Chapter 17: The Harbor of Ghosts
The dinner had ended in a heavy, artificial peace. The Kurogane estate had settled into the kind of profound silence that only extreme wealth or extreme isolation can produce.
“Do not worry, Lady Kotomi. I shall ensure that Master Masayuki is properly disciplined. He shall not disturb the sanctuary of your rest,” Sebastian had said, his bow as deep and silent as the night.
With the moon casting silver bars across the tatami mats, Kyle had led her to the guest bedroom. It was a cathedral of comfort—spacious, elegant, and equipped with a heavy brass lock that promised a safety she didn’t quite believe in.
As the others said their goodnights, Kotomi lay curled beneath the borrowed blankets, her back to the door. The first thing she realized was that the bed was too soft. It felt like a trap, a white silk bog trying to pull her down. The sheets smelled of lavender—clean, expensive, and utterly alien. To a girl who had spent weeks smelling of cardboard and alley-rain, the scent was deafening.
She hadn’t changed out of the oversized cotton shirt and drawstring shorts Kotaro had given her. They hung loose on her thin frame, the fabric brushing her skin like a question she didn’t know how to answer. Her legs were cold, but she didn’t move to adjust the heater. She didn't want to break the silence.
The photo of the seven girls rested on the nightstand. She’d wiped it clean, but the smudge across her mother’s laughing cheek remained—a permanent bruise on a memory. The smile in the photo felt like an accusation: Why are you resting? Why are you safe?
She stared at the ceiling, counting the shadows. She traced the faint outline of the curtain rod. She listened to the wind press against the windowpane, a low, persistent huffing like a beast wanting in.
Her fingers twitched against the quilt. The silence began to stretch, turning thin and brittle.
“I’ll be okay,” her father’s voice whispered in the back of her mind, his face a mask of sweat and terror. “Kotomi—run. Please. Don't look back.”
She blinked. Once. Twice.
The shadows on the ceiling didn’t just sit there anymore. They began to drip. The dark corners of the room seemed to stretch, the wardrobe elongating into a jagged, rusted beam. The lavender scent didn't fade; it was violently replaced by the iron-heavy reek of salt, rust, and something sour—the smell of old blood left too long in the sun.
The air shifted. It wasn't a sound or a breeze; it was the feeling of the room exhaling, taking reality with it.
Kotomi’s eyes snapped open.
The white ceiling was gone.
She wasn't lying down. She was standing. Her bare feet were planted on warped, salt-crusted timber, slick with moisture and something thicker. Yellow fog clung to the edges of the dock, curling around rusted oil barrels and shattered crates like skeletal fingers. Somewhere beneath the planks, the harbor water lapped with a slow, wet, rhythmic thud against the pilings.
She looked down.
Dark, viscous blood pooled around her toes. Narrow threads of waste trailed toward the edge of the pier, where a single, mud-caked boot lay overturned. And scattered across the wood, glinting like macabre coins in the moonlight, were ripped fingernails—some still rimmed with jagged bits of skin.
Her stomach twisted into a cold, hard knot. The "sanctuary" had been a lie. The memory had been waiting for her to close her eyes so it could drag her back to the beginning.
She tried to step back, but the salt-crusted wood felt like flypaper, pinning her soles to the rot. Her breath caught in a throat that felt filled with glass shards.
The silence of the dock was broken by a rhythmic, grating sound—metal dragging against metal. Chains rattled with a heavy, wet finality. Then, a low, rattling cough that sounded like water in a pair of ruined lungs.
She turned.
At the far end of the pier, a figure hung suspended from a rusted iron gantry. Iron hooks pierced the meat of his back, pulling his arms into a grotesque, agonizing arch. His head lolled forward, chin resting on a chest matted with dried gore.
“Papa?”
Her voice was a fragile thread. It didn't belong to this place.
The man didn’t respond.
She tried to run toward him, but the dock breathed and stretched. Every step she took seemed to add yards to the distance. The fog thickened, yellow and sulfurous, as the boards groaned beneath her feet like the ribs of a dying animal. Her voice rose into a frantic, high-pitched scream that the thick air seemed to swallow whole.
“PAPA!”
From the shadows behind the hanging figure, movement stirred. Men stepped into the flickering light of a single, buzzing streetlamp. They were too clean for the harbor. One adjusted a dial on a handheld device that pulsed with a cold, violet frequency. Another scribbled notes on a digital clipboard with mechanical detachment.
Then, the air itself seemed to chill as a new figure stepped forward.
He wore a long white haori, tailored and spotless despite the filth of the wharf. His hair was silver at the temples, and his eyes possessed the terrifying clarity of a man who viewed the world as a set of equations to be solved.
The leader of the Men in White turned to him and bowed low.
“We’ve extracted all we can, Commander. His neural resistance is higher than the baseline. The subject's mind is… deteriorating.”
The Commander didn’t respond. He stepped past them, his polished boots clicking on the wet wood with the precision of a metronome. He reached out and tilted the man’s chin up with two gloved fingers.
“You know where she is,” he said. His voice was smooth, devoid of malice—and therefore devoid of mercy. “You’re just being difficult, Doka-san. It’s an inefficient use of your remaining time.”
Kotomi’s father mumbled—a string of nonsense, a broken prayer.
The Commander stood, his face a mask of clinical boredom.
“Cut off another finger. We need a spike in his adrenaline to reset the neural bridge.”
One of the agents hesitated, his hand hovering over a tray of surgical tools. “Sir… any more and we risk total systemic collapse. If he dies, we lose the resonance link to the Moonshade.”
The Commander didn’t speak. He simply turned, the white fabric of his haori snapping like a whip. With a slight flick of his wrist, he signaled the Leader.
The Leader didn't hesitate. He drew a matte-black stun gun and fired a point-blank burst into the hesitant agent’s neck. The man convulsed and collapsed, his body arching before he hit the planks. The other agents didn’t flinch.
“Drag him out,” the Commander said, his voice flat. “Replace him with someone who understands that 'caution' is a synonym for 'waste'. We are running low on useful guinea pigs.”
Two men hauled the twitching body into the fog.
Kotomi screamed again, her throat raw and bleeding. “Stop it! Please, stop! I'm right here!”
But as she screamed, the Commander froze. He turned his head slowly, his sharp eyes cutting through the yellow mist, searching the air exactly where she stood.
The Commander’s gaze swept the dock, lingering on the space where Kotomi’s consciousness hovered. For one terrifying heartbeat, she felt the silver clip in her hair—the "Moonshade"—pulse with a white-hot heat that burned against her scalp.
Then he spoke, his voice carrying over the wet slap of the waves.
“Nanashi,” he said, addressing the Leader. “The resonance is spiking. The girl is watching us. She’s closer than the sensors suggest.”
“Shall we broaden the search, Commander Shiraishi?”
The name hit Kotomi like a physical blow.
Shiraishi. The name Masayuki had spat with the venom of a thousand-year grudge. The name that turned the "Magical Girl" story into a legacy of blood.
The Commander turned back to her father, withdrawing a long, surgical scalpel from his sleeve. It caught the moonlight like a sliver of broken glass.
“Let’s see how far a father’s love really goes when the nerves begin to fray,” Shiraishi murmured.
He raised the blade.
Kotomi screamed—a sound that tore through the fog, the memory, and the very foundation of the mansion—
And the world shattered.
She woke with a violent gasp, the scream still vibrating in her chest.
The white ceiling was back. The heater hummed. The lavender scent was there, but it was suffocating now. Her body was vibrating with an uncontrollable, rhythmic shaking.
She sat up too fast, the guest room spinning. The blanket clung to her skin like a damp shroud. As she tried to swing her legs out of bed, she felt the heavy, cold weight of the sheets beneath her.
She looked down.
A dark, spreading patch stained the expensive mattress, warm and humiliating against the pale blue fabric of her borrowed shorts.
“No,” she whispered, her voice a broken reed. “No, no, no—”
She didn't just cry. She scrambled. In a blind panic, she used her bare hands to try and "scrub" the dampness away, her nails catching on the fine threads of the silk sheets. She couldn't let them find out.
“I didn’t mean to,” she whimpered, her tears dripping onto the ruined bed. “I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry...”
She felt like a child again, small and helpless, while the ghost of Commander Shiraishi loomed in the corners of the room.
Outside the door, the floorboards let out a soft, familiar creak.
Kotomi froze. She stopped breathing, her heart hammering against her ribs. A shadow passed beneath the crack of light at the bottom of the door.
Then, a knock. Gentle. Hesitant.
“Kotomi?” Kyle’s voice came through the wood—low and careful. “I heard you. I’m coming in.”
She couldn’t speak. The shame was a thick, cold sludge in her throat.
The door opened with a soft click, and the silence of the room didn't break—it was simply joined by a steady, grounding presence. Kyle stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He didn’t reach for the light switch. He kept the room in the soft, blue-tinted moonlight, a kindness she was too panicked to notice yet.
Kotomi was hunched on the edge of the mattress, her hands still frantically rubbing at the damp sheets in a useless, repetitive motion. Her hair was a wild tangle, and her eyes were wide with a glazed, thousand-yard stare.
Kyle crossed the room slowly. He didn’t stop at a distance; he walked right up to the bed and sat on the edge, the mattress dipping under his weight.
“Kotomi,” he said. Not a question. Just a statement of her name.
She flinched, her hands finally stopping. She didn't look at him. She couldn't. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I’m sorry. I—I ruined it. I’m disgusting.”
Kyle didn’t pull away. He didn't look at the bed with the eyes of a judgmental host. He reached out and gently took her hands, stopping the shaking.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice dropping into that low. “Do you think I care about a wet mattress?”
She blinked, a single tear falling onto his hand.
He leaned in slightly. “You’re not 'broken.' You’re just still fighting a war that followed you home.”
He reached for the spare wool blanket at the foot of the bed and draped it over her shoulders, creating a fresh, dry sanctuary.
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
