The ice in his coke was mostly melted. He'd been watching her for well over an hour now; every time he went to drink, she moved, or talked, or did something to regain his attention. She sat at the counter with a steaming bowl of ramen which she only ate from intermittently. Mostly she talked with a boy sitting on her right. His ramen looked like little more than decoration – Beat never saw him eat from it the whole time they were there. No matter; his focus went immediately back to the girl. It was stupid, he knew. It wasn't like she was the kind of girl he’d usually notice. If anything, Beat should have seen her partner first: bright orange hair with a huge pair of purple headphones nestled in it, boldly colored clothes - still pretty tame for Shibuya, he thought - and an air of carefully maintained apathy.

The girl, on the other hand, was a typical Shibuya native. Dyed pink hair, clothes screaming to be noticed in a sea of fashion. She probably used netspeak in regular conversations and worried about how others viewed her. But every now and then, she smiled, and he was entranced.

“Beat, are you going to finish that?” his sister, Rhyme, interrupted his thoughts with mildly concerned expression. She indicated his glass.

“Nah, you can have it,” he pushed it towards her and looked back at the counter. The girl and her partner had vanished, and Beat twisted around in his seat to look out into the street. It was no use. There was no way he could find them in the mass of people out there.

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll pass,” Rhyme said with a raised brow. “What’s wrong with you today, Beat? You haven’t said a word since we came here,”

“It’s nothing, honest,” he rose, picking his skateboard up from off the floor under the table. “Listen, I got something to do, I’ll see you at home, a’ight?”

“Beat?”

He ignored her as he pushed his way out of the cafe and into the busy throng outside. Stupid of him to think he’d be able to find them in this mess. But then again, stupid was what he did best.

As he stood peering around at all the faces passing by, the back of his neck prickled. Something was off, that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He started in the direction of the scramble crossing. Everyone met in front of Hachiko, right? It was as good a place to start as any.

He was pushed along, buffed and jostled at every turn. After a while, he noticed there were some people doing more pushing and shoving than the rest. They ran, or at least tried to run, shoving others out of the way as they went. All of them had their phones out and they were staring down hard at them, barely paying attention to where they were going.

The thing was, Beat finally noticed, the people being shoved out of the way didn’t even seem to noticed they were being touched.

He picked out some of these people, in a hurry to get to their destination, and followed them. They all seemed to be heading in the same direction he was - the scramble crossing and the statue of Hachiko. A couple blocks down, and they came out on the open intersection, and all hell broke loose.

Several people disappeared in flashes of light, leaving no trace behind. Others were surrounded by strange looking animals, wolves, bears, foxes, even sharks jumping out of the concrete, all ready to attack. Beat barely got his skateboard up in time to shield himself from a whirl of strange teeth and claws. But when he gained his feet and looked around again - there she was.

Kneeling by Hachiko, hugging a stuffed cat to her chest, as several of the animals advanced on her, she sent out a weakly growing orb of green light that did nothing to deter them. The boy with her earlier was nowhere to be seen.

Beat ran toward her and was immediately blindsided by one of the creatures. He rolled over onto his knees and winced at the sharp pain running through his ribs.

So this is for real.

But there was nothing stopping him from getting to that girl. Blindly swinging his skateboard around, he struck a creature in the head and sent it flying. It was all he could do to fend them off long enough to get close to her.

“Hey,” he slid in front of her on his knees as she hugged herself and her stuffed cat closer, hiding her face. “You ok?”

She looked up sharply. “You can see me?”

“Yeah?” Beat paused for a minute, then smiled. “You tryna make yourself invisible or something?”

“No,” she frowned. “I’m trying to not die. But, you can see me,”

She bit her lip.

“And you can see all the Noise?”

“The wha?”

“All these creatures attacking. You can see them too?”

“I hope so. They been tryna take me out since I got here,”

“I see. What’s your name?”

“It’s...Beat,”

“Beat. Beat,” she repeated quietly, thinking. “I don’t remember you from the beginning of the week. Have you been in the Game all this time?”

“I don’t get it. What game?”

The body of a wolf whizzed over their heads and into the statue’s plinth, bursting into a haze of static.

“Never mind, there’s no time. Look, my name’s Shiki. Will you make a pact with me?”

“A...wha?” Beat scratched at his head, underneath the edge of his hat.

“Oh my god. You need to make a pact with me if you want to live through this. I just lost my old partner, so I’m really trying to stay out of sight for the time being. But, if we make a pact, we have a better chance of surviving this. Are you in?”

Beat thought. He had absolutely no idea what was going on, what half the words coming out of her mouth meant, but it was clear that she was serious about the danger. Plus, he had a feeling he would follow this girl into certain death. He took her outstretched hand.