The alley was two blocks from Sota's school.
Yūta looked at it from the corner with the same attention he had given it before when Sota had frozen in front of it — that darkness that did not quite correspond to the time of day, that weight in the air that someone without the hunter's eye would have attributed to the humidity or to the architecture of the buildings on either side.
This is where it happened, he thought.
It was not a question.
He put his hands in his pockets and crossed the street.
Inside it smelled of the usual things — damp, old cement, something harder to name that was the residual mark of what had happened there. Not blood exactly, because remnants did not leave evidence that lasted long, but something closer to the presence of something that had been there and was no longer, yet which the space still remembered.
Yūta walked to the far end of the alley slowly, his eyes checking the shadows and his ears registering the noise from outside — the cars, the footsteps, the background noise of an ordinary morning.
There was nothing.
No presence. No sign. Just the alley being an alley.
He looked at the walls. The floor. The exact point where, according to Sota's description, the woman had been. He tried to find something — a mark, an alteration in the energy of the place, anything that would tell him his reading was correct.
Nothing.
A sound to the right.
Yūta turned with the dagger already in his hand and the mana seeking the flow before his mind had finished processing what he had heard.
A black cat was watching him from the top of a flattened cardboard box with the specific expression of cats who have been interrupted in something important and are not pleased about it.
Yūta lowered the dagger.
The cat kept looking at him.
"Sorry," said Yūta.
The cat did not respond, which is exactly what cats do.
"It's just that I didn't know it was you," Yūta continued. "I thought it was... well. It doesn't matter what I thought."
The cat looked at him for one more second. Then it licked a paw with the dignity of something that has decided this conversation does not merit further attention.
"You're right," said Yūta. "I wouldn't talk to someone who frightened me either."
He put the dagger away.
The sound came from behind.
This one was not the sound of a cat — it was the sound of something heavier, of footsteps on the alley floor, of the movement of something that was not trying to be silent, but was not announcing its arrival either.
Yūta turned.
A hooded figure was standing about three metres from the entrance to the alley, its body oriented inward like someone who had come in without seeing that there was already someone there.
The two of them looked at each other.
The hooded figure processed what was in front of it for approximately a second and a half.
And ran.
Yūta went after it without thinking too much — the instinct of someone who has learned that when a person sees a hunter in a place connected to a remnant and runs, there is a reason for that, and that reason is generally worth investigating.
"Stop!" he shouted.
The hooded figure did not stop.
It turned the first corner to the right with a speed that suggested it knew the streets of Misato well, or simply had a strong interest in not being caught. Yūta turned after it, gradually gaining ground because his legs were longer, though the figure's knew the way better.
"I'm not going to do anything to you!" Yūta shouted. "I just want to talk!"
The hooded figure jumped a wall a metre and a half high with the momentum of someone who has calculated that the wall is preferable to the conversation.
Yūta jumped after it.
He landed in a back yard with washing on the line and a plant pot knocked over by the figure's passing, which was already reaching the far end. Yūta accelerated — three steps, four — and when the figure tried to jump the second wall he reached it, grabbed it by the arm, and the two of them ended up on the ground with the combined momentum of two people going in the same direction at different speeds.
The hooded figure ended up face up.
Yūta on top, holding it by the shoulders.
Both of them stayed like that for a moment, getting their breath back.
Yūta looked at the face beneath the hood — a man of about thirty, with the expression of someone who does not know exactly what is happening, but knows he does not like it.
He was no remnant.
Yūta let go of him and got up.
"Sorry," he said. "I thought you were... someone you weren't."
The man got up from the ground with the speed of someone who has many things to say and is choosing which to say first.
"You followed me?" he said. "You threw me to the ground? Who do you think you are to—"
"You started running," said Yūta. "When someone runs out of an alley like that—"
"You frightened me!" said the man. "You were standing there in the dark talking to yourself. What was I supposed to do?"
Yūta opened his mouth. He closed it.
"I was talking to a cat," he said.
"To a cat!"
"That's different from talking to yourself."
The man looked at him with the expression of someone who disagrees with that distinction but has more pressing things to think about.
Then his expression changed.
Not gradually — all at once, in the space of less than a second, with the specific speed of fear when it is genuine. The colour left his face. His eyes fixed on a point above Yūta's shoulder with the absolute attention of someone who has seen something that should not exist.
Yūta thought for a moment that it was because of him. That there was something in his face at that distance and in that light that was frightening.
"I'm not that ugly either," he said.
The man ran.
Yūta turned.
The remnant was about five metres away — humanoid, a greyish tone that was not the grey of any ordinary thing, with a build that suggested strength without the size that generally accompanied that amount of force. Its eyes were the kind Yūta had already learned to recognise — that absence of what human eyes have that makes looking at them directly produce a discomfort with no precise name.
It was not looking at him.
It was looking at the man who was running.
Yūta understood what was going to happen before it happened and began to move — the dagger already in his hand, the mana seeking the flow, his feet covering the distance between him and the remnant with all the speed he had.
It was not enough.
The remnant moved with a speed that did not correspond to what Yūta had calculated from its build, and what happened next was brief and final in a way Yūta was not going to forget quickly.
He stopped.
The back yard fell silent except for the noise of Misato on the other side of the wall.
Yūta looked at the remnant.
The remnant looked at him.
And then it charged.
The fight did not have the structure of the previous ones — there were no companions, no Kagami calculating angles from the side, nobody telling him when to attack and when not to. Just Yūta with the dagger and the mana that flowed for thirty seconds before needing to recover, and a remnant that was not the strongest he had faced, but was not the kind that stood still waiting for its turn to receive a strike either.
The first exchange was probing — the remnant attacked from the right with a movement Yūta blocked with his forearm, responding with the dagger to its side. The blade found something resistant — not armour exactly but a density in the skin that made the cut superficial where it should have been deep.
The remnant stepped back one pace. Then it advanced again with more speed.
Yūta activated the mana.
The purple appeared in both hands with that consistency he had gained in four days of training — not explosive but constant, the flow Kaito had taught him to maintain. The strikes that followed had more weight behind them, enough for the remnant to absorb them differently — with retreat, with something that in a human being would be called effort.
Ten seconds.
Yūta dodged a lateral strike by throwing himself to the right and responded with his elbow to the side of the remnant's head — not the dagger, the elbow loaded with mana, which was more effective at close range.
The remnant turned with the impact.
Twenty seconds.
The remnant changed tactics — instead of striking from outside it tried to close the distance, seeking close quarters where the dagger was less effective. Yūta read it too late and took the impact on his right shoulder, which sent him back two steps with the arm protesting from the elbow.
Thirty seconds.
The mana went out.
Yūta breathed. He switched the dagger to his left hand — his right shoulder was not in a state to be the primary hand at the moment — and continued.
Without the mana he was slower, but not ineffective. The four days of training with Kaito had done something Yūta had not noticed fully while it was happening — they had changed the reflexes, the reading of movement, the way the body responded to situations without needing the mind to think about it first.
The remnant charged again.
Yūta turned instead of blocking — he let the remnant's momentum pass beside him and used that second of imbalance to bring the dagger to its right side, this time with the correct angle to find something softer than the exterior density.
The remnant made a sound.
Yūta repositioned.
He waited.
The remnant took longer to recover this time. When it advanced again there was something different in the movement — more cautious, like something that has received enough information about what it is facing to stop underestimating it.
Yūta activated the mana again —
What followed was faster and cleaner than the previous exchange. The remnant was strong but predictable once Yūta found the pattern — it always attacked from the same angle when closing the distance, always from the right first, and that consistency was enough for someone who had identified it to know exactly when and where to be.
The final blow came when the remnant repeated the pattern one more time — Yūta moved to the left instead of the right, letting the movement pass through where he was no longer standing, and the dagger found the point he had marked before with all the concentrated mana of that specific instant.
The remnant went still.
Then it dissolved — not with light but with that sudden absence that was the sign that something had ended.
Yūta lowered the dagger.
He breathed.
And then he heard the second one.
It did not come from where the first had come from — it came from above, from the edge of the wall they had jumped before, with the speed of something that had been watching for a while and had chosen this specific moment to intervene.
Yūta looked up.
The second remnant was different from the first — leaner, with an agility visible in the way it landed in the yard making almost no sound, with eyes that had that same white without pupil, but with something additional that the first had not had — an attention that was more specific, more calculated.
"Another one?" said Yūta, quietly.
The remnant did not respond.
It charged.
This one was harder.
Not because it was stronger in absolute terms but because it was more intelligent in tactical terms — it used the space of the yard in a way the first had not considered, pushing Yūta towards the angles where the washing on the line and the knocked-over plant pot limited his movement. Every time Yūta tried to reposition himself the remnant was already in the place that blocked the best option.
Yūta took a strike to his left side that knocked the air out of him.
Another to his right forearm that was already protesting from the shoulder.
He moved back, gaining distance, trying to reset his reading of the situation with a mind that still had the noise of the first fight on top of it.
Two in the same place, he thought. That's not a coincidence.
The remnant advanced without hurry.
Yūta activated the mana — what he had left available after the first fight, which was less than usual but enough for something. This time he did not distribute it evenly but concentrated it in his legs, changing tactics — if he could not match the remnant's force in direct exchange he could match its mobility.
It worked better.
The next exchanges were more even — Yūta moving faster than the remnant expected, using the space of the yard rather than letting it be used by it, finding the angles the washing on the line created instead of allowing them to trap him.
The remnant adjusted.
Yūta adjusted too.
They continued like this for longer than either of the previous two fights had lasted — an exchange of adjustments, each responding to the other, with Yūta's mana dropping gradually while the remnant did not appear to have that kind of visible limit.
When the mana went out for the second time, Yūta's right shoulder had ceased to be a useful option, his left side was reminding him of the earlier strike with every breath, and the dagger was in his left hand, which was what remained.
The remnant looked at him.
Yūta looked at it.
Kaito hit me in the stomach until I couldn't take any more, he thought. This isn't worse than that.
It was not completely true, but it served.
He charged.
He did not wait for the remnant to come to him — he went at it with everything he had, using momentum rather than force, and the remnant that had been waiting for Yūta to defend was not entirely prepared for Yūta to attack.
The dagger found the neck.
The remnant went still.
It dissolved.
Yūta stood in the back yard with the washing moving gently in the wind and the knocked-over plant pot on the ground and the silence of Misato at that hour of the morning as though nothing had happened.
He lowered the dagger.
He looked at his hands.
His right shoulder was going to need ice. His left side too. The mana was completely spent and was not going to be available again for a while.
Two remnants in the same place, he thought again.
It was not a coincidence. It could not be.
He put the dagger away and took out his phone.