Shattered Mirror

The University of Tokyo Hospital was bathed in the dull gray light of the afternoon.
Aoi crossed the main lobby, her press badge still clipped to her jacket out of habit. Outside, towering over the building like a silent guardian, Rei stood watch—ready to intervene at the slightest sign of trouble.

She could feel his presence through the Resonance.
Warm. Alert. Anxious.

I’m here, it seemed to say. If anything goes wrong…

Aoi took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The corridors were livelier than during her last visit—nurses pushing carts, visitors carrying bouquets, doctors absorbed in their tablets. Hospital normalcy in all its mundane banality.

Room 407 was at the end of the hallway.

Aoi hesitated in front of the door. The message she had received—Yuki is awake. She wants to see you. Nya~—still echoed in her mind.
Who had sent it?
How did they have her number?
How did they know Aoi had met Yuki?

She pushed the door open.

The room was steeped in half-light, the curtains drawn. Yuki sat on the bed with her back to the entrance, her black hair cascading over her shoulders like a mourning veil. She didn’t move when Aoi entered.

“Yuki-san?”

No response.

Aoi took a few cautious steps forward. Her newly awakened spiritual sense was on high alert, picking up strange fluctuations in the air—as if multiple presences were occupying the same space.

“It’s Mizushima Aoi. We… met the other night. Did you send me that strange message?”

Yuki slowly turned her head.

Her face was changing.

Expressions flickered across it like cards being shuffled too fast. The perfect idol smile—radiant and empty. Deep sorrow that hollowed her features. Suppressed rage that made her jaw tremble. Then nothing. Emptiness. Eyes that looked without seeing.

As if several people were inhabiting the same body, fighting for control.

“Mizushima… san?”
Yuki’s voice was hers, but something rang false beneath it. An underlying echo. A discordant harmony.

She turned fully toward Aoi, revealing the dark circles under her eyes, the unhealthy pallor of her skin, lips cracked from dehydration.

“I… I don’t know anymore.” Yuki pressed a trembling hand to her temple. “Did I call you? I don’t remember. Someone told me to… no. It was me. It was…”

Her face suddenly froze into a smile.
Too gentle.
Too maternal.

It wasn’t the smile of a nineteen-year-old girl.

“Don’t worry, Yuki-chan.”
The voice had changed—lower, warmer, almost purring. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

Aoi stepped back.

That wasn’t Yuki speaking anymore.

Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the smile vanished. Yuki blinked in confusion, and her own voice returned—shattered, trembling, desperate.

“Who am I?” She clawed at the sheets with white-knuckled hands. “The idol? Nothing? The ordinary girl who just wanted to sing? The monster they created with their expectations?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I don’t know anymore. I’ve become a mirror. I reflect what others want to see. And now…” Her voice broke. “…there’s something else. Something that talks to me. That tells me everything will be fine if I just… disappear. That I won’t hurt anymore.”

Aoi felt her heart tighten.
She knew that pain.

Four years earlier, she had felt the exact same thing—the abyss opening beneath her feet when the world she had built collapsed in an instant.

“Yuki-san, listen to me. What you’re feeling… it’s not you. Something is influencing you. Something feeding on your suffering.”

Yuki’s face glitched.

For a fraction of a second, Aoi saw something else superimposed over her features—feline ears, glowing violet eyes, two spectral tails swaying behind her.

Then everything snapped back to normal.

But Yuki’s posture had changed.
Stiffer.
More alert.

Like an animal preparing to pounce.

“Too late.”

That wasn’t her voice.
It was the other presence—gentle, maternal, terrifyingly so.

Yuki lunged at Aoi.

She was no longer fully human. Her body flickered between two forms—the fragile young idol and something darker, made of red notifications and crawling kanji characters that writhed across her skin like insects. Her nails had elongated into claws. Her eyes burned with an unnatural violet light.

Aoi barely dodged in time, survival instinct taking over. She raised her hands, and a barrier of golden light materialized—unstable, flickering, but strong enough to block the first assault.

The impact sent her stumbling back three steps.

“REI!”

The window exploded inward instantly, and Rei landed in the room in his semi-kitsune form—three silver tails flared, cold flames crackling around his fists, eyes glowing pure gold.

Yuki—or what she had become—whirled toward him with an angry cat’s hiss and attacked. Her movements oscillated between a dancer’s grace and the chaotic violence of a wounded beast.

“Don’t hurt her!” Aoi shouted.

“I know!”

Rei dodged, blocked, repelled—but he was clearly holding back. Every time his flames touched Yuki, she screamed—not in physical pain, but something far deeper. And with every scream, Aoi heard two voices overlapping:

“Help me…”
Yuki’s voice—pleading, terrified.

“She’s mine!”
The other voice—possessive, furious.

“Help me!”

“MINE!”

Yuki collapsed to her knees, clawing at her face, torn between two wills.

Aoi saw her opening.

She rushed forward, ignoring the danger, and placed her hands on Yuki’s temples. Golden light erupted—not to attack, but to purify. To sever the link.

A shock tore through her body.

And suddenly, she was no longer in the hospital room.

She was Yuki.

She was staring at her phone.
Again.
And again.

Messages scrolled endlessly—insults, threats, humiliations. Every word a blade. Every notification a hammer blow.

Die.
No one loves you.
You should disappear.

And behind every message, a presence. Gentle. Comforting. A voice whispering:

Keep reading. You need to know what they really think.
I’m here. I’ll never leave you.
Let me carry this burden with you.

Aoi recognized the tactic.
Isolation.
Dependency.
The slow destruction of identity until nothing remained but despair.

She had lived through this—when her career had collapsed and the entire world seemed to hate her.

But she had survived. Alone. Broken, yes. But alive.

You can survive, she projected into Yuki’s mind. You’re stronger than this. You’re more than what they want to turn you into.

She searched for the connection—the spectral thread linking Yuki to the parasitic presence—and pulled with everything she had.

The world exploded in light.

Aoi came back to herself, gasping, kneeling on the floor of the hospital room. Yuki lay in front of her, unconscious but peaceful. The kanji characters had vanished from her skin. The claws had receded into normal fingernails.

But Aoi could feel it—it wasn’t over. The link wasn’t broken. Only weakened. Like a chain with a few missing links.

Rei knelt beside her, his flames extinguished, his tails gone.

“Are you okay?”

“I…” Aoi was trembling from head to toe. “I stabilized her. But the connection is still there.”

Voices echoed in the hallway. Footsteps approaching. Hospital security, alerted by the shattered window.

“We have to go.” Rei lifted Yuki into his arms as if she weighed nothing, then extended a hand to Aoi. “Can you walk?”

She nodded, even though it was a lie.

They exited through the broken window, Rei carrying them along the hospital façade, leaping from ledge to ledge until they reached a neighboring rooftop. Tokyo stretched beneath them, indifferent to their escape.

They took refuge in an abandoned warehouse a few streets away. Rei laid Yuki down on a battered old sofa, then sat beside Aoi, exhausted as well.

“What did you see?” he asked softly. “When you touched her?”

Aoi closed her eyes.

“A voice. Gentle. Maternal. Telling her it was there for her. That it would never leave her alone.” She opened her eyes and looked at Rei. “It’s the same presence as in the video. The VTuber. Nekomata_Hikari.”

Something shifted in Rei’s gaze. Tension. A memory.

“A gentle voice…” Yuki murmured, eyes still closed. “She talks to me when I read the messages. She says she understands. That she’s there. That she’ll never leave me alone.”

She opened her eyes—really her eyes this time—and looked at Aoi in pure terror.

“She’s devouring me. Little by little.”

The silence that followed was icy.

Rei watched Yuki as she drifted back into sleep, drained by what she had just endured.

“We can’t leave her here.” He ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “If Kageyama finds out we weakened his hold on her, he’ll send someone to retrieve her. Or worse.”

“You want to take her to your place?”

“The machiya is protected. The seals will hold until we find a more permanent solution.” He looked at Aoi. “And at least there, I can monitor her condition.”

Rei gently lifted Yuki into his arms. The young idol—so young, so fragile—didn’t wake, trapped in a nightmare she had never asked for.

Aoi watched Rei. His expression had hardened. Through the Resonance, she felt something complex—guilt, regret, an old wound that refused to heal.

“Rei?”

He didn’t answer right away. Then, in a hoarse voice:

“Kageyama’s invitation. Are you still planning to go?”

Aoi nodded. She knew it was a trap. She knew she was risking her life. But after what she had just seen—Yuki being consumed from the inside, turned into a puppet—she could no longer remain passive.

“It might be the only way to get answers.”

Rei clenched his fists.

She felt his resistance through their bond. His fear of losing her. His refusal to let her face danger alone.

But also his understanding.
His trust.

Outside, the sun was setting over Tokyo, staining the sky red and gold.