The girl before her—Kananin Rin could never forget.

Two years ago, the news hit like winter hail: a blood kin of the Four Pupils Clan had rebelled against the Clan Head.

Shock came first, then a slow ache, like a cracked cup cooling on the windowsill.

She and the Four Pupils’ young lady weren’t close, but they’d crossed paths.

Faces in the rain, names like drifting leaves—still, it counted as knowing.

In her mind, Four Pupils Yun Shi had been a lone lantern in fog.

A poor soul hiding her true heart behind a mask, swallowing everything like bitter tea.

Even with thoughts of her own, she wouldn’t speak.

She would bear it alone, and she would never raise her hand against fate’s river.

Rin held that belief—until that day.

Yun Shi fought the Clan Head’s cage and walked away from the main house, like a sparrow breaking the lattice.

Only then did Rin see it: the girl wasn’t unwilling to resist; she was afraid.

Because to defy fate is to change the sky itself, and humans fear the wind that shifts the sky.

In the two years after, Rin sometimes heard Shitou Yuya mention his sister.

Mostly, though, Yuuya dodged the topic, like stepping around a thorned branch.

For him, it was an unhealed wound, the shame of an older brother who failed his watch.

Now, Kananin Rin saw the face under the mask.

That face was this girl—Four Pupils Yun Shi—like moonlight revealed when cloud thins.

“Shitou… Yun Shi.”

“Don’t call me that. I shed that name two years ago.”

Yun Shi cut in, her tone firm as a blade laid on the table.

Her old name pressed against her like a nettle; her refusal was instinct.

“Then… should I still call you Miss Yun Shi?”

“Call me whatever you want.”

Rin looked at the girl.

Undeniably, she was the Yun Shi Rin remembered, a willow in rain.

Yet the witch’s garb on her was raven-feather dark, whispering at every breath.

It kept telling Rin: this is a Witch, emblem of the Underworld’s filthiest gutters.

A traitor from some clan—who knows which house birthed the storm.

Rin had wondered, once, who the Witch Night Specter was.

Most nights she filed that shadow under the Flamebu Family’s list of defectors.

Flamebu’s traitors were numberless, fires breaking off and building their own hearths in the Underworld.

So she thought: the Witch Night Specter might be one of theirs.

A title like the Underworld’s mud, fitting enough.

But today, she learned otherwise.

“You’re the Night Phantom, aren’t you?”

“I took off my mask. What lie could stay?”

Yun Shi didn’t dodge.

She owned it, open as a door swung wide.

That only deepened Rin’s confusion, like ink spreading in water.

“What’s wrong—surprised?”

Yun Shi asked back, and Rin couldn’t muster a solid rebuttal.

A heartbeat ago, she had a gun to the girl’s head like a thunderbolt raised.

Now the sky flipped.

Rin’s mind couldn’t keep up with the turn.

“Night Phantom… Yun Shi… if that’s who you are, saving Yuuya isn’t strange at all.”

Rin holstered her gun.

Her earlier fire thinned like smoke in wind.

Knowing Yun Shi’s true face, suspicion fell away like ash.

Yun Shi was Yuuya’s sister.

He didn’t know, yet—still, the reason was clear as spring water.

Of course she’d pull her brother from a pit.

Rin’s bluster had been ignorance playing at thunder.

“Kananin Rin, I want to ask you something.”

Yun Shi sat on a flat stone, like anchoring herself on a riverbank.

“What is it?”

“Nothing big. I just want to know… my brother—Is he doing well?”

So simple a question, yet it scraped her throat like frost.

She had avoided everything tied to the Four Pupils Clan.

But tonight, she couldn’t leave it to the wind.

“Yuuya… he’s doing okay. Sometimes he talks about you.”

“Is that so.”

“Hey, Yun Shi, why did you become a Witch? What happened these two years?”

Rin hadn’t forgotten her first words to Yun Shi back then.

The girl’s face was winter-still.

Soon after, Yun Shi left the Four Pupils Clan, and Rin never saw her again.

Like a lamp blown out by a sudden gust.

“I chose to become a Witch,” Yun Shi said, voice like dusk.

“I planned to leave the Four Pupils Clan and never return to the Underworld.

But I couldn’t do it.

In the end, I could only go back wearing a Witch’s skin.”

“So now you’re an enemy of your own clan?”

“Not just my old clan.

Even the Witch organization won’t open many doors for me.”

“Then I don’t get it. Why become a Witch—and become the Underworld’s most… the Underworld’s Night Phantom.”

Rin softened her voice, like smoothing a crease.

“Some things no one can foresee,” Yun Shi murmured, eyes deep as a well.

“Not even me.

I used to think, if I could enter the Underworld like my brother, I’d find freedom there.

But it came too fast.

Before I was ready, I fell into a dark corner like a dropped star.

I could only fight, again and again.

Grow stronger.

Clutch the strength to survive in a city of shadow.”

“Yun Shi…”

“I lost too much,” she said, like counting beads on a string.

“Friends.

Family.

A roof overhead.

One night stole everything.

In return, I gained strength—enough to live.

But I failed to guard what I wanted to guard.

Now I’m not the same.

I’ve found something new to protect.

A shelter I can claim.

So I choose to fight.”

“So you’ll fight your former side for that?”

“Yes.

I won’t be who I was—standing still like a stone.

I won’t run.

I want to find my answer in battle, like searching the horizon after rain.”

Yun Shi’s profile, brushed with sorrow, slid into Rin’s sight like a crane wing.

Hard to imagine: the girl who speaks her mind so plainly now—

Two years ago she wouldn’t even step over the thunder line, wouldn’t risk a single spark.

“Yun Shi, you’ve changed.”

She had.

No longer hiding everything under her ribs, no longer swallowing fate like cold broth.

Now she fights for herself, hunts for what she wants.

Even on a battlefield wired with knives, she won’t retreat a step.

“Truth is, many things are always changing,” Yun Shi said, voice a steady rain.

“No one stays the same.”

She had matured.

Her gaze held its own compass.

And with the weight of two lifetimes’ memories, growing up came faster, like spring pushing through frost.

“Kananin Rin, I only have one request now.

I’m the Witch Night Specter—please don’t tell anyone.”

“Why? Your brother worries for you.

If he knew you were alive, he’d be over the moon, wouldn’t he?”

“Even then, he can’t know.”

“If he knows, the Four Pupils Clan will know.

I fought hard to slip the Clan Head’s leash.

I don’t want them to learn I’m still in the Underworld.”

“…”

Every word rang true, beads tapping in a bowl.

If the Four Pupils Clan discovered her, it would be a tangle of thorns.

A traitor who chose the Witches—the stain is hard to scrub.

And with Shino Shitou’s temper, who knows what storm she’d call down.

“I’m leaving.

Don’t let a single word of tonight cross another mouth.”

Yun Shi stood, ready to go, like a shadow drawing back from dawn.

“Wait!”

“I can’t stay long.

My comrades are waiting.”

“Then at least leave a way to reach you.

It’ll be easier for me to find you.”

“Better not.”

Yun Shi didn’t budge.

She moved toward the cave mouth, like a bird toward light.

Rin grabbed her sleeve, fingers a hook in the fabric.

“Hold it!”

What the two of them would choose—no one could say.

The wind outside the cave held its breath.