Utako

Utako adjusted the collar of her uniform, eyes half-lidded. She tilted her head to see between her buffed colleagues as she tried to focus on the PowerPoint in front of them. The St Patrick’s Day Parade Preparation meeting was dragging.

Crowd control, Trafalgar Square, standby, watches, work, fireworks, emergency responses lines.

The voice of Avery, her station officer, droned on. She gave a look outside, to the sun heating the room and the pigeons pecking randomly. That was always the same thing anyways. Same places, same waiting, same people, same drunks, mischiefs and careless accidents. She knew it.

The room smelled of coffee and with a pinch of deodorant. She should have taken some of both to get through today.

Yukio pinched her and nodded in the direction of the speaker. She was invested in her new role of crew commander. And that included making sure Utako was not zoning out, apparently.

“…, when the fireworks will go off. Extra eyes on the crowd, near the fences or on the edges of volumes.”

Somebody muttered a joke beside her. A few chuckles spread across the room. The atmosphere was light. Too light maybe, given that they were preparing for thousands of small chaotic revellers on the streets of London in a month’s time.

“Oh, and last thing, we had to make some arrangements after Greg’s incident. Yukio, your team will be on the Red Watch next week,” Avery informed the assembly.

“Okay,” the crew commander simply responded.

Small protests were exchanged between the members of the team but in low voices.

“You can go now,” the station officer concluded.

They left the room slowly. The day was calm, for them. The other team had been called to a confusing traffic collision that blocked a good chunk of the south of the capital. But in two hours it will be done for Utako’s team. Until that it was a mix of paperwork and the team’s guilty pleasure: fire engine cleaning.

“We will be on Watch back-to-back. You don’t have to accept everything,” Utako told Yukio as she hopped near her.

“I choose my fights.” She responded. “Plus, that was not a suggestion. They decide these things.”

“And you, my dear Utako, your decision is: body, glasses or equipment?” Harry argued jumping between them with a big sponge.

Fuerza bumped into them. She grabbed the sponge making her spiked bracelet chuckle.

“She will take the hose and I will do the equipment,” she said before Utako could respond.

“I will do the equipment. Thanks,” she answered sharply, taking back the sponge and her right to decide.

She vigorously pressed the yellow brick, surprising her and her colleague with an unpredicted water jet in all directions.

“Careful, Kiryuu-San.” Fuerza mocked, shaking her hand. “Wouldn’t want you to mess up your perfect hair.”

Utako rolled her eyes and threw the sponge back. Fuerza dodged. She always dodged.

“Are you just jealous because mine doesn’t constantly smell like a wet dog, Miss Laya?”

“Dogs have fangs.”

“Shut up, Fuerza,” Harry threw as he climbed the fire engine with another sponge.

She grinned, stepping closer to Utako, half her width. Her voice dropped just enough so no one else could hear. “Seriously, though. How the hell did you even get here? We both know you’re not cut out for this. Too weak and too stubborn.”

Utako tensed. “Say that again?”

Fuerza just smirked, stepping forward. There was something off in her stance, something too ready, too coiled. Utako readied a fist.

“Enough!” Yukio ordered. “Utako, you know better than to play her little game, and Fuerza, you’re not a model of obedience.”

The crew commander placed a firm hand on Fuerza’s shoulder. A silent warning. Her subordinate was impressive but so was she. On top of that an old facial scar running on the side of her face gave her a singular aura. Fuerza scoffed and took a step back, but the smirk never left her face.

As their shift was soon finished and the truck gleaming under the garage lights, Fuerza wandered over to Utako. “Hey. Sorry about earlier,” she muttered. Her voice was too casual. She slapped her colleague on the shoulder and walked off, rejoining the gang of firefighters she was hanging with most of the time. Yukio was with them, talking in low voices. Probably the reason for Fuerza’s redemption act.

Then the call came in.

A fire.

Utako could feel the heat even with her uniform, even from outside of the house. They managed to contain the fire to prevent it from reaching the rest of the terraced house. Yukio was holding the first fire hose and Harry the other one, Utako on his back.

On the second floor, a burst of flame shattered the window. Soon fire was replaced by dense grey smoke. Yukio ordered the other duo to change her focus. Harry contracted his muscle to redirect the water stream.

Utako saw it.

A huge humanoid shape, darker than the smoke. Was something there? It couldn’t be someone, not that massive.

Harry reoriented the fire hose brushing away what was probably just smoke. The shape wasn’t there anymore.

Soon the fire disappeared.

Then the smoke.

When they turned off the hoses, people applauded.

But they had no time to waste.

Harry kept the fire hose ready in case of a new start. Part of the team entered the house. Damian confirmed the place was safe to enter. Utako and Yukio went upstairs. Her crew commander inspected the back of the house, while Utako went to the front room. She opened the door of what should have been an office. The place was covered by piles of burned papers on a thick layer of brown water. Files, notes and newspapers were spread around covering the place with soot and pieces of texts forever lost. Maybe she misinterpreted some kind of paper tornado for a thing. But still something wasn’t right.

Utako noticed a strange form in the corner of the room. She approached it slowly, checking the place was safe at each step. Once she was near it, she knew what it was. She removed the soggy burned newspaper covering corps.

A man, middle age, probably not older than her.

She continued removing his shroud of paper. His torso had collapsed inward, like a paper cup crushed in a careless hand. Utako frowned, leaning in. Nothing near the body could justify that. The skin around the chest had folded unnaturally, not torn or burned, but pushed, as though the air itself had suddenly turned to weight. Maybe it was the explosion? Bones were missing, or maybe displaced. She couldn’t tell. It was like marmalade in there. The absence was too neat to be chaos, too strange to be clean. She’d seen bodies before. Not like this.

Utako stood still, suddenly unsure whether she’d been holding her breath, or if the air had thickened when she entered. From the edge of her vision, the scattered papers seemed to flutter faintly, though there was no breeze. It was Yukio.

Her mentor couldn’t do anything more than observe the dead body of the resident.

Back outside, civilian and crew discussions pull them away from the eerie discovery. Lights, flashes and even the bright full moon made everything kind of blurry in the night. Utako pulled off her helmet, ran a hand through her damp hair. The cold air cut through the hood directly on her face. Yukio dropped the body on the floor. Utako gave a report no one asked for. “Chest cavity was… crushed inward. Not burned. Just… gone.”

Damian gave a quick nod, more focused on his radio.

Harry chuckled, “Maybe a ceiling beam dropped, or the heat pressure did something weird. You know how bodies get.”

Yukio said nothing, just handed her a bottle of water.

“I saw an impressive amount of beer bottles.” Damian added, “The man was an alcoholic, maybe it’s a spontaneous combustion.”

“Keep it real, Damian,” Yukio reprimanded, as she didn’t like those kinds of misconception from her crew.

“Does not work. The fire started downstairs. He was in his room,” Utako commented, while drinking.

“It started in the kitchen, so probably he left something on,” Harry suggested.

“Maybe some explosion or ceiling thing, you should be right, Harry.”

Utako shrugged it off with them, filed it away with all the other strange things the fires did.

She overinterpreted the scene. Smoke was just smoke and a dead body was just that, a dead body, probably.

Utako finally went back home when the sun was waking up. Louis, her cat, welcomed her loudly and crawled between her legs. The exhausted firefighter nearly fell on him. She barely removed the outer layer of her clothes before falling on the cough. Only the fridge humming was bothering the silence. Her body and mind shut down, she would have expected it.

But the shape came back. It walked toward her, calm and undisturbed. The shoulder grew. The chest inflated. Its walk became uncertain, drunk and deformed. The smoke turned into flesh. A baby’s soft skin. But soon, the skin roasted. And finally, the absence. Like something had made room for itself where the man’s chest used to be. It looked at her. She couldn’t sleep.

She turned on her phone instead.

The victim’s name had been passed around casually earlier, Hugo Alfredo. A quick search pulled up photos: sunglasses at night, bottle service, too-white teeth. A self-proclaimed ‘alpha’. Nightclub appearances, influencer nonsense. There was something performative about it in all posts. Cigars, muscle cars, a book about seduction techniques. She almost laughed. You shouldn’t find the death of someone as not a big loss but sometimes… Then came the older threads, weapons in the background, a small cache found in a storage unit he once rented. A financial scandal buried in legal paperwork. Talk of debts. Disappearances. Nothing concrete, but enough to make her wonder if someone had wanted him gone. She couldn’t find any post about the resolution.

She closed her phone, but the question lingered like the smell of smoke in her hair: Why the chest?

Louis jumped on the couch and curled up near Utako’s heart. He purred when she petted him. Then he fell asleep in silence, and so did his mistress.

The fire brigade’s response lingered in a corner of her mind all week. They barely heard anything about the investigation. It was still “ongoing” and, apparently, “not a priority”. Yukio had to gently remind her, more than once, to be patient and let the process run its course. Utako nodded, agreed, even meant it at the time. But after a few restless nights and too much scrolling through old articles, she needed air. She told herself she was just heading out for food. It just happened that she randomly ended up passing near the burned house. At least, that’s what she would say if anyone asked.

The caution tape was still flapping across the gate, but the padlock on the back fence had clearly been tampered with. Maybe children. Maybe someone else. Even without that the chain was so loose that would have been able to enter with her equipment. She slipped through without much effort, her breath tight as if the smoke had never really left this place.

Inside, it smelled like damp charcoal and melted wiring. The second floor was mostly untouched by fire, structurally speaking, because for the rest, furniture and decoration were crumbling. She moved slow, steadily. She was just curious, just looking. She moved with care and respect. After a week of vague memory, her mind was able to see concrete images. In the office again, she brushed aside layers of ash and ruined paper. The removed corps had left a distinct imprint. But the scorch marks on the floor made no clear sense. Circular, almost ritualistic in shape, but too faint to hold meaning. Then she found the printouts, singed and barely legible. Notes, bleeding ink, names maybe, surnames a lot, scattered across the floor like leaves. Alfredo had been looking for someone, or something. The few names she managed to decipher were nobodies, no visible links. She could get some mentions of “the inner circle,” “the recruit”, and a group called The Pack.

She paused at the edge of the desk, catching a whiff of something acrid, oddly biological. Burned… fur? Her nose wrinkled instinctively. She followed the scent to a warped floor panel, part of it already cracked open by fire. Inside was a hidden compartment, metal-lined and barely scorched. She lifted the lid fully, half expecting it to be empty.

Instead, there was a pile of banded cash, a small pistol, and a knife unlike anything she’d ever seen curved, not quite ceremonial, but too elegant for street use. Its white blade shimmered slightly, almost oily in the light.

She stared.

He’d had the money. Right there. No one took it.

So, it was probably indeed a stupid accident. That thought released her. Utako smirked to herself.

She looked at the knife then picked up the pistol. It was a curious object. She had never held one before. It was heavy, less than she anticipated but still. A whisper of a click had her freeze. Had she just cocked it?

Footsteps outside. Just one or two, maybe wind. She didn’t wait to find out. She slid the pistol into her coat and closed the hatch again, her heart hammering. Her fingerprints were now all over it, she couldn’t let it here. She had been stupid.

Only later, on the way home, did she think about it again. What was this Pack? Who were they? Could they be linked to the money he found? In the end she went back home with more questions than answers. Could it really be an accident?

“It was not an accident,” Yukio announced to the crew, her voice firm.

A low rumble of protest passed through the group, groans of frustration. When a fire was deemed suspicious, it meant a criminal investigation was on the way. That meant more paperwork, logs and even statements. Everyone hated it.

“We are in this together and that’s just formalities,” the crew commander added. “The guy was apparently quite unstable so it’s highly suspected he started it himself. Fuerza, can you fill the report?”

“I can,” she said flatly, without a flicker of enthusiasm.

As the crew began to disperse, Fuerza leaned in toward Utako, her voice low and laced with a smirk. “You’ve been very interested in this guy. Maybe you should volunteer to fill out the report, Kiryuu-San.”

Utako kept her gaze forward, unshaken. “Curious minds notice what others choose to ignore.”

Fuerza’s brow lifted, her grin still sharp. “Or they just see what suits them. And honestly? After how he ended up, that kind of curiosity doesn’t look too smart.”

Utako sighed softly, then turned to her. “You’re right,” she genuinely admitted.

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, cool, unreadable. Then she gave a short shrug and walked off, leaving the tension behind like smoke that refused to clear.
Utako watched her walk away, the usual hollow feeling curling in her gut.

She told herself to let it go, to move on like everyone else would.

Fuerza was right. Utako was indeed interested in this incident, not obsessed. It was just some intriguing unclear pieces. By the next day, the interrogation still gnawed at her.

She needed some confirmation. That’s why she found herself standing in the coroner’s office, under her crew commander’s recommendation. The room was colder than she expected, in all possible ways.  Utako stood beside the metal table, hands in her coat pockets, pretending her interest was routine. She was authorised to be here. Yukio probably hadn’t expected her to go on the very same day she suggested it. Nevertheless, she was here now, for apparently nothing.

“No signs of external violence. Smoke inhalation.”
The coroner, a lean man old enough to be retired for a good ten years, spoke while scribbling into his notes.

“And his chest? It was not the cause of the death.”
“Seeing how dark his lungs were dark, I doubt it. The burst likely occurred post-mortem. Nothing unusual, for a case like that.”

She nodded, offered a polite thanks, and turned to leave.
That’s when a voice stopped her.

“Actually…” The assistant, barely more than a student, lingered awkwardly by a tray of instruments. He didn’t meet her eyes. He reached her and continued talking in a lower voice. He tried to keep it natural but didn’t succeed.
“Off the record… when we inspected what was left of the chest cavity, it was difficult to identify anything in the area. It’s up to debate among the team but I’m pretty sure the heart wasn’t there. Not burn, not crushed. Just missing.”

Utako blinked.
“Missing, as in… removed?”

He bumped his shoulder.
“That, I can’t tell.”

A beat passed in silence, the hum of the coolers suddenly very loud.

“But as I said,” he added quickly, glancing toward the hallway, “That’s not in the report.”

Back at the station, the atmosphere was sluggish. The smell of wet gear and cleaning products still clung to the air. They probably tidied a little bit knowing who was coming. Indeed, the police finally arrived.

Utako caught sight of two investigators, speaking casually with Yukio. One of them, a tall woman with sunken eyes and a notebook in hand, turned toward her with a small nod.

When they finished, Yukio pulled Utako aside.
“Coroner found anything?” she asked in a hushed voice.

Utako hesitated. She thought about the hollow chest, the missing heart, the assistant’s cryptic opinion.
“Nothing official,” she said finally. “Nothing strange on the report.”

Yukio’s expression didn’t shift. Utako wasn’t sure if she got what was implied or not.
“Good. That’s all we need, then.”
The crew officer clapped her lightly on the shoulder and moved away.

Utako watched her go silent, an unease sensation gnawing at her guts.

The police moved on to the others. Harry joked with one of the officers. Fuerza gave clipped, lazy answers, arms slung behind her head. The conversations were short. Routine questions about the fire, the access points, who saw what. Yukio hung around, arms crossed, listening carefully.

When her turn came, Utako debated whether to say she had returned to the house after the fire. She imagined the expressions around her, imagined Yukio’s disappointment.

In the end, she admitted seeing something upstairs.
“Probably smoke playing tricks,” she added quickly.
The investigator jotted a note, seemingly unbothered.

Fuerza and Harry were blunter: they hadn’t seen anything. Nothing at all.

Later, the crew ended up at the Rome, a bar owned by Harry’s aunt, a few minutes’ walk from the station. A place the fire brigade half-claimed as a second home after rough nights or days.

They crowded around a sticky table, half a dozen pints already clinking and sweating onto the wood.

Utako sat quietly at the edge, nursing a lager, half-listening to Fuerza brag about an uncontrolled bonfire she’d once handled solo on her time off.

At some point, Yukio dropped into the seat beside Utako.
“You’re overthinking it,” she said without preamble, keeping her voice casual. Her fingers were playing on an old scar running from her hand to the middle of her arm.

“What do you mean?” Utako asked.

“The Alfredo fire. You’re still stuck on it?”

Weird things happen in fires, smoke, shock, stress. It didn’t mean there was anything behind it.

Yukio took a sip from her glass before finishing the thought.

“The coroner’s assistant thinks the heart was missing,” Utako said quietly.

“The heart?” she repeated. “There’s nothing about that in the report. Are you sure?”

“Me, no. But the assistant, yes.”

“Probably just a beginner’s mistake,” Yukio said easily, brushing it off.

Utako nodded. “Probably,” She agreed, though something in her voice faltered.

“You thought you saw something in the smoke,” Yukio added, lighter, almost teasing. “Happens to the best of us. Your mind just… overthought it.”

She clinked her glass to Harry as another round arrived, and the noise of the group swallowed them back up.

When the crowd thinned and the night air turned cold, Utako drifted outside.

Avery leaned against the brick wall, a calm grin stretched across his face as he passed a thin joint between his fingers.
“You look like you could use it,” he said, offering.
Utako hesitated, then took a shallow puff before passing it back.

“I still owe you for the ones at Christmas,” she said.

“They were gifts,” Avery contested, brushing it off.

To ground herself, she scrolled through her phone. Cats, gym selfies, dancers, the usual distractions went by.

Then out of nowhere, a familiar name jumped out.

Hugo Alfredo.
The victim’s old profile, a secondary account. A short, grainy video sat pinned at the top.

She tapped it open.

The footage was rough, distorted by poor evening lighting. Shadows writhed oddly in the background. Hugo’s face loomed close to the camera, sweat shining on his forehead.

“Found the best thing ever,” he whispered, excited and half-laughing. “You’ll see. Gotta get it right first. Soon.”

The video cut off abruptly, leaving Utako staring at her reflection in the darkened screen, the embers of Avery’s joint glowing faintly behind her.

Utako lowered her phone slowly, her mind replaying Hugo’s words. Probably just some stupid nightclub stunt, she told herself.

The shadow in the background looking familiar was probably nothing.
Probably nothing. There were a lot of ‘probably nothing’ around this fire. She was still staring at the screen when Avery nudged her with his elbow.
“You alright?” he asked casually, already taking another puff.

Utako pocketed her phone with a small, dry laugh.
“Yeah. Just tired.”

Avery didn’t push. He offered the joint again. She shook her head, the lingering buzz of smoke in her lungs already making everything feel half a step detached. They talked about the upcoming St Patrick’s parade,  about a Karen who had gotten on Avery’s nerves during the planning committee meeting.

A patron spilled out from the bar behind them, laughter trailing into the night. Utako followed the noise back inside.

“Maybe it was a vampire!” Harry joked, catching the end of their conversation. “The monster turned to smoke and disappeared!” He flapped his arms in a lazy imitation of a drunk bat. It was maybe a normal bat and the interpreter was drunk, hard to tell. The others chuckled. Even Utako managed a faint smile. Probably just gallows humour. Only Fuerza let out a low humph, clearly unimpressed.

Yukio, coming in behind them with a half-empty pint, tapped Harry on the back of the head.
“Shut it, idiot. She’s had enough for tonight.”
The gesture was casual, affectionate almost, with a pinch of real concern, the kind of ribbing that stitched them together on the job.

Still, as they wandered back toward the streetlights, Utako couldn’t shake the image.

A monster.
Probably just a joke.

Probably nothing.

She shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets, hurrying her steps to catch up the rest of the group.

Behind her, in her mind, Hugo’s distorted video kept whispering.

Back at home, Utako sat cross-legged on her bed, her laptop balanced on her knees, the glow of the screen painting her face pale in the darkness.

She hadn’t planned to fall this deep into research. It started simple.

She got back to Alfredo’s secondary account. But there was nothing there, except a message asking if he deleted some old posts. Was it true or not? She couldn’t tell.

What could tear a heart from a body and leave no clean explanation?

The first sites gave her nothing useful: animal attacks, industrial accidents, vague nonsense.

But the deeper corners of the internet… the stranger side… offered other possibilities.

Wendigos devouring human flesh.

Lamashtu, stealing the breath and hearts of men.

Werewolves, tearing apart their prey under the fever of the full moon.

And, of course, devils and demons, always hungry.

Utako sat back against the wall, exhaling slowly.

It was absurd. She wasn’t a child. She wasn’t even the type to believe in ghosts or monsters.

But still. The burned fur smell.

The way the heart was missing without explanation.

The distorted video of Hugo, laughing as if he had found some “best thing ever”.

The shape.

And now this…

She checked the date of the fire again.

Her stomach turned cold.

A full moon.

Utako stared blankly at the screen, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat.

She had seen something in that smoke.

Not a trick of her mind. Not just stress.

She closed her laptop and sat there in the dark, hearing Harry’s drunken joke echoing in her head.

Maybe it was a monster.

A werewolf.

Probably nothing, she wanted to tell herself again.

But this time… she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Utako had never been much of a believer. Not really religious because she never thought about it. Not really superstitious due to her very pragmatic mother. She wasn’t sure she even believed in Santa Claus when she was young.

But the more she read, the harder it became to dismiss that some things existed.

Legends across continents spoke of it. In many versions, werewolves tore their victim into flesh and took the heart, only the heart.

Late nights merged into early mornings as she scrolled articles and ancient illustrations until her eyes burned. At home it was on her laptop, at work she was scrolling her phone. Unfortunately, when people started looking at her, she could turn her phone off, but not her brain.

On a minor response for an unknown chemical leaked in a closed shop, she found herself sharing bits of it.

“No smoke, less risk of seeing things,” Harry joked to relax Utako. She was visibly tense.
“You know,” she said lightly, half-joking, “there are old stories about creatures that…”
She trailed off when she saw the looks.

Harry exchanged a glance with Fuerza behind her back.
Even Yukio’s smile tightened, careful and professional. But Utako could see she was keeping something for herself.

“You need some sleep, Utako,” she said gently, slapping her colleague’s shoulder.

As they were cleaning up the scene, a half-panicked cat darted out from a broken window, hissing madly. It managed to get stuck into the nearest fence. His head and one of his paws on one side, the rest of the body was moving frantically on the other side. Fuerza, trying to play the hero, lunged for it, cracked the fence open and yelped when the furious ball of fur sank its claws into her arm.

Swearing, Fuerza backed off.

Utako, moving slowly, crouched low and whispered nonsense to the animal.

It stopped trembling and let her scoop it carefully into her jacket. It was still angrily looking at Fuerza.

Utako carried it outside the danger zone and let it go.

The others watched without comment. Utako caught Fuerza muttering something under her breath, some non complimentary complaint about the animal.

The first scratch she noticed was at the back entrance of the station. Not a cat one.

It was deep, a gouge that tore through the thick paint and left raw wood exposed.
At first, she thought it was a prank or vandalism. Maybe someone was pranking her. But the way the marks raked downward, uneven and feral, made her stomach knot.

The following week, walking home through the narrow alley that cut behind the block, she spotted more: long, angry slashes carved into the trunks of the elm trees, almost too high for a dog, too random for a knife.

The same day, she was sure to have seen some while going to meet her parents. She tried to mask her concern but her mother noticed something was off. On the doorway, she tried to get it out of her daughter. But Utako lied, saying it was just work.

Walking back home, she couldn’t find the last scratches anymore. Each time she passed some, her skin crawled a little more.
They weren’t accidents. She was sure of it.

On her phone scrolled forum discussions, pages filled with blurry photos and half-credible witness accounts. She scribbled notes into an old notebook, circles and arrows tying random facts together.

Then a thought infiltrated her brain before she reached her home. She changed her path. She didn’t have to, shouldn’t need to. She shouldn’t have taken a detour to Alfredo’s house but she did. And at the back of it, she noticed some deep scratch marks.
Something with claws had made them.

Everywhere Utako looked, she started seeing signs.
A low growl from a dog behind a fence made her stop dead, her heart pounding.
An overturned trash can with its contents shredded across the alley, clear claw marks if you looked closely enough. A missing cat poster, peeling and weathered on a lamppost, another warning no one else seemed to notice. Was that the bartender’s cough… or a suppressed snarl?

It wasn’t just the streets.
At the station, every unfamiliar noise set her on edge.
The creak of old pipes sounded like growls in the walls.
The scuff of heavy boots down the hall could have been something else entirely, something with claws.

She caught herself studying people too closely, the way they walked, the way their voices sometimes caught on certain words. Here or on the news. There were so many suspects.
Was that scratch on Fuerza’s forearm really from a cat?

Little by little, the atmosphere around her shifted. Conversations fell quiet when she entered a room. People shot glances at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, small, pitying looks, nervous shuffles. Avery’s casual pieces of advice faded into awkward silences. Harry, always the loudest, started mumbling and steering conversations elsewhere when she got too close.

Even Yukio began to tread carefully, speaking slower, using that soft tone people reserved for someone who might break if you pushed too hard.
No one said it outright.
But she could feel it.

She was becoming the crazy one.
The one nobody wanted to sit next to too long in case whatever she had was catching.

And the worst part was elsewhere.
They didn’t see it.
They didn’t see any of it.

That’s what she thought.

Support came from the most unexpected person.

Fuerza.

One evening, after another long, restless shift, Utako found herself alone in the shower room. The others had drifted off, avoiding her like if she carried some invisible infection. She took slow breaths in the changing room. The steam blurred her vision and calmed her mind.

She didn’t hear Fuerza approach, just caught the clink of boots on concrete.
Utako tensed automatically, but to her surprise, Fuerza didn’t mock her, didn’t smirk.
She leaned casually against the wall, arms crossed. She waited a few seconds. Then she started undressing, putting her clothes on the side. She only kept her spiked bracelet. She rolled a towel around her and sat next to Utako.

“You’re not crazy, you know,” Fuerza said, tone quiet enough that it could have passed for an accident, a kindness slipped between grudges.
Utako blinked, not sure she heard right.
Fuerza continued before she could answer:
“I’ve seen… weird shit too. Not here. Other places. Things people laugh off, but they’re real. You’re not wrong to keep your guard up.”

A strange, unfamiliar warmth flickered in Utako’s chest.
Someone understood.

For the first time in days, the pressure behind her eyes eased slightly.
Utako muttered, almost embarrassed, “It’s not just the fire. There are signs. Scratch marks. Missing animals. The full moon.”

Fuerza nodded, slow and deliberate, the gesture almost too perfect. She stopped her there.
“Sometimes… it’s better to have a little protection, just in case,” she said, fishing into the pocket of her jacket.
She handed small, palm-sized objects wrapped in an old cloth, polished and dull, catching the overhead light: three bullets,.
“Silver,” Fuerza said simply. “Keep it on you. Just… in case. And don’t thank me. Let’s say it’s me thanking you for the cat the other day.”

Utako stared at it, her heart pounding.
It was stupid, irrational, everything Yukio would have rolled her eyes at. But she reached out and took it like it was a lifeline.

“Do you know how to get a gun?” Fuerza asked.

“I’ve f… have one.” Utako replied.

Her colleague lifted an eyebrow.

“Great.” Fuerza smiled faintly, like a secret shared between them.
Then, as they stood there, Fuerza started asking questions, little ones, dropped casually, carefully:
“Have you seen anyone acting weird during the night?”
“Any animals behaving strangely?”
“Any signs on the station grounds? At home?”

Each question sent Utako’s mind spiralling deeper, connecting invisible dots she hadn’t even noticed before.
Every doubt she had now seemed justified. Every instinct confirmed.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, Utako didn’t feel crazy.
She felt prepared.
She felt right.

Gaining an ally was great. However, the signs didn’t disappear. The opposite, they became more visible, more persistent. Or maybe just more present on Utako’s mind. The impact became noticeable even for her.

She started smoking, again.

It was Avery who first handed her the pack without comment after she snapped at him for asking if she was okay. By then, doors were left ajar at the station, ones that should have been closed by habit. Equipment misplaced, radios cutting in and out with odd static.
At night, when she walked home, she sometimes heard scratching along the walls of nearby alleys, low growls barely masked by the city noise.
Stray dogs, she told herself. A dog she probably should shout to be safe. She got horrified about just thinking that. But still the thought had existed. Normal stray dogs, she told herself.
Probably.

The thin silver bullet Fuerza had given her stayed tucked in her jacket pocket, worn smooth from the way her fingers fidgeted over it without thinking.

Even with them near her, she couldn’t sleep anymore.
The bags under her eyes deepened into bruises. Her mind felt fried, like an overclocked engine seconds from snapping. Caffeine stopped being enough. Nights stretched out into a painful, twitchy eternity. In a week she went from a cigarette a day to a packet.

Still, the bullets made her feel armed. Safe. Or, at least, less helpless. But it wasn’t enough.
She forgot meals, snapped at colleagues, sometimes zoned out completely mid-conversation.
Old vices she thought she’d buried resurfaced. She had fought so hard to stop smoking. Ten years trashed by a stupid smoke silhouette.

Worst of all, the feeling of being watched never left her.

On more than one occasion, walking home, she caught the glint of something low to the ground, crouching just beyond the streetlights, sharp, reflective yellow eyes burning in the bushes.

When she turned toward them, they were always gone. Vanished like mist. But the cold knot in her gut remained, tightening with each encounter.

Utako’s world had shifted.

The bullets were not let free anymore. They were loaded.

And every day, every half-heard growl, every misplaced tool, every flash of movement out of the corner of her eye… pushed her further into it.

That night, the feeling of being followed was worse than usual. Close enough to breathe on her neck.

Utako walked faster, her hand gripping the shape of the weapon inside her jacket pocket, thumb rolling over the cool metal like a prayer.
The city lights blurred at the edges of her vision, her breath sharp in her ears. She whirled around, hand half-drawing the pistol still hidden in her pocket.

Only to find Yukio standing there, hands up, palms bare to show she meant no harm. Quickly, like if the position was wrong, she brought one hand to massage her flank.

“Utako, hey, hey, it’s just me,” she said, breathing with a bit of pain. But at the same time, she slowly stepped closer, like she was trying to soothe a wild animal.

Utako’s chest heaved. Her fingers trembled against the fabric of her jacket.
It took a few seconds before she managed to lower her hand, her pulse hammering in her temples.

“You need to calm down,” Yukio said quietly, urgently. She glanced around, like worried they were being watched. “I’m exactly here for that. You’re freaking out. Screaming about wolves at the station. People are getting… worried.”

Her voice softened.
“It’s okay to be scared. But you’re scaring yourself too much to see clearly.”

Utako stared at her, her throat tight.
The anger, the fear, the endless tension buzzed inside her like a hornet’s nest.

“You don’t trust me,” Utako complained.

“I do trust you saw something that day,” her crew manager conceded. “But your mind created fiction on reality. You have to stop, it could only get worse that way.”
Somewhere beneath it all, she heard the concern in Yukio’s voice.
Real concern. Not mockery, not dismissal.

“What happened to your face?” Utako asked as she pointed to the small bandage on Yukio’s cheek.

She hesitated, judged Utako’s expression, then admitted it.

“A cyclist didn’t see me when I exited the station. Nothing more.”

“And your flank?”

“I probably dislocated a rib when he hit me.”

Utako wasn’t sure. It was probably nothing more.

“We have a long day tomorrow with the parade,” she concluded, closing the door.

The crew was assigned to help at the St Patrick’s parade, their job mostly ‘in case of’. Standing on the sidewalks. They mainly assisted by giving directions, fixing small boo-boos, and helping to get people to the first aid tents. Most of them spent the day leaning against trucks, chatting, their uniforms bright against the sea of green.

But Utako wasn’t in a festive mood. The evening was there, and the full moon loomed heavily in the sky again, sharp and bone-white.

Every shadow felt alive. Every sound too sharp.
Her fingers twitched toward the hidden gun inside her jacket over and over.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it.
The shape again, sliding between the crowd like smoke.
Tall, wrong. Moving in ways no human should.

Without thinking, Utako pushed through the mass of people, heart hammering against her ribs, the noise of the parade melting into white noise.

She swam against the stream of partiers, then went along the food stands, turned right, left… right again.

The chase ended in a narrow side street, empty and dark except for the yellow haze of a dying streetlamp.
And there it was. The shape, more defined now. A hulking, monstrous figure.

Utako’s eyes widened, she was only breathing, frozen.

But before she could react, Yukio stepped between them, hands raised, trying to calm the situation.
“She’s not a threat,” Yukio said in a firm voice, trying to reach it. “She doesn’t understand.”

But it was too late.

Behind Yukio, the big bad wolf emerged, grey fur, yellow eyes and jaws flashing teeth under the moonlight.
“Accidents happen,” it crooned, a mockery of pity.

Yukio shifted too, growing, hair spreading into fur, bones cracking like weak branches.

“I said no!” she angrily growled.

“You want a second round?” the unknown werewolf mocked.

Utako noticed the flank of Yukio sliced by deep claw scratches. She had lied. The fresh injury had clotted over, but the skin was still torn and tender. 

“We are not a democracy. Only the rule of the strongest reigns on the Pack,” the big bad wolf growled.

Yukio staggered to defend Utako.
The fight started abruptly.
Her crew manager was determined and fast. Both sides gave some hard hits. But the big bad werewolf was relentless, loving it. Yukio was losing.

She fell down.

The shape turned to its real prey.

Utako screamed, raised her gun, and fired.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.

She fired again and again until the gun clicked empty, the recoil numbing her hands.

Except…
Nothing.

The bullets had hit. She saw them. But they crashed uselessly into the werewolf’s chest.
No pain. No slowing.
As if she had shot smoke.
Or worse, as if she had missed reality itself. But she hadn’t.

A horrible suspicion wormed its way into her mind:
Did she even fire?
Had she only imagined it?

The big bad werewolf smiled, that awful, familiar smirk.

Its spiked bracelet caught the moon light.

Utako knew that grin: Fuerza.

“Oops,” Fuerza said sweetly, mock-concerned. “Maybe they weren’t real silver after all.”

The trap had always been there. Utako had just run into it willingly.

The bad wolf moved.
Fast, brutal, overwhelming.

Utako barely fought back. She wasn’t a match.
Not even close.

Fuerza didn’t kill her immediately. That would’ve been a mercy.
Instead, she left Utako broken, bloodied, shredded, crumpled against the cold alley wall.

Left her there like garbage. Next to the lifeless corpse of Yukio.

Fuerza just turned back and peacefully walked away.

Utako dragged herself back toward the street, clawing at the concrete, leaving bloody handprints behind. Every centimetre a breath sacrificed; every metre blurrier than the previous one.
The parade had ended; the streets were thinning.

People walked past. Some glanced down at her, hesitated. But nobody stopped. Maybe they didn’t see. Maybe they didn’t want to.

Hours passed.
Utako lay there, lost in a haze of pain and cold.

Her body lay there, battered, clawed, bitten, gradually falling still. She was alone in the crowd.

When the morning came, the city moved on. Garbage trucks rumbled down the street. Newspapers piled on doorsteps. Tourists laughed at breakfast diners nearby. Utako’s blood dried on the sidewalk like any other forgotten stain.

A tragedy nobody cared to notice. In the grand scheme of the universe, her death felt like an afterthought, perhaps not deliberate, but rather an inevitable consequence of her spiralling. Maybe it was always going to end this way.