She was small again.
No shoes. No voice. Just the sharp scent of rain.
In the dream, Aika stood at the end of a hallway she didn't recognize but somehow remembered. The wallpaper peeled in long, yellowed strips. The floor was wet, slick with something she didn't dare look down at.
Shadows flickered beneath a door at the end.
Her mother's voice came first—whispered, panicked, like she was trying not to cry.
Then a second voice. Male. Rough.
"You don't get to walk away from blood."
The door creaked open.
Aika stepped forward, one trembling foot at a time.
Her father was inside.
She couldn't see his face—only the back of him, shoulders rigid, gun on the table. Red smeared across his sleeves like paint. Behind him, something moved. A third figure in the dark, blurred and shifting.
He didn't turn.
He only said, low and even, "Go back to bed, Aika."
She tried to answer.
She couldn't.
And then the dream split in two—
The door slammed.
A flash of heat.
A sound like thunder—
BANG.
She sat up in bed with a gasp, chest heaving.
Her room was dark, silent but for the buzz of the city beyond the window. Her hands clutched the sheets like she was still falling.
It wasn't just a dream.
Not entirely.
She remembered pieces now. Blood on linoleum. The way her mother had shaken as she whispered, "We're leaving. Don't speak. Don't look back."
But look back was all Aika had done for years.
⸻
The next morning, the train station was its usual blur—fast, faceless, and loud.
Aika leaned against the metal pole in the middle of the car, headphones in but nothing playing. Just the illusion of quiet.
The envelope hadn't moved. It still sat in her drawer, unopened, pulsing in her thoughts like a second heartbeat. She could feel it watching her when she wasn't home. Waiting.
He wrote your name in blood.
The phrase haunted her. But the name that followed haunted her more.
Renjiro Hoshino.
Her father.
A man who had vanished before her memory could form edges around him. A man her mother never spoke of. A man whose last words—if that dream was real—sounded more like a warning than a goodbye.
She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them, someone across the train was staring at her.
Not subtly. Not curiously.
Like they knew her.
The man wore black gloves despite the heat, a coat too tailored for someone blending in. His hair was short, clean. Not someone she recognized—but the way he looked at her…
She turned away.
Two stops later, he was gone.
⸻
She told herself it was nothing.
Coincidence. Paranoia.
But that night, when she came home, the window in her kitchen was cracked open. She hadn't opened it.
Nothing was missing.
But something was different.
A glass on the counter. Clean. Still wet inside.
And next to the sink, something she hadn't seen since childhood:
A single red carnation, its petals already starting to wither.