Afterlight

Chapter 1 - The Horrifying Start.

Haruto Saito stood on the outdoor stairway like he had for months—hands in his pockets, the rail warm under his palms, the afternoon sun turning the school grounds into a patchwork of light and shadow. From this height the courtyard looked slow and patient: students drifting from class to club practice, a cluster of second-years talking near the bicycle racks, the long avenue leading to the front gate slicing the campus in two. Haruto knew every face that passed below, knew the rhythm of the day. He had learned to take comfort from that rhythm: the safe certainty that time moved on, that nothing sudden or personal ever happened to him here.

He was, as ever, skipping class.

Rei Tsukishima's footsteps were deliberate on the metal treads. She always found him. When she eased up beside him, she wore the same half-annoyed expression she used when she dragged him back to homeroom: a scold softened by something like worry.

"You're here again," she said, not loud enough to embarrass him but loud enough that her irritation had teeth.

Haruto didn't turn at first. He let her voice roll over him. He liked the control of the stairway—the small distance it put between him and the rest of the school. Rei had the audacity to care about the things Haruto didn't want to care about.

"You're going to miss the afternoon exam," Rei said. "Mr. Ishida's not the kind to forget a name on a roll sheet."

"Don't sound so pleased," Haruto said, flat.

She pushed her glasses up with one finger and looked at him. Up close, she always read like someone who'd practiced being stern for years. "You're not a ghost, Haruto. You can't just drift out of life and expect nobody to notice."

"And if I did?" he said. It wasn't defiance—just the familiar bluntness he used like a shield.

Rei sighed. For a moment she softened. "Just—don't make a habit out of disappearing. Hana called you last night. She sounded lonely."

The name tightened something in Haruto he tried not to name. He didn't answer. He watched the front gate. The stairs gave him a margin of safety and the illusion of distance from the things that smothered him at home: Riku's easy smile, his parents' quiet bickering, the way responsibility sat like a stone in his sister's small hands.

Rei huffed and started to walk away. "You're impossible. I'm not covering for you anymore," she muttered, but she glanced back once, her expression taut with something unreadable, then she left him to the sun and the empty stretch of walkway that led to the gate.

Haruto let the silence settle; the ordinary details filled his head—the squeak of bicycle tires, the fluttering posters on the noticeboard, the distant shout of a coach calling to club members. Then, at the edge of the courtyard, a disturbance snapped across the calm.

A man was coming through the main gate.

At first Haruto thought the man was just a stranger—dirty coat, hair hanging in his face, backpack slung crooked. People drifted in and out of the school grounds all the time: parents, delivery people, the occasional drifter passing under the archway. But the way the man moved made Haruto's stomach flip: not the uneven pacing of fatigue, but a jerky, puppet-like lurching, as if his limbs were trying to catch up to a mind that had already gone ahead.

The man pushed himself forward until he banged his shoulder hard against the iron gate. The clang traveled up to Haruto like a small, wrong bell. The man's arms rose slowly—too slowly—then began to beat against the bars with a hollow, rhythmless force. Hair hung like a curtain over a face Haruto could not see.

Three staff members crossed the courtyard toward the gate: Nurse Fujimoto from the infirmary, her white coat tossed open; Mr. Ishida, the homeroom teacher, adjusting his tie with an anxious hand; and Coach Hayata, who wore his PE jacket and an expression like a thundercloud.