The Severance

For a week, Kenji lived in the eye of the storm.

He was terrified. He slept with the lights on, but the bulbs would always burn out around 3:00 AM, plunging him into darkness where he would feel the cold weight of her hair draping over his chest.

But his life was... better.

The Yakuza didn't come. He saw them once, parked down the street, but when their car engine suddenly caught fire, they fled.

Tanaka-san was in the hospital. He had fallen down the stairs at his apartment. Both legs broken.

Kenji came home to clean floors, hot meals, and silence.

But the fear was a corrosive acid. He was a modern man. He couldn't live with a monster. He looked at her—"Ai," he had started calling her in his head—crouched in the corner of the ceiling, watching him watch TV, and he felt the primal urge to flee.

* She will kill me eventually,* he told himself. *Ghosts consume life force. I am just a battery to her.*

On Saturday, he went to a Shinto shrine in Shibuya—a big, active one. He bought the most expensive *Ofuda* (purification charm) they had. The priest looked at him with pity.

"You have something very dark clinging to you, son," the priest said. "Place this on the threshold. Do not hesitate."

Kenji returned to the apartment. Ai was in the kitchen. She was chopping vegetables. The knife moved with terrifying speed. *Chop. Chop. Chop.*

She paused as he entered. She turned. Her hair parted slightly, revealing a pale mouth curved into a shy, grotesque smile. She had made his favorite curry.

Kenji’s hand shook in his pocket. He gripped the paper charm.

"I can't do this," he said. "I can't live like this."

He pulled out the charm and slapped it onto the doorframe.

"Leave!" he shouted. "I command you to leave!"

The reaction was instantaneous.

Ai dropped the knife. She threw her hands over her face and screamed. It wasn't a roar; it was the sound of a woman watching her child die. High, shrill, and broken.

Black smoke erupted from her skin. The unseen force that filled the room—the pressure, the cold—was sucked violently toward the door.

*"Kenji... no... protect... no..."*

Her form distorted, stretching and tearing. She reached for him, her fingers turning to smoke before they could touch him.

With a final, mournful wail, she was blasted out of the apartment. The door slammed shut.

Silence.

Real silence. The oppressive weight was gone. The apartment was just a cheap, dirty room in Nerima again. The smell of incense vanished, replaced instantly by the smell of mold.

Kenji sank to his knees. He breathed easily for the first time in weeks.

Then, his phone rang.

Unknown number.

He picked it up.

"Sato-san," a deep voice rumbled. "We've been trying to reach you. Every time we came near your building, we got... bad vibes. But it feels clear tonight."

Kenji’s blood ran cold.

"We're outside," the Yakuza enforcer said. "Open the door, or we take the fingers."