Reiko didn't sleep that night.
Not really.
After dragging Shin back from the shrine — still bleeding, unconscious, muttering in a girl's voice that wasn't his — she sat beside him, watching his chest rise and fall. The smell of cedar still clung to her skin. The voice of the shrine statue echoed in her ears:
> "You watched me die before..."
It echoed through her bones like cold wind in winter. It wasn't just a hallucination. Something had been waiting in that shrine. Something that knew her.
Reiko's fingers trembled as she flipped open the old diary again. Its pages were brittle, almost transparent, like skin that had aged past death. More words had appeared since she last read it. As if written by invisible hands, bleeding through time.
March 17th, 1925
> "I kissed her. I shouldn't have. But gods, she was beautiful beneath the rain. She laughed when I said I wanted to run away. But I meant it. I would've given everything... if she'd only come."
Reiko stared. Her throat tightened.
The entry was signed: R.
Her hand.
Her writing.
But she had never written this before.
Had she?
She flipped ahead.
March 23rd, 1925
> "They called her names. Said she was cursed. They said girls like her burned shrines. That her body would never be buried on holy ground. She begged me to meet her on the roof. She wanted to leave. But I didn't go. I was afraid."
> "That was the day they killed her."
Reiko gripped the edge of the desk, heart thundering. It couldn't be. She'd never met anyone named Reina. She'd never... but the name was in the diary again and again.
Asigawa Reina.
The murdered girl.
The girl who had loved someone.
The girl who had died waiting.
And with that realization came the memory.
It wasn't clear. Not yet.
But Reiko saw flashes: a pair of hands reaching for her across the rooftop fence. Blood on the tiles. Boys in black uniforms. A red ribbon caught in the wind.
She saw herself.
Standing by the door.
Turning away.
And running.
She vomited in the sink.
---
Shin groaned behind her.
She spun around.
He was thrashing in the futon. His skin had gone pale. Veins pulsed black across his neck and arms. His lips moved, but the words were wrong. Feminine. Desperate.
> "Where were you...?"
She ran to him.
"Shin! Wake up! Please!"
He bolted upright.
Eyes pure white.
Then he screamed.
The windows cracked.
The ceiling light burst. Shards fell like snow.
Then... silence.
And from his throat came a whisper not his own.
> "You left me there. You knew. You knew they would hurt me."
Reiko's blood went cold.
She stumbled backward as Shin levitated inches above the floor, arms splayed like a puppet. Blood floated around him like ink in water.
> "I waited. I died. And I remembered."
The shadow behind Shin deepened.
It wasn't just possession. It was resonance. A memory so strong it clung to him through time, using his body like a bridge.
Reiko stepped forward.
"Reina... if it's really you... I'm sorry. I didn't remember. I was a coward. But I'm here now. Please, let him go."
Shin's eyes locked onto hers.
> "You remember... but do you regret?"
She nodded.
"More than anything."
> "Then come to me. At the shrine. At midnight. Alone. Bring the diary. Bring the truth."
He collapsed.
The air stilled.
---
It was past three when Reiko opened the last page of the diary.
There, scrawled in crimson ink — not aged, but fresh — were the final words:
> "You watched me die. Now watch me live."
---
TO BE CONTINUED