Tokyo. 11:41 PM.

  The rain came down in thin, silvery threads, weaving through the glow of neon signs like ghostly veins pulsing through the night. The city never truly slept, but in this quiet corner of Shinjuku, the streets had surrendered to stillness. Vending machines hummed like distant whispers. Headlights flickered past empty intersections.

  Kami walked alone.

  His hood was soaked through, water tracing a cold path down the back of his neck, but he didn’t flinch. He never minded the rain. It muffled the world — like cotton stuffed in your ears — and left him alone with his thoughts.

  He stepped off the curb.

  The crosswalk was painted with fading stripes, the lines distorted by puddles. He was halfway across when he saw the first one.

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  A man. Or what had once been a man.

  Standing under a flickering streetlamp, barefoot, pale, and completely still. His mouth was slack. His eyes were dark voids. His skin was bruised with the grey of rot.

  Kami stopped walking.

  His breath caught, heart hitching once in confusion before logic rushed in to calm it. A hallucination. A trick of the light. Maybe a homeless guy?

  He blinked.

  The figure was gone.

  Kami turned back toward the other side of the street, pulse beginning to settle — and froze again.

  There were two more now.

  A woman, bent at the neck as if her spine had been snapped. A child, missing half a face, holding a cracked porcelain doll. They stood motionless, watching him.

  The signal light ticked green.

  Kami ran.

  He didn’t remember the sprint back to his apartment. Only the rhythm of footsteps behind him that weren’t his. Only the sharp, guttural whisper that slithered through the wind:

  “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

  The elevator was too slow. He took the stairs two at a time. His key slipped in the lock twice before he jammed it in and shoved open the door.

  His apartment was quiet.

  No ghosts. No twisted faces. No whispers.

  He leaned back against the door and let his knees buckle. A dream. Stress. The horror manga he’d binged yesterday. Something. Anything.

  But when he looked up—

  There it was.

  Hovering inches above his bed, swaying ever so slightly. A soft, bluish flame — no wick, no smoke, no heat. It pulsed like it had a heartbeat.

  Kami stared.

  It stared back.

  That night, his dreams were not his own.