Where Waiting Becomes a Choice

The street no longer felt like a place. It felt like a wound that refused to close. Dust hung low in the air, lit by flickering streetlights that buzzed like exposed nerves. The pressure that had been building since the wraith’s arrival hadn’t released after Takumi went down — it had settled, thick and oppressive, pressing into lungs and thoughts alike. Reina stood where she was, knees trembling, crimson blade still in her hand.

Takumi wasn’t moving. Not dead, she could tell that much — but frighteningly still, chest rising shallowly, blood spreading beneath him in a slow, deliberate bloom. Kazu was beside him, hands shaking as he pressed down hard, trying to stop bleeding that didn’t want to stop. “Stay with me,” Kazu muttered. Not loudly. Not heroically. Just desperately. “Don’t you dare— don’t you—”

Takumi coughed. Wet. Ugly. Real.

Kazu exhaled shakily, almost laughing. “Yeah. Okay. Good. You’re… you’re still annoying.” Takumi didn’t answer. The wraith watched them. Not with interest. With patience. Around them, the remaining fighters regrouped instinctively, not because they believed they could win, but because standing still felt worse. A man with a chipped axe shifted his grip, knuckles white. Someone else leaned against a car door, vomiting blood between shallow breaths. No one spoke. The wraith took a step forward.

The ground cracked. Another. Closer. Reina moved. She didn’t look at Kazu. Didn’t look at Takumi again. If she did, she wouldn’t move at all — and she knew that part of herself too well. She tightened her grip on the sword and stepped into the street. “Kazu,” she said, voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. “Get him back.”

Kazu looked up sharply. “Reina—”

“I’m not asking.”

The wraith’s gaze slid to her as she approached.

“…you keep coming back,” it said.

Reina didn’t answer. She broke into a run. The sword came up in a clean arc, her body moving on instinct honed through repetition and pain. The first strike landed across the wraith’s ribs, steel biting deep, blood spraying hot across her sleeve. She didn’t slow. Second strike — lower, twisting her hips, tearing open muscle already half-destroyed. The wraith grunted, weight shifting. Its hand snapped out. Reina ducked under it, felt the air shear past her head, felt something tear loose behind her as the force pulverized a section of concrete wall. Shards slammed into her back, one slicing into her shoulder deep enough to make her gasp.

She stumbled. Recovered. The wraith drove a fist into her stomach.

The impact lifted her clean off the ground. Pain exploded through her core, sharp, blinding, intimate. She hit the pavement hard, air tearing out of her lungs in a sound that didn’t even qualify as a scream. For a second, she couldn’t move. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. The wraith loomed over her.

“Still standing,” it observed.

Reina rolled just as its foot came down where her head had been. Asphalt shattered. The shockwave rattled her teeth. She pushed herself upright, vision swimming, blood dripping down her chin. Someone behind her charged — too fast, too desperate. The wraith didn’t even turn fully. Its arm lashed out. The man’s body folded mid-stride. There was a sickening crunch as his spine bent sideways, ribs bursting through skin. He hit the ground screaming, hands clawing at nothing, legs twitching uselessly. The scream didn’t last long. Another death. Mid-motion. Meaningless.

Reina’s jaw clenched. She rushed again. This time, the wraith met her. Its hand closed around her arm mid-swing. The force was overwhelming, not crushing yet, but absolute. Like being caught in machinery that hadn’t decided whether to break you or not. Reina drove the sword into its wrist. Once. Twice. Blood poured down both of them. The grip loosened. The wraith slammed its forehead into her face. White exploded behind her eyes. She staggered back, tasting copper, teeth ringing. And then the pressure changed.

The air thickened. Condensed. Reina felt it before she understood it — that same wrongness Kazu had described, space folding inward, power coiling. The wraith drew its arm back. This wasn’t a strike. This was an ending. Reina tried to move. Her legs didn’t respond. Her body hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. And in that fraction—

The world shifted. She wasn’t on the street anymore.

She was standing in a narrow stairwell that smelled of mold, rust, and old rain trapped in concrete. The kind of place people passed through without ever really seeing. Paint peeled from the walls in long, tired strips. Someone had scratched a name into the railing years ago, half-sanded away by hands sliding past in a hurry.

The fluorescent light above her flickered — on, off, on — buzzing weakly, like it was deciding whether it wanted to exist. Her phone vibrated in her hand. Once. Twice. The screen lit up.

Are you coming?

Reina leaned back against the cold metal railing, breath coming faster than she wanted it to. Her fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles ached. From somewhere above her, voices echoed down the stairwell, raised, sharp, overlapping. Angry. Panicked. Then another sound cut through them. Crying. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just thin. Desperate. The kind that meant someone was trying very hard not to scream. Reina swallowed. Her thumb hovered over the screen.

If I go now, she thought, I won’t be able to undo it.

She knew that feeling. The one where a single step forward collapsed every safe version of the future you’d built for yourself. The phone vibrated again.

They’re getting angry.

Her chest tightened like something had wrapped around her ribs and pulled. She knew exactly what was happening upstairs. Knew the rhythm of it. The escalation. The point where voices stopped being words and turned into threats. She also knew what would happen if she stepped in. There were cameras in the building. She’d seen them on the way in — black domes tucked into corners, quietly watching. There were witnesses. People who wouldn’t intervene but would remember her face clearly enough to mention it later. And names mattered. Names carried weight. Power. Consequences.

She’d learned that the hard way.

People who interfered without protection didn’t get thanked. They got buried under paperwork, lawsuits, quiet warnings. They got labeled difficult. Unstable. Liabilities. Her phone vibrated again.

Please. 

The word hit harder than the others. Reina closed her eyes.

“Just a minute,” she whispered, voice barely audible over the buzzing light. “Just— let me think.”

She wasn’t saying no. She told herself that again and again. She was just… waiting. Waiting for someone else to step in. Waiting for backup. Waiting for proof that it was bad enough to justify what would come after. Waiting for the right moment — the clean moment, the defensible moment, the one where she could say I had no choice. The shouting above her cracked into something uglier. Something heavy hit the floor. A voice screamed — short, sharp, and cut off too fast.

Reina’s phone went silent. She stared at the screen, heart pounding, thumb hovering uselessly where a reply should have been. Seconds passed. Then minutes. Each one heavier than the last. When the sirens finally wailed outside, distant but unmistakable, relief washed through her first. Then came the shame. Too late. Later, people told her she’d done the sensible thing. They said stepping in would have ruined her life. That she couldn’t have known how bad it really was. That the system failed, not her.

One person even smiled gently and said, “You survived. That’s what matters.”

Reina nodded. She smiled back. She went home, washed the smell of concrete off her hands, and lay awake staring at the ceiling until morning. And every night after that, no matter how far she ran from that stairwell — the same words came back to her in the dark. Not accusing. Not screaming. Just waiting.

Are you coming?

The street slammed back into existence.

Reina screamed, not in fear, but fury and forced her body to move. The wraith’s strike came down. She threw herself sideways. The force tore through the space she’d occupied, compressing air and concrete into nothing. The ground imploded, a crater forming where Reina would have been. She rolled, came up on one knee, sword scraping against the pavement. Blood dripped from her nose. Her vision burned. But she was moving. No more waiting. No more later.

She charged again, faster than before, pain screaming through her body as she drove the blade deep into the wraith’s thigh, twisting hard. The wraith staggered, actually losing balance this time.

“…that look,” it said, voice tightening. “I remember that.”

Reina ripped the sword free.

“I don’t care,” she spat. “You don’t get to justify it.”

Behind her, another scream cut short — someone crushed against a wall, body bursting under pressure. Kazu shouted her name. She didn’t turn. The wraith straightened slowly, blood pouring freely now, its form destabilizing, edges of its presence warping.

“You waited,” it said. “So did I.”

Reina raised her sword.

“And people died,” she said. “That’s the part you don’t get to dress up.”

The pressure surged again. Harder. The 25th Hour strained — buildings groaning, lights bursting, time itself shuddering like it might tear loose. Kazu dragged Takumi behind cover, yelling something Reina couldn’t hear. The wraith spread its arms.

“Then come,” it said. “Prove you won’t hesitate again.”

Reina stepped forward. Alone. Bloodied. Unsteady. But moving. And for the first time since the fight began, the wraith looked uncertain. Not afraid. But shaken. Because Reina wasn’t fighting it out of rage. She was fighting it because she had already lived with the cost of waiting. And she would not do it again.