Koyomi gets a chance to actually help someone instead of just listening to their problems, and watching Tsubasa's perfect mask crack open over four episodes hits different when you've known her as the straight-A girl the whole time. SHAFT's visual language stops being just style and becomes the language of a girl's shame, her anger, her fractured home told through angles and empty spaces and dialogue that lands like a knife. This is what the series does when it stops explaining itself and trusts you to feel the weight of a family falling apart.

On his way to a bookstore during Golden Week, Koyomi Araragi runs into his classmate Tsubasa Hanekawa, whose face is covered by a bandage. She insists the wound came from home and begs him to keep quiet about her family's situation. That same day the two bury a tailless white cat killed by a car. When Koyomi tells Meme Oshino about it, Meme sends him straight to check on Tsubasa, and what he finds there begins nine nightmarish days. This short supernatural drama mixes mystery, romance and psychological tension.