Yūta's alarm went off at half past seven with the specific punctuality of something that has no consideration for the state one is in when it sounds.
Yūta turned it off, lay looking at the ceiling of the hostel room where he and Kagami had been staying during the mission, and counted to five before accepting that getting up was inevitable.
His right shoulder was still protesting — less than yesterday but enough for the first movement of the day to be a reminder of the back yard. His left side too, though to a lesser extent. The ice had helped.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his phone.
No message from Kagami.
Which meant one of two things — either Kagami was still sleeping, which was possible because when Kagami slept he did so with the same seriousness with which he did everything else, or Kagami was already awake and simply had nothing to communicate, which was also possible because Kagami did not send unnecessary messages.
Yūta assumed the first, showered, got dressed, and went out into the town of Misato with the morning still cold and the street still quiet.
Sota Miyazaki was waiting at his front door when Yūta turned the corner.
Not with his bag over his shoulder yet — he had left it leaning against the bottom step and was standing on the last step with his hands in his pockets and an expression that was marginally better than yesterday's, which in the circumstances was enough.
"Good morning," said Sota.
"Good morning," said Yūta. "Did you sleep?"
"Some."
"How much is some?"
Sota glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
"Didn't you ask me that before? Or did I ask you?"
"Someone asked me first," said Yūta. "I'm borrowing it."
Sota picked up his bag and came down the last step.
They walked along the usual alternative route — the one that did not pass the alley — with Misato waking up around them at the specific rhythm of small towns that are in no hurry to start the day. A bakery opening with the smell of fresh bread reaching the pavement. A man walking a dog who greeted them without waiting for a reply. A bicycle passing too fast for the hour.
"How's the shoulder?" said Sota, out of nowhere.
Yūta looked at him.
"What shoulder?"
"Yesterday when you left I saw you holding your right shoulder," said Sota, in the neutral tone of someone stating a fact. "I thought maybe you'd knocked it against something."
Yūta processed that Sota was more observant than he sometimes appeared.
"I'm fine," he said. "I knocked it against something. It's done now."
Sota nodded in the tone of someone who does not entirely believe it, but decides it is not his place to insist.
They kept walking.
Toma and Masa were at the corner before the school with their bags and that morning energy of hours when nothing bad has happened yet.
"Sota!" said Toma.
"Hello," said Sota.
Toma looked at Yūta with his usual openness.
"The cousin," he said.
"The very one," replied Yūta with a smile.
"How long are you staying?" asked Toma.
"A while," said Yūta. "I'm not sure exactly."
"Fair enough," said Toma, with the ease of someone for whom that answer is completely sufficient. "I hope you don't get too bored in the most boring town in the Tokyo metropolitan area."
"It's not that boring," said Masa.
"It's fairly boring," said Toma.
"Everything's boring to you if nothing's exploding."
"That's not true. Sometimes I'm fine with things that are just on fire."
Sota laughed — short, genuine, the kind of laugh that comes out without planning it — and that alone made the detour along the alternative route and the right shoulder that protested and the two remnants in the back yard worth something more than they had been worth until that moment.
Yūta watched the three of them talking — Toma with his usual energy, Masa with that economy of words that said more than it seemed to, Sota with that laugh that was coming back from wherever it had gone to hide.
He thought of Seki Haruto correcting his posture even when he had not asked him to. Of Mori Daiki with the bag of bread at seven in the morning. Of Fujiwara Nao glancing at him from the corner of her eye with that expression that was not indifference but too much attention focused on a single point.
I'll write to them later, he thought.
"Right," he said, raising a hand. "I'll leave you to it. Sota, I'll see you at the end of the day."
"Yes," said Sota.
"See you, cousin," said Toma.
Yūta turned the corner.
Kagami was at the next corner.
Not exactly waiting — he was looking towards the other side of the street with his usual attention, the cigarette between his fingers and his hands in his pockets, with the posture of someone who has been in the same spot for a while and has not noticed because being in the same spot does not make him uncomfortable.
Yūta stopped.
"Weren't you asleep?"
"I slept," said Kagami.
"I didn't message you because I thought—"
"I'm investigating from earlier today," said Kagami, not with the tone of someone correcting but of someone giving information. "There are things that are clearer first thing."
"Shall we investigate together?"
"No," said Kagami. "You check the alley and that area. I'll look at other sectors."
Yūta smiled.
"Dividing the work?"
"Covering more ground," said Kagami. "It's different."
"All right," said Yūta. "If I find something I'll call you."
"Yes," said Kagami. "And if I find something, I will too." He paused — slightly longer than Kagami's usual pauses. "Just in case."
Yūta looked at him.
"Just in case?" he repeated. "Does that mean you think there might be something stronger than what I found yesterday?"
"It means just in case," said Kagami.
Yūta decided that was all he was going to get from that sentence and nodded.
The two of them went in different directions.
The alley at eight in the morning was different from the alley at five in the afternoon.
It had more light — or should have had, because the hour justified it, but the darkness Yūta had learned to recognise as the mark of something that had happened or was happening was still there with a density that the morning sun did not quite manage to fully dispel.
He went in slowly.
The black cat was in the same spot as yesterday, on the same cardboard box, with the same expression of something that has decided this is its alley and any other criterion of ownership is secondary.
"Good morning," said Yūta.
The cat looked at him.
"Yes, I know," said Yūta. "I'm talking to you again. But this time I haven't got a dagger in my hand, so technically it's an improvement."
The cat did not respond, which was consistent with its position from yesterday.
Yūta walked to the far end of the alley and came back slowly, checking the walls, the floor, the angles. The presence Kagami had described — that accumulated weight in certain areas — was perceptible if one knew what to look for. Not as strong as yesterday, but it had not disappeared either.
He spent forty minutes in the alley and the immediate surrounding area without finding anything directly. No remnant, no active presence. Only that residual weight that was still denser near the alley than in the rest of the town.
What Kagami had said about the more powerful remnant kept resonating.
If since we arrived the presence has been heavier, and that's explained by there being a source generating more deaths than usual...
He came out of the alley and continued along the main street heading north, towards the park Kagami had mentioned as another area of concentration.
Kagami walked through the western sector of Misato with the same attention with which he did everything — without hurry, without visible signs of what he was looking for, with the completely ordinary appearance of someone taking a morning walk through a town that was not their own.
The presence of remnants was fainter in this area than near the alley — perceptible but not urgent, the kind of background weight that in a large city would go unnoticed, but in a town the size of Misato was easier to isolate.
He kept walking.
In the main square there was a group of people — neighbours who had stopped to talk, the kind of morning conversation of people who know each other and are in no hurry. A woman with a shopping trolley. Two older men with thermoses of coffee. A person in a hood, slightly apart from the group but within it, with the specific orientation of someone who is in a public place but not participating in it.
Kagami looked at them.
The hood was not unusual for the morning — it was cold and the wind had picked up since yesterday. But there was something in the way that figure was standing — too still for someone who was simply waiting, with an attention that did not correspond to the relaxed posture they were trying to project.
Kagami kept walking without changing his rhythm. He passed through the square. He turned the corner.
And waited.
Thirty seconds.
The hooded figure turned the same corner.
What followed was a silent and invisible-to-any-Misato-resident version of something that had all the structure of a game of cat and mouse — except that in this case neither of the two participants was entirely certain which role they had.
Kagami walked for three more blocks at the same pace as always, turning in places that reduced the figure's options without appearing deliberate. The figure followed — not closely, at the distance of someone who does not want to be identified but does not want to lose the trail either.
Kagami led it towards the industrial sector of the town — warehouses, an abandoned depot, a street that at eight in the morning had no pedestrian traffic.
Then he stopped.
He turned.
The hooded figure was about twenty metres away. It stopped too.
The two looked at each other for a moment.
Then the figure turned and ran.
Kagami ran after it without excessive haste — he knew where these streets led, he had checked the town map the previous evening with the foresight of someone who anticipates they may need to chase something or be chased, and the abandoned depot at the end of the street had no exit on three of its four sides.
The figure discovered this when it was already too late.
It stopped in front of the back wall of the depot — a wide space with the roof partially collapsed and the morning light coming in through the gaps — and turned to face Kagami with the inevitability of someone who has assessed the options and reached the conclusion that none of them are good.
Kagami stopped about five metres away.
"Take off the hood," he said.
The figure did not respond immediately.
Then it smiled.
Not the smile of someone nervous, nor of someone accepting defeat — the smile of someone who has been waiting for exactly this moment and is enjoying the fact that it has finally arrived. Slow, unsettling, the kind that does not quite correspond to any human face, even though technically it was on one.
It took off the hood.
The skin was a light green that was not the green of anything living. The hair yellow, not blonde. The eyes completely white without pupil or iris — only that pale surface that reflected the light of the depot in a way that made looking at it directly produce a discomfort with no precise name.
Kagami looked at it.
"Are you the remnant that killed a woman in an alley a few days ago?" he said.
The remnant let out a short laugh — not the sound of something amused but of something that finds genuinely funny something that in reality is not.
"I don't know," it said, in that slightly off voice. "I've killed several people. I don't keep count."
Kagami looked at it with that specific calm he had when something struck him as more serious than his expression showed.
"I'm going to kill you now," he said. "And then I'm going back to Tokyo."
The remnant smiled more.
"So direct," it said. "I like it." It leaned back slightly against the far wall with the posture of something that feels no urgency whatsoever. "Though you should know one thing before you try."
"What thing?"
"I've been following you for several days," said the remnant.
Kagami looked at it.
"Since you arrived in this town," the remnant continued, in that slightly off tone that made every sentence sound like something it had practised but not quite mastered. "I felt the presence of a strong hunter. I wanted to see who or what it was." It paused. "I didn't expect the hunter to follow me too."
"By the time I started following you," said Kagami, "I already knew."
The remnant looked at him with something that on a human face would have been called respect, but on its own was harder to classify.
"That explains why it took me so long to realise," it said. "Most notice much sooner."
"What did you come here to do?" said Kagami.
"That," said the remnant, with a smile that widened what was already too wide, "I'll tell you when you're about to die."
Kagami tightened his right hand slightly.
"You or me," he said.
"Of course," said the remnant. "That's always the interesting question, isn't it?"
It stepped away from the wall.
Kagami took his stance.
The reddish mana began to accumulate in his right hand with that specific concentration of someone who does not use it to intimidate but to use it — without announcement, without unnecessary visual effects, simply there, ready.
The remnant looked at both of them — at Kagami, at the mana — with that calculating attention that did not correspond to something acting on instinct.
"Let's begin," it said.