He reached Yamagata at exactly 4:32 AM.
Not that it mattered. There was no one to impress with his punctuality. No assistant to glare at him for driving through the night like he was trying to outpace a warrant. Just the empty streets, blinking traffic lights, and a mildly judgmental crow perched on a vending machine as he parked in front of Tsuki no Mado.
Yuna hadn't exaggerated. The place was... not much.
No doorman. No valet. Just an aging wooden building tucked behind a train station, with a carved crescent moon sign swinging like it was perpetually mid-sigh. The entryway smelled faintly of incense and lemon floor cleaner, and the front desk clerk didn't even look up from her book when he checked in.
The room was small. Tatami flooring. One futon. Shoji doors that didn't quite close properly. A low table with a chipped teacup and a view of absolutely nothing. No minibar. No ironed sheets. No blackout curtains. No soundproofing.
He should've hated it.
Instead, he stripped off his shirt, dropped his bag beside the futon, and collapsed backward—bones cracking, muscles snarling, brain still running cross-examinations on Hana's hypothetical face when she saw him.
His back hit the mattress.
Blackout.
-----
He woke up at 12:07 PM with a headache, low blood sugar, and a sense of vague betrayal.
Seven hours. Gone. Useless. He hadn't slept that deeply in months and of course it had to happen now—in a no-frills inn with floral wallpaper and a too-soft pillow, while Hana was still three hours away doing god knows what with people who thought 'boundaries' were a Western concept.
He showered quickly. The water pressure was terrible. The towels were thin. The mirror fogged instantly. Somehow, he still felt human by the time he stepped out.
A plain T-shirt. Jeans. Sneakers. The cap again. He grabbed his keys, wallet, and laptop bag like he was preparing for battle and headed out without a word.
He had a quick lunch at a diner a few kilometers out. The miso soup was passable. The eggs were overcooked. The rice was perfect, because apparently even roadside shokudōs took their rice seriously. He ate quickly, paid in cash, didn't look up once. The waitress bowed. He didn't return it.
-----
He reached Konoura just before 4:30 PM.
The air changed first—less city, more earth. The breeze carried salt and woodsmoke, warm and thick with early August heat. Rice fields blurred past the windows, neon-green and perfectly rectangular, broken only by narrow footpaths and the occasional heron staring like it had questions.
Konoura itself was... quaint.
Too quiet. Too bright. Too friendly.
Wooden houses with tiled roofs lined the narrow roads, their entrances marked with noren curtains and hand-painted nameplates. Every window seemed to be open, every home bleeding out the scent of grilled fish, flower soap, and freshly steamed rice. And people—so many people—wandering the streets like they didn't have inboxes or litigation deadlines or reasons to be inside.
A man in an apron hosed down the sidewalk in front of a tea shop. A group of elderly women were folding lanterns beside a shrine entrance, gossiping without shame or volume control. Someone had set up bamboo stalls along the road, already stocked with candied fruit and goldfish scooping kits.
Festival season. Right.
The Konoura Hama Festival. He'd read about it years ago, buried in a research folder for a regional client—celebrated every August to honor the sea gods and fishermen. Something about lanterns on the beach and traditional dances that went on too long.
He hadn't expected to drive into the middle of prep day.
Nor had he expected his car—sleek, black, and utterly out of place—to become the town's temporary tourist attraction.
People stared.
Old men paused mid-conversation. Children stopped chasing each other to point. A teenage girl nearly dropped her kakigōri. One boy pulled out his phone and began taking pictures like he'd just spotted a celebrity or a ghost. Or, more likely, a corporate shark who looked like he'd taken a wrong turn on his way to a boardroom.
Katsuki's jaw ticked.
This wasn't his world.
He wasn't built for it—this slow, sun-warmed, everyone-knows-your-grandfather kind of place. There was no anonymity here. No crowd to disappear into. Just locals with questions and too much time.
He kept driving.
The coast shimmered to his left. Mt. Chōkai loomed to the right, huge and unapologetic against the sky, its silhouette sharp enough to slice through cloud.
Yuna's voice echoed in his memory: Once you see Mt. Chōkai looking like it's about to swallow the sky, you're close.
He was close.
The houses were older now. Fewer signs. Fewer cars. A cluster of kids ran barefoot down the road, and he slowed automatically, scowling as they waved at him like he was supposed to wave back.
He didn't.
------
Katsuki parked the Panamera as far from the main road as possible, next to a shuttered soba joint and a vending machine that looked like it hadn't been restocked since the Heisei era. The sun was low, casting long shadows across the sloped roofs and string lights already being hung for the festival. The air smelled like grilled corn, salt, and humidity. He ignored all of it.
The mom-and-pop shop was wedged between a barber and a stationery store, the kind of place that sold everything and nothing. Faded awning. Handwritten signs. A wooden chime jingled when he stepped inside.
It was cramped. Floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with snacks, canned goods, cleaning supplies, and plastic toys that looked sun-bleached from decades in the same spot. The air was thick with the smell of soy sauce, mothballs, and nostalgia.
"Welcome," an old man said, barely glancing up from behind the counter. He wore a yukata patterned with cartoon fish, and his white hair was sticking up in defiance of combs or reason.
Katsuki found the cigarettes immediately—second shelf on the right, tucked beside the instant noodles—and dropped a pack of Seven Stars on the counter with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been doing this for years. He pulled out his wallet.
The old man squinted at him. "Not from around here, are ya."
Katsuki didn't respond. Instead: "You know where the Sukehiros live?"
That got the man's attention.
His eyes lit up. "Ah! You Hana-chan's boyfriend?"
Katsuki blinked once. "No."
Not a denial. Not a confirmation. Just a flat, absolute refusal to engage.
The old man didn't seem to mind. He nodded sagely, like he'd already decided the answer. "Yer gonna pass the Sakehiro first. Then their house is a few blocks after."
Katsuki frowned. "The what?"
"Sakehiro," the man repeated, puffing up with pride like he owned stock. "Best damn sake in the region, hands down. Sukehiro family's been brewin' it since before I had teeth. But yer comin' at the wrong time, son. No tours this week. Festival preparations, y'see."
"I'm not here for a tour."
"Oh, right, right," the man said, chuckling as if he had gotten distracted. "Well, ya'll can't miss it. Big ol' building with a torii gate right out front. Red paint's peelin', but still stands tall. Looks a bit like a haunted house, if I'm honest. Whole place creaks when the wind blows. Gives the young'uns a scare at night."
Of course it does.
Katsuki handed over the yen, took the change, and pocketed the cigarettes. "Directions?"
"Straight from here," the man said, gesturing with the loose-limbed energy of someone used to giving directions to lost tourists and drunk uncles. "Go left at the shrine with the stone foxes, then follow the road up past the fields—ya'll see a bamboo grove. The Sakehiro'll be on yer right, big wooden doors, smells like heaven. House is two, maybe three blocks after that. Yellow gate. Hydrangeas out front."
Katsuki gave a curt nod. "Thanks."
"Tell Hana-chan her Jii-chan says hi!"
He just walked out, lit a cigarette, and kept walking. Of course everyone here knew Hana.
------
Katsuki found the brewery five minutes later—didn't need to check the directions again.
The Sakehiro stood like it had been built to outlast war, weather, and every bureaucratic zoning law in existence. Unlike the surrounding wooden houses, this place was stone. Heavy, slate-gray blocks stacked with surgical precision, worn down at the edges but uncracked. The main structure was squat and wide, flanked by low extensions that might've once been storage wings, all crowned by a roof of deep, sea-blue tile. No soft lines. No welcome mat.
The red torii gate out front was massive—taller than the entrance itself—and slightly crooked, its paint faded into a dull oxblood. A narrow path of pocked flagstone led toward a pair of double doors darkened with age, ringed with rusted iron handles as thick as his wrist. A shimenawa rope hung above it, fraying at the ends. The faint scent of sake lingered in the air, rich and sharp, mixing with the late summer humidity.
Yeah. He got it.
The locals probably called it haunted because it looked like a shrine had fused with a fortress. Solid. Grim. Unmoving. The kind of place you didn't knock on unless you were sure you'd be welcomed in. Or stupid.
Katsuki parked three blocks away.
Not for the walk. Not even for the stealth.
For the car.
Because if she saw the Panamera first, she'd bolt.
Or worse, smash the windshield.
And between the two, the latter was statistically more probable.
He didn't need that fight.
So he left the car under a persimmon tree, pulled the cap lower over his brow, and walked until he found a shadowed post beneath a utility wire, half-hidden by the torii's angle and the heavy vines of a neighbor's fence. He lit a cigarette—his second in twenty minutes—and waited.
The sky was turning gold at the edges, the sun low and molten behind the mountains. Somewhere, someone was tuning a shamisen badly. A cicada screamed.
And then—
"See you tomorrow!"
His head snapped up.
That voice.
That familiar, grating, overly cheerful register that sounded like it had been soaked in sarcasm and sugared to mislead the innocent.
He hadn't heard it in a month.
But his pulse recognized it before his ears did.
Katsuki's eyes lifted toward the entrance.
And there she was.
Hana.