flickered, unsettled. "...You don't even look scared."
Her voice hardened. "You really don't remember me, do you?"
His lips parted, as though a memory tugged at the edge of his mind. He looked at her closely, really looked. "...Yurika?"
Her breath hitched. "Yes."
The name cracked something in him. His form rippled, flickering more violently. He shook his head like he could scatter the memory. "No. I... I don't remember. Should I?"
"You should." Her voice carried weight. "I lived with you. For two years."
Kael's eyes darted away, toward the graves. His jaw clenched. "The name... it sounds familiar. But I don't have time for this. Let go."
She released him, but her voice followed like a blade.
"Wherever you're going, I'm coming too. And don't even try vanishing. Not until I know what happened to the fifth grave."
Kael's eyes darkened, his flickering slowing as he drifted toward the empty patch of dirt where a stone should have stood. The shadows around it deepened, as though the earth itself refused to give up its secret.
"The fifth body..." his voice cracked cold, "...was never buried here. There was no blood. No corpse. Nothing."
Her stomach dropped. The cold felt sharper now, like knives against her skin. "...It's supposed to be your cousin, isn't it? Shaun."
The name ripped through him. His body convulsed, light and shadow tearing across his form like storm clouds.
His eyes widened, stricken with a pain so raw it didn't feel human.
"...Shaun?" His voice broke. "How... how do you know that name?"
He drifted closer, the air around him freezing, sucking the warmth from her lungs. His voice trembled, desperate, unraveling.
"You were there, weren't you? The night it happened."
He reached out with shaking hands, forgetting - again - that he couldn't touch the living. His fingers stopped inches from her face, trembling.
"Then tell me... what happened to him?" His voice cracked apart, jagged. "Because I didn't see. I couldn't see. I never even said goodbye."
Her chest tightened, but her voice didn't waver. "I don't know. I wasn't there. I was in Japan."
The graveyard exhaled all at once. Leaves scraped together, whispering like bones.
The trees bent with the wind as Kael's form flickered violently, his grief bleeding into rage.
"Figures," he spat, voice trembling. "Everyone who mattered wasn't there when it happened."
He turned toward the empty earth. His voice dropped, brittle as frost.
"I died that night too. But I didn't leave. I can't. Not until I know what happened to Shaun."
Yurika stepped closer, her voice quiet but cutting. "Then let me help you find him."
Kael's head turned sharply, his flickering pausing just long enough to reveal the storm in his eyes.
"I already know where he is," he whispered. "...It's just-" His voice fractured, a shadow slicing through it. "...Never mind."