The return from Hokkaido had felt like the start of a long, peaceful dream—the kind of dream where the sun never truly sets, and the air always carries the scent of pine and promise.
The "Big Sky" Ryusei had fallen in love with in the north was gone, replaced by the familiar gray-blue haze of Tokyo's skyline, but the internal tranquility remained.
For three months, the Little Crane Adoption Center was exactly what its name implied: a sanctuary for birds with broken wings.
The creak of the wooden floorboards, the smell of cedar and home-cooked broth, and the distant, rhythmic hum of the city all combined to create a sense of safety that Ryusei had once believed was a myth.
Ryusei, now seven years old and invigorated by the summer sun, spent his days in a blur of activity.
The trauma of the "Nerima Silence" had been pushed into a deep, locked closet of his mind.
He no longer woke up checking the hallway for purple neon light; instead, he woke up to the sound of sparrows nesting in the eaves.
He spent his afternoons practicing wooden sword forms with Hiroki in the backyard.
The yard was small, hemmed in by a weathered stone wall and a single, ancient maple tree that dropped its keys like little helicopters.
Hiroki, ever the patient teacher, showed him how to plant his feet and breathe with the rhythm of the wind.
Even at eleven, Hiroki moved with a protective gravity, as if he were constantly calculating the shortest distance between Ryusei and safety.
"Keep your center low, Ryusei!" Hiroki would shout, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
"If your feet aren't connected to the earth, the wind will knock you over before the enemy does.
You have to be like the mountain we saw in Sapporo. Unmoving. Heavy."
Ryusei would huff, his small face turning a bright shade of pink as he swung the heavy wooden bokken with all his might. The wood whistled through the humid air.
"I am connected! I'm like a mountain, Hiroki! Watch me!"
He let out a playful kiai, a high-pitched yell that made the sparrows scatter from the trees.
From the shaded porch, Mr. Tanaka would watch them.
He was a fixture of the house, a man whose presence felt as permanent as the foundations.
His gnarled hands usually rested on the head of a blackened cedar cane, and his eyes, milky with age, were often half-closed as if he were dreaming of ancient wars or long-forgotten landscapes.
Occasionally, he would offer a cryptic piece of advice that seemed far too heavy for a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
"The blade is an extension of the soul, Ryusei," Tanaka rumbled one afternoon.
His voice was like dry gravel grinding together, deep and resonant.
"If the soul is fragmented by fear, the strike will never find its mark. You must look past what you see with your eyes.
The eyes can be deceived by light and shadow, but the soul sees the truth of the intent."
Ryusei lowered his sword, tilting his head in that curious way children do.
"But if I don't use my eyes, how will I hit the target, Mr. Tanaka? I'd just be hitting the air!"
The old man smiled, but it was a thin, brittle thing that didn't reach his eyes.
"You will understand soon enough, little one. The world is much larger—and much darker—than it appears.
There are things that walk in the daylight that belong to the deep night."
Life was beautifully, painfully normal.
They ate together at long wooden tables, the air filled with the steam of shared meals and the boisterous laughter of children who had finally forgotten how to be afraid.
They laughed at the same tired jokes about Mr. Tanaka's thunderous snoring and the way the neighborhood cat always tried to steal the drying fish.
They fell asleep to the rhythmic, distant thrum of Tokyo's traffic, a sound that usually felt like a lullaby.
But normalcy is often the shroud that covers a coming storm, a thin, decorative veil of glass waiting for the first hammer blow of reality.
The Evening of the Origami Cranes
It was a Tuesday night, exactly three months to the day since their return from the north.
The humidity was thick, clinging to the skin like a damp cloth.
Dinner had been a particularly lively affair—Miyuki-san had outdone herself, preparing miso-glazed eggplant, fresh rice, and sweet chilled melon for dessert as a reward for the children's good behavior during their studies.
The dining hall had been a symphony of clattering chopsticks and the bright, high-pitched voices of twelve orphans who finally felt they belonged somewhere.
Miyuki moved among them like a quiet sun, her warmth touching every corner of the room.
After the meal, the children gathered in the common room.
The sliding paper doors were thrown open to catch a breeze that never came.
Mrs. Hina, the elderly "grandma" of the house who had lived at the center for decades, had brought out a massive, intimidating stack of square, colorful paper.
"Today," she said, her voice a gentle, rhythmic rasp that always reminded Ryusei of the wind in the pines, "we fold for luck.
Does anyone know the legend?"
"If we fold a thousand cranes, the heavens must grant us one wish. A single, pure wish. What will yours be, Ryusei?"
Ryusei sat cross-legged on the floor, his brow furrowed in intense concentration as he struggled with a bright yellow sheet.
His fingers were clumsy, but his heart was determined.
"I want... I want everyone here to stay
together forever," he said quietly, his voice carrying a weight that silenced the other children for a moment.
"No more leaving. No more goodbye. I want this house to be like a fortress that never breaks."
Miyuki sat beside him, her hands moving with a fluid grace that made the paper seem to fold itself.
She didn't use her eyes; she felt the creases, her fingers knowing the geometry of the crane by heart.
"That's a beautiful wish, Ryusei," she whispered, leaning over to kiss the top of his head.
"And look, you're getting better at the wings. See? You just have to be patient with the paper."
The room was a sanctuary of peace, smelling of toasted green tea and the dry, clean scent of paper.
It felt invincible, a small bubble of light in a city of ten million people.
The silence that followed was not broken by a scream.
It was broken by a sound that felt fundamentally wrong, a sound that vibrated in the soles of their feet before it reached their ears.
Thump!
A heavy, dragging thud against the front door.
Drag! Thump!
The sound of something heavy being pulled across the gravel, something that didn't have the grace of a human stride.
The heavy oak door creaked open, moving slowly as if resisting the hand that pushed it.
The hinges groaned in a way that sounded like a warning.
Mr. Tanaka stood in the threshold, framed by the dark humid night.
But the man who had watched them practice that afternoon was gone. He was a hollowed-out version of himself.
He was unrecognizable...
His stoic, gentle face was a mask of twitching agony, his jaw hanging at an unnatural, dislocated angle. His breath came in wet, bubbling gasps.
His clothes were shredded, hanging in tatters that revealed skin the color of bruised plums and necrotic gray.
He was soaked in a dark, viscous crimson that didn't look like human blood—it was too thick, almost like motor oil, and it shimmered with a sickly, iridescent purple light in the glow of the room's lamps.
Veins, black and swollen, bulged across his forehead and neck like writhing worms trapped beneath the skin.
A heavy, suffocating aura flooded the room.
It was an evil so dense it felt like a physical weight pressing against the children's chests, making the air feel thin and unbreathable.
The temperature in the room, once warm and inviting, turned freezing in a matter of seconds.
It smelled of rot, wet earth, and old, stagnant graves.
"Tanaka-san?"
Miyuki stood up slowly, her face drained of all color, the yellow crane she was holding fluttering to the floor.
Her maternal instincts were screaming, a cold dread pooling in her stomach.
"What happened? You're hurt! Hiroki, get the first aid kit! Tanaka-san, look at me! Talk to me!"
"I... I am so sorry, Miyuki," Tanaka rasped.
The sound wasn't human.
It sounded like two massive grinding stones crushing bone.
It was a voice pulled from a throat filled with glass.
"I tried... to keep it out. I fought the whispers in the dark... I told them 'not the children'... but the debt... the ancient debt must be paid in blood."
"What debt? What are you talking about?" Hiroki shouted, his voice cracking with fear as he stepped in front of the younger kids, his arms spread wide.
The children huddled together in the corner, the colorful paper cranes forgotten and trampled on the floor.
Ryusei felt a primal terror—the same icy, soul-deep void he had felt in Nerima.
He bolted forward, but he didn't run for the exit.
He ran toward the only light he knew.
He wrapped his small arms around Miyuki's legs, burying his face in her floral apron, shaking so hard his teeth rattled.
"Miyuki-san, look at his eyes!" Ryusei whimpered, his voice muffled by the fabric.
"Something is eating him from the inside! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!"
He was right.
Tanaka's eyes were no longer the milky, kind eyes of a teacher.
The pupils had dissolved entirely, replaced by jagged, oily purple smears that pulsed with a rhythmic, hateful light—a heartbeat of pure malice.
Then, the transformation truly began.
It was not a magical change; it was a violent, bone-snapping spectacle of biological horror.
Tanaka's hunched back straightened with a series of sickening cracks that sounded like rapid gunfire.
His aged, frail frame began to balloon, muscles expanding and tearing through the remnants of his shirt.
His skin didn't just tighten; it fused with the darkness of the room, turning a matte, leathery black.
His bones were reshaping themselves, snapping and resetting in seconds.
His fingernails lengthened into jagged, obsidian claws that dripped with caustic fluid.
Then came the most horrific part: four massive, wet tentacles erupted from his shoulder blades.
They tore through muscle and skin with a sound like wet leather being ripped.
They lashed out like sentient whips, dripping that same oily purple ichor onto the pristine tatami mats.
The floor began to sizzle and smoke where the liquid touched.
He grew younger in a way that was grotesque—a parody of youth where his face became a skull-like visage of primordial rage.
"Tanaka-kun, stop this!" Grandma Hina cried out, her voice trembling but her spirit unyielding.
She stepped forward, her wooden cane raised in a futile, brave gesture of protection.
She was the oldest soul in the room, and she refused to show fear.
"Remember who you are! Remember the boy who loved history! Remember the children you taught!"
"You are a man of peace! You are not a monster!"
The creature that was once Tanaka let out a guttural growl that vibrated the very floorboards.
It was a sound that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
"Tanaka... is... gone," it hissed...
the words echoing with a hollow, metallic resonance.
With a speed that defied the laws of physics, the creature swung a massive, muscled arm.
The blow caught Grandma Hina squarely in the side of the head.
Crun-ch.
It was the sound of a dry branch snapping—the sound of her skull fracturing under the weight of a demonic force.
She was hurled across the room like a discarded ragdoll, smashing into the plaster wall with a sickening, heavy thud.
Blood sprayed in a violent arc, staining the yellow origami crane Ryusei had been folding just moments ago.
Grandma Hina didn't make a sound.
She slumped to the floor, her eyes wide and glassy, her life extinguished in a single, careless heartbeat.
"NO! GRANDMA!"
Hiroki's scream was a jagged edge of pure grief that cut through the frozen air of the room.
The children were paralyzed, caught in the grip of a nightmare they couldn't wake up from.
Their sanctuary was gone, replaced by a slaughterhouse of shadows.
The monster turned its pulsing purple gaze toward the rest of them, its tentacles tasting the air, sensing their fear like a physical scent.
Ryusei looked at the blood soaking into his yellow paper crane and felt his mind begin to fracture.
The world was no longer a place of "Big Skies" and flower fields.
It was a place of teeth and darkness.
The monster took a heavy step forward, the floorboards groaning and cracking under its unnatural weight.
It raised its obsidian claws, pointing them directly at Miyuki and the small boy clutching her legs.
You are NEXT!