4965.1

Tomoyo woke to the sensation of something cold and slimy draped across her chest.

Her eyes snapped open. A translucent cord stretched from her spine to the ceiling, where a pelican eel drifted above her bed. The creature's jaw hung open, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth, and its body pulsed with white light that painted her bedroom walls.

"What the?!-" Tomoyo scrambled backwards, her back hitting the headboard. Her hand flew to her back, fingers grazing the cord where it emerged from her skin. The texture made her stomach turn. When she tugged at it, pain shot through her spine sharp enough to make her gasp.

The eel rotated midair to stare at Tomoyo with its empty black eyes. Tomoyo stared back. She knew this species. Eurypharynx pelecanoides. She read about them extensively at the Sky Tree Aquarium, memorized their features and the way their bodies adapted to crushing ocean pressure.

"What are you doing here?"

It ignored her, swimming in a slow figure eight pattern that made the cord twist around itself.

Tomoyo grabbed her phone from the nightstand. Gaggle would have answers. It had to. She unlocked the screen and pulled up the search bar but the date and time at the top of her display looked wrong. She squinted at it, brought the phone closer to her face, but the digits wouldn't come into focus.

She blinked a few more times, then decided it didn't matter. She typed pelican eel attached to person umbilical cord and was about to hit enter when her phone exploded with notifications.

[the dishes are burning]

Mika: three people got STABBED

Kuroko: where?

Mika: HERE! IN ADACHI!!

Kenji: mika ur so full of shit lmao

Mika: IM NOT

Kenji: pics or it didnt happen

Tomoyo stared at her phone. This had to be a joke. The entire chat existed for exactly this kind of nonsense. In fact, last week they convinced everyone the cafeteria was serving horse meat.

But something made Tomoyo open a new tab and type adachi ward murders into the search bar.

The results loaded immediately,

Three Dead in Series of Stabbings Across Adachi Ward

Tomoyo's thumb hovered over the first article. She tapped it, and text filled her screen: three victims. All stabbed. The most recent attack had occurred two blocks from her school.

The eel drifted lower, its cord now brushing against her shoulder.

Tomoyo looked up from the phone.

"…Did you do this?"

The creature's jaw hung open but didn't respond.

"You showed up right after the murders happened. That can't be a coincidence, right?"

The creature ignored her again, its attention fixed on a row of manga volumes this time.

"Is Raika-" The words caught in her throat. She forced them out anyway. "Is Raika one of them?"

Raika hadn't answered her texts in three days. Three days of hey are you okay? and did something happen? and increasingly desperate please just tell me you're alive.

A knock rattled her door, making Tomoyo jerk her head toward the sound.

"W-what?"

Something answered from the other side: a wet, garbled noise that sounded like someone trying to speak through a mouth full of water.

"Mom…?"

The garbled noise came again, louder this time.

Tomoyo glanced up at the eel. "Are you doing this?"

The creature ignored her yet again, continuing its lazy circles.

Tomoyo eventually swung her legs over the side of the bed and pushed herself upright. Her vision grayed at the edges, and she had to grab the nightstand to keep from falling. The sensation reminded her of those awful periods where she'd wake up dizzy and weak, when getting out of bed felt like climbing a mountain.

But she wasn't on her period.

Tomoyo looked at the cord trailing from her spine to the eel. The creature's body pulsed with that same white light, and she wondered if it was taking something from her. Blood, maybe, or some kind of nutrients. Whatever kept a person upright and functioning.

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Her legs wobbled when she took the first step, but she managed to make it to the door without collapsing.

The hallway stretched empty before her. No mom, just the familiar beige walls and the framed photos her mother and herself had hung years ago and never moved.

Tomoyo shut the door and headed for the bathroom instead. The eel followed, its cord dragging behind her like a leash. When she flicked on the light, her reflection stared back at her in the mirror: silver-blue hair falling across her face, long bangs obscuring one eye. She looked tired. She always looked tired, but this was different. Her skin had taken on a grayish color and dark circles ringed her eyes like bruises.

She looked like she was dying.

Tomoyo's gaze dropped to the sink, then drifted lower, following the cord that emerged from somewhere behind her. The umbilical cord vanished beneath her shirt, burrowing into her spine between her shoulder blades.

She shouldn't look, but her fingers found the hem of her shirt anyway. She lifted it, craning her neck to peer over her shoulder at the bathroom mirror.

Purple ran across her entire back in ugly splotches that bled into one another. It crept over her shoulders, down her sides, and disappearing beneath the waistband of her pajama shorts. She lifted her shirt higher. The bruising covered her ribs, her stomach, even under her arms.

Her whole body looked like it was rotting from the inside out.

Tomoyo dropped the shirt. Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the shirt, tugging it back into place like that would somehow undo what she'd seen.

She twisted the faucet. Water gushed out, cold against her palms. She splashed it across her face once, twice, three times, scrubbing at her cheeks until her skin stung, but the image wouldn't leave.

Water dripped from her chin down onto her shirt as she looked up. The eel floated beside the towel rack now. Those black eyes fixed at her.

"Stop looking at me like that."

The eel's jaw only opened wider.

She grabbed a towel and scrubbed her face dry, then shoved past the eel and its stupid cord and headed for the kitchen. Water soaked through her shirt collar, making her shiver as she made her way down the hallway.

***

The first thing Tomoyo noticed was the darkness.

Their apartment was small - cramped, really, with the kitchen bleeding directly into a living room barely large enough for a chabudai. But the far side of the room had been swallowed by shadow in a way that Tomoyo couldn't make out the chabudai.

The second thing she noticed was the smell of ochazuke.

The third thing was the garbled voice.

It came from the kitchen, where Tomoyo's mother stood with her back turned, hunched over the counter. Her shoulders moved in what might've been scooping rice.

"Mom?"

Her mother's shoulders stilled. Then slowly, she turned around.

Where her mother's face should've been, there was only darkness. It was the same darkness that had consumed part of the living room's wall. It shifted like oil on water, distorting the shape of her mother's features into something unrecognizable.

The garbled voice came again, and Tomoyo realized that her mother's face was trying to form words.