1 I want to hear it again.

The intensity of the shock that I felt spreading throughout my car made me jump, as much as the vision of a human figure emerging in the night just in front of my windshield.

With a screech of tires, I slammed on the brakes, the rain increasing the braking distance needed to bring the car to a complete stop.

Had I just... run over someone?

Here?

In the middle of the night?

In the middle of nowhere?

This was definitely not my lucky day. This was probably going to make me late.

"Nijima-kun?" Said the voice on the other end of the line. "Hey, can you hear me? Nijim-"

I hung up on my superior, dropping the phone on the passenger seat.

I got out of my car in the pouring rain, my clothes getting completely soaked in a few seconds. I could see absolutely nothing, at this late hour of the night, and in the middle of a mountain road, without any public lighting.

I took a flashlight from the inside of my car door, then went around my car to open the trunk, and put on a rain cape. It was a bit superfluous, since I was already completely wet from head to toe. But maybe it would limit the risk of catching a cold or worse. I took another look around my car, to check for damage.

Nothing. Not a trace.

However, I had not imagined this shock followed by shaking; a sign that I had collided and run over something.

So I started to scan the road with my flashlight, hoping not to see too much blood. I had a really bad habit of not being able to stand the sight of the red color. It always made me uncomfortable under normal circumstances. So if I had really run over someone...

My left hand dipped into my pants pocket, and tightened on the void.

That's right, I had left my phone on the front passenger seat. What an idiot.

I continued to walk along the dark road, lined with two huge stone walls that marked a trench in a dense forest. The trees were so tall that even in daylight they would have been just as disturbing. Except that in the middle of the night, all you could see was darkness. A huge black abyss, where even the stars were obscured. An abyss which, however, did not prevent the terrible and violent rain which was falling on me at the moment, from passing through the trees' foliage.

The light emitted by my flashlight illuminated as far as the eye could see a curtain formed by a multitude of water drops, making everything around me indistinguishable. Until something caught my eye.

A human body was lying on the road, motionless.

So... I did run over someone.

Carefully, I approached it, and saw that it was a woman.

A woman who didn't have a head anymore.

Had I crushed her so violently?

No, it was impossible. A human head could not come off like that. Could it?

Touching the young woman's hand, I immediately withdrew my hand, as if the contact with her skin had burned me. Except it was the opposite. She was cold. As if she had already been dead for a while.

Ah... I was really in trouble. And the police would probably ask me a lot of questions, and find me more than suspicious.

But there was no trace on the front grill of my car to prove that it had happened... However, a human body doesn't lie.

Then, raising the beam of my lamp, I saw a small shape, a few meters further.

It looked like a kind of bag, laid carelessly on the road. Perhaps I would know more about the mysterious woman who had gone under my wheels.

The rain increased in intensity, and wearing this rain cape made me feel better. I had made the right choice, putting it on was not a superfluous decision.

And finally in front of the object, I took the bag in my hands, to turn it and try to find the opening.

Except that... It was not a bag at all.

I had in my hands a human head. Nothing more, nothing less. A head entirely separated from its body, lying about ten meters away.

Petrified by fright and horror, I didn't dare let go of it, nor hold it harder than the simple pressure of my fingers on the already terribly cold cheeks and scalp.

She was already almost frozen.

Light blue eyes stared at me, wide open and inexpressive, as if surprised one last time before death.

Eyes... Which closed briefly to reopen just after.

The head had just blinked. And now it was staring at me with a sparkling energy. As if this person... This woman, who I had just killed... Was still alive.

'It couldn't be, could it?' I thought.

My brain was trying to figure out what was happening right now. Something physically impossible was happening right in front of me.

I had run over and probably killed this woman, and yet she was still alive.

It was as if having her head detached from her body was just a minor inconvenience. Like those Shonen heroes who would confidently say to their comrades, "It's nothing but a scratch! ".

Except that this was not a Shonen. The genre was not even the right one at all. We were rather in a Seinen, whose main theme was horror.

A horror story in which I was surely going to be the victim, me who was not the type to have a hero personality.

'It couldn't be, could it?', I mentally repeated.

But as if to sweep away any possible doubt, the woman's head smiled with all her teeth. She smiled mischievously, still staring at me,

"Wow, is this what you call love at first sight?" Said a female voice. "Because right now, you're really making my head spin!"

I remained silent for a moment.

That was the moment when my brain, which had been working too perfectly for twenty-nine years, went haywire.

It probably stopped working for a moment, briefly, but enough to give way to a sensation that was foreign to me.

For the first time in my life, in twenty-nine years, my heart missed a beat.

I couldn't tell what caused it. I couldn't understand what was happening to me.

My heart, which had been beating all these years at the same steady and peaceful pace, unperturbed even in frightening, amusing or sad situations, had suddenly gone wild for a short while.

It was totally unprecedented.

It was new.

It was... strangely refreshing.

I would never have expected that the emotionless me from a very young age would ever feel anything. And yet, there it was. I didn't know what it was, or what caused it, but it was there. And immediately, this unknown and new sensation was followed by a malignant nausea.

It was far too new for me. Far too new for me to handle.

But I resisted the urge to vomit.

This woman... She had just done something I never thought I would see.

She had just said that she liked me.

And her statement had had the most amazing effect.

So... I had to know more.

"What you just said... Do you really mean it?" I managed to say.

She seemed surprised by my question. Destabilized, even.

"What? Uh... I didn't expect that..." She said, frowning.

"What?" I asked without any detour.

She frowned a little more. Obviously, I was already annoying her with my lack of tact. Which was nothing new for me.

"Usually, this is the moment when you're supposed to scream in terror, and run away..." She replied, still staring at me.

"Why would I do that?" I asked again, in all sincerity.

Did she think I was going to try to run away after I ran her over? If so, she had a very low opinion of me. I wasn't one to run away from my responsibilities.

"Well... For starters, you're talking to a human head," she said. "Just a human head," she insisted.

"Oh..." I let out.

I had almost forgotten that detail in the rush.

"Weird... Really weird..." She mumbled in a low voice, without actually saying that to anyone in particular.

However, even though I was only talking to a human head, something even more extraordinary to me had happened; completely overshadowing that fact.

I had felt something.

And I intended to repeat the experience, no matter how strange it was.

"But what you said... about falling in love with me at first sight, was it true?" I insisted.

"Well... I mean, you're not ugly, for starters." She answered, not without showing a hint of concern.

"In this case, repeat it." I said, while bringing my face close to hers.

She winced, as if the immediate proximity of my face with hers bothered her a lot. Was this what they call 'being embarrassed'?

I had no idea. I just knew that this kind of proximity could make people uncomfortable. But again, the situation made me forget this detail...

"Wow, slow down!" She said hurriedly.

I'm sure if she could have, she would have run as far away from me as possible. But due to a lack of luck, or rather, body, it was impossible at the time.

"When you say something like that, it's because you feel something for the other person, right?" I asked, bringing my head even closer to hers, our noses almost touching.

She started to blush violently, suddenly avoiding my gaze.

"How can I put it... It's very embarrassing to ask like that!"

I really wanted to hear that again.

What she had said.

Because hearing it again, maybe well...

"Then say it again," I asked urgently.

... Maybe I could change.

But what followed were not the words I had so longed for.

"NO!" She screamed in horror.

At the same time, she managed to get out of my hands, and tilting forward, violently hit my forehead with hers.

Ouch. It hurt. It hurt a lot. How could a human head be so heavy?

But already, I could feel the ground give way beneath me. Had she hit me so hard?

As I fell to the ground, I heard the voice of that woman coming straight out of a nightmare again. Incomprehensible words came to collide with my eardrums made inoperative by my uneasiness.

There was nothing to foretell, that the first person who would make my heart miss a beat... Would be a person for whom no heartbeat would ever resound again.

There was nothing to foretell either, a few minutes earlier, that an encounter that would turn around my life completely, would happen...