"Thank you for coming," he said quietly. "Fujino. Operations manager."

Natsume answered before Hiro did.

"How many people know."

"Four staff members. Myself, the head nurse, and the two nurses present when the incident happened."

Fujino guided them away from reception toward the side corridor beside the elevators.

"Everyone else has been told the third floor is under emergency maintenance."

"What exactly happened," Natsume asked.

Fujino swallowed once before answering.

"It started with complaints from patients on the third floor. Mostly during the night at first." He pressed the elevator button.

"Patients reported hearing movement inside their rooms when nobody else was there."

"What kind of movement," Hiro asked.

"Furniture scraping. Whispering. Things falling over." Fujino kept his eyes on the elevator doors.

"Some of them claimed they were seeing shadows standing beside their beds. Others said objects in the room changed places when they looked away."

The elevator opened and the three of them stepped inside.

Fujino pressed three.

"We checked the rooms repeatedly," he continued while the doors shut. "Security cameras showed nothing unusual. None of the staff experienced anything themselves. At first we thought the patients were frightening each other."

The elevator hummed upward.

"Then one of the patients changed yesterday afternoon."

Fujino stared at the glowing floor numbers above the doors.

"He started talking to people who weren’t there. Then he began answering questions nobody had asked him." His hands tightened together again. "Around evening he became violent."

"Violent how," Hiro asked.

"He bit one of the nurses badly enough to tear flesh from her arm. Three staff members tried to restrain him and he threw one of them across the room hard enough to crack the wall behind her."

Hiro looked at him properly for the first time.

"Normal person couldn’t do that."

"No."

The elevator passed the second floor.

Fujino rubbed one thumb hard against the side of his hand.

"The nurses locked him inside the room and called me immediately." His voice had gone quieter now.

"When I looked through the observation window..." He stopped briefly. "He was sitting on the floor facing the wall."

The elevator continued upward.

"He was smiling."

Nobody interrupted him.

"Too wide. His mouth stretched farther than it should have." Fujino swallowed again.

"The whites of his eyes were showing completely. Not blinking. Just staring sideways while he smiled at the wall."

The elevator motor hummed softly overhead.

"His hands were bent backward under him." Fujino’s voice tightened despite the effort to control it.

"His legs too. The joints looked wrong. But he was still moving around the room normally." He looked down at the floor. "Like his body had forgotten how a human body is supposed to fit together."

Hiro exhaled once through his nose.

"Great."

"We evacuated the floor within the hour," Fujino continued.

"We told the patients there had been a pipe burst and transferred everyone downstairs." His eyes stayed fixed on the glowing number above the doors. "Then I contacted the Reizen family."

The elevator reached the third floor.

The doors opened.

The difference hit immediately.

Hospitals always had sound somewhere. Footsteps in distant corridors. Rolling carts. Televisions behind closed doors. Machines beeping softly from occupied rooms.

The third floor had none of it.

No movement behind the doors.

No voices.

No televisions.

The air outside the elevator felt colder than the air conditioned lobby below.

Fujino held one hand against the doorframe but did not step out.

Hiro straightened away from the wall.

Natsume adjusted her gloves once.

Then both of them walked onto the floor.

"Good Luck." Fujino wished.

The elevator doors shut behind them and the sound of the lobby disappeared completely.

A dull pressure hit them as they took a step ahead.

The corridor itself looked ordinary enough. Linoleum flooring. Pale walls. Blue curtain rails running along the ceiling beside rows of patient rooms. The same layout as every hospital floor in the city.

But two of the lights near the far end were dead.

And the air itself felt heavy, pressing faintly against the chest and the inside of the ears with every breath.

Every room door stood open except one.

Natsume stopped walking.

Hiro stopped a step later.

Spiritual energy moved across both of them automatically, thin currents spreading over skin and clothing before either of them consciously reacted.

A faint pale glow settled beneath Hiro’s open jacket sleeves while dense spiritual energy gathered around Natsume’s gloved hands in dark shifting layers.

Hiro’s posture changed slightly.

Less relaxed now.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "That’s strong."

Natsume’s eyes moved slowly down the corridor.

Doors.

Floor.

Ceiling.

The closed room at the far end.

"It’s not in that room. It’s near us," she said.

drip

Something wet hit the floor beside Hiro’s shoe.

Both of them looked up at the same time.

The man was attached to the ceiling directly above the corridor.

He looked middle-aged and wore a loose hospital gown hanging crookedly from his body.

His hands and legs bent at angles human joints should not have reached, twisted too far backward while his body still clung effortlessly to the concrete overhead.

His fingers spread wide against the ceiling tiles.

Bare feet pressed flat against the surface above them.

Dark veins bulged beneath pale skin.

His face pointed downward toward them.

His eyes were completely black.

No whites.

No irises.

Dense dark energy saturated the entire eye socket while shadow-like wisps poured steadily from his body and dissolved slowly into the corridor air.

His smile stretched far too wide across his face.

The corners of his mouth pulled almost to the sides of his jaw while saliva dripped steadily from between exposed teeth onto the floor below.

He did not blink.

For one long second he stayed perfectly still above them, staring directly into Hiro’s face upside down from the ceiling.

Hiro shifted one foot back slightly.

Natsume’s gloved fingers tightened once.

Then the man’s mouth opened wider.

A sound came out of him.

Not screaming.

Not words.

Something wet and broken between laughter and choking.

Then he dropped.