The Girl with Pink Pigtails

The bathroom remained warm and humid from Kageri's shower. Steam veiled the mirror, while droplets traced the tiled walls. Kenzo placed his clothes on the sink and studied the faint reflection visible through the condensation.

Dark shadows beneath his eyes made him look awful. The past few days had been relentless. In only forty-eight hours, he had witnessed more death than anyone should, and his mind was still struggling to process it.

"What the am I doing?"

He bowed his head, eyes fixed on the counter as the tub's quiet dripping echoed behind him.

He left the question unanswered, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water over his face. The shock cleared some of the fog from his mind. After rubbing his face with both hands, he straightened and studied his blurred reflection in the mirror.

"Pull yourself together," he muttered. "Repay the debt, and maybe… maybe you and Mom can finally walk away from all this."

His jaw tightened as he pictured his mother lying motionless in a hospital bed, wires draped across her body, trapped in a coma caused by the stress of his father's neglect.

Kenzo exhaled shakily and faced the shower. He stripped off his clothes and let them fall to the floor. With a turn of the knob, water sputtered from the old pipes. He stepped beneath the lukewarm spray, bowed, and pressed his hands against the tile.

For several minutes, he let the water stream over his shoulders and down his back, pooling at his feet before draining away. It was too cool to comfort him, but it offered something—a fragile barrier between him and the outside world.

He stayed beneath the spray a moment longer, then reached for the body wash on the tub's edge. Its lid was open. He glanced at the bathroom door, then back at the bottle.

"Did she…?" He stared at the bottle and sighed. "Of everything she brought, body wash wasn't one of them," he murmured as he began washing.

He lathered the soap over his skin, washing away the day's grime and lingering tension. The water cooled, but he welcomed it. It cleared his head, if only a little.

When he finally shut off the water, the silence rushed back in.

Kenzo grabbed the towel from the rack and quickly dried off before pulling on his sweatpants and T-shirt. He pushed his damp hair from his face, then gave his reflection one last look in the fogged mirror.

"Alright," he muttered. "Just… get through tonight."

He stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Cool air brushed his damp skin, while the bedside lamp cast a soft glow.

Kageri hadn't moved. She was exactly where he'd left her—curled slightly on her side, facing the window, breathing quietly.

Kenzo hesitated in the doorway, a towel still draped over his shoulder. For a moment, he just… looked at her. From here, she almost looked like a normal person, someone you'd pass in the coffee shop or on a train, lost in thought. Not an assassin. Not a trained killer.

But he knew better.

He exhaled slowly and crossed to the other side of the bed, tossing the towel onto a nearby chair. The mattress dipped as he climbed in and kept to the edge, giving her as much room as possible. The springs creaked once, then fell silent.

Kenzo sank into the pillow and stared at the ceiling, his eyes following the faint cracks in the plaster. His body was exhausted, but his mind kept circling the same thoughts: his father, the debt, Beaumont, the assets, and the murders he had witnessed. They twisted into a knot he couldn't untangle. At last, his eyes drifted shut, and sleep claimed him.

Meanwhile, atop the abandoned hospital, a girl slightly shorter than Kageri surveyed the city with her axe resting across her shoulders. Her red eyes scanned the skyline as she slowly turned her head. Beside her loomed a tall, broad man, slightly hunched with bent knees and long arms hanging loosely at his sides.

The man had ashen-gray skin and wore a torn straitjacket with matching pants. A black muzzle covered his mouth, metal cuffs bound his wrists, and messy black hair brushed his neck. His red eyes moved in eerie sync with the girl's.

"Did you… find it yet?" he rasped, each word dragging from his throat. "They want… the files… so they can make… more."

"Hmph." The girl tightened her grip on the axe, her gaze fixed on the city's distant glow. "You'd think they had enough for the first batch, but I guess the formula was incomplete." She gave a small shrug, her pink pigtails swaying lightly against her shoulders.

She glanced at him, then turned back toward the city. "Don't worry, big guy. I'll have those files in their hands before the night's over. Just give me time to strip this place clean." Through the wide window behind her, dozens of masked men in black suits and ties searched the abandoned hospital room by room, each mask revealing only one eye. She watched them pass with a faint smirk. "For incomplete models, they sure know how to work."

The man shifted, bending his knees further as his long arms hung limp. His red eyes turned toward the window, tracking the masked figures as they moved through the crumbling halls like silent ants.

"Incomplete…" He rasped slowly. "But…functional. Good…enough." He tilted his head slightly, joints creaking faintly. "Boss wants…perfection. Wants…More assets…A full sequence."

The girl gave the axe a lazy twirl before settling it across her shoulders again. "Yeah, well… perfection takes time. And data." She glanced toward the masked figures. "If the files are here, we'll find them. This place reeks of old experiments. You can practically smell the formaldehyde and fear here…And it's" Her fingers drifted down her face, slow and deliberate. "Intoxicating."

The man tilted his head farther, his neck cracking. A heavy metal collar circled his throat, its chain swaying against his chest. "You're… enjoying this… too much," he wheezed, though no judgment colored his voice. "You want…chaos, des...truction…With those files…the next phase…can…begin."

The girl laughed, soft and melodic, yet wrong in a way that crawled under the skin. "Want chaos?" she said, turning toward him. "I am chaos." Her red eyes slid to the masked men below. "Once we have the files, we'll hold the blueprint for an army—not these fragile, unfinished husks, but the perfect model the Boss wants."

The girl hopped from the ledge and landed almost silently on the cracked rooftop. She walked a few steps, dragging her axe blade across the concrete with a thin, scraping hiss.

"You know the best part?" she asked without waiting for an answer. "None of these backwater ass families have any idea what's happening beneath their noses." She took a few more steps. "The Vossens, the Beaumonts, even the Regalias—all clueless about how close their empires are to crumbling beneath our feet. And when they do—" She spun again, balancing briefly on the toes of her blood-spattered white-and-pink sneakers before stopping. "—ours will be the only empire left standing," she finished softly, tilting her head toward the sky.

The man's red eyes tracked her as the chain beneath his neck swayed softly. "The families…" He spoke again. "Will not…go…quietly." He slowly turned his head towards the girl. "This…will be…a war."

"Good," the girl replied. "A war means bodies," She continued. "Bodies mean data. Data means progress." She tapped the flat of her axe blade against her palm, once, twice. "The families bleeding each other out is just… a bonus."

As if summoned by their words, the rooftop door groaned open. A masked man stepped into the night and froze at the threshold. His single visible eye flicked from the girl to the hulking figure beside her, then dropped in silence. In his right hand, he gripped a metal briefcase crusted with dirt, as though dragged from a grave.

The girl's eyes locked onto the briefcase before the masked man had even taken another step.

She was still. Completely, unnervingly still.

Then she smiled. "There it is," The girl said softly as she stared at it.

Hours later, morning light slipped through Kenzo's bedroom window and crossed his face. He groaned, rolled over, and found the other side of the bed empty. Kageri's sheets were cool and so neatly smoothed and tucked that they looked freshly made.

Kenzo slowly sat up, running a hand through his twists as he scanned the room. The shirt and shorts he had given Kageri were neatly folded on the dresser, and her boots were gone from beside the door. Every trace of her seemed to have vanished.

"What the… did she leave?" Kenzo muttered. He scanned the room, climbed out of bed, and headed to the living room. She was nowhere to be found. The kitchen was empty, the front door was still locked, and only silence greeted him that morning.

Kenzo scanned the freshly cleaned apartment once more before noticing a yellow sticky note centered on the freezer door. "Huh? She didn't…"

Kenzo crossed the room and plucked the note off the fridge. The handwriting was neat, almost as if it were printed.

**Out. Beaumont's estate. Return by 1400 hours. -K**

"She actually left a note?" Kenzo muttered, scratching the back of his head. He flipped it over, found nothing else, and turned it back. "We have phones. Why didn't she just—" His gaze shifted to the black phone blinking on his bedroom dresser. He picked it up and stared at the screen. The same message appeared.

"She texted me, too?" Kenzo stared at the phone, then back at the note still in his hand. "The same…exact…message." He stood there a moment, then sighed. "She really needs a better hobby," Kenzo said to himself as he glanced at the clock on his nightstand—08:47 AM.

He had time. Maybe too much time.

Kenzo tossed the note onto the dresser and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face with both hands. "Fourteen hundred… that's two in the afternoon, right?" He counted on his fingers to be sure. "Yeah, two o'clock. So I have about five hours until she—" His phone rang, cutting him off. Startled, he grabbed it from the nightstand and saw Kota's name flashing on the screen.

Kenzo blinked, then hit answer. He brought the phone to his ear. "Yo."

"Holy shit, you're alive!" Kota's voice burst through the speaker, loud and relieved. "Dude, I haven't heard from you in like two days. I've been texting, calling—nothing! I thought you maybe got evicted or something!"

Kenzo deadpanned into the phone. "Why is eviction always the first thing that comes to your mind when I don't answer the phone?"

"Because, dude, you've been dodging calls from your landlord for months!" Kota shot back. "And last time we talked, you sounded like you were one missed payment away from getting tossed out on your ass. What was I supposed to think?"

Kenzo facepalmed and leaned over a bit as he sat up. "That I…I don't know, took care of it, and I'm probably tired and wanted to use my day off to sleep," he replied. "But no, I'm not evicted. Just wanted to rest and relax a bit; things have been kind of all over the place lately."

"All over the place?" Kota echoed, and Kenzo could practically hear the eyebrow raise through the phone. "Dude, you work at a convenience store. What kind of "all over the place' are we talking here? Did someone try to rob the place again? Please tell me you didn't try to be a hero."

"Nah, nothing like that. It's just—" Suddenly, Kenzo heard the phone being snatched out of Kota's hand.

"Stop wasting time talking about nothing and tell him what happened!" a girl snapped in the background as she grabbed the phone. "Kenzo!" she shouted into the receiver.

"Huh? Mizuki? What are—"

"Kenzo! We went to that stupid, abandoned hospital!" Mizuki yelled.

Kenzo shot upright, unsure he'd heard her correctly. "You went to the… what? The abandoned hospital?"

"Yes, the abandoned hospital!" Mizuki snapped, panic sharpening every word. "The one everyone keeps talking about online—the haunted place where people have supposedly been disappearing for years. That hospital!"

Kenzo dropped back onto the bed, one arm spread out while the other kept the phone pressed to his ear. "Oh, I know the place you're talking about—the old mental ward they shut down." His brows knit together. "Why the hell would you two go there?"

"Because Kota wanted to go vlog it for his stupid channel, and I tagged along because someone had to keep him alive!"

In the background, Kenzo heard Kota protest. "It wasn't just for views!"

Kenzo jerked the phone from his ear as Mizuki shouted at Kota in the background. A second later, the receiver rustled, and Kota came back on the line.

"Look, man," Kota said, voice tight. "Something is definitely off about that place. Like, seriously off."

"Off like that daycare center you checked out two weeks ago? Or like the abandoned mall, where you swore someone was whispering your name and trying to lure you into the backrooms?" Kenzo chuckled.

"Kenzo, I'm serious!" Kota's voice cracked. "Shut up and listen. We were walking around, filming rooms, right—broken beds, graffiti, the usual creepy stuff—when we reached what I think was the fourth floor. That's where we ran into this weird girl. Pink pigtails and an axe in her hand. A freaking axe!"

Kenzo tilted his head, confusion pulling at his brow. "A girl… with pink pigtails and an axe? Bro, what? Are you sure someone wasn't just messing with you—maybe one of the jerks from school trying to scare you?"

"That's what I thought at first!" Kota said, his voice climbing. "But Kenzo, she wasn't from school. I've never seen her before in my life. She was standing in the hallway, holding that axe like she walked straight out of a slasher movie!"

Mizuki's voice broke in close to the phone. "She smiled at us—like some creepy doll—and kept giggling." Her voice wavered. "That awful sound kept bouncing off the walls, like she was everywhere at once."

Kenzo sat bolt upright. "Whoa—hold on. Are you two serious? Did she hurt you? Did you call the cops?"

"No—no, we didn't call the cops," Kota answered quickly. "We ran. Like, immediately. The second she started walking toward us with that axe dragging on the floor, we bolted. Didn't stop until we made it to the car."

"Geez, guys… I'm sorry that happened." Kenzo said as he stood up. "Where are you guys now?"

"We're at my place," Kota replied, still breathless. "We went to that place like two nights ago and have been holed up here ever since. We wanted to call you right away, but Mizuki made me wait."

"Because normal people have normal things to actually do," Mizuki muttered in the background. "Unlike you, who wanted to post the video right away like an idiot."

Kenzo paced toward the window, pulling back the curtain slightly to look outside. The street below was quiet—typical for a Sunday morning. "Did you… Did you post anything?" He asked slowly.

“Hell no,” Kota shot back. "Mizuki deleted everything from my phone before I could even think about it. She said if that girl saw herself online, she might come looking for us."

"Smart," Kenzo muttered. "Can't have you doing two stupid things in one day."

Kota groaned. "Dude, I wasn't thinking—I was terrified! You didn't see her face." He paused. "Wait… Mizuki didn't delete everything. I still have a picture." A few seconds later, Kenzo's phone vibrated in his hand. "There," Kota said. "I sent it. Take a look."

Kenzo pulled the phone away from his ear and tapped the notification. The image loaded—grainy, poorly lit, shot in haste—but clear enough.

A girl stood in the dim hallway, pink pigtails framing red eyes that glinted in the camera flash. She wore black jeans torn along one leg and white-and-pink sneakers. A loose jacket hung from her shoulders, barely covering the ripped tank top beneath it. In her right hand, an axe rested lazily at her side. She tilted her head, her lips curling into a smile that never reached her eyes.

Kenzo's stomach dropped.

He stared at the screen, his thumb frozen above the image as his pulse raced and his breath caught. The resemblance was uncanny—not her face, but her hollow, lifeless eyes. They were just like Kageri's.