Seikyou Academy gates groaned open like a secret unveiled too late.
Teiichi waited alone, wind whipping around his jacket, thick with dust and the scent of aged paper and sakura long gone. The sun was low — that quiet, golden hour when everything feels a little more like yesterday.
Seven years.
That's been all the time since he'd last been here. Since she disappeared.
Yuuko.
The name lingered in his mind like a muted-rung bell. It haunted him in dreams, invaded quiet hours, and never dissipated. No other person remembered her. No other person was sufficiently courageous to speak about spirits anymore. But Teiichi did.
He traversed the overgrown courtyard, each sound of his footsteps crunching under the weight of years. Ivy covered the windows now. Creaking wood flaked away beneath him as he walked.
He didn't know why he came back.
Maybe he needed closure. Maybe he needed to forget her right. Maybe he just missed the way she used to taunt him when the world felt like it was on the verge of disintegration, and she was the only one holding the pieces together.
The creaky door of the old school building opened easily with less effort than he expected. As if it had been waiting.
He strode down the corridors — frayed posters still plastered on the walls, scattered chairs as if the kids had just left. Dust suspended in the air, caught in streaks of spent sunlight.
The Paranormal Investigations Club room was just as he had abandoned it.
Table. Tea set. Mirror.
Her place.
Teiichi hesitated before stepping inside, something balled up in his chest. All was still. Frozen in space, as though the world had stopped breathing.
Then — something changed.
In the mirror.
Not his reflection. Not a trick of the light.
Her.
She came closer slowly, bare feet silent on the wood. Her hair cascaded like water silk, and her eyes — warm gold and far too alive — met his.
"You actually came back," she said.
Teiichi's heart hammered achingly. "Yuuko…?"
Her smile curved softly, faint but familiar. "I thought maybe you'd forgotten me. But you hadn't."
"I couldnt."
She stepped forward, not touching the ground, not touching anything. As always.
But she looked real. Softer. Sad.
"This place should've forgotten me," she said, voice like the dusk itself — quiet and lovely and vanishing. "But you didn't. That was enough."
"Enough for what?" he asked.
The mirror flickered.
Her smile faded. "To wake me up."
And behind her, in the shattered reflection, something dark stirred. Watching.