September 27th, 2022, Tuesday – Exactly one week since Inori's predicament. It was 5:30 PM, and Katsuyama's central shopping street was buzzing with life.
Salarymen in wrinkled suits flowed from office buildings like a slow river, their shoulders heavy with the weight of another finished shift.
Students in uniforms wove between them, housewives carried bags heavy with ingredients for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast.
Street vendors called out with practiced enthusiasm, the sizzle of takoyaki and the sweet scent of roasting chestnuts drifting on the chill air. Bicycles rang their bells as they passed. The low autumn sun painted the streets in warm orange hues, yet the coming winter already whispered in the sharpening breeze.
Tucked between two larger buildings stood a modest Japanese-style shop. A faded red banner hung above the entrance, its bold black kanji reading "Tengokyu Family Store." Outside, an elderly owner tended a small onigiri stand, his wrinkled hands moving with deliberate care as he dusted the wooden counter. His gaze occasionally drifted toward the narrow alley directly across from his stall, then returned to his work.
In the shadows of that alley, something stirred.
Trash shifted with a soft rustle. It was not a rat.
Tabata Inori sat with her legs folded beneath her and arms crossed tightly over her chest, head bowed in quiet defeat. Seven days of exposure had left their mark. The once-white bands of cloth that wrapped her body were now stained with dirt and grime.
She smelled the air of the streets — sweat, garbage, and the faint metallic tang that never quite left her skin. Rats and cockroaches moved around her as indifferent neighbors.
She had walked far from the warehouse where she first woke. She had tried, more than once, to explain to kind-looking adults that she was the daughter of the Prime Minister.
Each attempt had ended the same way: worried frowns, gentle suggestions to stop such a sensitive prank, and the slow realization that no one believed her. Not when the news had already declared her dead.
Inori slowly lifted her dirt-smeared face toward the street. Her gaze settled on the onigiri stand across the way. The old man's careful movements, the simple rice balls wrapped in seaweed, they held her attention for a long minute.
Her lips parted, voice hoarse and dry.
"I… I am… sooo hungry…"
Her hand pressed against her stomach as it gave a low, painful grumble.
'I saw this coming, but… the leftover rice I found in the trash isn't sitting well.' The memory brought a faint wave of nausea.
A single tear traced a clean line down her grimy cheek and landed on her folded arms.
"I… I want to go home."
The words were barely a whisper, swallowed by the evening chatter of the street. She refused to beg, thinking Father would be ashamed if his daughter lowered herself like a common beggar. Yet the hunger gnawed deeper with every passing hour.
Her eyes remained fixed on the onigiri stand. The old man noticed. Pity softened the lines of his wrinkled face as he watched the small, dirty girl sitting motionless for hours.
He said nothing. No one else did either. Pedestrians passed the alley without a second glance. Inori stole quiet looks at their faces, sometimes offering a weak greeting when eyes met hers. Most looked away.
A thin strand of saliva escaped the corner of her mouth. She wiped it absently, still staring.
'These clothes… can I even call them that? They're quite strange…'
She ran her fingers along the fabric. It felt impossibly smooth, warm despite the chill, and far more durable than it had any right to be. She had tested it with sharp fragments of glass and metal during the long nights. Nothing left more than faint marks.
'Good thing it's snug and warm, though. The weather is getting colder.'
A faint, bittersweet smile touched her lips. Not everything was terrible.
Yet the problems piled higher. Hunger clawed at her constantly. Rashes itched across her skin. Her body ached from sleeping on concrete and mud. And she had not used the bathroom in days, the tight wrapping made it nearly impossible, adding a layer of constant discomfort she tried not to dwell on.
Speaking to herself had become her only companionship. The words helped keep the silence at bay.
Eventually the hunger pangs grew too sharp. Inori pulled a discarded newspaper over herself like a thin blanket and closed her eyes, hoping rest would dull the pain, if only for a little while.
Her gaze caught the headline on the crumpled sheet before sleep claimed her:
"Tragic news: Prime Minister's daughter, Tabata Inori passes away on her birthday."
She read the line once, twice. A soft, disgusted chuckle escaped her.
"How… unsettling…"
The shudder that followed was deeper than the evening cold. All of it had been real. It made no sense, yet it was true. The Prime Minister's daughter was "dead." The proof lay in black and white, printed for the entire country to read.
With that tangible evidence, the identity crisis that had been quietly growing inside her deepened. Who was she, if the world had already buried her? The question sat heavy in her chest as exhaustion finally pulled her under.
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The streets had grown quieter by the time she stirred again. Crickets sang from every corner. What was meant to be a short nap had stretched into six long hours.
Hunger, her only faithful companion woke her up. With pangs like needles in her stomach.
It was now 8:30 in the evening, though Inori had no way of knowing the exact time. The sky had deepened to indigo, and moonlight filtered through the clouds in pale silver threads.
Two officers on patrol passed nearby, their flashlights sweeping the sidewalks in slow arcs, searching for any sign of Sinner activity. Inori scrambled to her feet as quietly as her weakened body allowed. A small, ingrained fear of adults had taken root after the police station. She slipped away into the shadows, her bare feet dragging sluggishly along the pavement.
The moonlight cast a serene, almost ethereal glow over the city, painting rooftops and streets in cool tones that stood in cruel contrast to her tattered, filthy state. Every step sent a dull throb through her damaged foot, a constant reminder of the stone that had cut her days ago.
"I'm famished…" she murmured, arms wrapped tightly around her stomach as though trying to hold herself together. "The sleep might have restored some strength… but I'm still hungry… and thirsty."
Her voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper, carried away by the night breeze. The weight of the past week pressed down on her shoulders like an invisible yoke. Each breath felt heavier than the last.
"What… did I do to deserve this?" Tears slipped free again, tracing slow paths through the grime on her cheeks. "Father always called me… a wonderful daughter… so why? Why am I being punished so?"
The questions lingered in the air, unanswered, as she walked. She had wandered far from the place she first woke, yet she remained trapped in Fukui — a city she had never visited before her nightmare began. Her hair appeared dark blue to the eyes of others. Her nails looked painted black. And the world believed Tabata Inori was dead, her body found in perfect condition on the very day that should have been her fourteenth birthday.
The hunger for answers gnawed at her as fiercely as the hunger in her belly.
Leaving the busier streets behind, Inori found herself drawn toward a small forest that branched between two quiet neighborhoods. Tall, dense trees rose around her like silent sentinels, their branches clawing at the moonlight.
They were scattered at the base of a mountain Inori couldn't quite see.
Survival instincts whispered warnings — Sinners could be lurking in such places — yet exhaustion and a desperate need for any form of shelter pushed her onward. She moved deeper into the woods with slow, deliberate steps, each one careful and heavy, her bare feet sinking slightly into the soft earth and fallen leaves.
The forest embraced her in layers of silence. Leaves rustled overhead. A distant owl called once, then fell quiet. The air grew cooler, damper, carrying the rich scent of moss and decaying wood. Inori's ragged breathing seemed too loud in the stillness. She wandered without clear direction, hoping against hope for shelter, for something — anything — that might ease the constant ache in her body.
Time stretched. Minutes bled into what felt like hours. Her legs burned with fatigue. The white bands of cloth clung to her skin, now heavy with dirt and sweat, yet still impossibly warm against the growing chill. She stumbled over a root, caught herself on a tree trunk, and continued.
Another root. Another stumble. Each fall was slower to recover from, her small hands pressing into the earth as she pushed herself upright again.
Her mind drifted in fragments. The Kantei dining room. Her father's rare smile. The birthday that had never come. The radio voice declaring her dead. The truck that had struck her without leaving a mark. The glass shard she could not press to her throat.
"Am I really going to die like this? Me? Father Jiro's daughter?"
The question circled endlessly.
Her steps eventually slowed to a near halt at the edge of a small clearing. The trees there had been deliberately thinned, creating an open space bathed in moonlight.
A house.
A modest Japanese-style inn stood alone in the clearing, its wooden structure weathered but solid. No warm light spilled from its windows. It sat dark and quiet, as though waiting.
Inori's eyes filled with a fragile, trembling hope. For several long moments she simply stood there, breathing hard, staring at the building as if it might vanish if she blinked. Without pausing to question why an inn would stand isolated in the woods, she moved forward — slowly at first, then with renewed, desperate energy. Her bare feet stumbled repeatedly over roots and uneven ground, but she forced herself up each time, hands scraping against bark and dirt.
'Forgive me, Father… but I need to plead for some help.' Her pride, once bright and unyielding, had been worn thin by seven days of hunger and fear. She reached the inn at last, short of breath and trembling, and slid the paper door open with what little strength remained. It moved easily, unlocked.
Inside was darkness and dust. The air carried the faint, stale scent of old wood mixed with something indefinable. Manga volumes and scattered laundry lay across the floor. Inori paid them little mind. She sank down onto the wooden floorboards, the simple relief of sitting indoors after seven days washing over her like a slow, aching wave.
Her legs throbbed with deep, persistent pain. She massaged them slowly, fingers pressing into sore muscles, voice hoarse in the quiet room. "I've been walking for so long without shoes… my feet hurt."
Her face was barely recognizable beneath the grime, hair tangled into knots, the once-white cloth now a mottled gray-brown from days of exposure. She rubbed her sore body gently, feeling only light pains at her waist. Nothing major. Her body was slowly hardening into something rougher, more feral — a ruffian's frame wearing the shell of a Prime Minister's daughter.
The contrast haunted her in the silence. One week ago she had been dining at the Kantei with her father. Now she sat in a stranger's dusty room, forcing a small, fragile smile as she imagined a life here.
'This place doesn't look that bad…' She pointed weakly to her right. "I can imagine myself living here. I'll put a bed here…" Then to her left. "Then a bookshelf here…"
"Yes… this isn't bad at all."
She nodded to herself, the hunger-addled mind clinging to the fantasy like a lifeline. For several long minutes she sat there, letting the quiet wrap around her, pretending the inn could become home. "I-I wonder if there's food here-
The paper door suddenly slid open from the outside with a soft rasp.
Inori's heart lurched violently. She froze for one suspended second, then instinctively scrambled behind a small shelf in the corner, body trembling with the knowledge that she had trespassed into someone else's space.
A figure stepped inside. The voice that followed was unsteady, laced with the haze of liquor.
"Honey! I'm home—!"
English words, oddly accented, then a switch back to Japanese. "Haha, my American accent is getting pretty good!"
He dropped an empty beer bottle outside, wiped his mouth, and stretched. As he moved into the dim interior, moonlight filtering through the open door revealed him: a young man, perhaps two years older than Inori, with long wine-colored hair falling loosely to his nape and across his forehead.
A simple white shirt, stained with dirt and what might have been blood, hung loosely on his frame. Black pants fit him well. In one hand he carried a black-wrapped rod that clanged metallically when dropped.
He was staggeringly beautiful. Features too symmetrical, eyes glowing a faint red with a dark slash in their centers. Resembling a dragons pupil.
Inori's heart hammered against her ribs, loud in the sudden silence. 'Oh no, oh no, oh no....! I am in so much trouble.'
She pressed herself smaller behind the shelf, every muscle tense, already plotting her escape in the heavy quiet that followed.
The young man bent lazily to remove his shoes. In that brief window of distraction, Inori bolted, her frail legs carrying her toward the open door with every ounce of remaining strength.
Their eyes met for one terrible, suspended instant.
'…What a beautiful girl.'
The thought flashed briefly through her mind even as she fled into the moonlit forest.
Behind her, the boy remained crouched for half a second, dumbfounded. Then realization hit.
"W…Wait a minute....! Thief! Thief! Come back here, you son of a bitch!!"
His drunken haze vanished in an instant. He slammed his shoes back on and gave chase, moving with terrifying speed through the trees.
"Ahhhhhh! Why is she so fast!!!!" Inori cried, mistaking him for a girl in her panic as branches whipped past her face.
"Stop right there, criminal scum!!!!"
He gained on her effortlessly, navigating the forest as though it were an extension of himself. Inori's weakened body could not outrun him for long. Each breath burned in her lungs. Her legs screamed with exhaustion.
Out of nowhere, he lunged.
Her back slammed against the cold earth. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a sharp, painful gasp. His hand closed around her throat.
Tight.
Unyielding.
Like an iron choker.
"…I've got you now~"
The drunken playfulness was gone. What remained was something far more dangerous.
Inori's eyes widened in pure terror. Her hands flew to his wrist, nails clawing desperately, but the grip did not budge. Her chest convulsed, fighting for air that would not come. A dry, broken sound escaped her lips.
Her legs kicked weakly against the ground. Vision blurred at the edges. Sound faded until only her own thundering heartbeat remained.
'…I can't… breathe…!'
Tears spilled helplessly as her body trembled beneath him. Her grip weakened. Arms that had clawed frantically now barely clung to his sleeve.
For one terrible moment, her body went still.
"Ah shit." He released her instantly after noticing.
Air rushed back into her lungs in a violent, choking gasp. "—KGH!!"
Inori rolled onto her side, coughing violently, each inhale ragged and painful. She scrambled backward on hands and knees, rubbing her throat, eyes wide with raw terror.
She tried to run again, but his hand closed around her ankle in an inescapable grip.
"Where'd you think you're going?"
The pressure made her cry out. She instinctively covered her head with trembling arms, curling inward.
"P-p-p-please d-don't kill me! Please… I-I-I'm sorry. Please, p-please forgive me…"
She could only beg with a cracking voice. She had no strength left to fight. Her face stayed pressed to the grass and dirt, too afraid to meet his eyes.
The boy stared for a long moment, then rubbed his eyes with his free hand while keeping her pinned.
"Great. Just when I managed to get drunk…" He sighed. "Anyway, what were you doing in my house?"
Inori kept muttering apologies, barely hearing him through the haze of fear.
He snapped his fingers sharply in front of her face. "Oi. I'm talking to you."
She flinched violently.
He sighed again, voice calmer this time. "Look… I'm sorry for almost killing you. I overreacted. Now just return what you stole, okay?"
Inori finally raised her head after several long seconds, tears still streaming. "I… I didn't steal anything… I'm sorry for trespassing. P-please… just let me go…"
The boy sat back, studying her with an absent-minded expression. 'What's with her get-up? Cosplay?' From the neck down she looked like a dirty blue-haired mummy wrapped in bandages.
He gave a half-hearted smile that lasted 2 seconds.
Then — Smack!
A precise strike to the nape of her neck. Inori didn't even have time to react. Consciousness fled instantly, the world fading to black.
The boy scratched his hair, chuckling softly to himself. "It's getting dark… probably better to search her than ask questions. I mean, she looks like a homeless person, and hobos steal, right?"
He searched her carefully, avoiding anything inappropriate. After a few moments he facepalmed, laughing quietly. "She doesn't even have any pockets."
Worry flickered across his face for the briefest instant. "….So she's not a thief?"
He stayed still a moment longer. Feeling bad for not hearing her plea.
"Oh well. Best head back home!"
Any guilt vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He left Inori's unconscious body lying on the forest floor and turned toward his inn.
The time was now 10:50 PM. A full moon bathed the woods in silver light. The area was strangely calm — no sign of Sinners, not even the rustle of wild animals despite being a forest.
At least she could rest in peace… if the night cold and the growing drizzle did not claim her first.
Some time later the rain intensified, pouring unforgivingly onto Inori's motionless form. Water began to pool around her, threatening to slip into her nose and mouth.
A pair of yellow rain boots approached through the downpour. The handsome boy had returned, now wearing a yellow raincoat. He stared down at the girl getting soaked, muttering to himself.
"I can't sleep for some reason…"
His conscience — or whatever faint sense of responsibility remained — had apparently won. He crouched, lifted Inori into his arms with surprising care, and princess carried her back toward the inn, shielding her from the worst of the rain.
"Does this mean I cancel tomorrow's plans?" he said aloud, glancing once at the moon as he walked.
Those were the last words spoken that night.