Yun Shi seized Mizuki’s hand and cut through the crowd, ignoring the warped stares hanging behind them like hooked shadows. Her cheek throbbed like a buried ember. She’d swallowed every blame to clear Mizuki a path, and she had no interest in the rest.

She wouldn’t admit it—worry gnawed her like cold wind under a door.

A girl from light, stained by reality—what would she become?

No one knew.

The Witch’s base had places to rest. In an empty room, Yun Shi said nothing, led the dazed Mizuki inside, and flicked her toward the headboard. Mizuki kissed the wood with a dull thud.

“For the next few days you won’t fight,” Yun Shi said, cool as dusk. “The Special Task Force has temporary leave. If it feels wrong, you can quit.”

It wasn’t a lie. The Special Task Force had paid in blood; they wouldn’t get new orders for now. In a way, it was house arrest in a steel box of silence. But could Miyuki Kiseki, who had just stepped into this cruel world, accept that?

For no good reason, Yun Shi remembered classrooms washed in afternoon light—life without this shifting dark. Those few idiots were naive and headache-inducing, yet they were the only ones who didn’t hate her. Whatever happened, they never flinched from her like she was a shadow.

It felt like homesickness, a mirage that glimmered and stung. She told herself she was overthinking. Still, she’d been watching over Miyuki without meaning to, like a moth circling a lamp.

“Why…”

After a long hush, Mizuki finally spoke, her voice flat and lifeless, like water with no ripples.

“What?”

“Why did you do this, Miss Night Phantom…”

“Don’t get it twisted. I didn’t do it for you. Those people were boring. I was killing time, that’s all.”

…

Silence spread like smoke. Neither had words.

“Hey… why is it like this.”

After a while, Mizuki’s dead-tired voice rose again, thin as rain.

“People are dead. Ones I knew, didn’t know, hated, loved—everything… died.”

“…”

“Tell me, what is this place? Why can you accept it so calmly?”

“…”

“Please… tell me. What am I supposed to do…”

Her voice kept that lifeless scrape, then cracked with a buried sob. She covered her face with both hands, as if holding in a storm.

A helpless girl, wandering, lost in fog. She couldn’t see her path. She’d come from light and never learned the weight of the dark.

“This is the Underworld in full,” Yun Shi said, face blank as stone. “Killing, plunder—even life—are normal here, like winter rain.”

“But…!”

Mizuki sprang up; a small spark hit oil. She grabbed Yun Shi by the collar, fingers trembling like reeds.

“People died. How do you want me calm? How do I adapt? I’m a high schooler. You want me to learn to kill, to take from others—tell me how!”

“…”

“What Underworld, what darkness—say it! What do you want from me? I don’t know what’s wrong with this world. I thought it was peaceful, the whole way through!”

“Quit acting the tragic lead,” Yun Shi snapped, fire under ice. “Enough. This isn’t your world.”

She wasn’t generous by nature, and Mizuki’s shout lit her fuse. Only in front of people she knew did her real edges show.

“In your life you had what normal people have—friends and family who cared. Hear me: you don’t have that here.”

“…”

“Don’t you get it? The Underworld and the Outer World are opposites. Your world is peaceful. Mine is hell, day in and day out. If you hadn’t barged into my world, would this have happened?”

“But I never wanted to come. I… I didn’t know. I really didn’t…”

Mizuki cried, right in front of Yun Shi—helpless, like a small animal caught in rain.

“I didn’t know so many would die. I thought no one would. I thought I could protect them, but…”

She hid her face, sobbing in jagged waves. It was clear as a bell in an empty house—the kind of cry that would tug anyone’s heart, and her expression was nakedly lost.

Yun Shi couldn’t help it—she sighed. To be fair, she could never stand seeing girls cry. It was the last sliver of masculine instinct she had left, a stubborn ember in ash.

“The place you came from is beautiful,” she said softly, words like dusk light. “At least there you have bonds. But don’t forget—here, you only get one life.”

“…”

“You can charge in, be naive, be angry—but keep that for your world. Here isn’t the world you know. Here’s where those who fell into darkness gather, the way people in daylight never notice what monsters move under the floorboards. You just stumbled in.”

“…”

“Miyuki Kiseki, this is real. Day and night are two different worlds. Your place is peaceful, yes. Mine is hell. If you still come, you’re jumping into the fire pit. Stop interfering with my life. It’s better for you, and for everyone.”

Only here do you learn how precious the old warmth was—how silly play became sweet memory, how friends at your side turned into a ache you’d carry like a charm.

Yes. Words weren’t needed. Only living through it teaches what light truly is. Miyuki had it once, and she could still go back. Yunshi Bianqi had it once too, but she couldn’t return; she’d slipped off the rails, drifting beyond light for too long.

Yun Shi turned away. She didn’t look back at Mizuki. She walked out in quiet, and when the door clicked shut, the room fell into dead stillness, like a pond after frost.

Mizuki sat by the bed, small hands covering her face, sobbing in hiccups.

“Everyone…”

She whispered through tears, lonely as a lantern in rain.

She missed home. She missed friends from ordinary days—faces that never twisted, smiles that were honest as sun. And those doors that always opened—home.

…

Yun Shi entered her own room and closed the door. She glanced at the plain single, enough for a night’s drift. She breathed out, slow as fog. Her hand lifted; she slipped off her Goggles and set them on the table. In the dim, her true face came out—goddess-like, aloof, only to be admired from afar. The faint sorrow on it pressed like a thumbprint on glass.

She reached for her cloak to rest, when a “knock knock” cut the air.

“Who.”

Her voice was ice to the core, emptied of warmth.

“Xiao Yun, it’s me.”

The familiar voice eased the wire in her chest. She opened the door. Sham stood outside, heartache written like rain on her face. Yun Shi blinked, then let it go.

“Come in.”

Her voice softened, threadbare with fatigue, and it clutched at Sham’s heart.

“Xiao Yun!”

Sham snapped. She grabbed Yun Shi’s shoulders. When Yun Shi tried to pull away, Sham yanked once, hard, and folded the girl into her chest, refusing to let go.

“Why are you doing this? What’s the point! Did you think about me? I get hurt too!”

“…”

“Like some idiot hero—you think carrying every burden makes you one? You think Mizuki will be happy if you do this? No way! I’m angry. You were like this before, and you’re still like this. What are you trying to do!”

“…”

“I told you—when others don’t accept you, you still have me. Why tear yourself apart on purpose? Don’t forget—you have comrades!”

It was Yun Shi in Sham’s arms, but the one crying was Sham. Her tears carried deep, aching weight. She hated Yun Shi’s self-sacrifice like a thorn in the mouth.

Yun Shi had her reasons, carved deep as scars.

“I don’t need comrades. Not now.”

“W—what did you say?”

Sham stared, stunned at the girl whose bare face was still expressionless—cold enough to bite bone, a winter wall.

“It’s always like this. Even if I have comrades, the next second, they’re gone. It was like that before. It’s like that now.”

Yun Shi sighed, face stripped of feeling.

“No matter how I struggle, it’s useless. I can’t climb out of the abyss. Sham, I’m not like you. You—and the Underworld your Magic Institution knows—still count as normal. I come from the fiercest line under the Clan Head. You know those places are cruel; I know them better. Of course I’ll bear more darkness. It’s just my fate.”

“…”

“You know this. Someone born as filthy as me—no one treats me as a comrade. Even if I want it, no one will grant it. This is the life I get. So let me take these things. Because… someone has to play the villain, and I’m perfect for it. Not for any reason but this—what stands before you is a dirty ghost.”

She’d long made peace with darkness, like rain accepted by the river. She didn’t want Sham or anyone like her wading into this water. They had their own light. They shouldn’t deal with someone with none.

Yun Shi came from a filthy place.

The small light she’d won in the Outer World had been sanded clean, ground to nothing. She was back to what she’d been.

“But…!”

It was too sad—a life barred from light.

Sham couldn’t bear it. She opened her mouth to fight it, and Yun Shi slipped free of her embrace.

“Go back.”

“Xiao Yun!”

“Please… let me be alone. Let me be quiet.”

…

She closed the door. Darkness pooled again, deep without a bottom, and her heart dimmed with it like a wick.

Yun Shi lay on the bed, turning over and over. Sleep wouldn’t come. Her mind was a tangled field. Her face stayed empty, but her eyes, sharp with life, held an ocean of sorrow.

She started to miss those girls from ordinary days—each with a different temper, each a small lantern that once lit her path. She’d refused to admit it, but now she couldn’t deny it—she cared about them. She was starting to call them friends.

How many years had it been, to miss friends again; to want to cry because they weren’t beside her. Yunshi Bianqi was still alone. At least she still had a normal heart beating, stubborn as a drum.

She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.