The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 8

Having sealed the hole, the thing wearing Hikaru's face finds itself stranded on the other side, and all it wants is to get back and keep the one promise Yoshiki ever asked of it. A way home does open up, though Mokumokuren makes sure we feel the price before we understand it. Back in the village, the mark on Yoshiki's body keeps spreading, and Kurebayashi, worried for him, offers to close the next hole herself, while someone else seems to be working quietly towards ends of their own.

This eighth volume keeps the series' particular mix of rural summer dread and tender, uneasy devotion, where the horror sits as much in what these two boys mean to each other as in what waits in the dark. For readers already deep in the story, it tightens the knot considerably.