Haru hurried through the crowded streets of Asakusa, trying his best not to knock people in his wake. People that looked at their phones whilst walking had always irritated him, but now he had no choice but to do it himself. This was an emergency. Mara had not replied to any of his messages for three days. It wasn’t like her to do this; not with the exhibition coming; not to him. Even if she had lost her phone, (which she had several times in the past) she knew his number by memory, she would’ve reached out. At worst, Haru hoped she was just panicking about the next phase of her career. It was a scary change for her to throw away her anonymity she had so carefully built over the years. Now that he thought about it, she might have never been fully on board with it. Had he pushed too hard? So hard that she pulled away from it all?

He got to the building and pressed her buzzer a few too many times. There was no answer.

She could be in the studio, absorbed in her work; it happened before and she would miss the light flashing. But then Shiro would normally alert her too. He pressed again and again and nothing.

A couple was just leaving the building and, though he hated doing it, he squeezed inside before the door closed, nervously avoiding the couple’s looks.

He hurried to the lift. It was too slow! These things had a will of their own always seeking to contradict the flow of time against one’s own urgency. With nothing else to do, he checked his phone again. He had sent hundreds of texts that went unanswered. Mr Takeda’s kind expression came to him, his genuine gratitude for looking after his only  and precious daughter. This wasn’t happening, not on his watch. This had to be a miscommunication, there was just no room for any other possibility, not one that he could handle.

After what seemed like an eternity, the lift stopped on Mara’s floor. The doors barely opened and Haru could already hear Shiro’s barks. He took a deep breath. Had he panicked for no reason?

So then, why wasn’t she replying to his texts? No, something was still off. He needed to see her face. He would worry about being paranoid later.

Haru reached the door with a motion to bang on it, but he stopped and cursed under his breath. Of course she wouldn’t hear!

Shiro’s barks were louder now and he could hear its paws scratching at the door. The dog was there, this was a good sign. Mara hardly went anywhere without it. His pessimism, however, had other intentions and kept scratching at him; what if she had hurt herself? What if she was so hurt she could not answer the door? The thought gave him chills.

He lifted the doormat, and the spare key was there. He was thankful that she never listened to his advice about finding a less obvious hiding place.

Shiro was all over him as soon as he stepped in, as usual. Haru greeted him with loving pats and looked around. It was dark.

‘Where is she, boy? Are you alone?’

Shiro licked and furrowed his way close to Haru as his only answer.

Haru wandered further inside the flat. He turned on the light in the living room, hoping this would attract Mara’s attention, but what he saw instead startled him stiff.

A man in dark clothes was there. He was wearing a mask.

Was it a man?

Everything about him seemed unnatural: His flashy silver hair and his long and furry… tail? A thief in costume?

The man stood so still that for a moment Haru thought perhaps he was a mannequin.

Until he moved.

Slowly, he removed one glove, never taking his silver eyes off of him; even the way he moved made him seem like a resplendent apparition. Haru found himself mesmerised.

He stepped back once and his hand searched for Shiro while never taking his eyes off of this shady person.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Where is Mara?’

His eyes couldn't follow what came next.

Flashing silver eyes hunted for him and in the next second, the man was upon him; a wolf with its prey. An iron grip seized his neck, slammed and lifted him up against the wall, his legs dangling as if he weighed nothing.

Haru choked for air and his hands clawed at his attacker’s hold, but like a fly on a spider’s net, it was useless. The man’s eyes were completely grey and shone with a strange brightness as he squeezed. Haru knew then that his death was close; he stared right at it in the face. A simple snap of his neck would end it all.

He heard the man whisper some words he didn’t understand, some foreign dialect. His eyes flashed twice, emitting a light so bright that it forced his eyes shut.

The damage was done.

The grip on his neck loosened and Haru fell on his knees and then on his front, with his glasses falling off. He felt dizzy and couldn’t cough or breathe in for air. It stung too much to open his eyes. His body was limp, his ears ringing and the stinging noise muffled out all sounds, even Shiro’s barks. He had never experienced this level of exhaustion, fear, and pain in his life. Not when he ran the Hakone Ekiden marathon for his University and passed out at the end; not when he was outed in school and then constantly bullied. Or when he was homeless that same week after he came out to his father. Not even when, outside of *Nichō, drunken homophobes beat him to an inch of his life and he was hospitalised for months. No, this felt like the true end.

There was a distant thumping and he wondered if that was his own heart. The buzzing sound in his head was just too strong to make sense of anything else. Maybe he would just lay there, wait for death to claim him. Maybe it would’ve been preferable to have his neck snapped quickly; this pain was just too unbearable.

Then Mara flashed in his mind. Her timid yet hopeful smile and a smudge of paint on her cheek.

Had she suffered the same fate? It horrified him to even imagine it. To die like this, not having done anything to help her, petrified him even more.

He moved. Or twitched. He still couldn’t hear, but he felt the heavy steps on the floor. The man was walking close to him.

With tremendous effort, gritting his teeth, Haru squinted; his head throbbed with pain, but he kept trying. He wasn’t sure what he could do, but he had to pick up on something. Perhaps he could see what the man did next. If he somehow survived this, he would need every single detail. His eyes burned, and the light in the ceiling felt like the midday sun burning his eyelids. Still, he followed the vibrations of the man’s footsteps and saw him crouch near a four-pawed silhouette, Shiro.

*Hakone Ekiden - officially called the Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race, is one of the most prominent university ekiden races of the year held between Tokyo and Hakone in Japan on January 2 and 3.

*Nichō - or “Ni-Chome,” in Shinjuku, Tokyo is a buzzing, neon-lit gay quarter in East Shinjuku.