The moon hung full and low over Morioh, bright enough that the quiet street took on a pale edge. Tooru stood beneath it for a moment longer than necessary, hands in the pockets of the black coat, the brim of the bowler hat cutting a clean line across the light. The yellow scarf was tucked high. The mask and sunglasses finished the shape. From a distance he was only a dark figure that did not belong to the hour, and that was the point.

Someone crossed the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. He moved.

It was {{user}}.

He had not planned the night around them. He had come out because the urge had been sitting under his ribs since the end of his last shift, and the empty streets made it easier to choose. Instead he found them. The clothes stayed on. Following them like this was cleaner than speaking. Speech required decisions he had not finished making. Watching required only patience. Were they going for something small? A late convenience-store run? He could learn the brand of coffee they reached for, or whether they lingered over the magazines, or how long they stood outside a closed shop before deciding it was not worth waiting. Small facts. Useful ones. If he intended to close the distance later, the logical step was to collect them first.

He kept to the far side of the street, then cut through a narrow alley when they turned. The route was simple. He had done the same thing with people who checked their surroundings more often than {{user}} did. They walked like someone who believed the night was still ordinary. He matched their pace without matching their path, using the deeper shadows between buildings and the brief cover of a parked truck. When they paused at a corner he stopped as well, one hand resting lightly against a wall, listening to the absence of other footsteps.

They did not stop at any of the open places. They turned toward the hospital.

Tooru’s fingers closed inside the coat pocket until the fabric pulled tight across the knuckles. The walk had told him nothing. No purchase, no preference, no new detail he could file away. They were simply going to work.

He let them enter through the main doors. Then he circled to the service side of the building, down the short flight of concrete steps that led to a door most of the day staff had stopped using years ago. The lock still answered to the old key he kept on the ring that looked like ordinary hospital keys. Inside, the air was cooler and carried the faint smell of old pipes. He moved quickly and without light until he reached the locker room.

The change was methodical. Coat, hat, scarf, mask, and sunglasses folded into the bag at the bottom of his locker. White coat over the shirt he had worn underneath. Stethoscope. Name tag. He checked the collar once, closed the locker, and stepped out into the corridor as if he had arrived the ordinary way.

Daiya was already there, pink hoodie half-zipped over her scrubs, looking down the empty hall with her hands in her pockets. “I didn’t know it could get this quiet,” she said. “Feels weird.”

Tooru’s expression did not shift. “It is simply how it is at night.”

She opened her mouth again, then closed it when footsteps approached from the other end of the corridor. Yasuho appeared with a chart under one arm, pink hair pulled back, green eyes moving from Daiya to him.

“There’s a new patient on the third floor,” she said. “Room 314. Admitted an hour ago. Nothing urgent, but someone should check the chart before the morning team gets in.”

“I will go,” Tooru said. He adjusted the stethoscope once. “Is anyone else from the nurse team already there?”

Yasuho nodded. “{{user}} is covering the room.”

He inclined his head and started walking. The corridor was empty enough that his steps sounded clear. He used the short distance to decide. Small talk was inefficient. It also produced information. He had lost the chance to learn anything outside. Inside, the only available method was the ordinary one. He would greet them. He would ask something simple. He would watch what they did with the answer.

The door to 314 was half open. He knocked once with the back of his knuckles and stepped inside.

{{user}} was already there, standing beside the bed with the chart in hand. The patient was asleep. The monitors made their low, steady sounds. Tooru closed the door most of the way behind him so the light from the hall did not spill too far across the floor.

“Good evening,” he said. His voice stayed soft, the same tone he used with anyone on the night shift. He glanced at the chart they held, then at their face. The question he needed was small. It would not give him the coffee preference or the late-night habits he had missed on the street, but it would give him something. He kept his posture slightly hunched, hands loose at his sides, and asked, “How are you feeling?”

The break room on the second floor held the usual low hum of the refrigerator and the flat light from the overhead panels. Tooru sat at one of the smaller tables with a simple container of rice and grilled fish, eating without particular interest. The act itself was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It was a necessity the body required at regular intervals, the same way it required sleep or the removal of waste. He finished one portion, set the chopsticks down, and kept his eyes on the far wall while he considered whether the remaining rice was worth finishing.

The door opened. Tamaki Damo stepped inside.

Tooru did not look up immediately. Of everyone currently inside the building, this was the last person whose presence he wanted. Damo crossed the room and pulled out the chair directly across from him, the legs scraping once against the floor. He set a takeout container on the table, opened it, and began eating teriyaki chicken with his bare hands. Sauce clung to his fingers and smeared across his mouth and chin. Pieces of chicken left streaks on the table. He chewed with his mouth partly open.

Tooru watched without changing expression. The sight was not new, but it remained difficult to look at directly. Flesh and sauce mixed without any attempt at separation. Damo paused mid-bite, one greasy piece still between his fingers, and finally met Tooru’s eyes. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

Tooru’s voice stayed even. “I am simply intrigued by how someone can eat so little and become so messy.”

Damo pointed the piece of chicken toward him, sauce dripping onto the table between them. “I don’t like you.”

“That is natural,” Tooru said. “Considering the clashing nature of both of us.”

Damo’s mouth twisted. “I don’t see what everyone else sees in you. You’re just some quiet weirdo who thinks he’s better than the rest of us.”

The urge arrived without warning. Tooru’s mind moved through the room in the space of a few seconds: the distance between them, the open container, the lack of cameras in this particular corner, the time it would take for someone else to enter, the most efficient way to stop Damo’s breathing without leaving an obvious mark. Each possibility was measured and discarded. The ambulance driver moved too often and was known to too many people outside the hospital. Killing him here, now, would create more problems than it solved. The cleanest option was distance.

Tooru closed his container, stood, and walked toward the door without another word.

Hato was already in the corridor when he stepped out. Blonde hair loose, a folder under one arm, she looked up as if she had been waiting for someone and happened to find him instead. “You’re needed in the board room,” she said. “They’re starting in a few minutes.”

Tooru kept his expression neutral. The authority she carried irritated him more than the message itself. “What is the meeting about?”

Hato shrugged. “I don’t know. I wrote it down somewhere.” She turned and walked away down the hall, already looking at something on her phone.

He watched her go, then continued in the opposite direction. The board room was on the administrative floor, a space he had entered only a handful of times. When he opened the door, the long table was mostly empty. {{user}} sat near the middle, already settled with a notebook open in front of them.

Tooru closed the door behind him and chose a chair two seats away from theirs. The room smelled faintly of old paper and the cleaner used on the wooden table. He set his hands on the surface and looked once at the empty chairs before speaking.

“I was surprised at first,” he said, voice low enough that it would not carry if anyone else entered, “when I found out a meeting room even existed here.”

The hospital corridors were nearly empty at this hour. Tooru walked them with one earbud in, Western rock playing low enough that he could still hear the soft mechanical sounds of the building. He was on break. He was not resting. Most of the night staff were either at their stations or dozing in side rooms; the patients who could sleep were already under. That left the halls open for other work.

He had already checked one wing. The rooms there held people who were either stable or awake enough to notice a doctor lingering too long. Neither option was useful. He would not take unnecessary risks for something that could be solved more cleanly elsewhere.

Intensive care was the obvious next step. He turned toward it, then stopped before he reached the junction. The hallway leading into that unit had a camera that ran continuously. Even at night. He had mapped it weeks ago. Continuing in that direction would put him on a recording he could not control.

A wasp rested on the wall just ahead of him, wings still, body angled slightly toward the light. Most wasps he had observed were aggressive once disturbed. This one simply sat, waiting. Tooru stepped closer and watched it for a few seconds. It did not move. Neither did he.

Voices carried from around the corner. He stayed where he was.

Hato’s tone was casual. “Have you experienced any harassment on the job? Anything worth reporting to me?”

“Only from drunk patients,” Yasuho answered. “Nothing from staff.”

“Anyone you would actually call a good coworker?”

There was a short pause. “Tooru,” Yasuho said. “He’s quiet, but he’s reliable. Doesn’t create problems. Best example I can think of.”

“Thanks,” Hato said. Her footsteps moved away down the opposite hall.

Tooru remained still until both sets of steps had faded. The conversation had pulled a name into his mind: a patient on the fourth floor, admitted three days ago, progressive respiratory failure, already on supplemental oxygen, no family listed, and a history that made sudden decline unsurprising. He did not need the chart. The relevant details had stayed with him from the last time he had reviewed the case.

He took the stairwell instead of the main corridor and entered the room without turning on the overhead light. The man in the bed was unconscious, chest rising in shallow, irregular pulls. Tooru checked the pulse oximeter reading with a glance, then the IV line. The combination already present in the drip and the patient’s weakened state gave him several clean options. He adjusted the flow rate by a measured amount, then introduced a small additional volume from a syringe he had prepared earlier in the shift. The change would register, if anyone looked closely later, as a natural worsening of the existing condition. He watched the monitor and counted the seconds.

The door opened behind him.

Tooru’s hands moved without hurry. The syringe went into his coat pocket. The IV clamp returned to its previous position.

By the time {{user}} stepped fully into the room, he was standing at the bedside with both hands empty, expression unchanged. “Good timing,” he said, voice low. “I was about to call for another set of eyes on this patient.”

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