I watched the mist swirl and dance in dream-like tendrils around Murasaki's enchanting, violet eyes. They were perfectly framed by her full, soft black hair with blue and purple highlights.

This girl's entire face, bathed in the onsen's mist and golden glow of the sunrise, somehow reminded me of the northern lights.

Then I saw her sit up, deliberately revealing every curve, her micro bikini leaving just enough to let your imagination fill in the gaps.

"Ryu don't you dare look!" I heard Yuki's breathless whisper against my ear, and I jumped because she's usually not so intense.

"Well, Ryu-kun? What do you say? You look positively drenched in sweat, darling. Let me scoot over for you and let the onsen's steam take that nasty sweat away."

I took a step forward before I even realized that I was moving.

"What are you doing?" I heard Yuki ask.

I stopped. Hell. I wondered the exact same thing, and inwardly I had to repress a shudder, knowing damn well I would've stepped straight into that onsen and my doom.

I needed to get out of there fast.

I turned back towards the trail Hibana had taken around the onsen. "Hibana should be here any minute," I said.

But Murasaki just smiled, soaking in the tension like steam curling around bare skin. "You know what I heard? A little tanuki told me that you went on a date with Hibana of all people."

Then she tilted her head back and laughed, a beautiful, melodious, and terrifyingly rehearsed all at once.

"As if Hibana would date anyone. Please. And coming from a tanuki of all places? I don't know what reality she was tuned into."

Suddenly, she sat up a little more, causing the onsen to splash around her. She moved like the steam itself was following her orders—rising with each step, wrapping her in suggestion.

"But do you want to know what I really think?" she asked, stepping forward.

I did want to know.

The heat in my skin told me yes. But something deeper remembered the fear in Inego's eyes…when he warned she was a succubus. Every part of me screamed run as though the hot spring were full of acid.

She smirked as she took another slow step toward me, letting the steaming water bounce her buxom, petite frame as she moved.

Then, in the air, the warm, sunny scent of lemon and ginger.

"I think that the only girls who worry about Hibana are the ones who know they can't compete anyway. And guess what, Ryu-kun?"

I wanted to know what so badly it hurt.

She reached the other end of the hot spring and casually rested her elbows on the side of the deck, only a few feet from where I stood dumbfounded in her presence.

She grinned, pulling herself out of the water, just enough, so the micro bikini could give my fifteen-year-old eyes plenty of space to explore.

"I don't just compete. No." She leaned forward, accenting her curves as much as possible.

"I play for keeps."

And then everything went dark.

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It wasn't like passing out, but like black curtains fell over my eyes, sudden and disorienting.

I flinched before I could stop myself and almost yelled.

But then I heard Yuki.

"Ryu," her whisper tickled the edge of my ear, cool and oddly reassuring, "trust me on this. I'm covering your eyes with my hands, but you need to keep them open. Just… don't look suspicious in front of that—"

She cut herself off.

Then hissed, "That harlot."

I could have kissed Yuki then and there.

"Wait just a second, Murasaki," I said. "That sounds, um, pretty sweet, but I'm not kidding about Hibana. She's just a minute behind me."

Yuki whispered; her voice was a calming presence in Murasaki's confusing haze.

"I'll guide you. Just move when I say move."

I nodded slightly, enough for Yuki to know I understood.

A few steps away from Murasaki and I felt my thoughts returning from the wanton violet abyss of her supernatural charm and allure.

She was intimacy incarnate: gravity with perfume and thigh gap.

And I heard her laugh again. "You're too cute when you're nervous, Ryu-kun. Don't worry about Hibana. I've already thought of that."

"Right," I muttered, loud enough for Murasaki to hear.

I took a few steps forward, trying to keep steady while Yuki's ghostly hands covered my eyes and her coldness guided me.

"You gonna turn me invisible or something when she comes by?" I asked.

She arched her eyebrow. "Oh no. This is so much better than that. You can just hide under the water. I'll lie on top of you, and she won't see a thing."

I could feel Yuki's anger. She huffed, and I felt a cold draft run down my neck.

"Ryu, you'd better keep walking and think about how quickly Hibana would pull you out of the onsen by your neck," Yuki whispered through clenched teeth.

"And the computer," Yuki whispered. "Don't forget the computer."

"I can't. I… I know this sounds lame, but I've got to fix the stupid computer by the front desk," I said.

I stumbled forward, blindly.

I expected her to splash the steaming onsen's water on me. Instead, I heard her push herself away from the wall and back into the middle of the hot spring.

"Well, isn't that a shame. But that's okay, Ryu-kun," she purred.

I blinked, my eyelashes fluttered against Yuki's ghostly fingers. "It is?"

I heard her giggle. "Of course. I'll be here tomorrow."

Yuki tugged me forward—guiding my feet like a sleepwalker with a spectral seeing-eye girl. We moved step by step, and I was almost in the clear when she forgot about the dip in the deck.

My foot hit the lip of the onsen's entry step, and I tripped, stumbling forward like a cartoon character who just saw a ghost.

Which, to be fair, I had.

Splash.

"Gracious, you're as clumsy as I was," Yuki whispered. "You kicked a sandal into the water."

Water sloshed behind me as Murasaki shifted.

"Careful," she purred, her voice practically purring against the mist. "It'd be such a shame if you fell in. I'd have to carry you to the clinic, like I did with Inego yesterday."

I heard her splashing playfully, daring me to fall.

My body lit up like I was walking into a tripline—still in a blind fog of Yuki's protective hands.

Murasaki's tone dipped lower. Sadder.

"Is he okay, by the way? He's been avoiding me."

Then, almost too soft to catch:

"...like everyone else does."

She sighed. The splash of her sliding back into the water followed, and it echoed for too long.

By the time I stepped through the back entrance of the onsen building, my shirt clinging to my skin and my brain slowly rebooting, Yuki was already waiting—floating beside the broken vending machine like a pissed-off conscience with bangs.

"You have to stay away from girls like that," she said, arms crossed and eyes glowing. "She's dangerous! I could see that glamor she was doing. Hmph! Thinks she's so clever using the supernatural just to spice up her looks."

I furrowed my brow. "Maybe she has a reason," I said. "Yuki, please, just listen a minute. I'm not defending her, okay?"

Yuki was quiet for a moment. Then she added. "Okay, Ryu. I'll listen, but you need to be careful around those kinds of girls. Don't make excuses for improper behavior."

She wasn't scolding, she was trying to warn me. Sometimes, being with Yuki was like having a soft crush on my mother.

"That's… you've got a good point," I said. "But Shion was lonely."

Yuki tilted her head, confused.

I tried a different approach. "Okay, Shion's a bad example. You were lonely, and I stayed. That's why… I don't know," I said.

I sat down at the dusty terminal in the corner. "But you, and Inego? Both warning me about her? I'm not stupid. I'm just… trying to do what's right."

"You're not being careful, though," Yuki muttered.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I've learned something since getting dropped into this place," I replied. I booted up the ancient computer and watched the screen flicker like it was running on guilt and dead batteries. "Nothing here is what it seems."

Yuki floated beside me. "Not everything's safe either," she said.

She ran one of her fingers over Natsumi's scratches on my arm.

Just then the monitor lit up.

Green text scrolled across the black background, slow and deliberate:

Hello. I'm Lah Lah.

Are you H.P.?

I blinked.

Then I laughed out loud.

Of course Shin'yume had a haunted computer.

Why wouldn't it?

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