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6/21/2025, 6:14:58 AM
A chill falls over you, and you stop in your tracks. It isn't the seasonably cool weather or the retreat of warmth from the setting sun that sends this cold prickle down your neck, you feel certain. The sensation is that same sense of being watched that you felt at the school commissary earlier, but far more intense. You look around, scanning every building and alley on the street around you for the shadow of your pursuer as beads of cold sweat form on the back of your neck. You aren't afraid, it's nothing so conscious as that, for you have nothing to be afraid of. The warning comes not from your mind but your body, a primal instinct from every cell telling you of lethal danger.
Finally you spot it. A few dozen meters down the road, where your path home brushes the edge of Yoyogi Park, a blacker shadow in the darkness below a dense stand of trees. It's about the size of a human, though you can make out no more detail than that. You stare at the shadow, certain that it's staring back, contact made between eyes clearly illuminated and those hidden in darkness. You hesitate, unsure whether to go forward or back. To confront whoever it is that's rude enough to stalk you, or to listen to the warning from your instincts and flee.
In the event, you don't need to make the decision. In the blink of an eye the darker place amidst the shade is gone, and so is the oppressive sense of danger. Again there is no sign of anyone walking the street but yourself, and your wire-taut nerves relax. Indeed, the sense of danger fades so suddenly and so completely that you hardly believe it was real at all. After all, what reason could there be for feeling such animal dread here in your own peaceful district? You've never been prey to such anxieties before, either, even when you were a child visiting haunted houses or going on thrill rides at an amusement park. If anything, you tend to be calmer than the average person to an unnecessary degree. Is an unnatural sense of being watched another symptom of whatever plagues you with these headaches? But no, when you felt it earlier the Shijou girl really was staring at you. What, then? Was the shadow a real person, and only your sense of danger artificial?
Finally you spot it. A few dozen meters down the road, where your path home brushes the edge of Yoyogi Park, a blacker shadow in the darkness below a dense stand of trees. It's about the size of a human, though you can make out no more detail than that. You stare at the shadow, certain that it's staring back, contact made between eyes clearly illuminated and those hidden in darkness. You hesitate, unsure whether to go forward or back. To confront whoever it is that's rude enough to stalk you, or to listen to the warning from your instincts and flee.
In the event, you don't need to make the decision. In the blink of an eye the darker place amidst the shade is gone, and so is the oppressive sense of danger. Again there is no sign of anyone walking the street but yourself, and your wire-taut nerves relax. Indeed, the sense of danger fades so suddenly and so completely that you hardly believe it was real at all. After all, what reason could there be for feeling such animal dread here in your own peaceful district? You've never been prey to such anxieties before, either, even when you were a child visiting haunted houses or going on thrill rides at an amusement park. If anything, you tend to be calmer than the average person to an unnecessary degree. Is an unnatural sense of being watched another symptom of whatever plagues you with these headaches? But no, when you felt it earlier the Shijou girl really was staring at you. What, then? Was the shadow a real person, and only your sense of danger artificial?
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