Chapter 1: The Dead Boy Returns to School – Part 1

Reading Settings

Translator: Soafp

---

Third-year high school student Makoto Ichinose had trusted the sea.

The sea at night asked no questions. No matter how ugly the secret, it simply swallowed it in silence. And he had even tied two weights stolen from a construction site to Inori Amou's body.

The night Ichinose lured Inori—his underclassman and childhood friend of Aoi Yuki—into a trap, isolating him from Aoi, the other students, and his own family so that Ichinose could have Aoi for himself, Inori had been dragged down into the sea and killed. His skull was crushed. His breathing and pulse had stopped. The weighted body had vanished into the black depths.

In exchange, Aoi had clung to Ichinose, and he had believed, without a doubt, that he had “won.”

That night should have been the end of Inori.

But more than half a year after Inori Amou had disappeared from school and home, on the first Monday of the third term, Ichinose turned his attention to the crowd gathered in front of the school gates—and saw him.

The music announcing the start of the school day was playing, yet dozens of students had stopped in their tracks. The girls in particular stood staring at a boy, oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the way. Even a female teacher responsible for student discipline had forgotten to reprimand them, watching him as he walked by.

The instant Ichinose recognized the boy at the center of the crowd, the air caught in his throat.

It was Inori Amou.

He was the same slender, fragile-looking high school student as before. His slightly long black hair, translucent pale skin, and downcast eyes were exactly as they had been the night Ichinose sank him into the sea.

And yet Inori's figure alone seemed so unnaturally sharp, as though the world had suddenly brought him into focus.

Beautiful wasn't enough to describe him.

He wasn't glowing. He wasn't dressed in anything flashy. Even so, everyone sensed something enormous and invisible standing behind him. The boys stepped aside, oppressed by a feeling they couldn't explain. The girls—students and teachers alike, regardless of age—gazed at him as if they'd forgotten how to breathe.

When Inori looked their way, some blushed; others grew frightened and lowered their eyes. But even eyes that had turned away soon drifted back to him, like needles drawn by a magnet.

“Inori… Why…?”

Aoi Yuki murmured beside Ichinose.

She was looking at Inori too. Though she had rejected him and chosen Ichinose, her eyes were drawn to Inori more powerfully than ever.

As if ashamed of herself, Aoi quickly grabbed Ichinose's arm and hid half a step behind him.

It was still an unmistakable rejection of Inori.

But Inori paid no attention to Aoi's gesture. He walked slowly through the parting crowd. He seemed entirely indifferent to the countless eyes fixed on him and the commotion they caused.

“Good morning, Ichinose-senpai.”

He stopped in front of Ichinose and smiled gently.

Even up close, his features were unchanged. And yet Ichinose instinctively wanted to step backward. Something lay within Inori's eyes, darker than the deep sea and wider than the night sky.

“Inori… You're back. Everyone's been worried about you.”

Why are you alive…?

Suppressing the shout that threatened to escape his lips, Ichinose put on a friendly smile—the familiar expression of the kind, dependable senior trusted by his teachers and classmates.

“You disappeared so suddenly. Aoi was worried the whole time—”

“Actually, I was dead for a little while.”

Ichinose's smile froze.

Inori tilted his head as though he'd said nothing unusual.

“I'm joking. You didn't file a death certificate for me, did you?”

“Th-that's a terrible thing to joke about.”

“My apologies. I remember you don't like people making light of death.”

There was no reproach in his voice. That only made it harder for Ichinose to read what lay beneath his words.

Inori's gaze shifted to Aoi.

Her shoulders trembled. The moment he looked at her, it felt as if her heart had been gripped; her breath caught. But she didn't let go of Ichinose's arm. She offered no apology, nor any words of welcome. Her face remained tense, caught between the wariness one might feel toward a peeping tom and a fascination she couldn't explain.

Inori said nothing to her. He simply walked past Ichinose.

As they passed, Ichinose caught the faint scent of the sea on him.

“Oh, Senpai.”

A few steps away, Inori turned back and spoke as if he were simply finishing his morning greeting.

“I hope you make it through today alive.”

Before Ichinose could answer, Inori turned and headed for the school building. The students silently parted to either side as he walked.

The sight resembled the night sea splitting in two—the scene Ichinose had seen again and again in his nightmares.

---

Inori's desk remained in the same place in Class 2-3 as it had before he went missing.

Apparently, the school had only announced that he would be returning at the staff meeting that morning. A thin layer of dust covered his desk, and the timetable he'd put up before summer break had faded.

There were no doodles or signs of harassment. To his classmates, Inori had not even been someone worth hating; he was simply someone who would never come back, someone they had nearly forgotten.

But the moment he entered the classroom, no one could take their eyes off him.

A girl sitting near Inori dropped her textbook when she looked into his eyes. Another girl, confused by her own reaction, sent a message to a friend calling him a pervert who took pictures of people without their permission—and then kept glancing at him over her phone screen.

The boys watched with displeasure, but none of them tried to speak to Inori directly.

Aoi didn't move from her seat on the opposite side of the room. Even when a close friend spoke to her, she seemed distracted. Every time she looked as if she might meet Inori's eyes, she conspicuously turned toward the window.

Inori watched it all as if he were looking at exhibits behind glass.

Before, Aoi's attitude alone would have torn at his heart. He could still remember what that pain had been like.

But there was no longer any soft place inside him that could be hurt.

He touched the surface of his desk with one finger.

The instant he saw a small scratch in the wood grain, the memory of the day he died opened vividly before him.

That day, too, the summer light had streamed through the same window—

---

Six months earlier.

“Inori, just one bread roll again?”

At lunchtime, Aoi spoke with exasperation. On Inori's desk sat a small anpan from the school shop and a carton of milk. Beside it, Aoi had spread out a colorful homemade lunch.

“I didn't have much time this morning.”

“You said the same thing yesterday. Here, eat this.”

Aoi placed a piece of omelet on top of Inori's bread wrapper. They'd had this same exchange countless times since kindergarten, but Inori always looked a little troubled.

“That's one less for you.”

“My mom always packs too much. Besides, if I leave you alone, you'll just disappear.”

“People don't disappear just because they skip one lunch.”

“That's not what I mean.”

Aoi smiled, resting her cheek on one hand. Just seeing that smile made Inori glad he had come to school.

That ordinary conversation would be the last one they ever shared.

During sixth period, their homeroom teacher came into the classroom and called Inori's name. Two teachers responsible for student discipline were waiting in the hallway, holding his schoolbag and smartphone.

“Amou, come to the principal's office.”

“Why do you have my bag?”

“We'll explain in the office. Yuki, you'll come later too.”

An uneasy murmur spread through the classroom.

In the principal's office were the principal, their homeroom teacher, a uniformed police officer, and Ichinose—the chairman of the school board's son and a member of the student council. A small camera found in the girls' changing room and Inori's smartphone had been placed on the desk.

“You bought this, didn't you?”

The online order history showed Inori Amou's name and address. They said that dozens of videos of female students had been found in Inori's cloud storage.

“No! I didn't buy it!”

“But there's a purchase record. And your fingerprints were found on the camera.”

“I never touched it! My phone was in my bag during lunch—”

“We haven't decided that you're the culprit, but…”

The principal said that, but already looked at Inori as if he were guilty.

Then Aoi was brought in. She had looked anxious, not knowing what was going on, but as they showed her still images from the videos, her face went pale.

One of them showed Aoi while she was changing.

“Aoi, I didn't do this.”

Inori thought that would be enough. They'd spent more than ten years together. They had never doubted each other's words—not when one of them scraped a knee after falling, nor when one of them didn't want to go home after being scolded by their mother.

He was sure Aoi would know he could never do something like this.

But Aoi didn't look at him. Her fists, clenched in her lap, trembled.

“…Since when?”

“Wait… What? No, that's not—”

“Hey, how long have you been looking at me like that? Since we were little? When I stayed over at your house, when we went to the pool—were you laughing at me in your head the whole time?”

“No! I've never looked at you that way. I just… I love you, Aoi—”

“Don't say you love me like it's some excuse!”

Aoi finally looked up. In her eyes was not the trust Inori had hoped for, but fear and disgust.

“I liked you too, Inori. I always thought you were kind. That's why I never guarded myself around you. I told you everything. I even let you see me when I didn't mind being seen. And you used all of that… for something like this behind my back, didn't you?”

“I didn't! Please, just listen to me—”

“I feel like even the part of me that loved you has been tainted.”

Something deep in Inori's chest snapped.

“Don't call me by my name anymore… Don't come near me. I never want to see your face again.”

Aoi sprang up, almost knocking over her chair, and rushed to Ichinose, clutching the front of his uniform as though fleeing from Inori.

“Ichinose-senpai… Please don't leave me alone right now.”

“It's okay. I'm here.”

Ichinose pulled the sobbing Aoi into his arms and gently stroked her hair. Over her shoulder, he looked at Inori with a cold smile, as if savoring his victory.

“That's enough. Don't hurt Aoi any more.”

“Ichinose-senpai, I—”

“All the evidence points to you. Before you start making excuses, why don't you think about the girls you've hurt?”

The teachers nodded along with Ichinose. Not one of them spoke up for Inori.

The questioning at the police station continued into the night. They asked the same questions over and over, changing only the wording. If Inori denied it, they said he showed no remorse. If he stayed silent, they took it as an admission.

When his parents came to pick up their underage son, they didn't rush to him as he emerged from the interrogation room.

His father waited until they reached the police station parking lot and made sure no one was nearby before slapping Inori across the face. The crack rang in his ears, and the taste of blood spread through his mouth.

“Of all the schools, you had to do something like this at the chairman's school.”

The fact that his father hadn't even asked whether he was innocent hurt more than the blow.

“It wasn't me. Someone must have gotten into my account—”

“Don't make excuses with that filthy mouth!”

His father's fist drove into Inori's stomach. The air was knocked out of him, and he dropped to his knees on the white parking line. His father grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright as he doubled over, coughing.

“Who do you think paid for your schooling? Because of you, people at work are calling me the father of a criminal. Don't bring any more shame on the Amou name.”

“But I didn't do anything! Mom—”

“Hey, you pervert. Don't look at your mother like that. She might be next.”

His mother was crying, but not for her son. She kept repeating, “What if the neighbors find out?” and “What if this affects your father's job?” While his father beat Inori, she didn't try to stop him. She kept her distance, as if protecting herself from something filthy.

When Inori arrived home, a travel bag stuffed with his clothes was sitting outside the front door. While he was at the police station, his mother had apparently cleared out his room and packed whatever she thought he might need. The house key had been left on top of the bag, and the lock had already been replaced with a new one.

“Go somewhere. Anywhere.”

His father spoke from inside the house. He didn't let Inori in; he stood just beyond the threshold.

“Somewhere…? Where am I supposed to go?”

“Figure it out yourself. You're sixteen. You can manage that much. And don't ever come back here.”

“Dad, please listen to me! I have nowhere else to go!”

When Inori tried to step over the threshold, his father grabbed him by the chest and threw him out onto the front step. His knees and palms scraped against the stone, splitting the thin skin and bringing blood to the surface.

Even so, Inori got back up and reached toward his mother, who stood behind his father.

“Mom, believe me. Not once since I was little have I ever done anything like that to Aoi or any of the other girls—”

“Don't touch me!”

His mother slapped Inori's hand away. Her face twisted as if a stranger with a criminal record were trying to force his way into her home.

“I wish I'd never given birth to you. I'm ashamed of every one of the sixteen years I spent raising you. Don't ever think of me as your mother again. I don't think of you as my son anymore.”

“Mom…”

“Don't call me that. It makes me sick. Never show your face here again—”

Those words, spat at him by his mother, cut deeper into Inori than his father's fists.

When he was little, he remembered, he used to hold his mother's hand and fall asleep whenever he had a fever. He remembered her hugging him after he fell during Sports Day, because he'd kept running to the finish. He couldn't understand how the woman standing before him could possibly be the same person as the mother in those memories.

“You're no longer one of the Amous. Get out…”

His father threw the travel bag at him. A corner struck Inori's shoulder, knocking him onto the stone pavement again.

Before Inori could reach for the door, the lock clicked. A moment later came the dry hiss of disinfectant spray from inside. His mother was sanitizing the doorknob he had touched.

No one answered when he rang the bell. When he called his mother, all he heard was her phone ringing inside the house.

Eventually, even that stopped. On his second call, a recording told him the phone was switched off.

The living-room curtains shifted slightly.

His mother was watching him.

But the moment their eyes met, the curtains closed.

Clutching his travel bag, Inori waited outside the house until dawn.

Even when morning came, the door never opened.

---

For the first two days, Inori used what little money remained in his wallet to stay at a cheap business hotel.

By the morning of the third day, he had less than a thousand yen left. No hotel would let a suspended high school student stay for long without asking questions, and he couldn't withdraw money from the account his parents had frozen.

That night, he started sleeping on a bench at the station.

The air-conditioned concourse was chilly even on a summer night, but having a roof and lights made him feel safe. When the last train left, though, a security guard shook him by the shoulder.

“This isn't a place to sleep. Go home.”

“I can't go home. Please, just let me stay here until morning…”

No matter how much he begged, the guard wouldn't listen. Inori dragged his travel bag out of the station.

Rain was pouring outside. He didn't want to spend what little money he had on an umbrella, so he huddled beneath the awning of a closed shop. But the wind drove the rain beneath it, soaking his uniform from the feet up.

The next morning, Inori came down with a fever. His wet shirt clung to his skin, and he couldn't stop shivering. Still, afraid someone would steal his belongings if he fell asleep, he looped an arm through the handle of his bag and waited for morning on a park bench.

But while he slept for just a moment, the travel bag—and most of his clothes—disappeared.

All that remained was the uniform he was wearing and a smartphone with a dying battery.

Inori went home one more time. Soaked by the rain and too feverish to stand steadily, he rang the bell. His father's voice came through the intercom.

“Who is this? If you come back again, I'll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Please… I only need some clothes. I'll leave as soon as I've rested a little.”

There was no answer for a while. Then his mother's voice came through, faintly.

“Go disappear somewhere before the neighbors see you.”

The call ended.

When Inori looked up at his second-floor bedroom, the curtains and desk were gone. In just a few days, they had erased nearly every trace that he had ever lived in that house.

After that, Inori never went home again.

His phone service was cut off soon after. He searched for places where he could charge his phone, then used free Wi-Fi at stations and libraries to ask for help.

He sent Aoi a long message. It was marked as read.

It wasn't me. Please believe me.

While he waited for a reply, Aoi's profile picture disappeared.

It took Inori a while to realize she had blocked him.

He contacted his friends from school too, but all he got back was a single sentence:

Don't contact me, you pervert.

If he went to the police now, they would try to convince him to go home. If he called his parents, they would say the same thing they had when they first spoke to the police: Our son got violent and we couldn't handle him. He ran away on his own.

No matter who he spoke to, Inori's words were twisted into whatever version suited the other person.

By the end of September, the riverbank had become his bed.

He spread cardboard he'd gotten from behind a supermarket over the concrete, which still held the day's warmth. By dawn, the cardboard had gone soft and saggy with dew, leaving his back and hair damp. The mosquito bites on his arms had swollen red, and the blisters inside the shoes he'd worn day after day had burst and become infected.

The only food he could manage each day was bread bought with coins he found in vending-machine change slots, or rice balls a shop gave him when they were close to being thrown out at closing time. On days when he found nothing, he filled his stomach with water from a park tap and covered his nose with his sleeve to block the smell drifting from the garbage bags stacked behind restaurants.

One night, after three days without food, he spotted a packaged sandwich in a convenience-store trash can. Just as he reached for it, a student from his school who worked there caught him.

“Taking pictures of girls wasn't enough for you? Now you're a thief too?”

Inori apologized over and over, then left without eating the sandwich.

On nights when hunger kept him awake, he thought of the meals at home: his mother's miso soup, the ginger pork his father liked, the omelet Aoi used to give him. Every time he remembered, his mouth filled with saliva, and his empty stomach clenched in on itself.

Some of his classmates, who had only ever known him in a school uniform, found him like that. Instead of calling for help, they pointed their phones at him and laughed as they filmed his emaciated figure.

The peeping tom's homeless now lmao.

The video racked up tens of thousands of views overnight. The comments were full of karma, serves him right, and stop playing the victim. Passersby might have recognized Inori on their screens, but when the real boy stood before them, shaking with hunger, they wouldn't even meet his eyes.

When hunger became unbearable, food was all he could think about. Justice, reputation, and the future all seemed farther away than a single warm lunchbox.

And when December came, the riverbank at night was no longer just a place to endure hunger. It became a place where he had to fight to stay alive until morning without freezing.

So when Ichinose appeared that night, Inori truly thought he had been saved.

“I've been looking for you, Inori…”

Ichinose had come down to the riverbank and held out a convenience-store bag. Inside was a large fried-chicken lunchbox and some warm tea.

“The school is taking another look at your case. I told the teachers the evidence didn't add up.”

“Really…?”

“Yeah. Aoi regrets what she said, too. Eat something first.”

The moment Inori opened the lid, the sweet-and-savory smell filled his nose. He didn't care that his hands were shaking as he picked up the chopsticks and brought a piece of fried chicken to his mouth. He shoveled in rice and washed it down with tea when it caught in his throat.

The food tasted so good it hurt his tongue.

“Glad to see it.”

Ichinose smiled when Inori had eaten more than half.

“You really were hungry, huh?”

The chopsticks fell from Inori's fingers.

At first, he thought it was because of the cold. But the numbness crept up from his fingertips and along his arms, then stole the muscles he needed to breathe. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't support him. He collapsed beside the half-eaten lunchbox.

“Why…?”

“Because I can't have you coming back.”

The warmth of a concerned senpai had vanished from Ichinose's voice.

Three boys emerged from the darkness. They were delinquents from school who idolized Ichinose. One kicked Inori in the stomach; another grabbed his hair and lifted his face.

“You're… the one who did it, Senpai… right?”

With his numb tongue, Inori finally managed to form the words.

Ichinose crouched down and gently touched Inori's dirty cheek.

“You were in my way from the start. You were always beside Aoi.”

“That's not… Aoi…”

“She chose me. No matter what you say, she'll never believe you again. Though you won't get another chance to explain yourself anyway.”

An iron pipe came crashing down.

The sound of bones breaking seemed to come from someone else's body, far away. Inori tried to shield his head with his arms, but the poison in his body kept him from moving. They kicked him again and again. When he vomited, the rice he'd just eaten was mixed with blood.

Someone filmed him. Someone laughed.

Inori tried to call for help, but all that came out was a thin breath.

The last thing that came to mind was not revenge.

It could have been his parents, the police, a teacher, or Aoi.

He had only wanted one person—just one—to listen to him.

With that single wish, Inori Amou lost consciousness.

---

Inori's body was shoved into the trunk of a car and driven to the sea in the middle of the night.

When his weighted body fell from the seawall, the dark water rose in a single white splash, then closed over him as if nothing had happened. After Ichinose and the others drove away, the last thing Inori heard was the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

The dead feel no cold. They do not suffer. The heart stops, the electrical signals in the brain disappear, and everything that had filled the human being named Inori Amou drains away.

Maybe now I can finally be at peace…

Then something fell from beyond the world.

Lightning split the cloudless night sky. The bolt should have struck the sea's surface, but halfway down it turned black, becoming a shadowed flash of light that pierced Inori at the bottom of the sea.

In an instant, the sea split open.

The water was shoved apart as if cut by a gigantic blade, rising on either side into towering walls. At the center of the exposed seabed, only the dead boy's body was wrapped in red-black lightning.

A voice that was not a voice flowed into Inori's empty vessel.

It was not a name, but a concept.

Let cause have consequence.

Let sin have punishment.

Let evil that has escaped justice face retribution it cannot escape.

So utterly just, so merciless and terrifying, that even the gods feared it. They had paid countless sacrifices to banish this law of causality beyond the boundaries of their world.

The people and gods of ancient times had once called that concept—

El.

El did not resurrect the dead boy.

Inori Amou's memories, his empty body, and the god that had fallen as red-black lightning melted together, creating a new being that was—and was not—either of them.

His motionless heart beat once.

When Inori opened his eyes, the sea that had split apart stood still, as if its waters were subjects welcoming a new master. The creatures around him bowed their heads toward him.

Barefoot, he stood on the seabed and looked up at the walls of water surrounding him. A human would have been terrified by the sight. But his heart was as calm as a water's surface, undisturbed even by the fall of a pebble.

“I'm hungry.”

The god devoured prayers, and Inori devoured food.

The first words spoken by the boy who had become a god were not a vow of vengeance.

The world trembled at the sound, and the sea closed once more.