The afternoon sun pooled warmly over the courtyard, glazing the rooftops in soft gold. Aira sat on the stone ledge overlooking the lower campus. She could see the city stretching outward in layers of glass and steel, students moved far below like drifting figures in a painting, but she barely registered them.

  She’d been excited for this meetup all morning. Giddy, even. Catching up with Hyakki after three years felt like reclaiming a piece of her life she thought she’d lost. But every time she tried to settle into that excitement, her mind replayed last night’s argument with Akio.

  His reaction had stung more than she wanted to admit.

  He just had to bring up responsibility. Consideration. Character flaws. He’d dissected Hyakki like a case file instead of just being happy for her. And the worst part? She couldn’t even write off everything he said. Not when some of it had hit uncomfortably close.

  Aira pressed her elbows to her knees, chin resting in her palms.

  “He just doesn’t get it,” she muttered under her breath.

  She looked up just in time for Hyakki to vault onto the ledge in one smooth motion, settling beside her with that effortlessly casual grace she both admired and resented him for. His low ponytail shifted in the breeze; the faint smirk he offered was equal parts familiar and irritatingly smug.

  “About time,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder. “What took you so long?”

  “Had a few things to take care of,” he replied, voice easy, posture relaxed. “Sorry about that.”

  “Well, you’re here now,” she said, smile tugging at her lips despite everything. “How’s living with Runa and Kairo?”

  Hyakki let out a quiet breath of amusement. “Not bad. Runa’s great. Kairo keeps starting dumb competitions for no reason.”

  Aira laughed. “Yeah, that sounds exactly like something he’d do. Runa told us a story about one of those.”

  Hyakki tilted his head, eyeing her with mild interest. “You live with your brother, right? How’s that going?”

  The question hit harder than it should have.

  Aira’s swing of her legs slowed. Her gaze drifted out over the city again, but the view blurred behind the memory of Akio’s cool stare, his clinical tone, the way he’d said friends don’t disappear during the worst year of your life.

  “Oh. Yeah,” she said lightly, forcing her voice upward. “It’s good.”

  She kicked her heels once, twice—trying to shake the discomfort off.

  Then, as always, her honesty won.

  She inhaled, then said bluntly, “I told my brother about you last night after hot pot. And… I don’t think he likes you.”

  Hyakki shrugged lightly, looking out over the campus with a detached sort of humor.

  “Can’t blame him,” he said. “I don’t like me either. Did he say why, though?”

  Aira bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah. He said you seem like a bad influence. Kinda irresponsible. And… inconsiderate. Because you ghosted me for three years.”

  Hyakki nodded once, slow and unsurprised. “Yeah. That’s fair.”

  For a long moment, Aira simply stared at him—caught between the sharp edge of resentment and the softer ache of relief. Hyakki had always been impossible to read, but now the distance between them felt like a wall she couldn’t climb, a three year silence sitting heavy in the space he’d left vacant.

  Finally, she turned toward him fully.

  “Why did you ghost me for so long?” she said, voice low, “Where were you? You never told me anything.”

  Hyakki ran a hand through his long hair, exhaling as though the question weighed more than he wanted to admit.

  “It’s… nothing interesting,” he murmured. “I was mostly just trying to keep myself together, honestly.”

  Aira’s brows pinched. “That’s so vague. What does that even mean?”

  He shook his head gently, eyes dropping. “There was just… a lot going on. Too much. I was a mess. I couldn’t do anything for a while.”

  Aira pressed. “But like—what are the specifics? Did someone die? Did something happen to your family?”

  His gaze flickered away, shadows slipping behind his expression.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “But… it’s probably best you don’t know.”

  The answer sank like a stone. Not enough. Not even close. Aira wanted the truth, but she could see in the way he closed himself off that pushing harder would only make him retreat. Still, the refusal stung, reopening the raw place Akio’s words had pressed the night before.

  She forced a breath through her nose, looking away to hide the hurt.

  “You weren’t the only one in a dark place, you know,” she muttered, bitterness slipping out before she could stop it.

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  Hyakki lifted his head slightly, considering her in a long, searching silence.

  “I… know a little,” he admitted quietly. “Just pieces. Not the whole thing.”

  Aira crossed her arms, the old memories stirring like something waking under her skin. She swallowed, feeling the tremor in her voice before she even spoke.

  “I was almost killed by the Hollow.”

  The world around her faded as the memory surged forward.

  It had been a normal evening. She and Yoru were walking to Yoru’s dorm, laughing about nothing in particular.

  But then everything went black.

  When she came to, she was underground. The air was stale and metallic, the only light a harsh, pulsing red that flickered down the narrow tunnels. Her chest ached—blindingly, nauseatingly. And all around her… bodies.

  Strangers in unfamiliar uniforms lay crumpled where they’d fallen, blood pooling beneath them, already cooling. No movement. No breath. Just death.

  Aira had forced herself up, heart hammering, slipping between the bodies as quietly as she could. The tunnels branched endlessly, sirens wailing distantly like trapped animals. With every step, the ache in her chest worsened—sharp, dragging, wrong.

  She reached a clearing where several tunnels met, each mouth yawning into pitch darkness. She tried to pick a path, squinting into the gloom—

  —and then something looked back.

  A single red eye opened in the dark.

  Her breath stopped. Her blood turned to ice.

  The Hollow stepped forward—clad in shifting black, a corrupted scimitar in one hand, its infected metal rippling like something alive. Segmented links coiled and uncoiled around the blade like a serpent of rot.

  Aira stumbled back, panic clawing up her throat—when a metallic chittering echoed through the tunnels. M.A.W. Anomalies spilled into the clearing from every direction, surrounding her, hemming her in until there was nowhere to run.

  The Hollow walked toward her slowly. Inevitable. Unhurried. Certain.

  Aira had barely managed a step back before the figure moved—faster than she could track. A sharp crack of metal. A flash of black.

  Then pain. White hot. Devastating.

  The scimitar buried itself straight into her chest.

  The world dissolved, sound collapsing into a dull buzz. She remembered looking up, vision dimming, the Hollow’s single red eye staring down at her with absolute emptiness. No rage. No triumph. Just cold intent.

  Warmth drained from her body as if being siphoned away. Her legs gave out. Her fingers slipped. And she collapsed into the spreading pool of her own blood.

  Aira blinked hard, dragging herself back into the present as the memory loosened its grip. Her breath trembled on the way out. That old pain still pulsed beneath her ribs like a bruise time refused to let fade. Automatically, she pressed a hand to her chest, grounding herself in the warmth of her own skin, in the sunlit world that still existed around her.

  She inhaled once, then let the words come.

  “When I woke up,” she said softly, “I was in the hospital. Full life support. Tubes everywhere. I could barely move… barely breathe. Everything felt wrong. Like something had been scooped out of me and I couldn’t figure out what.”

  She watched her sneakers sway above the drop, her legs slowly rocking back and forth. The motion made her feel younger, smaller—closer to the girl who had lain in that hospital bed wondering why she was still alive.

  “Those days were a blur,” she continued. “I couldn’t do anything. So all I did was watch the news. And that was when I finally learned what the Hollow had done. All the attacks. All the deaths. How many people it had just—cut down.”

  Her throat tightened. She forced herself to keep talking.

  “Somehow, against all odds, I wasn’t infected by the M.A.W. They kept running tests on me expecting the corruption to show up.”

  She gave a small, humorless laugh. “It never did. And eventually… I made a full recovery. Physically, anyway.”

  Aira’s fingers curled lightly around the edge of the stone ledge.

  “But something still felt missing. Something I couldn’t get back.”

  That hollow emptiness—those first months of recovery when everything felt muted, drained, out of sync with the rest of the world—lingered at the edge of her memory like fog.

  “It made me obsessed with finding out who or what the Hollow was,” she admitted. “I wanted answers. Closure. Something to make sense of why it happened. Why I survived when so many others didn’t.”

  She exhaled sharply through her nose. “The more I learned… the more I hated it. It kills without hesitation. Without purpose. At least Echo has motives, ideology, something. The Hollow just destroys whatever’s in front of it.”

  She swallowed, her voice thinning.

  “That’s why I became a journalist. Why I started my blog. At first it was just for me—for the closure I thought I could get if I dug deep enough. But after the Hollow disappeared, things shifted. I realized there were so many families who never got answers. Never got justice. And even the vigilantes people love, like the Dawn Hound, aren’t spotless. None of them are.”

  Her legs swung a little harder, the rhythm grounding her.

  “But the Hollow?” she whispered. “Out of all of them… it’s the one I still can’t forgive. Not after what it did to me.”

  Aira looked down at her lap, arms wrapping loosely around herself as the sun warmed her shoulders.

  “I’m really lucky to still be here,” she said. “And I never want anyone else to go through what I did.”

  Silence settled over them, quiet and heavy. Beside her, Hyakki remained still, gaze fixed on the people far below. His eyes were distant, darkened by thought. Something in his expression looked almost like remorse. When he finally looked back at her, the faintest crease lined his brow.

  “…I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I had no idea.”

  Aira let out a long, slow breath.

  “Ugh—sorry,” she muttered, rubbing at her eyes. “I don’t… really like talking about heavy stuff. Feels like I’m trauma dumping or whatever.”

  Hyakki shook his head immediately, his voice calm but firm.

  “You’re not.” He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting casually on his knees. “If anything… I’m sorry. I should’ve checked in. I should’ve been a better friend to you back then.”

  Aira snorted, though the sound came out softer than she intended. “Okay, wow. Stop. You’re starting to sound like my brother.”

  That earned the faintest huff of amusement from Hyakki. “Speaking of your brother… what does he even look like? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Oh—Akio?” Aira perked up and immediately pulled out her phone. “Hold on, I have plenty of pictures.” She scrolled through her gallery until she found a recent one of the two of them from earlier this week.

  She held the phone up. “Here.”

  Hyakki leaned in. His eyes softened a little. “You two definitely share a few features,” he said. “I can see the resemblance.”

  Aira grinned. “Hehe, yeah. People say we look alike. But obviously I’m way cuter.”

  “Mm.” Hyakki’s lips curled faintly. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He hesitated, then asked, “So… what’s he like?”

  Aira made a face so dramatic it nearly tipped her backward. “Oh boy. Where do I even start?”

  She threw her hands up.

  “Akio is a weird tryhard nerd who gives lectures on the most random topics. He’s annoyingly perfect at everything. Like, he’ll write a flawless essay in an hour and then go reorganize the kitchen for fun. And he’s so responsible it’s boring.”

  She paused, remembering something—her brows rising as the memory resurfaced.

  “…But,” she added grudgingly, “for some reason he’s also… weirdly fit? We went to the beach earlier this summer and he just—took his shirt off and apparently he has abs now? I don’t know. He said it was his diet or something.”

  Hyakki perked up. “Does he track macronutrients?”

  Aira stared at him, betrayed.

  “Not you too.” She shoved his shoulder lightly. “I swear, if you two start bonding over spreadsheets of food I’m throwing both of you into the ocean.”

  Hyakki only chuckled—soft, warm, the kind she hadn’t heard from him in years. “Alright, alright. No macro talk.” A beat. “But… if I ever meet him, I’ll try to do better this time.”

  There was sincerity there—quiet but unmistakable.

  Hyakki pushed himself off the ledge in one smooth motion. Aira blinked. “Hey—where are you going?”

  He glanced back at her, one brow raised. “You’re not planning to sit here all day, are you?” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I heard there’s a pretty good crepe place nearby.”

  Aira felt a grin bloom across her face before she could stop it. “Oh. Hell yes.”

  She hopped off the ledge, landing beside him with renewed energy. Together, the two of them headed down the walkway—sunlight following them as they slipped easily back into conversation, catching up on all the years they’d lost.

  For the first time in a long time, the weight on her chest felt lighter.

  ─ ? NEXT CHAPTER POV ? ─

  Akio