The hospital corridor was white and fluorescent and quiet.

He sat in a plastic chair outside the surgery doors with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

Her blood had dried on his shirt sleeve and cuff.

The surgeon had come out and said she was stable.

He had nodded and not moved since.

Her phone slid out of her bag and landed face up on the seat beside him when he shifted forward.

The screen lit.

A notification from the number with no name.

Then another.

He picked it up. Her password was her mother’s birthday.

He had always known that.

He read the messages from the no-name number first.

Weeks of them, two in the morning and three in the morning, long and specific and relentless.

""

why do you even come to school

no one wants you there

you think people don’t notice? we all do

just stay home. seriously

everyone’s laughing at you btw

you look stupid keeping your head down like that

you’re not fooling anyone

it’s embarrassing to watch

we saw the pics

Which position does Mr.fuita prefer?

you really thought no one would find out?

Just die.""

His jaw tightened.

He kept reading.

He went to her photos — screenshots of posts, comment sections, her face captioned and shared and commented on by people he didn’t know.

He read the comments.

All of them.

His thumb kept scrolling and his face went flat, the muscles around his eyes and mouth loose, his lips pressed together.

He scrolled and noticed her mother’s number.

He read from the beginning.

Days of her voice.

I don’t know what I did wrong. I keep thinking if I just wait it will stop but it doesn’t stop.

I moved the plate again this morning so Dad won’t see. He has enough to worry about.

I think I’m disappearing. I don’t mean it like that. I just mean I can’t remember the last time I felt like a real person.

He read the last one.

Mum I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I’m really trying. I just don’t know.

He put the phone face down.

The fluorescent light hummed.

The surgery doors stayed closed.

His hands were shaking.

He pressed them flat on his thighs.

They kept shaking.

He pressed the back of his hand against his eyes once, hard, and breathed out.

He thought about every night he had knocked on her door.

Every time she had said she was fine.

Every plate left outside her room that she had moved so he would not worry.

Every morning he had left early and told himself he would make it up on the weekend.

Her uniform hanging loose for weeks.

Her going quiet.

Him being grateful for the quiet because he was so tired.

His hands stopped shaking.

His jaw set.

His eyes dried and went flat.

His blood boiled underneath.

He found the name in her messages.

The one who had organised it.

Who had led it. Who had kept going.

HANA.

He went to the nurse’s station and told them he would be back in an hour.

The garage was dark. Early morning. He had not slept.

He stood at the workbench and looked at the hammer.

He picked it up.

His hands were steady. They had stopped shaking an hour ago and had not started again and he did not think they were going to.

He put the hammer in his bag.

He was going to find that girl.

He was going to find her and he was going to make sure she understood what she had done — not with words, not with a complaint to a school office, not with anything that could be ignored or dismissed or apologised away.

He had spent his daughter’s whole life trying to protect her quietly, trying to provide, working the long hours, telling himself she was fine, and where had that gotten either of them.

His daughter had been bleeding on her bedroom floor for days and texting a dead woman’s phone number because there was nobody alive she felt she could tell.

He was done being quiet.

He walked out into the pre-dawn dark.

The streets were empty.

He walked fast, the bag over his shoulder, his jaw tight.

He thought about his daughter’s face when their eyes had met across the bedroom floor.

He thought about every day of the past three months that she had gotten through alone.

He thought about the uniform hanging loose and himself telling himself it was fine, she was fine, everything was fine.

He thought about that name.

Hana.

She was going to answer for it.

Every message. Every photo.

Every morning she had watched his daughter walk into school knowing what was waiting for her.

He was going to make sure she felt every single one of them.

He crossed an intersection.

The light was green.

He had checked it.

He had looked up and it was green and he had stepped off the kerb.

The truck came through on red at full speed.

He had one second of seeing it.

Headlights. The size of it. The sound.

And then the pain was intense. The ground was wrong and he was looking at the sky and he could not feel anything below his chest and the bag was somewhere and the hammer was somewhere and none of that mattered.

His daughter’s face.

That was what he saw.

Not the truck. Not the street.

Sora at her desk in October with her cheeks flushed and her smile she couldn’t stop, a day before any of it had happened, when she had still been fine and he had still believed it.

Her at seven, asleep against his shoulder on a long train ride.

Her at twelve, calling from school because she had forgotten her lunch, laughing when he said he’d bring it. Waiting for him at the gate, face bright when she saw him.

He was sorry.

He had been tired for so long.

He hadn’t looked.

She had been right there, and he hadn’t seen it.

He needed to tell her.

That none of it was her fault.

That she was a good girl. She had always been a good girl.

That he loved her.

He loved her—

The sky went dark.

He didn’t see it happen.

.

.

Kaito sat on the concrete between Hana and the ghost.

The ghost looked down at him from the chains.

The dark energy around it had gone still.

"Years," it said. "I waited for years. Nothing. No body. No thought. Just the anger. Her name."

Its voice stayed low.

"Then I woke up. A week ago"

The chains pulled tight as it leaned forward.

"God gave me another chance. That is the only explanation. I was sent back to finish it."

Kaito didn’t answer.

"She is the root of it," the ghost said.

The dark energy flared, sudden and hot.

"She is a monster. She was a monster then and she is still one now and she is right there and I am not going to leave until she is dead. I WILL KILL HERRRRRR"

But the chains held him still.

Kaito looked at Hana.

Her hair spread around her on the concrete. Her face slack and still.

The face that had laughed at a song he couldn’t sing. The face that had kissed him outside her apartment one hour ago.

Then looked at the ghost.

He said nothing. He didn’t know what to say.