The alarm screamed like a dying animal. Yuki Tanaka's eyes snapped open, not to the familiar ceiling of his bedroom, but to a nightmare. His hands—his own hands—were slick with blood. Not the thin, watery crimson of a papercut, but thick, clotted gore that dripped between his fingers, staining his sheets a deep, unnatural vermilion. His breath hitched, a ragged sound tearing from his throat. He scrambled upright, heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Where? His eyes darted around the room, searching for the source, the wound. Nothing. No gash on his palms, no cut on his arms. Just the blood. Warm. Sticky. Impossible.
He stumbled to the attached bathroom, flicking on the harsh fluorescent light. The mirror reflected a stranger. A boy of seventeen, yes, but one hollowed out by grief. Dark circles, deep and bruised-purple, hollowed his eyes. His skin was waxy, stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones. His lips were chapped, colorless. He looked like a corpse breathing by sheer force of will.
And the blood… it was still there, coating his hands like grotesque gloves. He thrust them under the faucet, scrubbing violently with soap. The water ran pink, then clear. He scrubbed until his skin was raw, until the friction burned. But the feeling remained. A phantom stickiness, a coppery tang sharp on his tongue, the scent of iron and something deeper, something rotten, clinging to the air.
He leaned close to the mirror, searching his own eyes for answers. They were wide, bloodshot, pupils blown with terror. And then… movement. A flicker behind him.
Yuki froze. Slowly, dread coiling in his gut, he turned.
She stood in the doorway to his bedroom. His sister, Hana. Or what was left of her.
She wasn't the vibrant sixteen-year-old who'd teased him about his messy hair just weeks ago. This Hana was a specter woven from despair. Her school uniform was shredded, stained with the same impossible blood that had coated his hands. Her long dark hair hung limp, matted with filth. But it was her face that shattered him. Her eyes, once warm and full of life, were now vast, empty sockets, weeping thick, shadowy tears that vanished before hitting the floor. Her mouth was open in a silent, eternal scream, the ragged edges of a deep, gaping wound visible across her throat – the wound that had stolen her voice, her life.
She didn't move. She just stood there, radiating an icy coldness that seeped into Yuki's bones, a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. Her presence was a physical weight, pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe. The scent of decay intensified, choking him.
Hana… His lips formed her name, but no sound emerged. Just like her. A scream trapped inside.
She raised a trembling, translucent hand. Not towards him, but past him. Towards the mirror.
Yuki's gaze snapped back to his reflection. And recoiled.
Standing directly behind his reflection, filling the space where the bathroom door should be, was something else. It wasn't Hana. It was a shape. A towering silhouette, impossibly tall and thin, composed of shifting, writhing shadows that seemed to drink the light. It had no discernible face, only a deeper patch of darkness where features should be. But Yuki felt its attention. A predatory hunger, ancient and cold, fixed not on the ghost of his sister, but on him.
The shadow-thing shifted. A low, guttural sound vibrated through the floorboards, less a growl, more the grinding of tectonic plates. It wasn't loud, but it vibrated deep within Yuki's skull, a physical assault on his sanity.
Hana's ghost flickered violently, like a faulty projection. Her silent scream seemed to widen, her form becoming less substantial, as if the shadow's presence was consuming her very essence. She pointed again, more urgently, her finger jabbing towards the mirror, towards the thing behind Yuki's reflection. A warning. A plea.
Then, as abruptly as it appeared, the shadow-thing dissolved. One moment it was there, a suffocating presence of hunger and malice; the next, it was gone, leaving only the mundane reflection of Yuki's terrified face and the empty bathroom door behind him.
The pressure in Yuki's chest eased. The bone-deep cold receded slightly. But Hana remained. Her form solidified again, though she looked fainter, frayed at the edges. The shadowy tears still flowed from her empty eyes. She stared at him, her silent scream a constant, agonizing accusation.
Why? Yuki wanted to scream back. Why did you leave me? Why can't I save you? Why can't I stop seeing this?
But the words wouldn't come. They never did. Not since the night he'd found her. Not since he'd been forced to watch – forced by his curse, his damnable ability to see the unseen – as something unspeakable had ripped her apart in the alley behind their apartment building. He'd seen the claws, the teeth, the impossible darkness that had swallowed her life. He'd heard her final, choked gasp in his own mind, echoing ever since.
He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut against the horror. When he opened them again, Hana was gone. The bathroom was empty. The scent of decay lingered, a faint, foul perfume on the air.
Yuki slumped against the sink, his legs trembling. He looked down at his hands. Clean. Scrubbed raw. But he could still feel the blood. He could still smell it. He could still taste it. And he could still feel the chilling gaze of the shadow-thing, a promise of more horrors to come.
The alarm clock blared again, a shrill reminder of the normal world waiting outside. A world of school, of classmates who didn't see ghosts, who didn't wake up covered in phantom blood. A world where Hana was just a missing person's photo, not a silent scream branded onto his soul.
He straightened up, forcing his trembling limbs to obey. He had to go. He had to pretend. But as he reached for the doorknob, he caught his reflection one last time.
For a split second, it wasn't his face staring back. It was Hana's, her empty sockets weeping shadow. Then it was his own, pale and terrified, the dark circles beneath his eyes looking like bruises.
He yanked the door open and fled the bathroom, leaving the mirror, the blood, and the silent scream behind. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than any ghost, that they would follow him. They always did. The red stain wasn't on his hands. It was on his soul. And it was spreading.