The garage was quiet now. Kaito leaned against the wall, still trying to make sense of what the girl had told him. The Hollowed. A hidden part of the city. That strange coin.
He looked over at her. She was sitting with her back against a metal shelf, breathing slowly. Dirt smudged her face, and her hands were scraped and shaking.
"What's your name?" Kaito asked.
She looked up, surprised for a moment. "Rei," she said. "And you're Kaito, right?"
He paused. "How do you know that?"
Rei gave a weak smile. "You've been watched for a while. Not by me. By others. You've survived in this city alone for years. You're stronger than you think."
Kaito didn't like the sound of that. "Watched by who?"
Rei hesitated. "By those who protect the Hidden. And those who want to destroy it."
Kaito sat down across from her. "You keep saying 'Hidden.' What is it, really?"
Rei looked him in the eye. "The Hidden is everything the city forgot. People, places, history, power. It's not magic—it's memory. Energy left behind by what once was. And it's waking up."
"And those... Hollowed?"
"They're people who got lost between the two sides. Forgotten for so long, they became something else. They're not evil, but they're dangerous."
Kaito's head spun. He had lived his whole life keeping quiet, staying low. Now he was being dragged into something huge.
"You're part of this now, Kaito," Rei said gently. "Whether you want to be or not."
He looked at the coin again, then at Rei. She wasn't just some lost girl. She knew things. And Kaito realized something—she was scared, but not weak.
"Then I want to know the truth," he said.
Rei nodded. "Then we need to go deeper."