“I think I’m going to make them yokai.”

“Huh?” Aerin poked her head out through the kitchen doorway, sighting her from across the corridor. “What did you say?”

“I think I’m going to make some of these people yokai.” Alexa snapped on her television control bracelet, and made a search for pictures of tengu. The images that appeared were statues, old drawings from scrolls, and sprinkled in between them were actual photos. She brought one up, and squinted at the image.

It was taken in a forest at night, from the ground looking up. The tengu was up in the tree, given the dark shape and the flash of red from its face, but otherwise it was blurry and the figure blended into the other parts of the canopy.

Aerin sat down on the couch by her site, and set down a plate with two buns on it, sliced open and filled with fluffy scrambled eggs and slices of bacon. “I’m scared to ask this but do you still like ketchup mixed with that really sugary kind of chili sauce we can only get at like a Mandala-style fast food joint?”

“I…huh.” Alexa’s eyes found the plate on the coffee table. She reached over and pushed one of the buns open wider, finding a red-and-orange smear on the inside, staining the bread and the egg. “Only if the ketchup’s on the sour side. Damn, what the hell, you remembered all of that?”

“Of course I remember. You made a huge fuss and your mum had to take you out of the shop.”

She blinked. It came back to her, distant and unfocused. The smell of fried food fading to a fresh breeze as they exited. “Wow, immediately hitting me with the most embarrassing moment of my life first thing in the morning. Thank you.”

“I thought that was when you directly messaged the…the archaeology professor instead of someone in your group and told him about your period tracker.”

Alexa felt her face go beet red. “No! Oh god no! I managed to forget that one, how could you-”

Aerin giggled and picked up her own breakfast sandwich. “The Baekho are known for their mystic assassins, you know.”

Alexa slumped on the couch, holding her face. “You’re killing me,” she mumbled extra dramatically.

“And why are you looking at this? Please don’t tell me this is another stupid ARG.” She took a bite of her sandwich.

“I’m just trying to look for reference pics. I should have taken one last night.” She scrolled through more images, and the next thirty or so were all artistic renditions, without a single real photo to be found. “Basically nobody has a real photo of a tengu.”

“...try a kappa.”

Alexa directed the search that way. What came up was another slew of drawings from a long lost age of old Earth - or at least, one of them - and then more found footage-style frames, none of which showed an actual kappa. “Like a third of this is just computer generated, I think. Like I’m pretty sure that anatomy’s not possible.” She paused briefly on an image claiming to be a real kappa sighting, yet proudly displayed a model integrated into the image that was hardly muscular enough to swim long distances, as she remembered kappa being capable of.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Aerin said through a mouthful of food.

“Huh?”

She swallowed the bite. “A lot of the time their physiology doesn’t make sense. They’re still magical creatures, and the definition of that is an organism that has an essential bodily function reliant on some kind of magical process. ‘Yokai’ is just what they call the ones that are as smart as us.”

Alexa turned to her. “Since when were you a yokai expert?”

“Since I went home.” She pulled her legs up onto the couch and hugged her knees with the hand not holding her sandwich. “You do know there’s a lot of…yokai in Baekho culture, right? Or more accurately, yogoe.”

“What was that word?”

“Yo-go-e. Yokai is what the Koro say.”

“Uh…”

Aerin took another bite silently, chewed and swallowed it. “Sorry. I think I’m just sick of the defaultism.”

“Did they look down on you? Even at home?”

“Everyone who’s in charge always does. You just have to give it time, and they all go the same way.” She stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth.

Alexa had no idea how to respond, so she just turned back to the screen and let the silence mellow out between them. “I actually might have another way of getting reference photos. The Federation documents literally everything they discover, but you need clearance to see that sort of stuff.” She dug around in between the couch cushions, and retrieved her phone again, navigating to Steven’s message. “And my boss left me his credentials.”

“Brilliant.” Aerin hopped off the couch, stretching her legs a little and then putting her hands on her hips. “Do you want coffee?”

“I have coffee.” She focused on navigating to the museum’s database page.

“Not that travesty you have in the kitchen. I’m talking about real coffee. From a shop. I’ll be around the block and back, what do you want?”

“I prefer the robot in the park.”

Aerin raised an eyebrow. “The fucking CupGO thing?”

“I mean, it’s real coffee. Isn’t it?” She looked up.

Aerin narrowed her eyes. “One of these days I’m going to find the guy they hired to just stick the word ‘go’ at the end of all their stuff and just shoot him in the head.”

“Uh…”

“We’re not getting clanker coffee. I’ll find a shop, and you’re gonna like it better.” Aerin scooped up her windbreaker from the chair in the corner, and made for the front door, pausing to put on the shoes she’d hurriedly kicked off last night.

“Iced latte, half sweetness!” Alexa managed to call out before the door closed. Her eyes followed Aerin down the front of her house, through the gate, until she vanished from what field of vision she had via the blinds and the window next to the television screen. Then her attention was back to the introductory page of the database, which recognised her as Steven in one of the corners.

She tabbed through the list of available databases, until she found one labeled “animals_paraphysical”, and brought up several million folders, each meticulously labeled as obtusely as possible and with shorthand codes she couldn’t possibly parse herself. Thankfully, there was a search bar, and she typed in: T-e-n-g-u.

No results.

Alexa backed out and looked through the list of names again. She picked up the sandwich Aerin had made and took a bite as she idly scrolled through, trying to see what her quarry would be named. The taste brought more memories out from the woodwork, of a particular fried chicken sandwich with the same sauce. So good, yet so bad for her.

No vowels, she thought, and tried searching again, this time for T-N-G. A few results popped up, but none of them seemed to be what she wanted. Figuring the folders might be broader, she put in Y-K.

Forty million results collapsed into a five-digit number, giving her hope, and she scrolled slightly before entering a random folder with a code that started with an A. There were two, almost three dozen images, and the top ones were of a creature with a bird-like head emerging from the water. Each had been taken with a high-powered camera from range, and they were crystal clear, capturing the odd features of the subject with remarkable fidelity.

Another shot caught the creature as it was mid-dive into reflective, bright blue water, where one of its multiple tails was visible.

Alexa exited the folder and scrolled all the way down to the entries starting with T, and started peeking in every other one. It took her all of twenty seconds for her to find a tengu entry. The images were once again taken from a distance, the first few depicting a trio of them, black-and-red as Kurt’s contact had been the night before, and each wore the same type of loose cloth robe. Their wings were stark against the brown brown-grey of whatever mountainside they were on, and it was perfect. In fact, the distance made composition easier for the distance she was depicting them at.

And then she started tabbing through the rest. The next couple were strangely voyeuristic, of tengu standing before wooden huts, presumably in a village somewhere. Then long range shots of their sheathed swords, which mostly seemed dirty. She lamented not having had a good look at the one last night, in the dark.

And then came the body.

About twenty images in, she found the image of a single tengu, framed perfectly by the autopsy table it - they were lying on. Its head was twisted to the side, halfway between contorted and calm, and the beak slightly open, the tip of the tongue peeking out. Two small gunshot wounds pierced the upper chest, one on each side. It seemed no martial prowess, with or without magic, would overcome the efficacy of a rifle. While she grimaced at the sight, it didn’t prepare her for the next photo. Or the next. Or the one after that.

They were all dead tengu, posed slightly differently on similar dissection tables. The worst part was that each following image in the set was a different individual, and there were at least thirty-five to go until the folder was depleted. She parsed through, held by some sick curiosity that tickled her brain, but not allowing herself to linger on each passing corpse. Most were hit in the chest, others in the abdomen, and when she got to the one that had taken a round in the head, which had burst open, she stopped, and flicked her wrist to exit from the folder.

They weren’t people. At least, not anymore, after what the Federation had done to them.

Alexa removed her control bracelet and tossed it onto the coffee table, where it clattered to rest beside the rest of her sandwich. She stood up and moved out into the hallway, bracing herself against the doorframe, trying to purge the idea from her mind before it could fester into something worse. She lightly slapped her cheeks, letting the short, sharp bursts of pain distract her.

We’ll go together, okay?

Her gaze travelled along the floor and reached the bottom of the stairs to the second level of the house. It had been overcast since the early morning, and that made the unlit hallway upstairs darker than she expected as her sight met it. As she slowly ascended, each step so light as to not make a sound, her mind went to Aerin and her obliviousness of what had transpired in the middle of that night. It was a dream, Alexa had reasoned, and yet she hadn’t found a moment to tell her about it.

By all accounts, Alexa thought she had slept well. She was owed it as far as she was concerned, now that she had actually enjoyed her time with someone she still had feelings for. That night she truly had nothing on her mind, a first in years, and she had managed to completely relax.

But the machinations of nightmares clearly didn’t care for her personal relationships, and she was back in the gigantic auditorium. This time though, she remembered. The déjà vu had kicked in and Alexa looked around, finding that the large trunks that held up the arched and domed ceiling were sandstone. Large blocks of it, carved and painted with patterns she couldn’t make out from that distance. As before she was a speck in a roaring crowd, most of whom were dressed in plain white robes. Her hand had been in another’s, but she couldn’t see their face, no matter what she tried.

Then there was the man. There had been a figure alone on the centre stage, looking and taking in the energy of the crowd, with a pair of something protruding from his head.

In that moment she had woken up, but the noise of the crowd continued for what seemed like seconds more, pursuing her to the waking world. In her flailing with the pillow, she had realised that Aerin was gone, and in her daze, she made the questionable decision to get out of bed herself.

The night, in contrast, was quiet, as expected of the neighborhood. There was no rain, no headlight, and no stars thanks to the clouds. It was pitch black in the corridor, and yet the moonlight had illuminated one thing.

Aerin stood at the window, looking out over the street with half-lidded eyes. Alexa followed the way her head was canted, and found she was looking down and across the street, where for a split second, there had been a person there.

Come back to bed, she’d urged, tagging her likely.

Aerin nodded and took her hand. We’ll go together, okay?

The words were oddly familiar, because she had heard them twice before, in that odd dream. Whether out of fear or weariness, they had both simply climbed back into the bed, and gone back to sleep.

When Alexa woke to the sounds of cooking downstairs, she hadn’t been sure. She wasn’t sure now either, as she stood where Aerin had been, glancing across the street in the same manner. Aerin certainly didn’t remember, or she would have said something. False awakenings weren’t unheard of, but she had never had the displeasure of one before that point.

Alexa froze. Her mental processes stuttered for a moment, and then she recognised that the spot Aerin was looking at was now occupied by a black rental car. The same car that had taken off the last time, when the attic had been-

She turned around, ice gripping her heart, and stifled a gasp.

The ladder was down again. It hadn’t been down earlier that morning, if her groggy memory served  her right. But she couldn’t remember the previous night, when she was, for lack of a better word, distracted. The black void up above seemed to return her gaze as she took a step forwards, the ladder lengthening as she got closer. She was about to put a hand on the run and climb when a breeze blew from above, warm to her outstretched hand. There was a deep rumble, like machinery shifting in the far distance. Deep in the dark.

What had Eric said?

The still-beating heart of the ship’s reactor could cause air to rise and fall.

Alexa took several steps back, and as soon as her hands found the bannister of the stairs, she rushed down, unlocking the front door and stumbling out, sans shoes, onto the walkway. She was so busy trying to look up through the window that she almost crashed into Aerin, who had just entered through the gate with a cardboard drink carrier.

“Whoa!” Aerin deftly stepped aside, doing a spin to get some distance. “What the h-”

Alexa looked between her and the second floor window. However ashen she appeared, it must have been bad, because Aerin immediately followed her line of sight.

“What is it? What did you see?”

“There was…I don’t know. The attic was open again, and it was like in the ship, like the radioactive stuff in the reactor hadn’t settled so it was heating up the air and mo-”

“Calm.” Aerin put a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

“There was someone up there.”

“Was there?”

Alexa shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, the black rental drove past them, down the street. She watched it until it turned at the intersection with the park. “I think…”

“Wha- Who was that? You know them?”

Alexa looked back up, and for a split second, there were those pinprick eyes again, in the dark. Watching her.

“I think my house might be fucking haunted.”