The handcuffs bit into their wrists as Kazuma dragged Mitsuha through Tokyo's back alleys. Metal clinked with each hurried step, echoing off narrow walls. His pace was relentless, almost manic, and Mitsuha's arm jerked forward with every stride.
"Kazuma!" Mitsuha's voice cut through the evening air, sharp and commanding. But he didn't slow down. "Why did you make me run from there!? And where are you taking me!?" Her free hand grabbed at his sleeve, trying to pull him back. "Listen to me, Kazuma! Stop! It's hurting! Kazumaa!"
He stopped. Abruptly. So suddenly that Mitsuha nearly collided with his back. When he turned, his eyes were blazing—anger, frustration, desperation all mixed together in a toxic cocktail. His voice came out low and sharp, like a knife drawn slowly from its sheath.
"Are you yelling at me?" Each word deliberate, controlled fury. "Because of you, the scene that happened at school—we'll be suspended tomorrow. And why was it necessary to hit Shize!?" His voice rose with each sentence. "Now she's probably in the hospital because of you! These hands are tied because of you!" He raised their cuffed hands between them, metal glinting in the dying sunlight.
"I had to run from there because of you! My reputation became a spectacle—all because of you!" His chest heaved with the weight of those words, anger finally released after hours of running.
Mitsuha's eyes flashed dangerously. For a moment, she just stared at him—then her own anger erupted like a volcano that had been dormant too long. "What did you say!? Because of me!?" She stepped forward, invading his space, her voice rising to match his. "And what about you!? If you had come on time, none of this would have happened!" Her finger jabbed toward his chest with each accusation.
"And as for hitting Shize—nothing would have happened to her! But you made me run from there, because of which everyone's eyes are on us!" She was practically nose-to-nose with him now, both of them breathing hard, emotions raw and exposed. "And tell me—where are you going!?"
Kazuma's jaw clenched. "I'm going for my work. And I'm forced to take you too because these handcuffs have trapped me with you!"
Mitsuha's eyes widened, then narrowed with calculation. "Then why don't we break it?" Her tone shifted, becoming almost reasonable. "Then you'll be free and I'll be free. And you go your way and I'll go mine."
Kazuma's expression changed—hope flickering briefly. "Yes! Why not? Let's do that!" He looked around frantically, spotted a large rock near the sidewalk edge. Without hesitation, he grabbed it—heavier than expected, rough against his palm. He held their cuffed wrists taut between them. "Ready?"
Before Mitsuha could respond, he swung the rock down.
CLANG!
The impact vibrated through metal and bone. But instead of hitting the handcuffs cleanly, the rock glanced off and struck Mitsuha's hand. She gasped—sharp, involuntary. Blood welled up immediately, dark red spreading across her pale skin, dripping between her fingers onto the pavement below.
"Oh no! Mitsuha!" Kazuma dropped the rock instantly, horror replacing anger. "Are you okay? Forgive me! Oh no—there's so much blood!" His hands hovered uselessly, unsure whether to touch or not.
Mitsuha pulled her hand back, cradling it against her chest. "Move away! Stay a little far!" Her voice was sharp but her face had gone slightly pale. "Why are you being so caring? It's not even that big an injury." She examined her hand with clinical detachment, blood still flowing. "Just once these handcuffs come off—I'll definitely take revenge for this."
She looked up at him, eyes hard despite the pain. "Forget all that. First tell me where you're going. Until you tell me, I won't let you go." She planted her feet firmly, immovable.
Kazuma's frustration bubbled up again. "It has no meaning! No matter how much I explain—you won't believe me!"
Mitsuha's lips curved into something between a smirk and genuine curiosity. "Wow. Then this will be even more interesting." She crossed her arms—or tried to, handcuffs making it awkward. "Tell me."
Kazuma's internal monologue screamed at him. Man, she won't leave me alone! What should I do? I have to get there on time or that homeless boy will leave. I have to tell her. He exhaled slowly, resignation settling over him like a heavy blanket. His voice dropped to a near-whisper, as if speaking the words too loudly would make them more real.
"Ugh... Mitsuha, listen. The matter is a bit strange. And unreal too." He couldn't meet her eyes. "An evil lady has taken control of me—called a Yokai. Because of which I can't die." The words tumbled out faster now, desperate to be said before courage failed. "When I try to die, I go back in time. Even if I want to, I can't kill myself."
He finally looked up at her. "There's a girl named Arisa who I'm going to find out about. I suspect that she's the yokai. These things were told to me by a homeless boy who will leave here before the festival ends. That's why I need to find him quickly."
Silence. Then—Mitsuha burst into laughter. "Hahaha! Wait wait wait!" She bent over slightly, shoulders shaking. "Do you read webnovels a little too much!?"
Kazuma's face hardened. "You're laughing." His voice was flat, emotionless. "I knew it. When you weren't going to believe, why did you even ask." He stepped closer, eyes intense. "No problem. Because I'll also show you proof of this. Then you'll believe. Come with me."
The garden was quiet in the early evening, long shadows stretching across overgrown grass. Kazuma's eyes scanned every corner, every bench, every tree—searching for that familiar figure. The homeless boy who'd warned him. The one who knew about the yokai. The sun was slowly setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. But there was no sign of him.
Mitsuha watched Kazuma pace like a caged animal, growing increasingly agitated with each empty corner. Finally, she grabbed his arm—their handcuffs jangling. "Enough, Kazuma! That's it!" Her voice was sharp with impatience. "So where is your home-less boy!?"
Kazuma stopped moving. Just... stopped. Like someone had cut his strings. His voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper. "He's gone." The words fell like stones into still water. "I was late. He's gone."
His legs gave out. He dropped to his knees, one hand still tethered to Mitsuha, dangling uselessly. "All my hard work has been wasted..." His voice cracked. "Aaaah! How will I find out about Arisa now!?"
Mitsuha looked down at him—this broken boy on his knees—and something shifted in her expression. Not quite sympathy, but... understanding, perhaps. She crouched down to his level. "Stop crying and stand up." Her voice was gentler than before, though still commanding. "And tell me where Arisa is now?"
Kazuma looked up at her, eyes red-rimmed. Slowly, shakily, he stood. "She... she's dead." The words came out hollow.
Mitsuha's eyebrows rose. "Ooh." She processed this for a moment. "So can you take me to her graveyard? Where Arisa's body is?"
"Why?" Kazuma's confusion was genuine. "Why do you want to go to her graveyard?"
Mitsuha's lips curved into something sharp and calculating. "Kazuma." She leaned in close, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Do you want answers to your questions or not?"
The graveyard was old—really old. The kind of place time had forgotten and nature was slowly reclaiming. Dried leaves carpeted the ground in thick layers, crunching beneath their feet with each step. Ancient trees loomed overhead, their branches creating a canopy that blocked out most of the dying light. Weathered crosses and crumbling headstones jutted from the earth at odd angles, like broken teeth.
They stood before Arisa's grave. Her name was carved into a simple cross—"ARISA MORIGUCHI." The letters were still sharp, recent compared to the worn markers around it. Fresh earth, not yet settled, marked where she'd been laid to rest.
Kazuma stared at it, emotions warring on his face. Mitsuha, meanwhile, had acquired a shovel from somewhere—Kazuma hadn't asked how. She planted it in the ground with a solid THUNK.
"This is Arisa." Kazuma's voice was barely audible. Then he noticed what Mitsuha was doing. "And first you'll tell me why you took this shovel!?"
Mitsuha looked at him with those cold, calculating eyes. When she spoke, her voice was matter-of-fact, as if proposing the most reasonable thing in the world. "I haven't seen a bigger idiot than you till today. I'm going to dig up her grave."
The words took a second to register. Then—"WHAAT!?" Kazuma's voice echoed across the silent graveyard. "Are you crazy, Mitsuha!? Has your mind gone bad!? You can't do this!"
Mitsuha's expression didn't change. If anything, she looked more determined. "You're the one who said that Arisa is an evil lady. And an evil's body can never decay or rot—because they're not human." She lifted the shovel, testing its weight. "We'll open her grave. If there's a smell and the body is dissolving—it means she's human. And if the body is fresh or there's no body at all—then it means she's an evil lady."
She looked at him, eyes glinting with something almost like excitement. "And now I'm enjoying this work."
"But if someone sees us!?" Kazuma protested weakly. "We'll go to jail!"
Mitsuha shook her head confidently. "Don't worry. No one will see. Everyone is busy at the Bunkasai festival. It's almost fireworks time. And besides, there wasn't even a watchman at the gate." She hefted the shovel. "Now shut your mouth and move your hand with mine."
The first shovelful of earth came up with a dry, scraping sound. Then another. And another. Mitsuha worked with single-minded determination, dirt flying with each thrust of the spade. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the cool evening air. Her breathing grew labored but she didn't slow down. Mud splattered their already-ruined uniforms, dark stains spreading across white fabric.
Kazuma found himself helping despite his reservations—their cuffed hands moving in awkward tandem. Dig. Lift. Throw. Repeat. The pile of displaced earth grew steadily beside the grave. Time became meaningless—there was only the rhythm of the work, the scrape of metal on dirt, their synchronized breathing.
"Wait!" Kazuma's hand shot out suddenly. "Look at this—the coffin is visible!" Through the dirt, dark wood was visible, gleaming dully in what little light remained.
Mitsuha threw the shovel aside and dropped to her knees, brushing dirt away with her hands. Her fingers worked frantically, clearing the coffin's surface. The handcuffs forced Kazuma down beside her, both of them on their knees in the grave like grave robbers in some gothic horror story. When enough was clear, Mitsuha grabbed the coffin lid and pulled.
It opened with a creaking groan—and then the smell hit them.
It was overwhelming. Suffocating. The stench of decay, of death, of rot—it invaded their nostrils, their mouths, their very lungs. Sweet and putrid and wrong in ways that made their brains scream danger. Kazuma turned and retched violently, his body rejecting the assault on his senses. Vomit splashed onto the dirt as he heaved again and again.
Mitsuha's face had gone pale but she forced herself to look. The body inside was... deteriorating. Flesh had begun to slough off in places, revealing bone beneath. The skin that remained was discolored—greens and blacks and purples that shouldn't exist on human flesh. Maggots writhed in the exposed areas. But most importantly—there were injuries. Clear, visible trauma to the head. Multiple impact sites, brutal and unmistakable.
"Hmm. This is human." Mitsuha's voice was clinical, detached. "See, Kazuma?"
Kazuma wiped his mouth with his free hand, forcing himself to look again despite every instinct screaming not to. And what he saw made his blood run cold. The body. The injuries. The pattern of trauma. He'd done this. He'd done this to her.
"How can this be!?" His voice cracked with disbelief and horror. "All her symptoms were matching! If she's not a yokai—then who is!?"
Mitsuha's eyes narrowed, focusing on the head wounds. "These wounds on her face... who hit her?"
The question hung in the air. Kazuma's voice, when it came, was barely a whisper—cold, dead, final. "I did."
Mitsuha's head snapped toward him. "What? You?" Her eyes were wide with shock. "Impossible!"
"You wanted to know why I wanted to die, right?" Kazuma's words came slowly now, each one dragged up from somewhere deep and painful inside him. "Then listen."
"Kento." The name came out soft, reverent. "He came into my life when I was troubled. He freed me. I got so lost in his friendship that I forgot he had an illness from which he was slowly dying."
Kazuma's eyes were distant now, seeing the past instead of the present. "Then I asked him a question—'Why don't you make a girlfriend?' You know what he said?" His lips twisted into a bitter smile. "He said—'I can never love. Because a man can love a helpless woman unconditionally... but a woman will never want to love a helpless man.'"
"And after that Arisa came into his life." The name was poison on his tongue. "She loved Kento so much that he forgot his own words. You know—in love, people don't become blind, they become idiots."
His voice grew harder, colder. "But when Arisa found out that Kento had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy—she left Kento. And you know where I saw her? With someone else. Having sex. That day. The day Kento died."
Mitsuha listened in silence, her expression unreadable.
"And when I did this to her..." Kazuma's hands clenched into fists, handcuffs digging into his wrist. "Hitting her head repeatedly... I killed her. And that Kento... he probably still thinks that Arisa loved him even after he was gone."
His voice cracked. "And the biggest mistake in this is mine. I'm the one who introduced Kento to Arisa. And when he was taking his last breath—I couldn't reach on time."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. Then Mitsuha reached into her bag and pulled out a cigarette. The lighter's flame flickered in the darkness as she lit it, smoke curling up into the evening air. She took a long drag before speaking.
"People want what's important to them more than love." Her voice was philosophical, almost detached. "Actually, there's no such thing as love. These are just things made up by humans."
Kazuma looked at her, surprised. "You're smoking again? If your parents find out—"
"Yeah yeah!" She cut him off sharply. "They don't care whether I live or die. They just send money in the name of being parents. Otherwise they have no connection with me."
The words hung in the air—two broken people sharing their brokenness in a graveyard, handcuffed together, standing over a corpse.
The dark night had arrived. The sky had darkened to deep indigo, stars beginning to peek through. And then—suddenly—the sky exploded with light.
BOOM!
Fireworks. Massive, brilliant, beautiful. They burst across the darkness in cascades of gold and silver and red and blue. The Bunkasai Festival's grand finale. Both of them looked up instinctively, the colors reflecting in their eyes.
Mitsuha's lips curved into a bitter smile. "Fireworks. People come from far and wide to see this. After a year's wait, you get to see this view." She gestured around them with the cigarette. "But my fate—with you, with one hand tied, sitting in a graveyard with a dead body watching this view. What a scene!"
Then something changed. The fireworks in the sky seemed to... shift. The brilliant colors began to darken, to take on a reddish hue. And then—it wasn't light falling from the sky anymore. It was liquid. Dark. Wet. Red.
Blood.
It rained down from where the fireworks had been, droplets hitting their faces, their clothes, the ground around them. And Arisa's body—the wound on her decomposed head—began to bleed fresh blood, impossible and wrong and terrifying.
Mitsuha's voice came out as a strangled whisper. "What the f—"
BOOM!
Another explosion in the sky—but this one wasn't a firework. The blood in the air seemed to ignite, turning the rain of crimson into a deluge. They were soaked in seconds, red staining everything, the metallic taste of it on their lips.
"Kazuma!" Mitsuha grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around. "What's happening!?"
"Mitsuha!" Kazuma's voice was pure terror. "Look ahead—some strange thing is coming toward us!"
From the darkness between the graves, they came. Shadows that moved wrong, that twisted reality around them. Twelve figures—if they could be called figures at all. They were tall, impossibly tall, their forms constantly shifting like smoke trying to hold a shape. Their eyes glowed an unnatural blue, cold and hungry. Black flames wreathed their bodies, dark fire that consumed light rather than producing it.
Kazuma and Mitsuha stumbled backward, their feet tangling in the disturbed earth. The creatures moved closer, gliding rather than walking. One of them raised what might have been an arm—and from that limb, spikes erupted. Sharp. Black. Deadly. They shot forward like arrows, aimed directly at Kazuma's chest.
"KAZUMA!" Mitsuha shoved him hard.
They both dropped, the spikes whistling over their heads. Where the projectiles hit the ground, they didn't stop—they burrowed, disappearing into the earth only to erupt seconds later from a different spot. The graveyard became a forest of deadly black spikes, shooting up randomly, unpredictably.
"Get up! Run!" Mitsuha was already moving, pulling Kazuma up by their joined hands.
They ran. Stumbling, falling, scrambling back up. The creatures pursued silently—no footsteps, no breathing, just that terrible gliding motion. Spikes erupted from the ground ahead of them, forcing them to zigzag through the graveyard. A cross shattered as a spike burst through it. An old headstone crumbled to dust.
Mitsuha's breathing was labored. "Kazuma—ah... ah... we have to get out of the graveyard! Get up! Let's go quickly!"
A spike shot up directly in their path. They swerved, but it changed direction mid-flight, curving through the air toward them. It struck Mitsuha's back with a sickening wet sound. She cried out, stumbling forward. Blood—fresh, human blood this time—began to soak through her uniform.
"MITSUHAAA!" Kazuma caught her before she fell completely.
He looked back. The creatures were closing in, surrounding them on all sides. Their glowing eyes fixed on the pair with predatory intent. More spikes were forming, ready to launch.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
Kazuma did the only thing he could think of. He pulled Mitsuha close, wrapping his arms around her as best he could with the handcuffs. He squeezed his eyes shut, buried his face against her shoulder, and braced for the inevitable.
Please. Please, not like this. Not her too.
The creatures advanced. Spikes raised. Ready to strike.
And Kazuma held on, waiting for death that wouldn't take him—but would surely take her.