Prologue
If someone had asked me what the happiest period of my life was, I wouldn’t have needed long to answer. It was university.
Not because I was exceptional. I wasn’t a genius who could read a textbook once and remember every line, nor the kind of person who lit up a room the moment he walked in. I wasn’t athletic, particularly talented, or destined for anything great. I was ordinary. My grades were decent, my appearance average, and my social life completely normal. I attended lectures, turned in assignments on time, worked a part-time job that paid just enough to cover rent and groceries, and complained about exams like everyone else.
And yet, I was happy. The reason was simple: Hana.
“Haruto.”
“Hm?”
“You’re ignoring me again.”
I looked up from my laptop. Hana Kosana was sitting across from me at our small dining table, her notebook open and her pen still. She was looking at me with those slightly narrowed eyes she always made when she knew I wasn’t listening.
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” I said.
“You’ve been staring at that screen for thirty minutes.”
“I was studying.”
“You’ve been staring at the same page for thirty minutes.”
I glanced down and realized she was right; the page number hadn’t changed.
Hana crossed her arms. “See?”
“I was thinking,” I offered.
“About?”
“Important things.”
“What important things?”
I paused for dramatic effect. “...What I’m going to eat tonight.”
Her expression collapsed into pure disappointment. “Haruto. You’re hopeless.” She sighed loudly and went back to her notes, though I could see the corner of her mouth twitching as she fought off a laugh.
This was normal for us. We had been dating since high school, and for the last year, we had been living together in a small apartment not too far from campus. It wasn’t luxurious by any means. It had two tiny bedrooms, a narrow kitchen where two people could barely stand side by side, a bathroom with a door that stuck if you didn’t pull it just right, and a living room barely large enough for a second-hand couch and a low table we used for everything. The walls were thin enough that we could hear our neighbor’s television, the kitchen sink dripped unless you turned the handle extra tight, the washing machine coughed whenever it spun, and our refrigerator had recently developed a strange, faint whispering sound that Hana swore was haunted.
But it was ours. It was home.
There was something comforting about coming back after a long day of lectures and knowing Hana would be there. Sometimes she would be at the table surrounded by textbooks with her hair tied up. Sometimes she’d be watching a low-budget drama on TV, pretending she wasn’t crying. Sometimes she would fall asleep on the couch waiting for me to come home, her cheek pressed against the armrest and her breathing slow. And sometimes, like now, she would just be there, existing across from me and making even studying feel less lonely.
“Are you hungry?” she asked without looking up.
“A little.”
“I knew it.” She closed her notebook with a soft thump. “Let’s go buy something.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s cold outside.”
“Then wear a jacket.”
“That’s troublesome.”
She stared at me flatly, and I stared back, trying to look innocent. After five seconds of this silent battle, she stood up. “Fine. I’ll go alone then.”
I was on my feet instantly. “Wait.”
She grinned. “Thought so.”
I grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair. “You planned that. You manipulated me.”
“I convinced you.”
“That’s manipulation.”
“Same thing.”
“It absolutely is not.”
We kept arguing about the philosophical difference between convincing and manipulating while we shoved our feet into our shoes. It was a meaningless argument—the kind couples have when neither actually cares about winning, but just likes hearing the other’s voice. I didn’t know it then, but I would remember that stupid conversation thousands of times. Not because it mattered, but because it didn’t. It’s the ordinary moments you miss the most when they’re gone.
Life went on like that: lectures in the morning, part-time jobs in the afternoon, cheap convenience store bentos when we were too tired to cook, and exams we crammed for together until one of us fell asleep on the notes. We were in different departments, but our schedules often overlapped. We’d meet between classes, buy two canned coffees from the vending machine, and sit on the steps outside the library. Sometimes we’d eat lunch together in the crowded cafeteria; other times we’d just sit side by side in silence, her reading while I pretended to read while actually watching her. We didn’t need to fill every silence. Being together was enough.
One afternoon, I came out of my last lecture to find Hana waiting in the hallway holding two warm drinks. She held one out to me. “Here.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking it.
“You looked tired during second period. I saw you through the window.”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Very. You were blinking like you were trying to stay awake.”
“I need to sleep more.”
“You say that every week.”
“And every week I continue to operate on minimal sleep. I’m consistent.”
“You’re predictable,” she corrected.
“I prefer consistent.”
“That’s just a fancy way of saying predictable.”
“I’ll accept that.”
We fell into step together as we walked across campus. The setting sun painted the old university buildings orange while students streamed past us—clubs shouting to recruit new members, friends laughing loudly, and bicycles ringing as they weaved through the crowd. Everything was normal. Peacefully, painfully normal.
“I like evenings like this,” I said quietly.
Hana glanced at me. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Just... nothing happening. Everyone going home.”
She smiled a little. “You’re weird.”
“Maybe.”
We left campus and started down the familiar road toward our apartment, the same route we’d walked hundreds of times. We passed the bakery that always smelled like butter at this hour, the small park where kids played, and the vending machine that had eaten my 100-yen coin the month before. Our hands brushed as we walked—once, twice, and on the third time, I reached over and took hers.
She didn’t pull away. She laced her fingers with mine and squeezed. “You’re clingy today,” she said, her voice soft.
“Can I not hold my girlfriend’s hand?”
“You can. But you’re doing it like you’re afraid I’ll run away.”
I laughed. “Would you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
We kept walking, hands linked. I remember looking at her then—her hair moving slightly in the cold wind, her cheeks a little red from the temperature, her eyes focused ahead. She looked happy and calm. There was no sign, no warning, and no ominous feeling in the air.
Then she stopped.
“Hana?”
She didn’t answer, staring straight down. At first, I thought she had dropped something, but then I saw it: a faint light spreading beneath our feet. The glow grew brighter, lines etching themselves onto the asphalt as if an invisible pen were drawing at incredible speed. A circle formed, then another inside it, followed by intricate runes, geometric patterns that hurt my eyes, and constellations of light connecting one after another. It spread outward, centering directly on us.
It was a summoning circle. I didn’t know the word then, but my brain supplied it anyway. It looked like something from manga or games, only far more complex, beautiful, and fundamentally wrong. This wasn’t ink; it was light itself carving reality.
“Hana, move!” I pulled her hand, trying to step off, but the light followed us.
The air began to vibrate, a low hum rising from inside my chest rather than the ground. Around us, passersby started to notice. Someone stopped and asked what it was, while another lifted a phone to record, assuming it was an art project. The light intensified and the hum became a roar as a distinct pull took hold—not wind or gravity, but a force tugging directly on my existence, dragging me toward the center.
My feet slid forward against my will. Hana stumbled with me, gripping my arm with both hands.
“Haruto!”
“I don’t know what’s happening! Hold on!” I tried to dig my heels in, but the pavement beneath the light felt like ice. The pull grew stronger, the light turning blindingly bright.
Suddenly, Hana was in front of me, her eyes wide with fear—not for herself, but for me. With all her strength, she pushed me.
My body flew backward out of the circle, hitting the cold pavement hard as the air was knocked from my lungs. “HANA!”
I scrambled up immediately. She was standing alone in the center now, the light swallowing her legs and waist, her hair lifted as if underwater. She reached her hand toward me, and I reached back. For one second, our eyes met across the blazing light. She mouthed something I couldn’t hear over the roar, and then the light exploded into a deafening silence.
When I opened my eyes, the circle, the light, and the symbols were gone. The pavement was ordinary asphalt again under the streetlights, and Hana was gone.
“...Hana?”
I stood there frozen, hand still outstretched, before looking around wildly. People were screaming and shouting for the police, but the place where she had stood was completely empty. There was no body, no blood, no scorch marks, and no trace that anything had been there.
I ran to the spot, dropped to my knees, and touched the cold asphalt. “Hana! Hana!” I shouted her name until my throat hurt, praying she would answer, but she didn’t.
The police arrived, cordoned off the area, and eventually took me to the station, questioning me for hours. They asked where she was, what happened, if we had argued, and what kind of light I kept talking about. I told them the truth: a circle of light appeared, pulled us in, she pushed me out, and she vanished. But looking into their eyes, I could see they thought I was lying, inventing a fantasy to cover up a crime.
Nobody believed me—not the police, not the witnesses, not the media, and eventually, not even her family. In the courtroom, her mother looked at me with eyes full of hatred and tears, demanding to know where her daughter was. When I repeated that she was taken by a circle of light, her father had to hold her mother back as she screamed at my lies.
They needed a grounded answer, and any logical story was better than a magic circle. I was tried and convicted—not for murder, since they never found a body, but for abandonment and obstruction. My life ended at twenty-three. University, friends, and our apartment vanished. My parents stopped visiting after five years, growing old without me while I spent more than thirty years in a small cell, repeating the same story until no one was left to listen.
Sometimes I wondered if I had gone insane, if trauma had forced my brain to invent the circle to protect me from guilt. But whenever I thought about giving up, I remembered her last look, her hand reaching for me, and the fact that she had chosen to stay so I could leave.
Decades passed. My hair turned grey, my back bent, and my hands shook.
Eventually, I lay on a hard prison bed, breathing shallowly while staring at the cracked ceiling I had memorized over the years. My heartbeat slowed. Somewhere far away, a television hummed, and I thought of our apartment again—the whispering refrigerator, the small dining table, and Hana sitting across from me, telling me I was staring again.
I smiled, my lips barely moving. “Hana...”
My final thought wasn’t anger, regret, or hatred. It was a single wish: I wish I had been able to find you.
My heart beat once, twice, and then stopped. Haruto Kisaragi died in prison at the age of fifty-six, never knowing what became of the woman he loved, believing to his final breath that she had been summoned away, and dying entirely alone.
