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"Can you hear me?"

The girl blinked. Her eyelids moved slowly, as if pushing through something thick. The world around her appeared in blues and greens, warped at the edges. She tried to focus on the source of the voice and found a tall man with broad shoulders standing beyond the curved surface in front of her. His features became clearer as her vision adjusted: dark hair, greying at the temples, and a sharp jawline. He wore a uniform she didn't recognize, something formal with buttons running up the front and insignia on the chest. In his hands, a clipboard.

Water pressed against her skin from all sides. A cylindrical chamber surrounded her, glass or something like it, filled with liquid that tasted faintly metallic when it seeped between her lips.

She tried to speak. Her mouth opened but the sound caught in her throat, probably trapped by the water. She gripped her chest, fingers pressing against ribs, and forced air through her vocal cords.

"Y...yes."

The man marked something on his clipboard. "Good. Do you feel any pain?"

Pain? She looked down at her hands. They floated in front of her, pale and translucent, like they were made of glass themselves. Light passed through the skin, illuminating the bones beneath. 

Had they always looked like this?

She tried to remember what her hands looked like before… before what? Nothing ended up coming, so she shook her head.

The man made another mark. "Do you remember anything?"

Remember. The word circled in her mind, searching for something to latch onto. She reached for memories but found only empty space. No faces. No places. No sense of who she was or how she'd gotten here.

Why couldn't she remember?

"Is it bad… that I don't?"

"No." The man clicked his pen. "It's good. Great even, because it saves us the trouble."

Trouble. She looked at the chamber walls, at the way they contained her, keeping her separate from the man. Had she caused this trouble? Was that why she was confined to this chamber?

"Did I... do something?"

"No. You're not in there because you did something bad. On the contrary, you were created to do something good."

"What kind… of good?"

"The kind where you save hundreds- no, thousands of lives."

The number meant nothing to her. 

"What is the point... of being good?"

The man's pen stopped moving. After a moment, he sighed and meet her eyes through the glass.

"Look, I'm not good with sugarcoating things, so I'll put it bluntly: you shouldn't exist in the first place. But you do now, because you have a purpose."

Purpose. Another word that meant nothing.

"What is... purpose?"

"Purpose? I suppose… it's like how animals are born to reproduce. To keep their species going." He picked up his pen, clicking it twice. "But for you, it's simpler than that. Your purpose is to kill."

Kill. She knew how to kill. The knowledge sat in her muscles in the way her body moved through the water. She could picture it: the vulnerable points on a human body, the precise amount of force needed to stop a heartbeat. These things existed in her mind like facts, like breathing.

The man watched her through the glass. "Looks like you understand."

She nodded. Understanding wasn't the right word, she just simply knew.

He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. The paper crinkled as he unfolded it once, then twice. He pressed it flat against the glass directly in front of her face.

The creature on the paper seemed to glow. Bioluminescent spots ran along a body that stretched impossibly long. Its jaw unhinged at a wrong angle, and its lure was casting white light. A pelican eel, but maybe not quite?

A spear materialized before she registered the thought.

It shot forward, punching the glass where the paper had been. The impact rang through the chamber, and the paper tore from the man's grip. The man himself barely moved, but his expression had soured.

"Least your reaction time is good," he muttered, marking his clipboard. "But you'll need to control that better."

The spear floated beside her now, suspended in the water like her. She stared at it. White bone, or something that looked like bone.

She reached out. The spear drifted toward her hand. When she thought left, it moved left. When she thought forward, it shot ahead, stopping just before the glass. She pulled it back.

When she looked back at the man, his mouth had curved into something that might've been a smile.

"What… am I?"

The man's smile faded. He picked up the fallen paper, smoothed it against his thigh, then held it up again, this time at a safe distance from the chamber.

"You are the predator. And that" - he tapped the photo - "is your prey. It must be eliminated. Otherwise, those thousands of lives I mentioned? They're all going to die."

***

The penguin exhibit sat empty.

Tomoyo pressed her palm against the glass, searching for Ringo among the rocks and water. The other penguins waddled about their business, but Ringo was missing. No, not missing. There, in the far corner, staring directly at her with his beak hanging open like he wants to say something.

She pulled her hand back. The morning had been wrong from the start: waking up with an eel attached to her spine, the sky replaced by a void, three people stabbed to death in Adachi. Even Kuroko had been off. Kuroko, who never got angry at anything, had slammed her fist against a vending machine because the change slot was empty. The sound had made Tomoyo flinch.

But none of it mattered. Raika was here. Raika had texted. That meant Tomoyo had to find her.

She moved through the aquarium, the eel trailing not far behind. Past the tropical fish tanks, past the touch pools where children shrieked and laughed. Tomoyo eventually reached the moon jellyfish exhibit, where she could see them floating in their tank, pulsing gently. Translucent bodies caught the blue light, made them glow.

A girl stood before the tank. Silver hair fell past her shoulders, catching the blue light. She wore simple white clothes: a shirt, pants, nothing remarkable. But she stood perfectly still, face turned toward the jellyfish.

Tomoyo drew closer. The eel brightened slightly, illuminating the space between them.

"Um, sorry to bother you, but have you seen my friend around here? A girl about my age, light brown hair, yellow eyes."

The girl didn't turn around.

Heat crept up Tomoyo's neck. Of course. Tomoyo had just interrupted like she always did, assuming people wanted to be interrupted. She took a step back, already forming an apology in her head.

"Do you know what they are?" the girl finally said.

"I- what?"

"These." The girl raised a finger, pressing it against the glass. "What are they?"

The plaque sat right there, bolted to the wall beside the tank. Black text on white background read Aurelia aurita. Moon Jellyfish. Could she not read? Was her vision bad?

"They're moon jellies," Tomoyo said.

"Moon jellies." The girl repeated it without intonation. "What is their purpose?"

"…Purpose?"

"Yes."

"Well... they're beautiful, aren't they? And that makes people happy when they see them."

The girl stared at the tank. Her head tilted, just slightly.

"Is their purpose not to kill?"

"…Sorry?"

"They have spears." The girl pressed her whole hand on the glass now. "That's what they're for, right?"

"No, that's-" Tomoyo moved closer, looking at the jellyfish. "Moon jellies barely sting at all. People can't even feel it most of the time."

The girl said nothing.

"What I'm trying to say is, I don't think they're made to kill."

The girl continued staring at the jelly. Seconds passed before Tomoyo's phone buzzed in her pocket. Raika. She needed to find Raika. This conversation was eating time she didn't have.

"I'm sorry," Tomoyo said, backing away. She opened her mouth again, then closed it. She wanted to excuse herself but didn't know how to address her.

"What's your name?"

The girl's shoulders locked. Her hand fell away from the glass.

"What is… a name?"

Huh? How did you explain something like a name?

"I guess a name's how people tell you apart from everyone else. Like, I'm Tomoyo. That's my name. When someone says Tomoyo, they mean me specifically."

The girl's gaze drifted back to the jellyfish tank.

"Do they have names?"

Tomoyo followed her line of sight. Did moon jellyfish have names? The penguins had names, like Ringo. But the jellyfish...

"I don't think so? Moon jellies don't live very long, so..." She trailed off, uncomfortable with where the thought led.

"I see. So things that don't live long don't need names."

"That's not-" Tomoyo's hands twisted together. "I mean, it's more complicated than that."

The girl went quiet.

"Surely someone gave you a name," Tomoyo tried again. "Your parents, or someone you know?"

Her head tilted. When she spoke again, she turned to face Tomoyo fully, and for the first time, Tomoyo saw her face fully. Light blue eyes, almost aquamarine.

"Then you give me one."

"I-I can't! We just met and all…"

"Haven't we met before?"

Had they? Tomoyo searched the girl's face, looking for anything familiar, but came up empty.

"I..." Tomoyo looked at the girl's pale skin, at the way light seemed to pass through her. The girl was like zero, a blank slate waiting to be given value. "Rei. How about Rei?"

"Rei." The girl repeated it. Her eyes brightened slightly, catching the blue light from the tank. "Rei."

Tomoyo's thoughts drifted back to Raika. She had to find her.

"I'm really sorry, Rei, but I have to go now." She backed away, already turning toward the corridor. "I really need to find my friend. Maybe we could talk about jellyfish some other time?"

"Wait."

Tomoyo froze mid-step. The word hadn't been loud, but it cut through the aquarium's ambient hum.

"This friend you're searching for. Is she your purpose?"

Tomoyo didn't want to get into it again. "Something like that," she said, already turning back.

"What if I told you this friend you're searching for no longer exists?"

Tomoyo froze again. "...What do you mean?"

"It's tragic, how you always search for her even though she's dead to begin with. That makes it a meaningless purpose, I suppose"

Dead. The word sat in Tomoyo's chest, heavy and cold.

"No. No, she can't be dead. She texted me. I saw her earlier this week." Tomoyo pulled out her phone, fingers trembling as she pulled up Raika's message. "See? Right here. She's waiting for me at the aquarium. And what do you mean by always? Like I've searched for her many times before?"

Rei's expression didn't change. "Why don't you ask the anglerfish next time?"

The anglerfish. What did an anglerfish have to do with anything? Tomoyo opened her mouth to ask but stopped when Rei raised her hand.

A spear materialized beside her, white and coated in red, gleaming in the aquarium's blue light. Then the spear shot forward.

Tomoyo tried to run, but her legs wouldn't move. The eel wrapped around her, trying to shield her body, but the spear punched through its flesh like it was made of water. The creature's light flickered once, twice, before going dark.

The spear emerged from the other side and drove into Tomoyo's chest. She felt the spear scrape against her ribs, and then felt nothing at all.

The last thing Tomoyo saw was Rei standing over her, watching her with empty aquamarine eyes.