Time continued to pass as the day began to cool, the beachside breeze slipping through the wide-open windows of the sharehouse. The sun was beginning to dip over the mountains now, long shadows cast over the city of Tenoroshi. In the kitchen, dinner, of which stewed snapper was the star, had been served. There wasn’t a proper dining room or a table large enough for everyone to sit around, of course, and some, such as Otoya, had brought their own dinner for the night. The sentiment was there though, with a table that could seat four and a faded, leather couch that the rest could squeeze into. The rice cooker worked overtime, the instant pot steamed with miso soup, the single cutting board was bleeding with vegetable vestiges and fish juice, and someone was going to have a lot of dishes to do afterwards.

That someone though, wasn’t there.

Nothing so convenient as satellite television existed, but there was an old radio that the former members of the club left behind, tuned to the news, or to the weather, or to commercials that should have been put off the air a long time ago. A forecaster spoke of hotter days ahead, sermonizing to people about how water was God. An indifferently cheerful newscaster reminded listeners that the recent dry spell meant that anyone camping out in the mountains should watch out for empty cabins. A sportscaster spoke his spiel of in-land sports, and segued into a story a foxtailed porcupine spotted on June 15, riding the subway line from Central to Northwestern. Meaningless babble, capped off by a staticky jingle and a commercial break that ended in five seconds of awkward silence.

The radio broadcast continued again. A forecaster spoke of hotter days ahead. An indifferently cheerful newscaster reminded listeners that the recent dry spell meant that anyone camping out in the mountains is prohibited from making campfires. A sportscaster spoke his spiel of in-land sports.

The stewed fish was good. Sayuri really outdid herself this time.

The sun continued to set, gradating into the boundaries of twilight.

People continue to die on the radio. Tenoroshi was sleepy, but the rest of the world wasn't. Heart disease was a big killer today, a bunch of rich, old folk passed fitfully from it, and one even had the audacity to cause a car accident while doing so. Assaults were reported too, but only as a passing remark. It happened in the Southern District, after all. Any 'normal' person would stay far away from that undeveloped cesspool of youthful indulgence; anyone who didn't sorta deserved it anyways. Nameless minors were reported missing, the confidentiality of the matter making the description much too vague to elicit any particular memories of sightings. The radio continued on, a callous obituary for those who were gone, those who no one really knew.

In the relative quiet of her own room, Aya scanned her negatives, one at a time. The most recent ones were familiar. No surprises there, at least. Gotou and Suzuha, the shaved ice store, and some other pointless pictures. Just flights of fancy and suspicion. As she continued to look through them though, the camera-girl noticed something curious. It may have been a trick of the light, but in a couple of her pictures, there was the shadow of a cat, facing a single direction. The most recent picture that featured the shadow-cat was at an old, shut-down ryokan that Aya saw a couple days ago in the Northern District, while the oldest one stemmed back all the way to the beginning of the school term, when she took a picture of the back of Hijirido University's student union building for...some reason she no longer remembered. In total, there were 24 exposures with that shadow-cat, and she was certain too that she hadn't noticed any cheeky feline photo-bombing her shots when she actually took them.

Strange stuff, for sure.

Though there was still some lingering warmth from the hot day, evening brought forth cool ocean breezes, and Fumiko almost felt a bit cold as she stepped outside the sharehouse. It wasn't necessarily quiet, with cars still driving through the relatively busy streets of the Central District, but it was better than incessantly-looping radio chatter. Wasn't like the sharehouse was ever so quiet though, not when the walls were so thin. The plumbing made it sound like a storm was brewing every time someone flushed the toilet, and Aya's snores were hella legendary on a good night, nevermind a bad one. Would have been nice if they could get a hammock going in the small backyard of the sharehouse. Give someone a chance to escape the general din of having a house of six university students with irregular sleep schedules.

The skies were purple now, gradating into the star-studded black of a proper night sky. A lull in traffic brought momentary quiet, broken immediately after by the cawing of crows. Looking off to her right, she could see thirty or so of those birds, cawing loudly and swooping up and down a neighbouring alleyway, making a general ruckus. Nasty little shits, to be sure. Probably fighting over fresh, steaming garbage.

And like that, Iwao went back to work, alone now in the kitchen. The silence was heavier now, the sharehouse as empty as it would ever be. Mochizuki didn’t return, and Aya just recently left. The radio droned on, switching to larger scale news. Politics. Elections. Corruption. Big enough that humans were numbers, enough to remind one that even though Tenoroshi may have been infamous for apathy, the outside world wasn’t much different. It took a lot to feel for someone you never knew.

Armed conflict in the Middle East. A hole in the atmosphere. A European heritage site set on fire. An oil spill in the Pacific. Small tragedies, building up to a quiet apocalypse. The radio continued to fill the silence, the silence continued to smother the mind. How long would it go on for? How many more until everything falls apart, breaking into molecular dust?

Crack.

The plate broke, split in the middle in a perfectly straight line. Mochizuki’s plate. They used it to hold the greens tonight. His sister got it for him, didn’t she? So he stopped eating out of plastic containers.

“You just keep fucking up, huh?”

The radio dissolved into static.

---

If she slept now, maybe she'd be hitting her REM cycle by the time Hiroyuki came back? Maybe he'd be tired too, but maybe they could exchange some words, snuggle up warm, and pretend that she hadn't messed up her sleep schedule just for the sake a stupid fantasy. Her, no, his room was as messy as always. Mornings and evenings never seemed to be Hiroyuki's times, really. For all his sharply-dressed outfits, he certainly didn't care to put them where they oughta be. The sweater he wore to sleep in laid at a bundle in the corner of the room. It was a present. Cost her a month's wages to get something from that foreign export boutique out in the Southwestern District, and even now, it wasn't so clear. Was it good that he was comfortable using it as loungewear, when he used to have none? Or was it bad that he never wore it when going out with her, or even going out at all?

Aya slipped in bed, soon enough, shifting to her side. Something hard pressed against her leg. Right, her phone. Should empty your pockets before sleeping. She brought it out of her pockets, and a note slipped out as well. Though she had a skylight in the room she shared with Hiroyuki, it was too dark to read by moonlight, or even by citylight. Above, the window looked pitch-black.

If she decided to turn on a light to read, the note's contents were simple enough.

Flying hand squashed building.

A prank, maybe from Aya? That handwriting looked like her's though...

It was the smell that hit Otoya and Fumiko first, the smell of garbage, freed from its odorless containers. A fishy, moldy, meaty stench, underscored by the knife-like scent of rust, iron, blood. Another dead stray? Another dead fucking stray, so close to their sharehouse? That cat killer was right beside their fucking home? What the f-

A car drove by, headlights briefly illuminating the contents of the alleyway.

It was just a dead crow, wings twisted and feathers scattered all over the place, blood speckling the pavement. Above, the crows continued to dive down, some feinting, others swiping with their talons at a shape that darted from one corner to the next, bursting in and out of the spilled garbage like a soldier taking cover. Another crow dived down, but went too low. The creature leapt out, snatched it by the throat, and slammed it into the concrete. The crow twitched and squawked terribly, but more brutality followed, its body slammed to and fro by the alleyway creature until enough bones snapped that it no longer moved.

Above, the remaining flock circled or roosted, uncertain, and below, the two clubmates could see what the creature truly was: a rat. A rat of freakish size, its naked tail whipping about as it tore into the creature. It was a blessing, really, that the shadows were enough to obscure most of the large rat's features. Like seeing a fruit fly up close, like seeing a slug that had grown too big, it was uncanny, disturbing, to witness something become larger than what you think it should. And this one...this one was the size of a small dog, discounting its tail. Its teeth chitter-chattered, gnawing through flesh and into pulverized bone.

Another car passed by, momentary illumination lighting up its eyes, the fleshy gristle running down its chin, the scratches and naked patches of its hide. The car passed by. The shadows returned.

But the rat was no longer chewing.

It was staring out, towards the two that stood at the mouth of the alleyway.

And without any signal, any warning, it scampered towards them, claws clickering against stone.

Other than salarymen rushing to catch the train, or rushing to join their bosses in 'optional' after-work drinking parties, the streets of the Central District were fairly empty. Those who looked for edgier entertainment would go Southwest and hopefully not find themselves encased in concrete and tossed out under the docks. Those who looked for classier entertainment would go North and hopefully not find themselves bankrupt after indulging in one too many fancy snacks. And for the rest, the Western District was always willing to serve them with generations-old izakayas. No one hung around in the Central District for fun, after all.

Which made things just a little bit unnerving. Talk of disappearances within Tenoroshi seemed like a favorite topic of the radio host tonight, and there wasn't even a taxi for her to hail too. Not that there was a need to. She could see the station now, with its bright lights and slightly higher pedestrian presence!

Her shadow grew long. An unmarked vehicle slowed down beside her, and the tinted window scroll down, revealing a man with sunken cheeks and a thin nose. His hair was slicked back, like a yakuza enforcer, and his shark-like eyes stared into her very soul, assessing her worth as a human being.

"Da," Atsushi said, his voice accented by the Russian he had been practicing for the last coupe months. "Not good times to be stomping about alone, Aya. Need a lift to Tsunoda's?"

Iwao had to be losing it if he was expecting a radio to sound out when it was rather decisively turned off. Nothing ominous or ordinary came out of the machine, and instead, his ears simply picked up the ordinary sounds of an empty house. The clock ticked, the faucet dripped, and old injuries seemed to throb in synchronization with it. His own room was quieter, but not by much. The traffic sounded infrequently outside, while the crows cawed frenetically, a flock scattering away in the last shades of evening. The walls were thin in the sharehouse, sound-proofing non-existent.

So he could clearly hear when the radio was turned back on, a distinct click sounding, followed by the garbling of voices as it changed frequencies. Did Sayuri head downstairs after all? Did Fumiko come back? From within his own room, Iwao couldn’t tell, but the program itself seemed normal enough. ‘Tenoroshi Tonight’, an evening news segment done by a Takahiro Tatsuya, reporting on new happenings around the city on June 15. The police investigating reports of gun shots heard in the Northern District. Another missing persons report, this time for a young man with black hair and square-framed glasses last seen in the Northwestern district. And on lighter news, a runaway goat from the local petting zone having escaped down the train tracks stretching from the Southeastern District to the Central District.

The youth was focusing this time. Paying attention. It was easy enough to remember that today was the 14th. A radio gaffe? Or something more?

Iwao would have to wait though. Through the thin walls of the sharehouse, he could hear loud steps going up the porch, followed by a door being thrust opened, then slammed shut. Someone was home.

---

Sayuri’s message went unread.

Well, it wasn’t like that was all too uncommon. If Hiro was going to be so busy that he couldn’t even make it home for dinner, he wasn’t going to be able to immediately read and respond either. Or maybe he didn’t bother reading it because he was already home?
The walls were thin, after all. She could hear it too, the sound of a door opening and then closing downstairs, accompanied by the indistinct murmurs of the radio she thought had already been turned off.

---

Fumiko and Otoya ran hard, and it wasn’t as if they needed to run far either. The skittering of the giant rat continued to dog them, but as they made the turn at the entrance of the alleyway, as they bounded up the steps of the sharehouse, wrenching the door open, the two both noticed that they were no longer being chased. The rat had turned the opposite direction that they had, nothing but a lump of black fur in the amber light of the streets now.

Except...if they narrowed their eyes, was that another oversized vermin, pushing its form out from a storm drain to follow the first?

Fucking gross. Tenoroshi seriously needed pest control, huh?

“What are you talking about?” Atsushi replied, a brow raised. “I’m an Uber driver.”

The streets were empty, but the detective still obeyed speed limits and uncooperative traffic lights. The ride was comfortable, but the interior smelled of faded air freshener. One hung from the rearview mirror, shaped like a pine tree yet not smelling of either pine nor tree. A couple minutes passed before he replied, tapping a finger on the steering wheel. “Did he have her shoes?”

The car pulled over to the side, one of the front wheels grinding up against the curb. Atsushi grimaced; he was a good driver when it came to following traffic regulations, but that was just about it. Outside, the neon sign of ‘Camera & Film’ buzzed like a mosquito, moths bouncing against the surface of the ‘lamp’.

He waited for Aya to exit before rubbing the stubble of his chin.

“Department’s not gotten any reports about missing children. Careful on your way back, Aya.”