The dripping stopped.
Silence settled over the office so completely that Fujino became aware of the sound of his own pulse inside his ears.
Then he heard breathing.
Not his own.
Quiet.
Close.
The careful rhythm of someone breathing softly through their nose while trying not to make noise.
Fujino felt every muscle in his back tighten.
The sound came from the corner behind the office door.
The one part of the room he had avoided looking at for the past hour without fully realizing he was avoiding it.
His eyes shifted toward it slowly.
The corner was empty.
Nothing there except shadow.
"Who's there," he said.
His voice sounded smaller than he intended.
Nobody answered.
He was losing his mind. That was what was happening.
The stress of the past week — the things he had decided not to think about — it was all accumulating somewhere inside him and emerging as auditory hallucinations.
He needed sleep.
