Kamon Kai has stopped waiting for death—he simply hasn't gotten there yet. Six months behind on rent, out of pills, and buried beneath the garbage of a life he no longer wants, he exists in a rotting six-mat room in the forgotten corner of Tokyo known as Haigami Ward. Every morning is the same: the stain on the ceiling, the ache of hunger he refuses to answer, the quiet hope that today might finally be the day his heart stops on its own.
Then the ceiling tears open.
A girl falls from nowhere—g
The convenience store's automatic doors slid open, and a blast of white light and artificial electronic chimes stabbed at Kamon Kai's eyes and ears.
"Welcome in—"
The clerk's voice carried no enthusiasm whatsoever. Kai kept his head lowered and made his way toward the shelves lined with onigiri and boxed meals. He had three thousand two hundred yen to his name. Once he factored in medicine, there wasn't much left to spend. His own food could be cheap cup noodles. As long as his stomach was full, that was enough.
But that woman—the one waiting in his room—what was she going to eat?
(What does she even eat, anyway?)
"...Something warm."
He remembered her saying that, and found himself staring at the steamed bun case by the register and the hot snack shelf. After agonizing over it, he picked out a single nikuman and told the clerk. He also bought a bottle of green tea, plus cheap cup noodles and water for himself.
He paid, shoved the receipt into his wallet. A few coins remained. He didn't feel like calculating exactly what he'd bought and for how much.
The road to his apartment grew darker the further he got from the store's brightness. He passed through a shuttered shopping arcade and turned into a damp, narrow alley. Beside a garbage collection point, a cat watched him.
Kai didn't stop walking, just shifted the bag slightly in his hand.
From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a man heading home after a quick trip to the convenience store. But inside his room was a former princess who had fallen from the ceiling.
Every time he thought about it, reality felt a little thinner.
He climbed the stairs of Corp Haimori. The old wooden steps creaked with every footfall.
He stopped in front of Room 102 and turned the key.
When the door opened, the air of the room brushed against his cheek. Lighter than it had been in the morning, yes—but the smell of humidity and old tatami still lingered. Yet that rotten, stagnant quality had faded somewhat.
Melissa sat small on the tatami, buried in the black hoodie he'd given her.
"...You're late."
"I hurried as much as I could."
Kai pulled the nikuman from the plastic bag and held it out to her, still in its paper wrapper.
"What is this? A white lump...?"
"A nikuman. It's warm. Careful, it's hot."
Melissa stared at it with deep suspicion, but then, as if steeling herself, she opened her mouth slightly and took a bite of the edge.
One second. Two.
"...!"
Her gold and silver eyes flew wide.
"What is this... it's so soft... and inside, this rich meat juice...!"
"You're overreacting. It's from a convenience store."
"Silence, servant! This is... magnificent. Warm, and the flavor is so strong..."
She let out a heated breath.
The gesture was less like a princess and more like a girl who hadn't had anything warm to eat in a long while.
Kai peeled back half the lid of his cup noodles. No electric kettle. He filled the old kettle in the kitchen with water and set it on the stove. The gas flame flickered blue.
While waiting for the water to boil, Kai leaned against the wall.
Melissa was eating the nikuman little by little. Her outline looked slightly—just slightly—clearer than it had that morning.
It probably wasn't because she'd eaten the nikuman. Maybe the Impurity in the room thinning out had stabilized her existence a bit.
(...She was fading, wasn't she.)
Admitting that made something in his chest grow a little heavier.
The kettle began to whistle.
Kai poured the hot water into the cup noodles and closed the lid. Three minutes. Steam and the smell of cheap noodles rose through the room.
"Hey."
Melissa, having neatly finished the nikuman and licking her fingertips, spoke up.
"What."
"Are you going to work?"
Kai's eyes drifted to the job listing he'd left at the edge of the tatami.
"MISOGI SERVICE — Specialized Cleaning & Restoration"
The paper he'd found yesterday while cleaning the room. He'd wiped off the dirt and smoothed out the creases.
"...I'll go tomorrow."
"Not today?"
"It's already late."
"I see. Then go tomorrow."
"Don't order me around."
"If you don't go, my existence will become unstable again. The Impurity left in this room will return eventually, too."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm stating facts. Cleaning stabilizes me, for now. But just because you tidied up what was in your room doesn't mean all the Impurity is gone."
Her gaze stopped on a black stain on the wall.
The stain was fainter than it had been that morning. But it hadn't disappeared completely.
Kai looked at it too.
It felt like the stain had spread again while he wasn't looking. Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe it was the medicine.
"...Well, I'm tired. I'm going to sleep."
With that, Melissa slipped without hesitation into Kai's old futon—which was really just the futon he'd aired out and beaten earlier.
"Hey, that's my—"
"Servants sleep on the floor. Complaints are not accepted."
Turning her back to him, Melissa immediately began breathing in the steady rhythm of sleep.
Kai let out an exasperated sigh and lay down directly on the tatami.
The unpleasant smell of mold had definitely faded.
The stain on the ceiling was quiet, too.
When was the last time he'd gone to sleep without taking his medicine? A dull ache throbbed at the back of his head, but he fell asleep without reaching for the over-the-counter pills.
As the night deepened, a dull pain began to spread at the back of his skull. A chill ran down his spine, and sweat beaded on his fingertips. He couldn't tell whether his body was craving the medicine or whether it was just exhaustion.
With the futon claimed by Melissa, Kai lay on the tatami. The hardness of the floor pressed against his back. Even with his eyes closed, the stain on the ceiling floated up behind his eyelids.
Still, at some point, he fell into a shallow sleep.
When he opened his eyes, the air in the room was quiet.
Kai lay still for a while, cheek pressed to the tatami. His head felt heavy. His throat was dry. When he tried to sit up, the strength wouldn't come to his shoulders, and he had to try several times.
Close beside him was a faint shadow.
Through the gap in the loose-fitting clothes, a slender neck was visible. Astonishingly thin, white—fragile as something made of glass. His eyes caught the bare feet peeking from the hem of the hoodie Melissa wore.
When Kai sat up, the golden hair swayed softly, and the mismatched eyes turned toward him.
"...What a slow way to wake up, servant."
Her voice held none of the languor of just having woken—still haughty, still clear.
"I skipped my medicine. ...My body's heavy."
"You brought it on yourself. You were stirring up poison and playing dead."
Melissa didn't bother to stand, just fixed him with a cold stare. The right eye burning gold, the left icy silver. Being looked down at by those eyes felt like sinking into bottomless mud.
Kai poured tap water into a cup and drank it down in one go. The chlorine-tinged water settled in his stomach, and a miserable sense of reality returned.
In the corner of the room, a neatly folded piece of paper had been placed.
The job listing he'd pulled out of the mountain of garbage yesterday. The edge was a little creased, but he'd wiped off the dirt.
"MISOGI SERVICE."
A specialized cleaning company that restored the scenes of solitary deaths and accidental fatalities.
Kai picked it up and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket.
"Are you going?"
Melissa spoke with her chin resting on her knees.
"How should I know. ...I don't have money. Can't buy medicine, can't buy food."
"Go. And clean."
Melissa's brief, commanding voice.
"You're not coming?"
"There's no way I would walk around in this filthy outside world. Besides... in my current state, I don't have the strength to leave this room far behind."
Her words were fact. Her very existence wavered like thin mist. If he took her outside, she looked like she might vanish on the street along the way.
"...Then stay here and watch the place. Don't touch anything."
"There isn't a single thing here worth touching."
She spat the words and turned away, as if she'd lost interest.
Kai pulled on his black hoodie and shoved his feet into old sneakers. The cuffs were stretched out, and stains that wouldn't come out remained on the hem.
When he opened the front door, the damp morning air hit his face. The air of Haimori Ward carried a mix of mold, earth, and the smell of something on the verge of rotting.
A few steps from his door, the door of the neighboring Room 103 flew open.
"Ah—I knew it, it's Kai-kun!"
A shrill voice, though a little tired, rang out.
Hiyama Sumire stood there. Her dull ash-brown hair was tied back in a single bundle, paired with a white hoodie and black chinos. She held a small insulated bag in her hands.
"Good morning! ...Whoa, your complexion is terrible! Are you okay? You're not taking your medicine weird again, are you?"
Sumire planted herself in front of Kai and peered into his face. A faint smell of disinfectant drifted from her fingertips.
"...You're loud. Leave me alone."
Kai turned his face away and muttered a snide remark.
"How could I leave you alone?! The day before yesterday you almost collapsed in the hallway, didn't you? I saw it!"
"Don't remember."
"If you don't remember, that makes it even more worrying. Here, take this. I made it after work yesterday, so eat it at lunch."
Sumire held out the insulated bag.
Inside, apparently, was a bento box and a bottle of tea.
"...Don't need it."
"Don't need it—what kind of answer is that?! You'll die if you don't eat! You really are stubborn..."
Sumire furrowed her brow with worry and pressed both hands together in front of her chest. It was a habit of hers that surfaced when she sensed someone's presence or someone feeling unwell. She let a little of her fang show and made an angry face, then awkwardly averted her eyes when their gazes met.
Earnest, unguarded kindness.
To Kai, this neighbor with her suffocatingly warm body heat was close to agony. He was quietly waiting to rot, and she kept trying to pull him up with mud-stained hands.
"...I'm not paying you."
"I don't want your money! Just take it!"
Sumire pushed the insulated bag into Kai's hands and said, "See you, I've got work!" before clattering down the stairs.
Kai sighed and regripped the bag's handle. He'd eat the bento during a break at work.
(...Whatever.)
Bag in one hand, Kai left Corp Haimori behind.
The streets of Haimori Ward were a gradient of gray no matter where you looked.
Old wooden houses and abandoned factories. Old tires and soggy cardboard discarded in the corners of alleys, and the invisible aura of death they gave off drifted faintly over the whole district.
But to Kai's eyes, there was more than just an "old neighborhood."
At the bases of buildings, in the cracks of fractured asphalt, before the entrances of empty houses where no one lived.
Thin black stains were crawling there.
Like black oil seeping out, or thin smoke clinging to the ground—a wrongness. Ordinary passersby paid it no mind, stepping right over it. But Kai could tell it was there.
When he drew close, the surface of his skin tingled, and the back of his throat turned bitter.
(...Impurity, huh.)
The word that former princess had used crossed his mind.
Human suffering and loneliness. Traces of death.
He'd always thought this was a hallucination from withdrawal. But when he'd cleaned the room, that stain had definitely faded. And now, the black shadows crawling all over the city seemed to writhe like living things.
Avoiding the places where the stains were thick, he turned down an alley.
One more turn past the Yorimichi-dori shopping arcade, into a dark back alley where sunlight never reached.
There, a rusty iron sign was mounted.
"MISOGI SERVICE."
Around the sign clung black stains thicker and more viscous than anywhere else in the city. As if the entire building were covered in b
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