Takayama sat on a hard chair in a small police station on another island, a tiny town with low houses, narrow streets, and a constant smell of salt and seaweed. The room was cramped, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling on a twisted cord. The walls had yellowed with age, hung with old notices about missing boats and faded photographs, faces smiling out of yellowed paper, long forgotten by everyone except, perhaps, those who had been searching for them. A fan turned lazily overhead, stirring the humid air but bringing no relief, only shuffling the papers on the desk with a quiet rustle.
The officer, a man in his forties, with bags under his eyes and a cigarette perpetually hanging from the corner of his mouth, leaned on the desk, looking down at Takayama.
"So. One more time," he said in a low, patient voice that had long since lost any real interest. "How did you leave them?"
Takayama stared at the floor. His hands lay on his knees, fingers clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
"I went to get firewood," he answered quietly, almost without inflection. "I said, ten minutes. I saw... it. A guardian. A wolf. I was too scared. I froze. I couldn't move."
The officer exhaled smoke, watching it rise slowly to the ceiling and dissolve near the bulb. He narrowed his eyes slightly, as if only now truly registering the last word.
"A wolf," he repeated. "Hold on. What wolf? There are no wolves in Japan. The last one was wiped out a hundred years ago, maybe more. Are you sure you didn't just imagine it?"
"No," said Takayama, and for the first time in the whole conversation he raised his eyes. "I saw it. Yellow eyes, in the dark, staring right at me. It was a wolf."
The officer took a drag, let the smoke out through his nose.
"Could've been some stray dog. Or a boar, they wander around here sometimes, especially at night, near the forest."
"It was a wolf," Takayama repeated, slower, firmer, as if hammering each word in separately. "I know what a dog looks like. I know what a boar looks like. It was a wolf."
The officer looked at him for another couple of seconds, then shrugged, as if deciding not to argue with a man who was clearly not all there.
"Fine," he said, jotting something down in his notebook without much interest. "A wolf, then."
"Scared, huh. And your friends?"
"I don't know," said Takayama. "When I came back, they were gone. Not on the beach, not in the cabins."
"All of them? Not a single one left?" The officer narrowed his eyes. "No trace at all?"
"The fire had gone out. The blankets were still lying there. Nothing else."
"Strange," the officer muttered, though not as if he truly suspected anything – more out of the habit people in his line of work had of stating the obvious out loud.
Takayama didn't answer right away. Inside his head, another voice spoke up – his own, cold and clear.
*I didn't run. I just watched. I stood there and watched all of it.*
The door opened. Two more officers came in, their uniforms damp from the sea air, faces tired, as if they'd been on their feet all night.
"We searched the whole area," one of them said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "No tents, no boat, no live fire. Just dark ash and scattered rocks. Nothing else."
"Any tracks?" the first officer asked, without turning around.
"All trampled," the second one answered, shrugging. "Sand, and it rained overnight – even if there was something, you couldn't make it out now."
The first officer turned back to Takayama, took another drag of his cigarette.
"So they left on their own. Didn't tell you where. Probably home already, drinking tea, having a laugh about you getting questioned here."
Takayama nodded slowly, not lifting his eyes.
"You can go," the officer said, stepping back from the desk. "But if you remember anything else, even something small – you know where to find us."
"Okay," said Takayama, and stood, feeling his legs stiff from sitting so long.
He stepped out into the evening air. The little town beyond the station windows looked small, hushed; the streetlights along the waterfront were just beginning to come on, one after another, with a quiet hum. He looked out toward the sea – dark, calm, already reflecting the first stars. In his mind, the wolf's yellow eyes still burned, as if branded there forever. And he carried that moment with him for the rest of his life – the one that stayed clearest of all, sharper even than the faces of the friends no one would ever see again.
Day one.
Ranji lay on his bed in his room. The window was open, the curtain stirring faintly in the breeze, billowing and settling, as if the house itself were breathing along with him. Outside, the ordinary sounds of the city: cars, distant voices, train horns, somewhere a dog barked and then fell silent. But inside the room there was silence, thick, almost tangible. He lay on his back, arms at his sides, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. There was a small crack running across it; he noticed it every day but never gave it much thought, yet now he stared at it as though it might hold the answer to something.
He wasn't asleep. He was just lying there. Breathing evenly, though his chest rose heavily, as if the air had thickened. Memories of the day before, of Aya, of Ken, of how he'd watched and done nothing, circled slowly in his mind, like murky water in a puddle, never settling to the bottom. He wasn't angry. He wasn't crying. He just lay there, waiting for the emptiness to either pass or grow heavier than it already was.
Day two. A new day at school.
The morning was bright, almost blinding – the sun was high, the sky clear, without a single cloud. The schoolyard buzzed with its usual noise: someone shouting as they played tag, someone sitting on a bench hunched over a notebook, someone standing by the gate talking on the phone, laughing too loudly for the hour. The air smelled of dust, hot asphalt, and freshly cut grass from the lawn near the entrance.
Ranji lay on the ground in the middle of the yard, on his back, arms spread out to the sides, eyes half-closed. Dust settled on his school shirt, in his hair, on his face, in a thin gray layer, like ash. A fresh bruise on his cheek, a split lip, a thin trickle of blood still seeping from the corner of his mouth. He'd been beaten, not savagely, but enough to leave marks. The same three girls, a year or two older, from the graduating classes, had done it quickly, without many words. They'd simply walked up, surrounded him, struck a few times, fists, feet, knees. He hadn't fought back. Hadn't cried out. He'd just fallen. And they'd walked away, laughing.
Now he lay in the dust. Alone.
A small circle of silence gradually formed around him. Students walked around him, throwing quick glances, whispering, but no one came closer. No one asked, "Are you okay?" They simply went around him, the way people go around a puddle or a stone in the road, not out of cruelty, exactly, but out of that particular indifference that comes when something happens too often to be surprising anymore.
"Him again," someone muttered, passing by without stopping.
"Come on, don't get involved," their companion answered. "Not our business."
And then they appeared again.
The same three girls. They walked slowly, confidently, as if the yard belonged to them alone. One in a short skirt, another with a cigarette between her fingers, the third holding her phone, screen off – she wasn't filming, just holding it so everyone could see: she could, if she wanted to.
They stopped over him. Their shadows fell across his face, briefly blocking the sun.
The first one crouched down. Long nails, painted black, touched his cheek, not gently, but testing, the way you'd check merchandise on a shelf.
"Puppy," she said quietly, almost affectionately. "Look at him lying there. In the dirt, like trash."
The second one let out a short, sharp laugh, blowing smoke to the side.
"Doesn't even try to get up. Honestly, it's boring with him. I wish he'd snap back just once."
The third leaned in closer, her hair falling forward, covering half his face.
"Pathetic. Lying there like a rag. Are you even going to get up? Or are you just going to lie here until the bell?"
"Leave him, let's go," the first one said, straightening up. "He won't say anything anyway."
"Boring," the second repeated, dropping her cigarette butt near his head, almost deliberately, not even looking to see if it hit him.
Ranji didn't answer. Didn't move. He just stared upward, through them, through their shadows, into the sky. The sun struck his eyes again. Tears ran down his temples, mixing with the dust and blood on his cheeks, leaving dirty streaks.
The girls lingered another moment. The first one brushed off her skirt.
"Fine. Let him lie there. No one's going to help him anyway."
They turned and walked off, footsteps confident, heels clicking against the asphalt. The whispers behind them faded. The yard filled again with its usual noise – someone shouted again, playing with a ball, as if nothing had happened at all.
Ranji kept lying there.
The dust kept settling.
The sun kept shining.
He didn't care.
Prison.
Ranji's father was fighting in a dark corner of the prison yard, in a spot the lights from the watchtowers didn't reach and the guards rarely bothered checking. Around him, in a tight circle, inmates stood in silence, men who didn't care who won, as long as there was something to watch in this bleak hour before lockdown.
His opponent, a tall maniac disfigured with scars and wild eyes, swung a fist. The father dodged, struck back hard. The blow landed square on the jaw. A sickening crack rang out. Blood sprayed across the concrete. The maniac staggered, his teeth stained red.
"Go on, finish him," someone in the crowd said quietly, without any real malice, simply stating what the outcome called for.
The father hit him again. And again. The bone gave way. The man collapsed, a dark, glistening pool of blood beginning to spread beneath his head in the dim light of the wall lamp.
Ranji's father stood over him, breathing hard, his knuckles split open, blood trickling down his fingers, dripping onto the concrete. His eyes were empty – no satisfaction, no rage. Only exhaustion, the same familiar exhaustion he carried to bed with him every night these past years.
"Done," someone in the circle said shortly, and the crowd began to disperse slowly, as if that settled it, an ordinary matter, not worth any further discussion.
Elsewhere, an underground fight club.
The room was stuffy, low-ceilinged, reeking of sweat and cheap beer, the walls bare concrete, scrawled here and there with names and fight dates. A few spotlights lit the ring, leaving the spectator area in near-total darkness, from which came the roar of the crowd, whistling, fists pounding against the concrete railing.
In the center of the ring, a man and a woman were fighting. No gloves, no rules. She was smaller but faster, dodging, striking low, splitting his lip with a short, precise hit. He snarled, lunged forward, swinging almost blindly in his fury. She stepped aside, struck his knee. He fell, crying out briefly. The crowd roared louder, someone by the ring already waving money, demanding a bet.
Miyuki sat off to the side, alone, a little apart from the main crowd, where it was quieter. She cracked sunflower seeds between her teeth, click, click, click, and spat the shells onto the floor beside her boot.
"Another one down," she murmured, watching the woman in the ring finish off her opponent with a series of body blows.
A guy with a neck tattoo sat down beside her, also watching the fight.
"Betting on her?" he asked.
"Who else," Miyuki scoffed, not taking her eyes off the ring. "The men here are pretty much all the same. Plenty of anger, zero technique. At least she thinks while she hits."
"A girl like that doesn't come cheap," the guy remarked.
"Everything costs, if you want it to actually work," Miyuki said, cracking another seed, a thin smile crossing her face. "They always fall eventually. The only question is how much it costs them before they figure that out."
In the ring, the referee raised the woman's hand, declaring her the winner. The crowd roared, money changing hands, someone whistling happily, someone else cursing and tearing up a losing bet.
Miyuki stood, brushed the shells off her knees, glanced at the ring one more time.
"Alright," she said. "That's enough watching for today. Plenty of work left to do."