The Corrupted Fury of Light

A Short Story - The Corrupted Fury of Light

Penulis: Grace Prikasih – UKI

“All things have consequences. Even when the result is unfair. Not when the one giving it have hatred run deeper than his kindness.”

An Accident Wrapped in Lies

Rain had always fallen softly over Hanamori Academy, turning the marble courtyard into a mirror that reflected its towering prestige. The air smelled of lacquered wood, perfume, and the quiet arrogance of privilege. Within its immaculate walls, laughter echoed — but not all of it was kind.

Shine Mochizuki walked those halls like a ghost long before he died. A scholarship student among heirs and prodigies, he was the kind of boy who apologized when others hurt him. His uniform was always neatly pressed, his words polite, his eyes bright — until they weren’t.

Every day was a performance of cruelty. Kuro Kanagawa, the headmaster’s prized donor’s son, played the charming devil; his laughter was a sentence. Toma Akutagawa, ever eager to please, used his fists where words failed. Hana Izumi, with her perfect smile, spread whispers like poison. And Yumi Hanako, too frightened to resist, watched everything in silence.

Teachers looked away. The Headmistress smiled for the cameras and spoke of “discipline and excellence,” never of blood on locker doors or bruises hidden beneath long sleeves.

Then came the rooftop — where the rain met the concrete and the night swallowed their laughter. No one knew what was said before Shine fell, only that by morning his body lay broken below, a silver pen clutched tightly in his hand.

They called it suicide. They held a brief ceremony. The academy flew the flag half-mast for a day and then forgot.
But the rain didn’t stop that night. It poured harder, as if something in the heavens had cracked open — and refused to close again.

Silence is A Sign of Cowardice

Rain clung to the windows like fingerprints. It hadn’t stopped since Shine Mochizuki died.

Yumi Hanako sat at her desk long after curfew, staring at the homework she couldn’t finish. Her dorm room smelled of damp paper and lavender detergent — a scent she used to mask the staleness of guilt. Outside, thunder rolled softly over Hanamori Academy, and the old dormitory beyond the gates loomed like a scar.

She told herself she wasn’t afraid.

That the noises she heard were only the pipes, that the soft tapping behind the wall was the wind.

But when she looked at her phone, the message was still there.

Shine: “You’re awake, right?”

Her chest tightened. The number was hidden — no name, no record. She had deleted the message three times, and three times it reappeared.

Shine: “You watched.”

The text blinked out, replaced by a black screen. Her reflection stared back from the glass, and for a moment, she saw him — pale, dripping wet, eyes gold like dying sunlight through smoke. Then the screen went dark again.

Yumi clutched her blanket and forced herself to breathe. “It’s just my imagination…” she whispered. “Just… imagination…”

But even she knows it’s just a bluff.

Days passed.

Her friends stopped talking to her. Belittling her even. Hana rolled her eyes when Yumi tried to speak, sneering at her to “stop acting crazy.” Even Kuro harshly told her to stop “embarrassing the group.”

She avoided the mirror in the changing room because every time she looked, her reflection smiled just a little slower than she did. When she blinked, she swore the reflection didn’t.

That night, she dreamt of the rooftop. The sound of rain. The crunch of gravel under shoes.

And Shine’s voice — haunting, furious — asking once more,

“Why didn’t you say something?”

She woke to find her bedsheets soaked with blood, her legs all cut up. Her phone was on, its camera open, pointed at her face. The screen showed her asleep — but in the corner of the frame, someone else was standing.

Yumi couldn’t take it anymore. She ran through the courtyard barefoot, the rain hitting her like stones. She screamed his name into the dark — begging, apologizing, confessing all at once.

No one heard her. Not even Him.

The next morning, students found her lying face-down in the flooded courtyard near the old dormitory. Head concussed, neck snapped in an unnatural way. Her lifeless body lie on the ground. Others whispers condolences, some felt bad for her “accident”. Her eyes were open, reflecting the gray sky, and her phone floated beside her — the screen cracked but still glowing faintly.

“Coward,” it read.

But when the police tried to retrieve the text log, they found nothing.

No sender.
No messages.

Only the faint sound of a boy humming through the speaker before the phone died.

Hatred Run as Deep as Anger

Toma Akutagawa didn’t believe in ghosts. He doesn’t believed in fear — the kind that could be carved into someone with enough pressure. The kind he once etched into Shine’s trembling body beneath the rooftop light.

But lately, fear had begun to chase him. Like a predator would to a prey.

The gym smelled like sweat and polish, the floor glistening under bright halogens. Toma was alone that evening, working the punching bag, fists wrapped, rhythm sharp. Every hit echoed like a heartbeat — fast, angry, hollow.

He’d heard about Yumi. “Fell down from the ledge? Tch. Pathetic. Weak girl couldn’t handle the guilt.”

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching.

The bag swayed oddly, heavier than before. When he grabbed it to stop the motion, something cold and slick brushed his knuckles. His stomach turned — the surface was damp, soaked through. He stepped back. Blood pooled beneath the bag, spreading toward his shoes.

He looked at the bottom of the bag. Blood dripping from it.

And on the canvas of the punching bag, faint words appeared as the light flickered — drawn in moisture, letter by letter:

You hit me first.

He tore off his gloves, stumbling back. “Who’s there?!” Only silence answered. Then a soft drip, drip, drip from somewhere behind him — steady, deliberate, like footsteps in puddles.

That night, he didn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt weight pressing down on his chest — as if invisible hands were holding him still. He awoke gasping, clawing at his throat, his sheets damp with sweat and regret he refuse to acknowledge.

The whispers came next. When he washed his hands, water ran red for an instant.

When he looked in the mirror, someone else’s reflection flexed his fingers.

And when he turned away, he could still feel the grip of another’s bruised wrists beneath his palms.

He tried to laugh it off to Kuro the next day. “Man, this school’s cursed.” Kuro rolled his eyes. “You’re just scared of your own shadow.”

Toma smirked — but that night, when thunder cracked across the sky, he thought he saw Shine’s silhouette in the flash.

Hanging. Neck bend unnaturally. And then gone.

Days blurred into nights. Toma stopped eating, stopped talking. He become more irritable. He got angry more often. Lashing out on anyone and everyone. Getting into more and more unnecessary fights. He become paranoid. Fearful. But he refuse to believe so.

And then, one stormy evening, his car wouldn’t start. The rain poured harder than ever — like the heavens themselves were mocking him. He slammed the steering wheel, shouting curses into the empty street.

Then he saw it — a figure standing ahead of him in the headlights.

Soaked, still, head tilted slightly to one side.

“Shine?”

The figure took a single step forward.

Toma’s engine roared back to life. Panicked, he hit the gas — and the car lurched toward the figure.

But instead of impact, he hit… nothing. He thought is was over.

Then he heard it. A truck horn, blaring into his ears. He stepped on the gas to pedal back… but it was too late. The truck hit him and his car, sending him flying away to a ditch, hit scream heard by none and his final breath spend in agony and tears. Muttering useless apologies to no one until everything is silent.

When rescuers found the wreck, the windshield was shattered inward.

Inside, Toma’s body sat still — crushed between the metal. A gruesome sight for the boy.

And on the passenger window, written in fog from the inside:

Weakling...

In the faculty office, the Headmistress signed the report with steady hands. “Another tragic accident,” she said.

But outside, rain battered against the windows, whispering through the cracks — as if someone was laughing softly in the storm.

Who's The Fairest One Now?

The academy’s gardens were blooming again, but Hana Izumi couldn’t stand the scent of lilies anymore.

They reminded her of funerals.

Every morning, she stood before her vanity — brushing her hair, curling her lashes, layering her perfection — but the girl in the mirror never moved quite right. The reflection’s smile came a second too late. Its eyes lingered too long.

Her reflection had become her worst enemy.

Her perfect face now adorned with exhaustion. Dark circles under her eyes, hair slightly unkempt, makeup now as flawless anymore. She had once ruled this place with a single glance. People used to chase her approval like air. Now they crossed hallways to avoid her. The laughter that used to follow her turned into whispers and quiet sneer behind her back.

Even Kuro stops engaging with her because he thought she’s gone crazy.

Hana’s nights were restless. The air in her dorm room was damp, heavy, smelling faintly of rain even with the windows sealed. The sound of dripping came from somewhere she couldn’t find.

She tried to ignore it. She tried everything.
Music. Perfume. Prayers.

But the whispers grew clearer. And each time, it haunts her.
“Pretty face. Empty eyes.”
“You laughed when I cried.”

Her vanity lights flickered, shadows stretching across the mirror like fingers. And for the briefest second — she saw him.

Shine stood behind her reflection, not her.

His skin pale and cracked like porcelain drowned too long in water. His golden eyes hollow, his lips trembling between sadness and rage.

“You called me worthless,” he whispered. Head tilted 90 degrees “But what are you now?”

Hana screamed and threw the mirror to the floor, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards. But in every fragment, he still stood there — dozens of him, each reflection grinning wider.

She didn’t sleep for days.

Her makeup began to smear, her eyes sunk in. She looked like a ghost of the girl who once sparkled under the spotlight.

And yet, she couldn’t stop checking her reflection. She needed to be sure she was still there. That she still existed.

The academy noticed. The Headmistress spoke to her gently about “public image.” Students whispered about her breakdown. But all fall deaf on her ears. The mirrors whispered louder.

“You took everything that wasn’t yours.”
“Even his last breath.”

She smashed every mirror in her room. Even her phone screen was cracked from her trembling grip. But the reflection wouldn’t stop. It found other surfaces — the glass window, the polished doorknob, even her eyes in the shower steam.

On the night the rain came again, Hana decided to face him.

She filled the bathtub, lit candles, and placed her vanity mirror on the counter. The surface trembled with mist and reflected the faint flicker of candlelight.

“Please…” she whispered. Her voice shook. “You’ve had your revenge, right? Y-You had enough, right?! Let me go already!! Get out of my head!! Why are you doing this to me??!!” She lashes out. “STOP IT!!!”

The reflection smiled — but she wasn’t smiling. Her anger fueled him. His smile grew wider and sharper.

“You didn’t let me go.” He grinned. “So why should I let YOU?”

The candles went out. Water rippled, cold as death. She screamed once, the sound muffled by the thunder.

Morning came.

The dorm matron found the door locked. When they broke it open, Hana Izumi lay still in the bathtub. The water was cloudy, tinged with red.

On the mirror above her, words were scrawled in fog as if traced by unseen fingers:
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall — who’s to blame for this all?”

Her phone played a faint recording of Shine’s voice — that same soft melody from his recorder, the tune he used to play when no one listened.

And far off on her bed, all her photo with Kuro are all shredded to pieces. With Kuro’s face blurred out with a red marker.

Fall of The False Light

The rain had become constant. It no longer came in storms — it simply never stopped.

Hanamori Academy was drowning in gray, the gardens flooded, the air thick with rot. Yet classes continued, smiles remained plastered, and Kuro Kanagawa still stood above it all — the last of the golden circle.

Only, he no longer looked untouchable.

His once-perfect posture sagged. The glint in his eyes dulled to a hunted look.

He hadn’t slept in days. Every reflection seemed to stare too long, every shadow whispered his name.

“You said I was weak.”
“You said I should die.”

He would wake up drenched in sweat — or was it rain? His bed soaked through, footprints leading from the window to his pillow, though his window had been locked from the inside.

The sound of dripping water followed him everywhere.

Drip.
Drip.
DRIP.

It began with the photos.

He found them on his desk one morning — polaroids, dozens of them. At first glance, they were pictures of him with his friends, laughing, smirking, taunting — but as he flipped through them, his own smile twisted frame by frame.

In the final photo, he stood alone on the rooftop, rain pouring down, and behind him — Shine.

Same uniform. Same pen.
Same look from the day he died.

Kuro tore them apart, but when he blinked, the pieces were back on the desk, neatly stacked.

Next came the voices.

During class, while the teacher lectured about ethics and integrity, he heard a whisper behind him.

“You called it a joke.”

He turned — no one there. Another whisper, closer this time.

“Was it funny, Kuro?”

He stood abruptly, chair clattering to the floor. The entire class turned to stare. The teacher’s brow furrowed. “Kanagawa, what’s the matter?” Kuro opened his mouth to speak — but Shine’s voice came out instead.

“It hurts.”

The class erupted into confusion. Kuro ran from the room, heart pounding, hands shaking. In the mirror of the hallway window, he saw his reflection smile — not his own smile, but Shine’s, twisted with quiet vengeance.

He started tearing out mirrors. Every reflective surface in his dorm was covered with blankets. Even his phone screen was shattered. He spoke to no one, trusting no shadow.

But Shine didn’t need reflections anymore.
He came in dreams.
In flickers of light.
In the sound of Kuro’s own laughter turned against him.

Kuro dreamed of the rooftop again — only this time, he was the one on his knees. The rain stung his eyes, his hands bound by invisible strings.

And Shine stood before him, dripping wet, head tilted in that familiar, broken way.

“Say it again,” the ghost whispered. Shine’s distorted giggles filled the room. “Say what you told me before I fell.”

Kuro shook his head violently. “It wasn’t— I didn’t mean—”

But the ghost only leaned closer, voice soft as the rain.

“Then why did you smile?”

Kuro screamed awake — but the rain still fell inside his room, soaking the floor.

By the morning of Founders’ Day, he looked hollow — uniform wrinkled, eyes ringed in gray. Still, the Headmistress insisted he attend. The cameras were coming. The academy needed its golden image back.

He walked to the stage with a trembling smile, rain still tapping faintly at the edges of the covered courtyard. The banners fluttered. The crowd applauded.

“We honor our students for their excellence—”

The microphone hissed.
The lights flickered.
A drop of water fell from the ceiling and landed on the mic, sparking it.

The screen behind them glitched, images flashing too fast to catch.

Then it froze.
Shine Mochizuki’s student ID photo appeared.
Underneath it, red text began typing itself across the display:

“You said I should jump.”
It flickers again. More distorted this time.
“S O N O W I T I S Y O U R T U R N.”

Gasps rippled through the audience. The headmistress shouted for the tech team — but the microphone shrieked, feedback screaming like a wail.

Kuro backed away from the screen, eyes wide.

He looked up — and saw rain falling from the ceiling in a thin, perfect circle around him. Every drip feels like a jab of needles to his skin.

Within it, the floor turned slick and reflective — a mirror of water. And in it, Shine’s reflection waited.

“Do you remember how they laughed?”
“Do you remember how it felt?”

Kuro dropped to his knees, shaking. “I didn’t mean to kill you! I just— I just wanted—”

“To feel powerful”

The voice surrounded him, filling the courtyard, the audience frozen in silence though none of them seemed to hear it.

Only Kuro could. Only he could see Shine rising from the reflection beneath him — cold, drenched, eyes gleaming like molten gold.

The ghost reached for him.

Kuro screamed — a raw, animalistic sound — and stumbled backward. The stage lights overhead creaked. Screws snapped, and the metal bearing dropped under invisible pressure.

The entire structure groaned — and then collapsed.
For an instant, it was utterly silent.

Then came the crash — a thunderclap of splintered wood, metal crashing, and pride broken.

Kuro Kanagawa hit the marble below, body twisted under the metal stage lights, rain finally pouring in sheets from the heavens. Cameras caught it all. Students screamed.

And on every screen, for one fleeting second before the broadcast cut, Shine’s face appeared — Grinning wide. Watching. Almost in glee.

When the reporters played back the footage later, they swore they saw it — a faint shadow standing beside the fallen boy, grinning wide with bloodshot eyes.

But the rain blurred everything.

And in that blur, it almost looked like the ghost was smiling.

Corrupted Fury Drown The Light for Infinity

The rain stopped three days after Kuro Kanagawa’s death.

The academy grounds, once drowned in gray, were left coated in silence. No birds, no chatter, no life. Just the faint creak of banners still fluttering, their gold thread stained by water and rot.

The administration called it an “accident.”
The students called it “karma.”
No one knew the truth—or simply decided to not acknowledge it—stays silent.

One by one, the members of that golden circle were gone. The classrooms felt hollow. Their dorms stood empty. Even the light in the hallways seemed hesitant, flickering as if afraid to settle.

Yet, somewhere within those walls, a peace had returned.

No more whispers.
No more dripping sounds in the night.
Only quiet—a stillness that was both comforting and heavy.

In the archive building, the old portrait of Shine Mochizuki had been rehung. Someone—no one knew who—had placed a white chrysanthemum beneath it.

For the first time since his death, Shine’s eyes in the photo looked calm, the faintest trace of a smile playing on his lips.

Peace had come—but it was the kind that followed fire. The kind that left ashes in its wake.

Meanwhile, in a forest far from living civilization…

The forest was silent that night.
No wind. No cicadas. Only the faint hiss of fire from the old family shrine, its sacred charms burning away one by one.

Aome Mochizuki sat cross-legged before the flame, his uniform sleeves rolled to the elbow, his eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness. The ritual was done. The last name—Kanagawa—had turned to ash minutes ago.

Behind him, the air shimmered.
Then came the sound—soft, slow footsteps, like someone walking through water.

“Shine…”

The name escaped his lips as a prayer and a curse all at once.

A pale shape appeared, fragile as mist—white hair drifting, gold eyes dim and hollow. The spirit of Shine hovered for a moment before lowering itself beside him. Without a word, it rested its head on Aome’s lap, just like it used to when he was alive and feverish as a child.

Aome’s reached out, fingers sliding through Shine’s ethereal hair. It felt like touching cold light—weightless, wrong, yet heartbreakingly familiar.

“You did well,” he whispered, voice hollow. “You did so well, Shine.”

Aome’s eyes blank with cold anger, and a twisted sense of affection. His expression stayed blank—eyes half-lidded, mouth slightly open, the faintest hint of confusion frozen into his face.

he murmured, brushing his thumb under Shine’s eye. The fire crackled, spitting embers into the air like fleeting stars.

“You’ve done good,” Aome continued softly, voice hollow with both devotion and madness. “You won’t fade away. I have built you a vessel. Metal, circuits… something that won’t die.”

Then he laughed softly—a sound that started small, but grew strange and uneven, echoing off the shrine’s walls

“You’ll live again. You’ll stay with me. Forever…”

The flame guttered out.
The forest fell into silence once more.

*****