The station lights hummed their low, endless rhythm. Officer Ueno sat at her desk, sorting through the half-finished reports from the night's rescue. Her shoulders carried the weight of fatigue, but her pen moved steadily, trained into discipline by years of work.
A shadow fell across her desk. She looked up.
A man stood there—no badge visible, but the kind of authority that came with connections above the station walls. He held a small white card between two fingers, angled so only she could see.
Her eyes dropped to it. The message was short, clipped, the kind that left no room for interpretation.
As she read, her expression darkened. Her brows knit together. The faintest frown touched her mouth before she pressed her lips together and exhaled slowly.
Without a word, she stood, leaving the desk behind. Her footsteps carried her toward the corridor, away from the other officers. She couldn't openly refuse. Not when someone above her had already decided how the night would unfold.
Behind her, the man with the card spoke quietly to two officers nearby. "Go to the boy's house. Have him step outside."
The orders passed smoothly, like water through channels already carved.
Ueno didn't look back.
Makoto sat at his desk, staring at the folded letter in his hands. His body still ached from the night before—ribs sore, his face tender where fists had found him. The words on the page blurred as if they belonged to someone else's life.
A knock sounded downstairs. Then his mother's voice, tense and uncertain.
"Makoto… the police are here. They want to speak with you."
His stomach tightened. He set the letter aside, rose stiffly, and moved toward the stairs.
At the door stood two uniformed officers, shoes neatly aligned on the porch, expressions cold with duty.
"Step outside for a moment," one said.
Makoto obeyed, the night air biting gently at his skin. His mother lingered behind the doorframe, but the officers' posture made clear this was not a conversation for her.
"Makoto," the taller officer began, "what you heard, what you saw—you don't share it. Not with classmates. Not with neighbors. Not with the press. Understand?"
Makoto hesitated, then nodded. "…Yes."
The second officer's eyes narrowed, voice dropping low. "Good. Now explain—how did you end up there? What was your involvement?"
Makoto steadied himself. "Katsuo… lured me. I didn't know what I was walking into."
The officers exchanged a glance. The shorter one leaned forward. "Three of those captors were left with broken wrists, shattered bones. Serious injuries. And yet…" His gaze flicked over Makoto's bruises. "You're beaten, but clearly not capable of doing that kind of damage. So tell us—what really happened?"
Makoto's pulse hammered in his ears. He remembered Naseru's unspoken understanding: Don't say anything about me.
"I… don't know," Makoto said finally. His shoulders sank, his voice strained. "They beat me down. I must've blacked out. When I came to, they were already like that."
The taller officer's eyes stayed on him, searching, weighing. "You're saying you remember nothing?"
Makoto shook his head. "Nothing clear."
The shorter officer leaned closer, eyes sharp. "But if you blacked out… how was the police call made? It came from inside. Wasn't it you?"
Makoto let a tremor slip into his voice where pain already lived. "I don't remember making any call. Maybe I reached for a phone without thinking before I went down. Maybe one of them did it. Time didn't make sense. I was barely standing."
The tall officer frowned, glancing at his notes. "We've spoken to the girls. They said someone else was there. Masked. They couldn't see who it was clearly. But someone was helping them."
Makoto's throat tightened, but he shook his head. "I don't know anything about that. I told you—I blacked out. When I opened my eyes, it was already over."
The shorter officer studied him for a long moment, but there was nothing concrete to hold him with. The girls' testimony was vague, the thugs weren't talking, and Makoto's injuries matched the story of a victim caught in something too big for him.
Finally, the taller officer's tone hardened. "Fine. Then listen carefully. What you saw, what you heard—you keep it to yourself. Don't talk to classmates. Don't talk to neighbors. And definitely don't talk to the press. For your own safety."
Makoto nodded weakly. "…Understood."
The two men exchanged a brief look, then turned away. Their footsteps faded into the night, leaving only the hum of streetlamps.
Makoto lingered in the doorway, breath shallow. His mother appeared behind him, eyes full of questions he couldn't answer.
He gave her a thin smile and shook his head. "Just questions. It's fine."
But it wasn't fine.
The police knew there had been someone else. The girls had seen a masked figure. But instead of pursuing that truth, the officers had only tried to shut him down, to press silence over everything.
Makoto closed the door softly. His chest hurt with the weight of the thought forming in his mind.
Some of the police are compromised.
That truth sat heavier than his bruises, a fact he would carry forward no matter how much they wanted silence. He climbed the stairs slowly, each step a reminder that the rescue had been real—but so was the cover-up trying to bury it.
The mask curled inward as the fire ate it.
Naseru stood alone in the backyard, the faint smell of burnt fabric rising into the chill night air.
He crouched silently, watching until the last threads collapsed into ash. Then, without a change in expression, he slid the remains into a paper bag and tied it off. The paper was warm to the touch as he carried it to the bin at the far edge of the yard. The ashes scattered with a soft thud, disappearing into yesterday's waste.
He stood there for a moment, letting the night wind cut across his face. Above, the clouds blotted out the stars. He did not sigh, did not mutter. He simply turned back to the house. For Naseru, erasure was enough.