"To free a soul, one must first enter its cage."
---
Reiko didn't remember when her knees hit the floor.
Or when the shrine's flickering light vanished behind her.
All she knew was the cold.
It gripped her fingers. Sank into her chest. Wrapped around her like the arms of something dead, yet desperate.
When she opened her eyes, the world was no longer made of wood and incense and rain.
It was black water.
A still, endless sea of mirror-like liquid — stretching in all directions under a blood-red sky.
Floating somewhere above: a giant, rusted school bell swaying in the air, cracked down the center, as if mourning something lost.
Reiko stood — barefoot, dress soaked. Her reflection rippled below her, endless.
And behind her, a voice whispered.
> "You shouldn't have come here, Reiko-chan."
She turned.
The girl standing there wore a torn 1920s school uniform — white blouse streaked in blood, red scarf frayed. Her black hair was long and wet. Her eyes? Empty. Void-like. As if the world had forgotten to paint them.
Asigawa Reina.
The murdered girl.
The spirit that had haunted Miya-zaki Shrine — and the soul now fusing with Shin Kazumi.
"You're the one who did this to Shin," Reiko said. Her voice shook, but she didn't back down.
Reina tilted her head, amused. "He invited me. You all do. The moment your hearts break wide enough to hear the silence."
The wind howled — sharp and shrill like a blade scraping porcelain.
Reiko stepped forward. "Then break the link. Let him go."
Reina's smile faded. "And what of me, Reiko? What of the girl whose throat was cut in a classroom while the world kept teaching? What of the whispers? The silence they stuffed into my mouth? What do I become if I let go?"
Reiko paused.
She hadn't expected an answer like that.
But she didn't flinch. "You become free."
The bell above them rang once.
A BOOM that cracked the sky.
And suddenly—Reina moved.
She lunged forward, blood trailing like wings behind her. Her fingers extended into claws. Her mouth stretched into something inhuman.
Reiko barely dodged.
She rolled across the surface of the black water as if it were glass, slicing her palm in the process.
Reina hovered, her shadow a writhing mass of childhood regrets.
"You think love will save him?" she hissed. "You think your compassion matters in a world that let me die?"
Reiko stood — trembling — and held out the bloody charm her mother once used for cleansing.
"No," she said. "But maybe… remembering you does."
---
A blast of light erupted from the charm — white, raw, like fire made from memory.
Reina screamed — not in pain, but in grief.
Flash.
The realm changed.
The sky faded.
And suddenly, Reiko was standing in an old classroom.
Desks overturned.
Blood staining the tatami.
A girl's body curled at the center — hands bound with twine. A paper charm shoved into her mouth.
And standing over her — a shadowy figure with no face, holding a ritual dagger.
Reiko could only watch as it happened again.
The murder.
The ritual.
The binding.
And Reina's soul, pulled screaming into the altar bell — imprisoned not by malice, but fear.
> "They said I brought the curse…"
"They said I tempted the teacher…"
"They said I deserved it…"
Reina's voice echoed across time.
And Reiko, hands trembling, walked to the scene — and hugged the dying girl's soul.
She didn't fight.
She didn't purify.
She didn't scream.
She just held her.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You didn't deserve any of it."
For the first time — Reina cried.
---
When Reiko awoke, the shrine was still again.
Shin lay beside her, unconscious — but breathing.
And the ancient glyph was broken.
The skeletal remains of Reina at the altar were covered gently in cherry blossoms, as if something had finally passed on.
Reiko looked up at the cracked ceiling.
Rain leaked through.
But for the first time, it didn't feel cold.
Just clean.
---
TO BE CONTINUED