Half a year has passed since the god Yato vanished without a trace.
Iki Hiyori, now nineteen, lives an ordinary life as a university student in Tokyo—attending lectures, making friends, studying psychology. She gave up her powers as a half-ayakashi to walk the Near Shore as a normal human being. It was her choice. It should have been enough.
But the hole he left behind refuses to close.
Between lectures on grief and loss, Hiyori finds herself searching for answers she can't find in any textbo
Dawn Without Yato -Noragami After Story- - Spring Rain, Silent Hole
An April afternoon. The university lecture hall was dimly bright, softened by sunlight slanting through the windows.
The lecturer's voice drifted like distant waves.
"—Loss is the hole left by a person's existence."
Iki Hiyori lifted her head.
A window seat. She could see the ginkgo trees swaying in the wind. Their new spring leaves glittered, catching and scattering the light.
Her deep brown eyes fixed on the lecturer. When her emotions stirred, the depths of those eyes seemed to glisten — that was her defining trait. Nineteen years old. Her shoulder-length black hair was tied back carelessly today, as always. A white blouse, a beige cardigan. A knee-length skirt. That was her usual style.
At a glance, she was an ordinary college girl.
But behind her ear, a faint old scar remained. It was the trace of a memory — from when she had been a half-ayakashi, desperately trying to pull her soul back into her body as it slipped away.
Hiyori ran her pen across her notebook.
*Loss is the hole left by a person's existence.*
The moment she wrote it, something deep in her chest seemed to make a small, tight sound.
(A hole...)
The pen tip stopped.
Before she knew it, she had written a name in tiny letters at the edge of the page.
Yato.
Her heart jolted, and she hurriedly covered it with her hand. Even though no one was looking.
"When we lose someone, we go on living, carrying a void shaped exactly like them,"
the lecturer continued.
"That void will never be filled. But eventually, that very void becomes a part of who we are."
Hiyori looked out the window.
The ginkgo trees.
She had walked that path with him once.
Him in his jersey, always grinning lazily, holding out his hand and saying, "Hiyori, offering." A five-yen coin. *Go-en.* A connection. Such small, silly things.
The hand gripping her pen trembled faintly.
—Misaki University. A private university of about six thousand students, nestled in the hills of Musashino, Tokyo. Hiyori was in the literature department, majoring in psychology.
(Why did I even choose psychology?)
She knew the reason.
Because she wanted to understand what it meant to have lost Yato.
The chime rang.
The lecture ended. The students around her stood, a rustling murmur of movement.
"Hiyori, wanna grab lunch?"
A friend called out to her. Hiyori smiled just a little and shook her head.
"Sorry, I want to go to the library for a bit..."
"Again? You've been at the library nonstop lately, Hiyori. Take a break once in a while."
"Yeah, but I have this assignment..."
Her friend looked a little worried but didn't press further.
Hiyori left the classroom alone.
Walking down the hallway, she thought about herself.
She had friends. Classes were interesting. A normal college life.
But.
(Somewhere inside, I'm searching.)
That jersey. That sloppy grin. That lazy, drawn-out voice calling "Hiyoriii."
She reached the library. Without hesitation, Hiyori headed for the psychology shelves. *The Psychology of Trauma and Loss.* *Attachment Theory.* *The Work of Mourning* — she kept picking up books like these.
(It's ridiculous.)
She knew it herself. No book would bring Yato back.
But she couldn't stop.
She opened one book and found a passage:
"Those who cannot accept loss remain bound to the past."
Hiyori closed the book.
Her chest ached.
—
Evening.
Rain began to fall from the sky, drop by drop.
Hiyori left the university and decided to walk home instead of riding her bicycle. She didn't have an umbrella. A little drizzle was fine.
The rotary at Musashino Central Station. This was her nearest station. About forty-five thousand passengers passed through each day. In the rotary in front of the station stood a small shrine.
A place where the boundary between the Far Shore and the Near Shore grew thin.
—The *hosomichi.*
Once, Hiyori had been able to see it. The presence of ayakashi, the existence of gods — everything.
But now.
The shrine was just an old, weathered lump of wood and stone.
Hiyori stood before it.
(I didn't even mean to come here.)
Her feet had moved on their own.
She took her wallet from her bag. Opened the coin purse and searched for a five-yen coin. The gold-colored coin with a hole. *Go-en.* A connection.
(It doesn't mean anything anymore.)
Even so, Hiyori tossed the five-yen coin into the offering box.
A light, ringing clink.
She pressed her palms together.
"...Yato."
She murmured it, barely audible.
She closed her eyes.
She felt nothing.
Back then, it had been different. When she pressed her hands together, she could feel his presence right beside her. The wind would shift, the air would tremble, and she would catch the scent of the Far Shore.
But now.
The rain soaked her hair. Droplets traced down her face. Cold.
Just that. Nothing more.
Hiyori opened her eyes.
The shrine stood there, silent.
"That battle" — the great final conflict over the god Yato, which had taken place months ago. In the midst of it, Hiyori had chosen to let go of her half-ayakashi powers. To live as an ordinary human. And Yato had vanished.
Had he been destroyed? Sealed away? Or had he left of his own will?
No one knew.
A single tear slid down Hiyori's cheek.
Was it rain, or was it tears?
She could no longer tell the difference.
—
Night.
Hiyori had returned to her apartment — Corp Hiiragi, a twenty-five-year-old two-story building. A 1K corner room. Sixty-two thousand yen a month in rent. From the balcony, she could see the torii gate of a small shrine. That had always weighed on her mind.
She changed out of her wet clothes and sat at her desk.
She opened her assignment report. The title was *The Psychology of Trauma and Loss.*
But the words wouldn't sink in.
Outside the window, the sound of rain was growing heavier.
A rushing, pouring sound, as if washing the whole world clean.
Hiyori stood and opened the window.
The cold scent of rain drifted into the room. Rain hammering the asphalt. The distant sound of a car driving by. From the next apartment, the faint laughter of a television leaked through the wall.
(This is the Near Shore.)
The world of humans.
Hiyori remembered the time when she had been a half-ayakashi.
Her soul slipping out of her body, walking the Far Shore. Seeing phantoms. Meeting gods. And being saved by Yato.
Back then, she had always stood in a precarious place. But Yato had been there. He had drawn the boundary line and protected her.
But in that battle—
Hiyori bit her lip.
"Those who cannot accept loss remain bound to the past."
That passage she had read in the library came back to her.
(I know.)
In her head, she understood.
But her heart couldn't catch up.
Hiyori placed her hands on the window frame and leaned out into the rain.
Cold droplets struck her face.
(I want to feel his presence.)
That unique scent Yato had always carried. The smell of a god — incense and iron, mixed with a faint sweetness.
But all she could smell was the rain.
No presence of Far Shore ayakashi. Nothing.
Hiyori's slender, delicate frame trembled. Her body should still have held the supple muscle from her old martial arts training, but now she felt utterly strengthless.
(I'm completely a Near Shore human now.)
Severed from the Far Shore.
That fact was unbearably heavy.
Slowly, Hiyori crumpled to the floor.
She sat down, hugging her knees.
The sound of rain filled the room.
"...Yato..."
She wept, stifling her voice.
So no one would hear.
The sound of the television next door, the laughter — it all felt terribly far away.
—
The next morning.
The rain had stopped.
Rubbing her sleep-deprived eyes, Hiyori headed to the university. The sky was still overcast, and puddles remained on the asphalt. The air was cool and damp, with a taut, strained stillness.
She walked along the ginkgo-lined path.
The wet leaves glittered, catching the morning light.
Hiyori thought about the day before.
(I cried, huh.)
She felt a little lighter, maybe.
But the pain hadn't gone away.
The hole was still there, gaping open.
—That was when it happened.
Suddenly, a strong wind blew.
A sudden gust, like a spring storm.
The ginkgo leaves rustled all at once, tossing Hiyori's hair.
And then.
A scent.
Incense smoke.
The coldness of iron.
A faint sweetness.
—Yato's scent.
Her heart nearly stopped.
Hiyori whipped around as if struck.
The tree-lined path was empty.
Just two or three students walking in the distance.
Hiyori ran.
To the very end of the path.
The wind had already died.
No one was there.
No presence at all.
(...A hallucination?)
An illusion born of wishful thinking?
Or—
Some kind of omen?
Hiyori stood rooted to the spot.
Something tightened deep in her chest.
(Just once more.)
(I want to feel the Far Shore.)
The dangerous wish surfaced quietly.
It was an emotion she, now fully a human of the Near Shore, should never have harbored.
But.
At the core of Hiyori's heart lay a certain, steady strength.
The will to see through whatever she set her mind to.
(If this really was some kind of sign—)
(I want to find out.)
Hiyori lifted her head.
The wet ginkgo leaves, bathed in the morning light, shone gold.
The wind was gone.
But inside Hiyori's heart, a small breeze had begun to stir.
Toward a reunion with Yukine.
And toward an encounter with Kugaha.
It would move her, before she even knew it.
—The wind, beginning to blow.
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.