Chapter 1 — The Sound of the Bell
Ren already knew that image.
Not the full face. Not a name. Not a complete memory.
Only fragments.
Pink hair swaying in the wind. A quiet presence. A strange sense of longing, as if his chest recognized someone his mind had never been able to reach.
In the dream, he stood before an ancient stone staircase. Mist covered the steps, bells hung from red pillars, and petals drifted through the air even though no trees were nearby. Everything felt distant, drowned in white light.
The girl stood at the top of the stairs.
Long, loose pink hair. Eyes he could never quite make out. A pale dress moving as if touched by a breeze from another world.
She looked at him as though she had been waiting for him for a very long time.
Ren tried to climb the steps.
One.
Two.
Three.
The ground trembled.
The mist thickened, swallowing his feet, his hands, his chest. The girl's figure began to dissolve into the white.
"Wait..." he called, his voice low and weak.
She slowly raised one hand.
Then the sound of a bell echoed through the emptiness.
Ren opened his eyes.
The dull-colored ceiling of his apartment welcomed him back.
For a few seconds, he stayed still, breathing slowly, trying to hold onto the image before it slipped away again. It did not help. Just like every other time, the dream began to fall apart the moment he woke up. All that remained was the weight in his chest.
The pink-haired girl.
Always her.
Since childhood.
And he had never known who she was.
Ren rubbed his face, let out a breath through his nose, and sat up in bed. The small room was messy in the usual way. Clothes tossed over the chair. An empty mug on the table. Payment notices piled near the closed laptop. The curtain barely covered the window, letting the gray morning light in without asking.
His phone vibrated on the dresser.
He picked it up and saw two bank notifications, an automatic reminder about a bill due date, and a message from his landlord asking, in a tone that was too polite to be kind, when the overdue rent would be settled.
Ren stared at the screen for a few seconds, then locked it.
"Great," he muttered.
He got up, went to the bathroom, and splashed water on his face. The reflection in the mirror gave him back the same tired expression as always. Slightly messy black hair. Blue eyes with no light in them at that hour. Eighteen years old, yet looking like he had already been pushed past his limit.
He braced himself against the sink.
Another day.
More spreadsheets.
More numbers that were not his.
More debts that were.
The apartment was small, silent, and cheap enough to fit inside a budget that barely existed. Ren had lived alone long enough to get used to the absence of any other presence inside those walls. Even so, sometimes the silence felt too large.
He grabbed the white coat with blue details hanging behind the door. It was not new, but it was still in decent shape. He put it on, adjusted the collar, and left without eating breakfast.
The morning air outside was cold.
The city had already fully awakened. Cars, hurried footsteps, storefront lights, people carrying their own problems as they passed him without noticing he existed. Ren liked that. There was a kind of peace in indifference.
At the accounting office, time always moved the same way: far too slowly.
Ren spent the morning surrounded by numbers, reports, spreadsheets, invoices, and the dull hum of the air conditioner. He answered what he needed to, did what he was told, and avoided conversation. He did not hate the job. Hatred required too much energy. He simply endured it.
During the break, while some coworkers laughed near the break room, he stood by the hallway window with a cup of bad coffee in his hand.
Sometimes he felt like something was wrong with his life, as if he were walking in the wrong place while wearing a name that did not completely fit him yet. It was not a clear thought. More like an old discomfort, deep and impossible to explain.
Maybe it was just exhaustion.
Maybe it was the debt.
Maybe it was the dreams.
By the time he left work, the sky was already dark. Night fell cold, painting the storefronts and signs with scattered reflections. Ren slipped his hands into the pockets of his coat and walked a few blocks.
He stopped at a convenience store open twenty-four hours, bought something cheap to eat and a bottle of water, then left a few minutes later with the plastic bag in his hand.
That was when he saw her.
A girl was crouched near the wall of a building, a little away from the main street. Her shoulders trembled, and her face was lowered as if she were trying to hide from the rest of the world. Her crying was quiet, but constant.
Ren stopped on instinct.
Normally, he would have kept walking.
That was what almost anyone else would do.
He knew that.
But something about the scene bothered him.
Maybe it was the time. Maybe it was the place. Maybe it was the way she seemed completely alone.
He let out a short sigh and changed direction.
"Hey."
The girl did not answer.
Ren stepped a little closer, keeping enough distance not to scare her.
"Are you okay?"
She slowly lifted her head.
She looked young. Maybe his age, maybe younger. Her face was wet with tears. Her eyes, however, had something wrong with them. It was not the color. It was the depth. As if there were a void inside them.
Ren frowned.
"Are you lost?"
The girl sniffed and pressed one hand to her chest.
"I..." Her voice came out weak. "I don't know."
"Don't know what?"
She stared at him for a second too long.
"I don't know who killed me."
The air suddenly seemed to turn colder.
Ren went silent.
The street, which until then still carried some distant noise, now felt emptier.
"What?"
The girl tilted her head.
Her crying stopped.
In an instant, her expression changed. It was not anger. It was not sadness. It was something broken, twisted, like a mask slipping off her face.
"I don't remember," she said, and now her voice sounded as if it came from somewhere much deeper. "I don't remember the face. I don't remember the voice. I don't remember anything."
Ren took half a step back.
The skin on his arms prickled.
The girl slowly stood up.
"But it hurts," she continued. "It hurts so much that I can't stop searching."
The plastic bag in Ren's hand crumpled.
"You..."
She smiled.
It was a horrible smile.
"Maybe if I kill someone... it'll go away."
Ren did not wait for her to finish.
He turned the instant she lunged.
The sound of her movement was wrong—sharp, dry, like wind cutting through metal. Something passed where his neck had been a second earlier and slammed into the wall behind him, tearing chunks from the concrete.
Ren's eyes widened.
He ran.
His footsteps hit the damp pavement fast. He turned the corner without looking back and heard her right behind him, too light for a human body, too fast for any normal person.
"Hey!" the girl's voice echoed, distorted, louder now. "Why are you running?"
Ren clenched the bag until it tore. The bottle fell, rolled across the ground, and stayed behind.
That was not normal.
That could not be normal.
He turned down another street, breathing harder. His heart pounded heavily, but the sound of her footsteps behind him did not fade.
"I just want to know!" she shouted, almost laughing. "What does it feel like to die?"
Ren glanced over his shoulder.
She was running in a way that felt wrong, her body leaning too far forward, her hair flying as if it no longer obeyed the wind. A dark shadow spilled from her feet like liquid smoke.
Spirit.
The word surfaced in his mind for no reason.
Or maybe not for no reason.
Instinct.
Fear.
Something worse.
Ren darted into a narrow alley between two buildings and realized too late that he had run into a dead end.
He stopped abruptly.
The wall at the end was too high. The side walls were smooth. No ladder, no door, no low window. Nothing.
Damn it.
He turned around.
The girl was already standing at the entrance of the alley.
The shadow around her seemed thicker now. The tears had stopped. Her face was tilted at an almost childish angle, but her empty eyes stared at Ren with hunger.
"You run fast," she said.
Ren took one step back until his shoulders hit the wall.
The alley was freezing cold.
She moved closer, slowly savoring the shrinking distance.
"I wonder..." she murmured. "If I tear off your face, will I remember my killer?"
Ren clenched his teeth.
No weapon.
No escape.
No one nearby.
The girl lunged.
Everything froze.
Not figuratively.
Actually froze.
The air stopped. Sound vanished. The shadow on the ground hung motionless. Even the dust floating before Ren's eyes seemed trapped in place.
His eyes widened.
Had time... stopped?
In the absolute silence, something crossed his mind.
The image of pink hair.
The same girl from the dream.
Long, soft strands dancing in white and mist. A gaze he could never fully see. A longing with no origin. A presence his heart recognized before any thought could catch it.
Then came the sound.
A bell.
Clear. Pure. Singular.
Ring.
A cold light filled the alley.
Right in front of Ren, a circle of blue energy opened in the air, delicate and deadly at the same time. Petals appeared from nowhere, spinning as if carried by an invisible wind.
And then she appeared.
A white dress.
Long, loose pink hair.
Blue eyes so clear that, for a moment, Ren forgot how to breathe.
The girl stood between him and the cursed spirit as if that were the place she had always belonged. A katana rested in her hand, its pale blade reflecting blue light. At the end of the hilt, a small sakura-shaped charm swayed gently.
The spirit recoiled in sudden terror, its expression twisting in pure fear.
The newcomer said nothing.
She stepped forward.
Just once.
Her blade cut through the air.
There was no exaggerated motion. No visible effort. Only a streak of blue light crossing the alley.
The next instant, the spirit split apart.
Her body dissolved into dark fragments and shining particles, as if it had never truly been solid. The echo of a scream broke halfway through and died before it could be born.
Silence returned.
So did time.
The distant sounds of the city slowly came back, as if the world had remembered how to breathe.
Ren remained still, unable to process what he had just seen.
The pink-haired girl lowered her katana.
Then she turned toward him.
Those blue eyes rested on his face with an intensity that made something inside his chest tighten for no reason he could explain.
She looked at him like someone who had finally found what she had been searching for after crossing centuries.
Then her lips moved.
"Ren," she said, and her voice was too beautiful, too calm, too intimate for a stranger. "You finally came back."
He blinked once.
Twice.
His throat went dry.
"...What?"
She kept looking at him as if the question itself were impossible.
And Ren, pressed against the cold wall of a dead-end alley, with his heart still pounding and the sound of that bell still echoing somewhere inside his soul, realized only one thing:
His life had just changed.
End of Chapter 1