1.03: Back to the GrindI rushed from the second floor toward the stairs and took them two at a time. The front door banged softly behind me as I reached the stairs and spilled out onto the narrow street.

  It ran beneath a line of shady trees, fnked by tall apartment blocks and offices that leaned in like they were gossiping over the road. A few tiny cars and more bicycles hugged the curb. Vending machines blinked from alcoves between buildings, offering coffee, soda, and questionable “energy” drinks. The sidewalk was busy with the usual morning mix of pedestrians.

  Kids in uniforms trotted toward school in noisy little clusters. The kindergarteners were the easiest to spot wearing bright yellow hats bobbing like migrating chicks, tiny light-blue smocks worn over sweaters, oversized randoseru bouncing on their backs. A few held hands in perfectly straight lines the way teachers trained them, waddling along with the solemnity of a military parade.

  Behind them came the elementary students in their puffier fall jackets, standardized colors peeking out underneath. Navy shorts paired with long socks for the boys, skirts over thick leggings for the girls, jackets zipped up to their noses against the October chill.

  A pack of middle-schoolers followed, their outfits a jumble of sailor colrs and bzer variations. The girls’ sailor uniforms had transitioned to their autumn versions… long sleeves, darker blues and maroons, ribbon ties neatly knotted or rebelliously loose. The boys wore stiff bck gakuran jackets, top buttons done up tight for more warmth. Although some were deliberately undone for the sake of bravado.

  Then came the high-schoolers: the pid-skirt ptoons. Knee-length skirts with thick tights, bzers with school crests, scarves wrapped fashionably around necks. Some girls wore the uniform sweaters oversized and slouchy; others kept every button fastened with military precision. The boys looked half asleep in their bzers and dress shirts, ties crooked or shoved into pockets, some shivering because refusing to button your jacket was a matter of pride.

  They all walked in easy circles around each other.

  Laughing, gossiping, nudging shoulders, sharing snacks, comparing test scores. Sometimes drama. Even though it hadn’t been that long since I was in high school myself, I was already out of the loop.

  Elders moved among them slowly, shopping bags in hand, heading toward markets or temples, their quiet pace completely different from the chaotic school rush. The rhythms were familiar enough to almost be comforting.

  Almost.

  An odd-looking Western tourist stood out from the crowd.

  Pale, sunburned nose and a guidebook peeking from her tote.

  I tried a tentative smile at her as I hurried past. I probably couldn’t say more than “good morning” in English without embarrassing myself, and I didn’t have time to try, but I at least wanted to be polite.

  She blinked, startled, then managed an awkward little smile back before looking away quickly.

  It wasn’t an outright denial of my existence.

  Well. That was… a little encouraging, at least.

  “Are… y–yo… lose?” I fumbled out anyway.

  She kept pointedly looking away. If her hair could’ve stood on end, it probably would have, judging by the panicked tightness around her eyes.

  “Yes,” I said mely.

  Was I validating her judgment of me… or I was trying to say okay, have a good day?

  I didn’t know which.

  I hurried past her, my spirits weirdly lifted despite everything. A group of elementary-school kids trailed after her, chatting and ughing with each other in easy, effortless voices. The sound made something in my chest tighten painfully.

  I envied them.

  Being able to talk easily together like that.

  Having a little pack to walk with.

  It would have been nice to have company for a change.

  I usually walked alone these days. Back in the good days, Reiko-chan was often beside me… kicking at pebbles, teasing me, occasionally deciding I was the perfect test dummy for some new throwing technique she’d learned at her dojo. Even those surprise grapples had made me feel… more human. Less like a stray dog people avoided on principle.

  No, no, no. Don’t dwell on it.

  I grit my teeth and focused on the present. The tiny flicker of optimism I’d wrung from the tourist’s reaction made me bold. My lips pulled into what I hoped was a friendly grin as I approached the group of students.

  “Good morning!” I called.

  The girls screamed.

  Instantly. Like I’d kicked a beehive.

  They locked up for half a second, eyes huge, then bolted around me, shrieking as though I’d pulled a knife on them. I stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, hands halfway up in a helpless little wave that died on the vine.

  I cpped my palms over my face, mortified, legs pnted wide.

  “YAKUZA!!!” one girl yelled at the top of her lungs.

  I froze.

  P-police?!

  My eyes darted left and right, searching for uniforms. Just the accusation was enough to get me questioned. It wasn’t like I’d never been stopped “just in case” while walking home.

  “Ah—”

  I yelped instead of answering and broke into a run, breath burning sharp in my throat.

  If they want to treat me like this, I’ll just stay quiet from now on. At least then they’ll avoid my gaze.

  None of them looked familiar. These weren’t the local kids I’d passed a hundred times on this route. Maybe they’d taken a new shortcut. They didn’t know me.

  If they did… would it even have made a difference?

  I’d probably never know.

  I didn’t slow until I reached the nearest station’s entrance. I halted at the top of the stairs, sucking in deep, calming breaths, my fists clenched at my sides. The cool morning air slid into my lungs and slowly settled my rattled nerves.

  No one else hassled me. A couple of commuters gave me a wary gnce… most likely because I looked like a thug who’d just sprinted away from a crime scene right then, but they kept walking. Small blessings.

  I straightened my suit jacket, tugging the pels into pce, and wiped sweat from my forehead with a tissue I fished from my pocket. The little packet had been pressed into my hand by a girl passing them out in front of my office building that same day, before I had my meltdown finding out about Reiko’s death. She’d looked terrified of me, her hand visibly shaking as she extended it.

  A memory flickered.

  I hadn’t even noticed her at first. She was half-hidden behind a stack of tissue boxes almost as tall as she was, standing in the cold outside the building entrance. October winds kept flipping her skirt’s hem and blowing her bangs into her eyes, yet she kept chirping the same line at every passerby, bowing like a tiny wind-up toy on its st legs.

  “Please take one! SSDS—eighth floor! Free consultation for spiritual disturbances! Please take one!”

  Most people ignored her. A few took tissues out of pity. The rest flowed past like she didn’t exist.

  I tried walking by quietly, keeping my head down, but the moment she looked up and saw my face she froze mid-bow. Her fingers spasmed around the packet. I watched the color drain from her cheeks.

  Oh, no…

  Please… please don’t scream.

  She took one wavering step backward and bumped into her tissue tower. The whole stack wobbled dangerously. For a moment, she looked like she might burst into tears. Then, with a tiny squeaked-out breath—

  She held the packet toward me again.

  “H-h-here! P-please, uh, t-take it!”

  Her hand was trembling so hard that the tissues shook like a leaf in a typhoon.

  I accepted it gently between two fingers.

  “Th-thank you,” she peeped, bowing so fast her hair flew forward. Then she scampered to the opposite side of the lobby like she’d nearly died and needed to put a building between us.

  The tower of tissue boxes teetered for a second…

  I reached out on instinct and steadied it with one hand.

  She peeked at me from behind a pilr… just her eyes visible… and mouthed something I couldn’t make out before hiding again.

  The whole exchange sted maybe ten seconds.

  And yet, she’d still forced herself forward to hand it to me.

  It must have taken serious courage to walk up to my face and offer anything at all.

  After I finished mopping my forehead, I finally looked at the pstic packet before stuffing it back into my pocket. At the time she’d given it to me, I’d been too stressed to read it. Now, thinking about her determination, guilt prodded me into examining the print.

  A company name and a slogan were stamped on the front.

  SSDS, Tokyo Got a yokai? I’m your guy!

  A snort escaped me before I could stop it.

  “He’s ciming to be a yokai?” I muttered, rolling my eyes as I tucked the packet away again. The pun was awful. It still made me chuckle under my breath.

  Then another thought hit me.

  There was no address. No phone number. No URL. No QR code. Nothing but the name and the cheesy line.

  “What kind of idiot prints something like this without any contact information?” I grumbled.

  Maybe it was some viral marketing thing. Or a scam. Or both.

  I shrugged, my lips pursing in an exaggerated “whatever” face, and started down the stairs into the station proper. I kept my gaze fixed mostly on the floor as I walked. If I met a police officer’s eyes head-on down here, it sometimes got… awkward. They took it as a challenge, and that always led to horrible conversations where I had to prove I didn’t belong to a Yakuza family… neverminding that they’d supposedly disbanded nationwide these days.

  Sometimes I wondered if I’d been born a few decades earlier, would they have forced me to join?

  Would Reiko have taken me more seriously if I’d tried leaning into the image that my face and people projected onto me?Get some badass dragon tattooed across my back, punch out anyone who looked at me wrong, collect protection money, run shady back-alley deals…

  Yikes.

  I couldn’t actually imagine doing any of that for a living. I could barely accept a tissue packet without scaring a poor girl half to death.

  I didn’t need that kind of spiral this morning.

  So I let my expression go neutral, almost bnk, and focused hard on the tiles at my feet. It had a side benefit. People tended not to notice my face as much if I stared at the ground like I hated it.

  If I tried to look approachable, people flinched. If I tried to look inconspicuous, I still got hassled for “lurking.”

  I walked past the ticket consoles and shuttered kiosks, heading straight for the IC card gates. I tapped my card, listened for the reassuring chirp, and slipped through.

  Something felt… off. The machine chirped as expected but there was something wrong.

  I gnced up quickly without meaning to, then dropped my gaze again. The unease followed me all the way to the escators.

  It wasn’t until I reached the ptform that I understood why.

  The pce was almost utterly silent.

  There was no soft roar of overpping conversations. No ctter of high heels on tile. No footsteps, no rolling luggage, no rustle of newspapers, no little noises from people’s phones.

  Nothing.

  I stopped short and spun slowly in pce, taking in both sides of the ptform. Two sets of tracks, one on either side. Empty benches. Empty vending machines humming to themselves. Digital departure boards scrolling times for trains that nobody seemed to be waiting for this morning.

  At this hour, the ptform should have been jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with commuters. Sarymen, office dies, students, tourists, everyone crammed together breathing the same stale air.

  Instead, it looked like a set after the staff had gone home.

  A cold prickle worked its way down my spine.

  I jogged the length of the ptform, checking each kiosk. Every shutter was rolled down. No managers. No part-timers arranging snacks. Even the little convenience shop in the corner, the one that boasted “Open 365 Days!” in glowing letters, was dark as a tomb.

  Two in the morning vibes. At eight-something AM.

  I checked my watch just to be sure I hadn’t somehow broken time.

  Still normal. The sun had been shining when I came down. The streets above were packed. I wasn’t hallucinating an eerie absence of people during an entire rush hour, right?

  “I haven’t gone crazy yet,” I muttered under my breath. “Or have I?”

  Given everything I’d been through tely, it wouldn’t have been that surprising if I had. But the watch agreed with me. So did the faint rumble of traffic filtering down from street level. Humans hadn’t vanished off the face of Earth since I went downstairs as far as I could tell.

  But where was everyone that normally commuted to and from this station?

  I thought back to the gates.

  Come to think of it, there hadn’t been any cops in the koban by the entrance either. That box was usually good for at least one bored officer reading the paper. Today it had been empty. Lights on. Chairs. No people.

  Was I relieved I hadn’t seen anyone wearing a police uniform?

  Maybe a little.

  But the absence made my skin positively crawl. Something about the ck of authority figures bothered me more than their presence ever had.

  My heart thudded against my ribs hard enough to hurt. Sweat tickled under my colr. I raked my fingers through my hair and tried to breathe.

  That was when the train arrived.

  The familiar jingle pyed over the speakers. A bright, chirpy voice announced the train’s approach and final destination, cheerful as ever. The wind of its arrival spped against my face. For a second, the simple fact of the train still existing and doing its thing calmed me.

  The world hadn’t stopped. Things were still functioning. I’d still be able to get to work on time, even if the emptiness here felt like some kind of a warning from the universe.

  I let out a shaky sigh and moved to my usual boarding spot. Creature of habit, even when everything else was out of order.

  The train slid to a stop. Doors hissed open. The welcome chime sounded from the overhead speakers.

  I stepped on.

  And stopped so fast my heel squeaked on the floor.

  The car was completely empty too!

  Not like “there’s one old man snoozing in the corner and a nodding off student” kind of empty. Not a “wow, lucky, I get a seat today” kind of empty.

  Completely empty.

  No passengers. No bags. Not even a forgotten umbrel.

  It matched the station: pristine, humming, and utterly devoid of any apparent life.

  “What…?” I whispered.

  A z-zombie outbreak? Godzil’s attacking?! Some kind of a disease outbreak? Did I need a germ mask? Shit!

  I gnced back at the ptform.

  Still very empty. No one was rushing to get on this train. No one was coming down the stairs or escators.

  The doors slid shut behind me with a soft, final chime.

  “Great,” I muttered. “Now you’re worried about germs, Susumu. After all the convenience-store fried chicken and instant ramen you’ve eaten since leaving mom and dad’s home.”

  The train lurched into motion, pressing me gently toward the handrails. I staggered, caught myself on a hanging strap, and stood there for a second in the center of the car, listening.

  The usual sounds were there. The low mechanical whine of acceleration. The faint rattle of wheels on tracks. The distant thump of air passing through tunnels.

  What was missing was everything human. No coughs. No tired sighs. No rustle of newspapers. No phones. No keyboards ccking. No whispered gossip.

  Just me.

  Me and my reflection in the darkened windows.

  “Maybe there’s a strike of some kind going on, or a holiday that I forgot…” I told the empty seats. My voice sounded too loud. “Or an emergency announcement I missed. Or… something.”

  None of those expnations answered why there’d been nobody at the gates, or why the station staff had all vanished, let alone this apparently empty train.

  I made myself walk to my usual spot by the doors, though the cars sometimes changed, near the middle of the car. I grabbed a strap with one hand, my briefcase strap digging into my other shoulder, and stared at the blurry tunnel walls outside.

  The fluorescent lights overhead flickered once.

  Just once.

  The sound system popped gently, like someone plugging in a microphone. For a heartbeat, I thought I heard a few discordant notes of Caramelldansen py through the speakers, the melody twisted and slowed until it sounded wrong.

  I shook my head hard.

  “You’re hearing things,” I muttered. “You’re just tired. That’s all.”

  When I looked back at the windows, my reflection stared back at me. Same tired suit. Same dead-eyed gre. Same face, despite everything I’d been through.

  For a second, though…

  For just a second…

  I could have sworn there was something else behind my shoulder in the gss. A pale oval, where a face should have been. Featureless. Smooth. Unblinking.

  I spun around.

  The car was empty.

  My skin crawled.

  I gripped the strap until my knuckles went white, heart pounding loud in the silence.

  “Get a grip, Susumu,” I whispered. “You have to go to work. You can’t freak out because a train is a little… empty.”

  The train roared deeper into the tunnel.

  And I had the sudden, terrible feeling that I wasn’t as alone as I kept telling myself.