July 10th, the evening of the first day of the festival.

The sky is strange again this year. Even though the sun sets late in summer, it's about time for night to fall.
Instead of a sunset, it's a deep blue, as if ink has been poured into it. Suffocatingly so.
As time passes like this, at some point, the sky will have turned pitch black like soot.

Passing through the alley of food stalls, you stop in front of the shrine bulletin board.
A faded missing person flyer. A familiar face that has been posted there for three years.

【Natsuki Aose (16) — Missing since the night of July 16th, the final day of the festival】

"……No matter how much I look at it, it doesn't really look like me."

Suddenly, a voice comes from beside you.
A tall boy dressed in a faded navy yukata is peering at the flyer.
With a face exactly as it was three years ago—no, a face that has aged at the same rate as yours.

"You were the first to find me again this year."

He smiles, pulling up only the corners of his mouth. A passerby walks right through his body.
No one screams.
It's only natural. Because he is invisible to everyone else.

"Now, I should explain this year's rules. ……Or so I'd like to say."

His expression freezes into a look you've never seen before.

"... Why. You... what happened to your body? Why are your fingertips... translucent?"