Sota Miyazaki's room had that specific quiet of places where someone has decided that inside is safer than outside and has organised their life around that decision. The blinds were half lowered. The school bag was in the corner with the same look it had had for several days. There was a cup on the desk that nobody had picked up.
Sota was still looking at the space in front of him when Kagami and Yūta sat down in the chairs beside the desk — not on the bed, not too close, in the exact spot where two people can talk without either feeling the other is invading something.
"Sota Miyazaki," said Kagami. "I'm Kagami. He's Amane. We're here to help you."
Sota looked at them for the first time since they had come in. It was a brief glance — from Kagami to Yūta and back to the space in front of him — with the quick assessment of someone who has learned in recent days not to trust too quickly people who say they are there to help.
"Hello," he said. Dry. Courteous on the surface and completely closed underneath.
"Everyone tells me the same thing," he added, before either of them could continue.
Yūta looked at him. Then he leaned slightly forward, elbows on his knees and his voice quieter than usual.
"Could you tell us what happened?" he said. "What you actually saw."
Sota looked at him.
"If I tell you, you'll think I'm mad," he said. "Like everyone else."
"We're going to believe you," said Yūta.
"They told me that too."
"Yes," said Yūta. "But this time it's true." He paused. "Tell us the truth. What you really saw."
Sota looked at both of them for a moment. At Kagami, who looked at him with that calm that was not indifference but total attention. At Yūta, who had in his expression something Sota could not quite name but which resembled recognition — like someone who has been in a similar place and remembers it.
"Do you really believe me?" he said.
Yūta smiled and nodded.
Sota breathed.
"I was walking with my friends," he began, in the voice of someone who has mentally rehearsed how to tell this many times and still has not found the version that does not sound like madness. "We were on our way back from school. Toma and Masa. We were talking about something, I don't remember what, and I saw a shadow. On the pavement opposite. It was going into an alley."
He paused.
"It was strange," he said. "The shadow. I don't know how to explain it. It was just strange in a way that has no name. And it made me curious, or frightened, or both at the same time, and I told the others to go ahead, that I had forgotten something, and I crossed over."
"And in the alley?" said Yūta, carefully.
Sota opened his mouth. He closed it. His hands on his knees tightened slightly.
"There was a person," he said, and the tone of his voice changed. "But it wasn't a normal person. Its skin was... green. Not the green of a plant or of anything I had ever seen before. The green of something that imitates the colour without quite understanding what it is for. And the hair was yellow — actually yellow, not blonde. And the eyes..."
He stopped.
"The eyes were completely white," he said at last. "With nothing inside. Just white."
Yūta said nothing. Kagami said nothing either.
"And there was a woman," Sota continued. "Against the wall. Crying. When she saw me — the woman — she tried to ask me for help. And I..."
His voice cut out.
Yūta stood from the chair slowly and sat on the edge of the bed, beside Sota, but without invading his space. He put a hand on his shoulder.
"Breathe," he said. "Take your time."
Sota breathed. Once. Twice.
"I was blocked," he said. "My body wasn't responding. I wanted to move, I wanted to do something, but it was as though the signals weren't getting anywhere. I looked at my own hands. "The creature turned when it saw me. And it smiled. In a way that... that I can't remember without wanting not to remember it."
Kagami was watching him with that specific attention of his — not interrupting, not rushing him, registering every word with the precision of someone who knows that what they are hearing matters.
"It killed her," said Sota, in a lower voice. "With threads. They came out of its fingers. Very fine, very fast. And I couldn't do anything."
Yūta pressed his shoulder slightly.
"Then it came towards me," Sota continued. "It said it was going to kill me. With one of those threads it brushed my face." He touched his cheek with the back of his hand, as though the contact were still there. "I couldn't move. Not because of force — because of fear. There's a difference, but in that moment I didn't feel it."
Kagami leaned slightly forward.
"And after that?" he said.
"Its phone rang," said Sota.
Kagami looked at him.
"Its phone?"
"Yes." Sota looked at him. "It took it out of its shirt pocket. It struggled with it, as though it didn't quite understand how it worked. It answered and someone said something. It replied that it was fine, that it had gone out to exercise, that it was coming back." He paused. "It hung up. It looked at me. It said it didn't have time for me. It stroked my face." His voice was completely flat now, like someone reciting something they have gone over so many times it no longer has any temperature. "And it left."
The room fell silent.
Sota looked at the space in front of him again, with eyes that had that specific depth of someone seeing two things at once — what is in front of them and what is inside them.
Yūta put his arms around him.
He said nothing first — he simply held him, with the ease of someone who has decided that there are moments where the words come after.
"That's too much for anyone," he said at last. "Not just for a fourteen-year-old. For anyone."
Sota did not respond immediately. Then, slowly, something in his posture gave way — not all at once but like something that has been held up for too long and finally finds somewhere to rest.
Kagami watched them from the chair. Without moving. Without adding anything. With that calm that was not coldness but his specific way of respecting moments that did not need his intervention.
"Your mother told us you haven't been going to school," said Kagami, when the silence had had enough time to settle.
Sota pulled back from Yūta's embrace. He wiped his face with his sleeve.
"Since then I'm afraid to go out," he said. "I feel like something is watching me." He paused. "And nobody believes me. My mother doesn't believe me, the therapists don't believe me. They tell me it was the trauma, that the brain sometimes does that, that what I saw wasn't real in that way." He looked at both of them. "But it was real. I know it was real."
"It was real," said Yūta.
Sota looked at him.
"Do you really believe me?"
"Yes," said Yūta. "We believe you."
Sota looked at both of them — at Yūta first, then at Kagami, who nodded once with that brevity of his that in this context was worth more than a speech.
And then Yūta smiled — that smile of his that was genuine in a way people noticed without being able to explain exactly why — and gave a thumbs up.
"If you want," he said, "you can go back to school. We're going to look out for you. I promise."
Sota looked at him for a moment.
And then he cried.
Not from fear this time — from something else. The specific relief of someone who has been holding something completely alone for days and has just found someone who does not ask them to let go of it, but simply comes and stands beside them.
He hugged Yūta with the force of someone who had not planned to do it, but could not help it.
Yūta patted him on the back.
"It's all right," he said. "It's done now."
Kagami looked towards the window with an expression that nobody who did not know him well would have been able to read. But it was there.
Sota gave Yūta his number with hands that were still a little unsteady and the expression of someone trying to remember how to do that — how to trust someone, how to accept help — after several days without practising it.
"I'll come and pick you up tomorrow," said Yūta. "To go to school. So you don't go on your own."
"And if...?" Sota began.
"If something happens," said Yūta, calmly, "you call me and I'll be there straight away. I promise."
Sota nodded.
"Thank you," he said, quietly.
Kagami stood.
"We need to talk for a moment," he said to Yūta.
"Yes," said Yūta. He turned to Sota. "We'll see you tomorrow."
Sota watched them go with something in his expression that had not been there when they came in.
Yuriko Miyazaki was waiting downstairs with the same cup of tea as before — still cold, still untouched.
Kagami explained what he could explain without explaining what he could not — that her son had seen something real and disturbing, that it was understandable that he was like this, that the best thing was for him to gradually resume his routine with support. That the young man who would look after him, gesturing towards Yūta, would accompany him to school tomorrow if she authorised it.
Yuriko looked at both of them.
"Can you really help him?" she said.
"Yes," said Kagami.
Yuriko nodded. She thanked Kagami first and then Yūta with the specific gratitude of someone who has spent days without anyone telling them there is something to do besides wait.
"Please don't thank us," said Kagami. "It's our job."
They went out.
Outside, before getting into the car, Kagami stopped.
"Good work," he said.
Yūta looked at him, mildly surprised to hear that from Kagami.
"I've always been good with younger kids," he said, with a smile.
"You're only two years older than him."
The smile disappeared.
"Don't ruin the moment," said Yūta.
Kagami did not respond. He looked towards the second-floor window.
Sota Miyazaki was there — not entirely visible, half hidden behind the blind — watching them with the expression of someone trying to decide whether they can trust something they still do not fully understand, but which for the first time in days does not entirely frighten them.
The following morning, Yūta called at quarter past eight.
"I'm downstairs," he said when Sota answered.
"Coming down."
Sota came down the stairs with his bag over his shoulder and the expression of someone who has made a decision they still do not know was a good one, but have made it anyway. He stepped out into the street.
Yūta was leaning against the wall opposite with his hands in his pockets.
"Where's your friend?" said Sota, looking around.
"He had a few things to see to," said Yūta.
What had actually happened was that Yūta had called Kagami at quarter to eight to let him know they were leaving in half an hour, and Kagami had responded from somewhere between sleep and consciousness that if he called him again he was going to kill him, and Yūta had hung up with the speed of someone who takes that threat more seriously than they would like to admit.
I never would have thought, Yūta said to himself, that Kagami could be that frightening in pyjamas.
"Right then," said Yūta. "I'll walk you there."
They walked. The town of Misato at eight in the morning had a different rhythm from five in the afternoon — more people, more noise, more light. Sota walked with his shoulders slightly tense and his eyes checking the sides of the street with the frequency of someone who has learned that strange things do not give warning.
The alley appeared two blocks before the school.
Sota stopped.
He did not see it coming — his feet simply stopped moving when the alley entered his field of vision, with that specific darkness that did not correspond to the time of day. He stood looking at it for a second that felt longer. Then he turned and started walking in the opposite direction with the speed of someone who is not fleeing but moving away with determination.
Yūta appeared in front of him before he could get up speed.
The collision was inevitable — Sota against Yūta's chest, bouncing back slightly, falling backwards with his bag cushioning the impact.
Yūta looked down at him.
"What happened?"
"That was the alley," said Sota, from the ground.
Yūta looked at him. Then he looked at the alley. He studied it for a moment with the specific attention of someone who knows how to read those things — the darkness, the weight of the air, whether there was something there that should not be.
There was nothing. But he understood all the same.
"We'll go a different way," he said, and extended his hand.
Sota took it and got up.
The alternative route took them along a wider street where the sun reached without obstruction and there were enough people that the feeling of being watched dropped to a manageable level. Sota walked with his shoulders a little less tense.
At the corner before the school, Toma Inoue and Masa Shirai were standing with their bags and the expression of people who have spent days waiting for their friend to show up again and have just seen him show up.
"Sota!" said Toma, with the energy of someone who does not know whether to hug or ask questions first and chooses to do both at the same time.
"Hello," said Sota, with something in his voice that was warmer than the dry hello of the bedroom.
Masa looked at him. Then he looked at Yūta with the direct assessment of someone who notices there is a new variable in the equation.
"Who's this?" he said.
Sota opened his mouth. He closed it. He looked at Yūta with the expression of someone who has no answer prepared for that.
"My name's Amane, I'm his cousin," said Yūta, with the ease of someone who lies well because they believe what they are saying in the moment they say it. "I'm visiting and took the chance to walk with him."
Toma looked at him with his usual openness.
"Welcome," he said.
"Thank you," said Yūta.
Masa kept assessing him for one more second. Then he nodded — not with complete conviction, but with enough to move on.
The three of them started walking towards the school entrance, talking about something — Toma asking questions, Sota answering with more words than he had used in days, Masa adding comments from the side with that economy of his.
Yūta stayed one step back.
"Sota," he said.
Sota turned.
"I'll leave you with them," said Yūta. "But if anything happens — anything at all — you call me. I'll be there straight away. All right?"
Sota looked at him.
"Anything?" he said.
"Anything."
Sota nodded slowly.
"Thank you," he said.
Yūta gave a thumbs up. Then he turned and began to walk in the opposite direction, with his hands in his pockets and his phone in the right pocket where he always kept it.