The remnant that had been the receptionist was still standing in the doorway of the rooftop door.
Or what remained of it.
The shape it had now did not correspond to any seventy-year-old man nor to any man of any other age. What was there now was the kind of thing Kato and Yuna already knew well enough, but which did not become easier to look at with practice.
"Guests must... sleep..."
The voice was the old man's, but processed by something that did not know how to use a human voice completely. It had that background distortion that mindless remnants carried when they tried to reproduce words they had been exposed to too many times.
Yuna activated the mana.
"Why aren't you activating yours?" she said to Kato.
Kato was looking at the remnant with his hands in his pockets.
"Calm down," he said.
"It's coming closer."
"I know."
"Kato—"
"Look carefully," said Kato.
Yuna did not understand what exactly she was supposed to look at carefully. The remnant kept advancing with the slowness of something that is not in a hurry because it has no concept of hurrying. Its arms were bent at angles that did not correspond. The white, pupil-less eyes reflected the little city light reaching the rooftop.
"Guests must... sleep..."
Yuna could not wait any longer.
She fully activated the mana and readied herself.
The sword fell from above.
Not dramatically, but precisely, as though someone had calculated the correct angle before moving. It went through the remnant from top to bottom and divided it with a cleanness that left no margin for error.
The remnant came apart in silence.
The phrase was left unfinished.
Yuna lowered her arms and looked towards where the sword had come from.
A man was at the edge of the roof. He had not run down or appeared with any noise. He was simply there, with the posture of someone who had arrived from a higher point and had chosen that exact spot to stop.
He would have been somewhere in his mid-twenties. Cold gaze. Simple clothing, the kind that did not draw attention precisely because it had been chosen not to. In one hand he held a sword that did not look like something carried to be shown, but something carried because it was used.
Kato looked at him.
"It's been a long time, Renji," he said.
Yuna looked at Kato.
"Is he a hunter I don't know?"
"Renji Aoyama," said Kato. "A former student of mine."
Renji did not respond to the greeting with a greeting. He looked at Kato with the seriousness of someone who had several questions and had chosen to start with the most urgent.
"How did you find me?"
"I was following the rumour," said Kato. "The one about the remnant that hunts remnants. When the hotel one appeared, I felt a familiar mana presence."
He paused.
"I knew it was you."
Renji did not seem surprised.
He did seem annoyed.
"You're still a nuisance," he said.
"I hear that a lot," said Kato.
Yuna looked at both men with the expression of someone processing several things at once.
"Why have I never heard of him?" she said to Kato.
Kato looked at Renji.
"Because years ago Kana asked me to train him," he said. "The idea was for him to learn as much as possible so that someday he could become a good teacher."
He paused.
"Renji left the hunters."
"I didn't leave them," said Renji. "I stopped pretending I believed in them."
Yuna looked at him.
"Why?"
Renji looked at Yuna with the brief assessment of someone deciding how much to explain and to whom.
"The hunters turned remnants into a monopoly," he said, in the tone of someone who did not give speeches but said what he thought in the order he thought it. "You decide who knows the truth. You decide what gets hidden. You change the explanations given to victims' families. You erase the real causes of deaths."
He paused.
"And then you call that protecting people."
Yuna did not respond immediately.
Renji continued:
"Hunters don't protect the truth. They manage it."
Yuna looked at him.
"Revealing the existence of remnants would cause social panic," she said. "Persecutions. People trying to hunt remnants without any preparation. Perhaps the end of the hunters themselves."
"Panic is no worse than ignorance," said Renji. "At least fear lets you run."
Yuna went quiet again.
"You decided," Renji continued, "that ordinary people have no right to know what is killing them."
"The system exists to protect—"
"And you don't even tell your own hunters everything."
Yuna tensed.
Renji looked at Kato for a moment.
"The story of 'The Traitor' wasn't real either, was it?"
Kato looked away.
That gesture was enough.
"I know," said Yuna.
Renji went still.
That was not the answer he had been expecting.
"Did he tell you?"
Yuna looked at Kato.
"Yes."
Renji smiled. Not with humour, but with something closer to the recognition of someone who had just received information that slightly changed the map of what they thought they knew.
"How generous," he said. "Years late, but generous."
Kato did not respond.
Unable to hold back, Yuna asked:
"Do you really believe the world is ready to know about remnants?"
"The world is never going to be ready," said Renji, "if hunters keep deciding for everyone."
"What do you intend to do then?" said Yuna.
"I've said enough," said Renji.
Kato cut the conversation short.
"We can discuss this later."
Yuna looked at him.
"Later?"
"I need to ask you something," Kato said to Renji.
"No," said Renji.
"I haven't said what it was yet."
"I don't need to."
Kato became more serious.
"Then don't hear it as a request from a hunter."
Renji looked at him.
"Hear it as a request for help from your former teacher."
The rooftop was silent for a moment.
Renji did not respond immediately.
But he did not leave either.
"I'm listening," said Renji at last. "But not for free."
Kato nodded.
Yuna moved closer to him and said quietly, with the discretion of someone who did not want the other person to hear, even though they probably would:
"Are you sure? He seems unhinged."
Kato responded in the same volume.
"He's not unhinged. He's wounded. Sometimes they look the same."
Renji looked at both of them without saying anything.
"There's someone I need to protect," said Kato. "Her name is Aoi Mizuno. She has been cursed by a remnant."
He paused in the tone of someone who had said that few times and each time it cost the same.
"The curse weakens her more every day. At first it was tiredness. Then fever. Fainting. Now she can barely stay on her feet for long."
"And I can't move too far from Aoi," Renji continued. "Every time I leave her alone for too long, the curse advances."
He fell silent again for a second.
"I need help."
He said it in the tone of someone for whom asking for help was one of the hardest things available and who was doing it anyway because they had no other choice.
"We accept," said Kato.
Yuna nodded.
Renji looked at both of them for a moment.
"Thank you," he said.
It cost him to say it.
It showed.
"How did you know we were here?" said Yuna.
"I'd been following that form of the remnant for days," said Renji. "When I felt two hunters in the fake hotel, I came closer to see who they were."
Yuna processed that.
"So... it was going to devour us in our sleep?"
"Probably," said Renji.
"And the hotel remnant?" said Yuna.
"It's one of the forms used by the remnant that cursed her," said Renji. "It creates fake spaces around the city. Hotels, guesthouses, places to rest. People come in, sleep and disappear."
He paused.
"When you destroy one of those forms, the place falls apart. But the real core doesn't appear. That's why I can't find it."
Kato nodded.
"That's why you couldn't find it."
Kato looked at the building.
"What aggressive hospitality."
The building creaked.
Not gradually. It was the kind of creak that announces something and is right to announce it. The walls began to crack in ways that did not correspond to any normal structural deterioration. The interior lights flickered. The general shape of the building lost something. Not the shape exactly, but the certainty that the shape was real, the way one looks at something a certain way and stops seeing what one was seeing.
"When one of its forms is destroyed," said Renji, "the fake space comes apart."
Kato went still for a second.
"My car!" he said.
Yuna looked at him.
"Did you have insurance?"
Kato looked at her.
"Insurance?"
Yuna patted him on the back.
"I'm sorry."
The hotel collapsed.
Kato looked at the remains from where they were.
"That car could have lasted a few more years," he said.
Yuna gave him a strange look.
"Yes, sure. A few more years..."
Renji was already walking.
"Let's go."
Renji's flat was in a quiet part of Kagoshima. Not the centre, nor a place that received much traffic. It was the kind of area chosen by someone who needs something to be predictable, even if everything else is not.
The place was simple. Tidy. It had the silence of spaces where someone had decided that silence was preferable to noise, even if they did not always prefer it.
Renji opened the door.
"You're back?"
The voice came from inside. Feminine, with something of relief that was trying not to sound too much like relief, because that would have meant admitting there had been worry.
"Yes," said Renji.
Aoi Mizuno appeared from the kitchen.
She was wearing light pyjamas and had dark hair slightly dishevelled, in the way hair gets when one has spent time at home without going out. She was pale. Not dramatically, but like someone who has spent weeks with something constantly draining their strength and has already started to consider it normal.
Upon seeing Kato and Yuna she stopped.
"Sorry. I didn't know Renji was bringing visitors."
"Please don't worry," said Yuna.
"She's Yuna," said Renji. "He's Kato."
"Aoi Mizuno," said Aoi, with a smile that took some effort but was also genuine. "Nice to meet you."
She looked at Kato with curiosity.
"How do you know Renji?"
"I was his teacher," said Kato.
Renji cut in.
"Mathematics."
Aoi looked at Renji, surprised.
"Mathematics?"
"Years ago," said Renji.
Kato smiled.
"Very bad student."
"Very bad teacher," said Renji.
Aoi laughed softly.
"That explains some things."
Renji looked at her.
"What things?"
"Nothing," said Aoi, still smiling. "I'll make tea."
Yuna offered.
"I'll help."
Aoi and Yuna went to the kitchen.
Kato and Renji were left alone in the sitting room, with the silence of two people who had things to say to each other and were calculating in what order to say them.
Renji looked at Kato.
"Are you out of your mind?"
Kato knew what he was referring to.
"Wasn't it that everyone deserved to know the truth?"
Renji tensed.
"Don't drag her into this."
"She's already in it," said Kato. "The curse didn't ask whether she wanted to be."
Renji did not respond immediately.
"She's ill," he said at last, in the tone people use when they explain something they already know has no good defence. "The curse is advancing. Right now I can't pile the truth on top of that. Once everything is over I'll tell her."
Kato looked at him.
"That's what everyone says when they're hiding something."
"Don't compare me to them."
"I'm not comparing you," said Kato. "I'm telling you what I hear."
Renji tightened his jaw.
Kato did not press him further.
"Are you willing to talk about the hunters now?" he said.
"When Aoi is safe," said Renji. "Not before."
Kato nodded.
In the kitchen, Aoi put water on to boil with the concentration of someone who needed their hands to do something concrete while their head did something else.
"Kato seems like a good person," she said.
"He is," said Yuna.
Aoi smiled.
"I'm glad Renji got to see his teacher and his wife again."
Yuna almost dropped the cup she was arranging.
"I'm not his wife."
"Sorry," said Aoi, with genuine awkwardness. "Girlfriend?"
"Neither."
"Oh."
"We're colleagues."
"Of course," said Aoi.
Yuna looked at her.
"I mean it."
Aoi nodded with the smile of someone who did not want to argue.
"Have you known Renji long?" said Yuna, changing the subject with the decisiveness of someone who had chosen that topic because the previous one was no longer productive.
"Two years," said Aoi. "He does photography for a local magazine. Sometimes they send him to faraway places and he arrives late."
She looked at the water beginning to warm.
"It worries me because he always comes back tired. Sometimes hurt. And he never explains too much about what happened."
Yuna nodded.
"Renji doesn't give warning when he's going to be late," Aoi continued, "doesn't give warning when he gets hurt, and doesn't give warning when he's going to do something stupid."
She paused.
"I'm starting to think it's a pattern."
Yuna smiled.
"I know someone similar."
Aoi prepared the tea and put the cups on the tray with the care of someone who does things properly because doing them properly is what they have available when other things are not.
She picked up the tray.
She started walking towards the sitting room.
The tray trembled.
Not gradually. It trembled the way things tremble when what is holding them no longer has enough strength to hold them fully.
Yuna was there before it fell.
She took the tray with both hands, held the weight and waited.
Aoi tried to apologise.
"Sorry. I'm fine. This has been happening for a few days, but—"
Something went out in her gaze.
Only for a second.
"I don't want to sleep..." she murmured.
For an instant, a greyish mark appeared beneath the skin of her wrist. It seemed to pulse once, as though something on the other side had responded to her words, and then went out again.
Renji arrived from the sitting room before she finished the sentence.
He did not ask if she was all right. He already knew the answer.
He took her with the care of someone who had practised that movement because they had had to practise it and guided her towards the bedroom while Aoi tried to say she could walk on her own and her legs said something different.
Before disappearing down the corridor, Aoi looked at Kato and Yuna.
"Sorry about this," she said. "Rest well."
The bedroom door closed.
Kato and Yuna were left alone in the sitting room for a few seconds.
"The curse has advanced quite a bit," said Yuna, quietly.
"Yes," said Kato.
"Do you think the remnant is strong?"
Kato looked towards the corridor where Renji had taken Aoi.
"I think it's patient," he said. "That can be worse."
Renji came back.
His face was closed, as though he had stored too much inside and had no intention of opening it at that moment.
"She's been getting worse for over a month," he said, without preamble. "First she was sleeping more. Then the fever. The fainting. Now the curse advances faster."
He looked at Yuna.
"I need you to stay with her. To protect her."
Yuna nodded.
"I'll look after her."
Renji looked at her for a moment, with the recognition of someone who did not give thanks easily but who in that moment genuinely had them.
Then he looked at Kato.
"You come with me."
Kato barely smiled.
"Like the old days."
Renji opened the door.
"Don't insult the old days."
Kato followed him outside.
"I missed you too."
The door closed behind them.
For a few seconds, neither spoke.
Kato walked with his hands in his pockets. Renji, with the sword concealed beneath his jacket and the step of someone who knew where they were going, even if they had not yet said it aloud.
Years ago they had walked similar streets as teacher and student, with Kato explaining something that Renji listened to with that critical attention of someone who learns and at the same time evaluates whether what they are learning is worth learning.
That night it was not entirely clear whether they were walking together out of trust, out of necessity, or because they had still not finished resolving something they had left unresolved for too long.
Kagoshima received them with the silence of a city sleeping peacefully.
As though sleeping were still something safe.