The white hospital loomed against the night sky of Nagoya, its windows lit like eyes that never sleep. From the outside, it seemed calm. From the inside, it always was, in that particular way places that live with death learn to feign calm.
In Room 304, Yūta Amane had been talking to himself for nearly an hour.
He was seventeen, with black hair slightly longer than his school regulations allowed, and a face people described as calm, never quite knowing whether it was true calm or just exceptionally well-controlled. He was neither tall nor short, neither the sort to fill a room nor the sort to disappear entirely. There was something in the way he sat, in the way he listened, that made people, without realising it, speak more than they intended.
At that moment, he was perched on the blue plastic chair of Room 304, elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor, speaking to someone who could not answer.
It was not the first time. Nor would it be the last.
His father lay with his eyes closed, connected to a machine that breathed for him with a mechanical patience Yūta had never quite been able to imitate. Kenji Amane had been a man of average build and few words, the kind who didn't need much to make his presence felt. Now his hair was a little longer than Yūta remembered, because no one had cut it as often as he would have liked, and his hands rested across his chest in that stillness which, even after three years, was hard to watch for long.
Three years. Three years of that rhythmic sound, that blinking green light, that bed smelling of antiseptic and something else harder to name.
"Three years, old man," Yūta said, without lifting his eyes from the floor. "Three years, and I still don't know what to say when I come. So I tell you things. Things about school, things about the street, whatever. I suppose it's better than silence."
He paused.
"Today, Mori Daiki almost made the history teacher cry by asking if he had lived through the Second World War. The man's forty. It was the best thing all week," he added with a short laugh.
Somewhere in the corridor, a cart squeaked. Yūta waited for the noise to pass before continuing.
"Seki says I should study more. Nao says I should sleep more. They're probably both right, and they'll probably keep saying it until I graduate."
He pulled out his phone out of habit. The screen read 12:07.
"Shit," he muttered, standing abruptly.
He slung his backpack over one shoulder and glanced at his father a moment longer, as if wanting to say something important but finding neither the words nor the time.
"I'll come tomorrow," he said finally, his voice lighter than he felt. "At least try not to get bored in the meantime."
He closed the door slowly.
His smile lasted exactly as long as it took to hear the click of the lock.
He took the stairs down on foot because the lift at that hour was too slow. At reception, two nurses looked up as he appeared. They already knew him. They already knew his name without him needing to say it.
"Good evening, Amane. Everything alright?" asked the older nurse, a woman in her fifties with her hair tied back and thin-rimmed glasses.
"All fine, Tanaka," Yūta replied, leaning his hands on the counter and offering the smile he reserved for these moments—a smile that cost nothing and said nothing. "I fell asleep talking to him again. I need to learn to set an alarm."
The younger nurse chuckled.
"Rest well, tomorrow's Friday."
"That's what I keep telling myself."
He stepped out into the night with his hands in his pockets, walking home unhurriedly.
The alarm rang at quarter past seven, with that specifically cruel energy only Friday alarms possess.
Yūta turned it off without opening his eyes. Then he turned it off again. Then he lay staring at the ceiling for exactly a minute before accepting that the day had started without asking permission.
He showered with the hottest water he could bear, ate cold rice in front of the television no one was watching, and stepped out into the morning cold with his backpack slung over one shoulder and his headphones on, though he was listening to nothing.
They found him two blocks from school, as they did every Friday.
"You're late," said Seki Haruto, without looking up from his phone.
Seki Haruto was the kind of person who made everyone else feel slightly disorganised by comparison. He carried his backpack on both shoulders, uniform buttoned up perfectly to the top, black hair arranged with near-offensive precision for seven in the morning. He was slim, direct-eyed, expression neutral—the type to process a situation before reacting, which made him a friend who was rarely dramatic and an opponent exhausting in any argument.
"I'm exactly on time," replied Yūta.
"You're late."
"On time."
"Technically—" Mori Daiki appeared behind them, carrying a bag of bread. "If school starts in twenty minutes and it takes fifteen to get there, Yūta arrives with five minutes to spare, which is—"
"Late," repeated Seki Haruto.
"Heroically punctual," Mori Daiki concluded, offering a piece of bread to Yūta, who took it without hesitation.
Mori Daiki was the complete opposite of Seki Haruto, which explained both why they got along and why they contradicted each other in almost everything. He was broad-shouldered, with dark brown hair always slightly messy and an expression that suggested he had just had the best idea of his life—or was about to regret it—often both at once. He radiated energy, filling the available space, or creating space where none existed.
Fujiwara Nao walked alongside Yūta, hands in her pockets, eyes squinting against the morning sun. She was the quietest of the group, in the sense that a scalpel is quieter than a hammer—not because she had nothing to say, but because she chose carefully when and how to speak.
"Did you sleep?" she asked bluntly.
"Some."
"How much is 'some'?"
"Enough to function."
Nao shot him a sidelong glance, that expression she wore when she decided it wasn't worth pressing further—for now.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got right now."
They walked the rest of the way with Mori Daiki talking about football training, Seki Haruto correcting him each time he exaggerated, and Yūta listening half-heartedly while finishing his bread. It was a normal Friday. Nagoya smelled of dampness and waking city streets. Nothing at that moment suggested it would be Yūta Amane's last normal Friday for a long time.
Mr Yamada had been explaining the Edo-period taxation system for twenty minutes when Yūta closed his eyes for what he estimated would be five seconds.
It was far longer than five seconds.
When he opened them, Mr Yamada stood at the front, looking at him with the patience of someone who had spent years dealing with sleepy teenagers. The entire classroom was silent.
"Welcome back, Amane," said the teacher, his tone more tired than angry.
Yūta sat up slowly, ran a hand through his hair, and smiled with just enough guilt.
"Sorry, sir. It won't happen again."
"You said that on Tuesday."
"This time I mean it more."
Someone in the back row stifled a laugh. Mr Yamada sighed the way men who have seen too much sigh, and returned to the blackboard without another word.
Seki Haruto leaned slightly from the desk beside him.
"You got lucky," he whispered. "With Kobayashi, you'd be staying an hour after class."
Yūta nodded without replying, staring at the board without really seeing it.
When the recess bell rang, Mori Daiki was already on his feet before the last echo had faded.
"Tonight," he announced with the solemnity of someone declaring something important, "my house. The usual. Video games, drinks, and Seki Haruto losing the same game he always loses."
"I've never lost," said Seki Haruto.
"Seki Haruto losing," Mori Daiki repeated, ignoring him completely. "And Yūta?"
Yūta hesitated.
"I don't know. I've got things."
"Things?"
"Things."
Mori Daiki opened his mouth to insist but the bell rang before he could finish.
The afternoon found them walking together along the usual route, the sun already dipping over Nagoya's rooftops, traffic noise blending with chatter and backpack straps.
"You really can't come?" asked Mori Daiki, returning to the subject with relentless persistence.
"I'm going to see my father," said Yūta.
There was a brief silence, honest rather than uncomfortable.
"Oh," said Mori Daiki, adding nothing further.
Seki Haruto also said nothing, only nodding slightly, hands in pockets.
At the corner where paths diverged, Mori Daiki tapped Yūta on the shoulder in his version of 'see you later,' and Seki Haruto raised a hand without turning fully. Both turned right and vanished into the crowd.
Fujiwara Nao stayed.
They walked half a block in silence before she spoke.
"Do you want me to come with you?" The question came faster than she likely intended, eyes forward, cheeks slightly flushed.
Yūta looked at her for a moment.
"I don't want to bother you."
"You're not bothering me."
"Nao."
"Really, I'm not—"
"Thanks," he said with a calm, unmocking smile. "But I'll be fine."
Nao pressed her lips briefly, then nodded.
"Alright," she said. "Eat something before you go. You look like you haven't eaten properly all day."
"I had bread this morning."
"That's not eating."
"It's a start."
Nao huffed and walked away without another word. Yūta watched her go before continuing on his path.
His nap was meant to be twenty minutes.
It lasted three hours.
Yūta opened his eyes in the darkness of his room, saw 21:14 on the phone screen, and shot out of bed, heart racing. He grabbed his backpack, keys, jacket, and ran without even putting on his headphones.
He ran most of the way.
Tanaka greeted him from reception with the usual expression.
"Late tonight, Amane."
"Lost track of time," Yūta said, climbing the stairs. "I'm coming down."
Room 304 was as always. The machine breathing. The blinking green light. His father with eyes closed in that stillness Yūta still couldn't stop finding unsettling.
He sat in the usual chair and ran a hand over his face.
"Sorry I'm late," he said. "I fell asleep. I know it's no excuse, but it's what happened."
There was no answer. There never had been.
"I was thinking about school today," he continued, elbows on knees. "Mr Yamada caught me sleeping again. Almost sent me to the office. Seki says I should take things more seriously. That if I want to get into medicine, I need to start trying now."
He smiled unconsciously.
"Medicine," he said aloud. The word sounded different in that room, in front of that bed. "I still want that. To help people. I don't know if I'm smart enough, but…"
He stopped.
The sound had changed.
Not suddenly. Not like an alarm or a shout. It simply ceased, with the silent naturalness of something ending.
The line on the monitor was flat.
Yūta stared at it for a second that felt much longer. Then two. Then three.
He rose slowly. His legs obeyed, though he had not given them the order. He walked to the bed and took his father's hand, still warm, a warmth that lingers and makes everything harder.
He said nothing.
There was nothing to say that wasn't too late.
After a moment whose length he could not gauge, he released the hand, wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, and walked to the door.
He had to alert the nurses.
He opened it.
The corridor was dark.
Not dim, not low-lit. Dark in a way that made no sense, because less than an hour ago he had walked this same corridor with the hospital lights on, white as always. Now there was nothing. Only a dense darkness stopping precisely at the threshold of the room, as if Room 304 were the last island of light in something nameless.
At the end of the corridor, a figure.
A nurse, by silhouette. Standing, motionless, about twenty metres away.
Yūta inhaled. He told himself it was a power cut. They had generators. There had to be an explanation.
He stepped towards the figure.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice strange in that darkness, far too small. "I need a doctor, my father—"
The figure turned.
Yūta froze.
The nurse's eyes were wide, completely white, her face fixed in an expression that was no expression. She collapsed silently, as if some invisible strings had been cut.
And then Yūta saw it.
Beyond her, in the shadows where the light ended, there was a creature. No defined shape, a colour somewhere between violet and green that should not exist in anything living. A single, enormous eye, lidless, observing not intelligently but something worse—purely instinctive, utterly hungry. Beside it, on the floor, lay something Yūta recognised, after a second, as a person.
It took that second because it no longer looked entirely human.
Yūta's brain processed everything in the time fear becomes physical—that moment when it leaves thought and becomes weight in the chest, heaviness in the legs.
He ran.
He slammed the door, locking it with hands that barely obeyed him. He pressed against the wood and listened.
Silence.
Then, from the other side of the corridor, something moved—not like a step, but like movement.
Through the crack under the door came a strip of that unnatural darkness. In it, Yūta saw, reflected in the slit, that single eye staring straight at him.
It was watching him.
It knew exactly where he was.
Yūta stepped away from the door, looking around the room. The machine off. The bed. The chair. The window with the curtains half-drawn.
The curtains.
He crossed the room in three strides, tore the curtain rod from its rail with a sharp strike, and turned just as the door swung inward.
The creature filled the doorway with its impossible form. Its eye found him instantly. And then, in that face that was not a face, something appeared that took Yūta a moment to recognise.
A smile.
He gripped the rod with both hands.
He had no plan. No rational reason to believe a curtain rod would help against whatever was staring at him. But staying still felt worse than any alternative.
So he didn't stay still.