Night. 水月 traced her fingertip along the dry wood grain of the window frame. The water droplets from last night were gone. Dried away. And yet the memory of that cold lingered in her fingertips—not as a physical sensation, but deeper. One layer beneath the skin. (He was definitely there.) She still held to that conclusion this morning. The outline of a boy. The vertical stripes of his hakama. That moment when he dissolved like mist. There was no gap through which she could process it as hallucination. She wondered if she was deliberately filling in those gaps herself—but even so, the water droplet had been real. She pulled on her cardigan over her school blouse and descended the stairs of Oborozuki Manor. The creaking of the treads echoed sharply in the morning silence. The sunlight streaming through the entrance hall was dappled, filtered through the gaps of trees that had begun to shed their leaves. Her mother had risen early. She sat at the kitchen table with her medicine arranged before her, sipping hot water. Her complexion wasn't bad. But when 水月 said "good morning," worry flickered across her mother's eyes. "Your face looks a little pale," "I slept fine. I'm okay," It wasn't a lie. She had slept. Only—even in her dreams, she'd been searching for someone. Breakfast was toast and soup left over from the day before. The soup had cooled slightly, but it was fine. 水月 ate in silence. The manor's kitchen had high ceilings, and sound echoed strangely in this place. Each time the spoon touched the cup, the dry sound bounced off the walls. It was about a twenty-minute walk down the stone steps to Ashihara High School. The route passed through Hotaruzawa Street, but the morning shutter street was nearly empty. Rusted shutters, moss-slicked pavement, dust accumulated on shop windows. Only one tofu shop remained open. An elderly man in a white apron swept the storefront, and when 水月 passed, he bowed silently. She nodded in return. It was a small exchange, but a certain one—the morning's acknowledgment. The moment she passed through the school gate, she felt eyes on her. 水月 collected them at the edge of her vision with practiced ease. Curious gazes. Confused gazes. And one more type—a gaze she couldn't quite name. The information about the transfer student living in Oborozuki Manor had already reached the classroom. Ashihara was a small town. Information traveled at a speed incomparable to the city. When the homeroom teacher prompted her to stand before the class, 水月 felt it. Thirty-two gazes turned toward her all at once. Their density pressed against her skin like a demand for self-introduction. "I'm 水月 Hasumi. This is my first time in Ashihara, so there will be many things I'm unfamiliar with. Thank you for your kindness," That was all she said, and she bowed. She offered no unnecessary words. She sent no signal asking to be approached, nor any signal asking to be left alone. She simply arranged the form of courtesy. After taking a seat in the corner, 水月 quietly observed the classroom. The contours of the groups. Who looked at whom. Which seats were isolated. Today's date written in the upper left of the blackboard. The ridge of the mountain visible through the window, holding the same shape as yesterday. The option to tell someone about last night's boy surfaced in her mind once, then quietly sank. She had no words for it yet. She held the outline of what she'd seen. But the pathway to convert it into words that another person could receive—that pathway wasn't yet connected. 水月 understood her own state with objective clarity. First period modern literature began. At lunch, 水月 stepped into the hallway. Inside the classroom, there was a sense of something being demanded of her. The air carried the hesitation of whether to approach the transfer student—kindness in form, but somehow exhausting. 水月 wasn't afraid of being alone. As she walked past the bulletin board in the hallway, a piece of paper caught her eye. An A4 sheet, slightly aged, pinned with a thumbtack. "Local History Room · Ashihara Town Hall, Second Floor · Hours of Operation" was written by hand. Below it were the address and hours. 水月 stopped and took out her notebook to copy down the address. "Are you trying to look into the Mibu family?" She turned. A female student stood there. Slightly shorter than 水月. Black hair cut evenly at the shoulders, perfectly straight. She wore glasses; the eyes behind the lenses were a calm brown. A face where emotional fluctuations didn't easily surface. Her posture had no unnecessary movement—something like the quiet of a researcher before a subject of study. A thin fountain pen was tucked in the breast pocket of her uniform. 水月 paused for a beat. It wasn't a greeting. It wasn't a word of sympathy. The surprise at this being the first contact lasted only a moment, but before that surprise could settle, her wariness eased slightly. Relief at the fact that this person hadn't pushed in with emotion. "I was just copying down the address," "A transfer student living in Oborozuki Manor shows interest in the local history room's information. There's a connection," She—灯里, as 水月 would later learn—didn't make an assertion. She stated an observation: "There's a connection." That was all. Not an interrogation, not curiosity. Just the logical connection of fact to fact. "Are you looking into the Mibu family?" Now it was 水月's turn to ask. "I've been curious for a while. There's a gap in the historical records," 灯里 leaned against the hallway wall. The distance between them was about two meters. She didn't close it. She seemed to sense the invisible boundary 水月 had set. "My grandfather was a former town hall employee. He taught me how to read documents. Serial numbers in bindings, how to identify damage," There was no emotional aspect to it. She was speaking methodologically. She brought up her memory with her grandfather, but her tone carried no sentimentality. 水月 sensed something beneath that restraint. But she didn't ask. An unspoken agreement not to step into each other's inner worlds formed silently within that short hallway conversation. "Want to go together after school?" 水月 closed her notebook. "Yes," The Ashihara Town Hall was a two-story building one block north of Hotaruzawa Street. The exterior walls were a dull white, and a paper reading "For Staff" was pasted on the glass door of the entrance. The first-floor lobby had folding chairs arranged in rows, and the white fluorescent light reflected off the white linoleum floor. Two staff members at the counter were processing documents. At the top of the stairs to the second floor, a door with a "Local History Room" nameplate hung at the end of the hallway. 灯里 pushed it open. The interior was larger than expected. Two windows. Facing west, so the light at this hour slanted in diagonally. Wooden bookshelves lined the walls, with two reading tables placed between them. The air was dry, carrying the scent of old paper. Not the smell of dust, but the smell of time accumulated in paper itself. 水月 paused for a moment to confirm that scent. The staff member in charge—a woman in her fifties wearing glasses—looked up. "Is there something you'd like to research?" "We'd like to see records from the Taisho period in Ashihara," "That's on the third shelf from the top of that rack. They're arranged chronologically," 灯里 moved quickly to the shelf. 水月 followed a moment later. 灯里's movements were methodical. She took out the index file and first confirmed the overall structure. Before determining what she was looking for, she grasped where everything was. 水月 saw in that order an approach she didn't possess. "I'll check the index. Can you go through the actual documents?" It was a natural division of labor. 水月 nodded and took out the bound file from the indicated shelf. The Mibu family—an old family that dominated the Ashihara area during the Taisho period, who had amassed their wealth through sericulture and silk thread trade—appeared scattered throughout. In congratulations and condolences columns. In land transaction notices. In articles about regional projects. The name alone was unremarkable. It appeared with the ordinary frequency of records from a local influential old family. 水月 continued turning pages silently. The paper was old, fragile. It would crumble from the edges if she applied pressure, so 水月 turned the pages carefully but without hesitation. It happened as she approached the binding from late Taisho 12. Her finger touched emptiness. Pages were missing. The binding seam existed. It was firmly sewn with thread. But the pages that should have been sandwiched in that seam—they didn't exist. There was no trace of cutting. No mark of glue peeling away. As if nothing had ever been bound there from the beginning. A clean void. "灯里," 灯里 came immediately. Together they confirmed the void. 灯里 cross-referenced it with the index file. Her finger traced the serial numbers in the binding. "From late Taisho 12 to early Taisho 14. In terms of serial numbers, bindings seventeen through twenty-three are all missing," Her voice was quiet. But something lay beneath it. 水月 traced the binding seam of that void once more with her fingertip. The reception room of Oborozuki Manor came to mind. The hook marks remaining on the wall. The place where a painting should have hung, empty. That void and the void beneath her fingertip now seemed connected somehow. But she couldn't see how they connected. Only the certainty that they did, in this strange state. 灯里 took out her notebook and began writing down the numbers of the missing sections. "Could it be coincidence?" "There's the possibility of administrative negligence," But neither of them spoke the word "but." Whether the loss was accidental or intentional. The very indeterminacy of that judgment—was speaking something. Speaking something that couldn't be converted to language. The staff member called from the hallway. "I'm sorry, but it's past closing time. We need to shut down," 灯里 finished her transcription. She closed her notebook and stood quietly. "The absence of records itself becomes a primary source," When those words reached her, something moved within 水月. Not like a key fitting into a lock—that wouldn't be precise. Rather, like finally noticing that the place where a lock was supposed to be had no key. Voices that were never recorded. Erased memories. Existence that was never spoken of. The boy from last night overlapped with it. He had words. Words that arrived not through eardrums but through a more direct channel. The meaning of searching. The meaning of having to go to the promised place. But those words—were recorded nowhere. They had been repeated for a hundred years without reaching anyone. The hesitation about whether to confess her ghost experience stirred within 水月. But her mouth didn't open. Partly because it hadn't yet taken the form of words. And also—there was an instinct that it was wrong to bring something she hadn't yet processed as "fact" to this person. 灯里 was someone who dealt with facts. Someone who brought observation instead of emotion. It was too early to bring an unprepared story. The lights in the resource room went out. The two of them stepped into the hallway. Outside the town hall, the sun had tilted low. The western mountain of the basin was swallowing the light, and long shadows stretched across Hotaruzawa Street. The air had suddenly grown cold. Autumn came early to Ashihara. 水月 pulled at her cardigan sleeves. On the bridge spanning Hotaruzawa River—marked "Hotaruzawa Bridge" on its railing—灯里 stopped. 水月 stopped as well. Below the bridge, the river flowed. The water surface caught the evening light, tinged red. The river wasn't particularly wide, but its current was swift. It was easy to believe that this river had once turned water wheels for sericulture. White