🌙 Episode 25 – “Threads That Pull”

Morning sunlight poured across the classroom floor in fractured strips, filtered by blinds that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Ren sat in his usual seat, head propped in one hand, pretending to listen to the teacher drone on about Meiji-era reforms.

Two desks away, Yuto Sakamori was sketching again. His pencil never left the page for more than a breath, and Ren noticed something unsettling — his hand wasn’t drawing people. It was drawing pieces of people. A shoulder here, a mouth there, a scattering of fingers positioned like flower petals.

When the bell rang, Aika waved Yuto over to join them for lunch on the school rooftop. He hesitated, glancing at the other students filing out, then followed silently.

Rooftop Bonding

The rooftop air smelled of asphalt and sun-heated metal. Aika unpacked her bento with the precise neatness of a surgeon. Ren tore into a convenience store sandwich.

Nara, however, had nothing — until she reached over and bit into Yuto’s onigiri.

Yuto froze, eyes darting to hers.

“You… could’ve asked,” he said, voice low.

Nara chewed slowly, her expression unreadable. “I could’ve. But then I wouldn’t know if you’d let me.”

Aika groaned. “Nara, that’s—”

“—how you learn people,” Nara finished. She tossed the half-eaten onigiri back to Yuto. He didn’t eat it.

Ren expected Yuto to be annoyed, but instead, he pulled out his notebook and started sketching again — this time, Nara’s face. Or at least, her smile. Except in the drawing, her mouth was wider. Too wide.

Yuto’s Story

That evening, the group walked together toward the station. The air was thick with August humidity, and the cicadas screamed like static from every tree.

“You want to know why I draw like that?” Yuto asked suddenly, not looking at them.

Ren glanced at him. “You don’t have to—”

“It’s fine. People look whole on the outside, but inside they’re in pieces. I just draw them how I see them.”

Nara’s voice slid in like a knife. “Who broke you?”

Aika shot her a glare, but Yuto didn’t seem offended. “My older sister. She jumped. From our apartment roof. I was thirteen. We grew up having a good childhood and two loving parents, but something changed some months before she died, father had been behaving weird lately, he scremed at out mother. One day our mother coming home from supermarket saw him with another women. It appeared that he was cheating on our mother.
That night was different, out parents fought all night, father even slapped our mother when she accused him of cheating.

In the moring we found our mother hanging dead on a rope in the hall.

We couldn't handle the shock. The neighbour saw us from the balcony and came for help. She called the police. Toom us to her home and comforted us after that. In the morning she and her husband were crying when I woke up, the news paper had a phoot of a 13 years old girl found dead under the bridge after suicide.

It was my sister.”

Silence stretched, broken only by the hiss of a passing bus.

Threads in the Dark

As they neared the station underpass, the air changed — cooler, heavier, and laced with a faint metallic tang. Nara stopped walking.

“Something’s pulling here,” she whispered, tilting her head as if listening to a frequency no one else could hear.

Ren scanned the shadows. “Another scavenger?”

Nara didn’t answer. She walked forward, fingers trailing along the concrete wall. The rest followed, unease prickling their skin.

Yuto stopped abruptly. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

Before anyone could reply, something thin and invisible snapped around his wrist — yanking him toward the darkness beneath the bridge. He slammed into the wall, breath torn from his lungs.

Ren lunged forward, grabbing his other arm, while Aika’s panicked voice echoed in the tunnel.

Nara crouched down beside them, her face inches from Yuto’s. “Don’t pull back. Let it take you a little.”

“What the hell are you saying?!” Ren snapped.

Nara’s eyes glittered. “I want to see what’s on the other end of the thread.”

The Glimpse

Yuto’s hand was half-vanished now, swallowed by an absence shaped like water but darker than shadow. His eyes widened — not in fear, but in awe.

“I… see something,” he whispered. “A hall. Endless. And—”

The thread snapped. Yuto crumpled to the ground, his wrist unmarked. The pulling force was gone.

But before they could breathe relief, a voice bloomed in the air, deep and resonant, as if spoken through the bones of the city itself:

“Found one.”

The four froze. Nara smiled slowly, almost tenderly.

The episode ends with the four walking away in silence, but Yuto keeps glancing at his wrist — as though the thread is still there, tugging softly.