Rain fell, relentless and cold, striking the earth as the wooden house burned.
Fire and water collided in a cruel rhythm—hissing, screaming—neither winning, neither saving anything. The house stood half-consumed, its beams glowing red beneath the rain, as if its heart refused to stop burning even while the sky tried to drown it.
Outside, the koi pond was already dead.
Its stone rim was cracked, water spilled out and mixed with ash, forming a gray, lifeless slurry. A single koi lay motionless near the edge, eyes clouded, body twisted as if it had tried to escape at the last moment and failed. Rain struck its scales, but the body did not move. The pond, once alive with quiet beauty, now reflected only smoke and falling embers.
Beside it stood the Enmusubi no Ki, the love-binding tree.
Strips of cloth hung from its branches, soaked and heavy, names written in fading ink bleeding into one another until no name could be read anymore. Some cloths smoldered, curling in on themselves as fire climbed the bark. Others tore loose under the weight of rain and ash, falling into the mud like discarded prayers.
The tree did not protect anyone.
Its trunk cracked with a long, hollow sound, steam rising where flame met rain. If the god of love was listening, it did not answer.
A broken lantern lay near the steps of the house, its light extinguished. Wooden sandals floated in shallow water, knocking gently against each other, empty forever.
Inside, the house collapsed inward.
Smoke filled every corner, thick and suffocating, erasing direction, erasing hope. Flames crept along the walls and ceiling, devouring paper doors, wooden pillars, memories carved into the grain.
The first couple lay near the far wall.
The man had wrapped himself around his wife, his body curved over hers in a final, instinctive attempt to protect her. His clothes burned, his skin blistered, but he did not move. His arms were locked in place, stiff in death.
The woman beneath him had white hair, spread across the floor like ash-stained snow. Her skin was ruined by burns, pain frozen into her features. Her eyes were open but empty, staring through smoke and fire at nothing. Whatever breath she had left had already been stolen.
Protection came too late. Love did nothing.
Across the room, the second pair was already still.
The man with white hair lay stretched toward her, fingers extended, hand stopped mid-reach. His skin was unnaturally pale, drained of warmth and life, firelight reflecting in eyes that would never close on their own.
She lay just beyond his grasp.
He never touched her.
The distance between their hands remained, permanent, untouched by rain or flame. Whatever words he had tried to speak burned away before they were ever heard.
Nearby stood the other two figures.
They looked human.
But their bodies did not react like living things. Fire scorched them. Smoke filled their lungs. Rain soaked through their clothes. And still, they did not move—not because they were untouched, but because death had already claimed them.
They had tried.
Whatever they were meant to do, whatever they were meant to stop, ended here. Their eyes were dull, their forms frozen in unfinished motion, caught between intention and annihilation.
No one escaped.
The roof collapsed with a final roar, burying everything beneath burning wood and rain-soaked ash. The sound echoed once—and then there was only the rain.
Outside, the Enmusubi tree smoldered quietly.
One last strip of cloth burned through and fell, the name on it erased completely.
Rain washed the ashes into the ground.
Love, ink, blood, prayers—everything dissolved.
Nothing remained alive.
No one is born a monster.
That word is taught—
passed down carefully,
like a warning disguised as truth.
At first, it is only fear.
Then fear becomes a rule.
And rules, when repeated long enough,
begin to feel like morality.
They learned early what they were allowed to want.
Not happiness—only survival.
Not love—only obedience.
Even then, they dreamed small.
A meal shared without hiding.
A name spoken without flinching.
A life that did not require permission.
But the world does not forgive those
who resemble its nightmares.
It punishes them
for daring to feel human.
Strangely, love was always the breaking point.
Whenever someone chose them—
not out of pity,
not out of fear,
but out of love—
The world responded the same way.
It erased the choice.
It called it a mistake.
It buried the one who believed.
And afterward, it asked no questions.
So tell me—
If a heart can love,
can it truly be a monster?
If a hand reaches out,
who decides whether it deserves to be held?
Is cruelty justified
when it wears the mask of order?
Or is it simply easier
to destroy what we refuse to understand?
They did not want power.
They did not want revenge.
They wanted to live.
And when even that was denied,
something old began to wake—
not rage,
but memory.
The memory of what was taken.
The memory of what was never allowed to exist.
Now the question is no longer
what should they do?
The question is—
What would you do
if the world told you
your humanity was a lie?
___
They were not hunted because they were dangerous.
They were hunted because they were different.
Difference makes people nervous.
Nervousness becomes suspicion.
Suspicion, when shared, becomes permission.
No one remembers who threw the first stone.
Everyone remembers why it was "necessary."
They were studied, labeled, corrected.
Told how to speak.
Where to stand.
When to disappear.
Every kindness shown to them
was called weakness.
Every boundary they drew
was called rebellion.
Still, they endured.
They learned to smile carefully.
To love quietly.
To exist in ways that would not invite punishment.
But the world has a strange cruelty—
it forgives endurance,
yet despises hope.
The moment they believed
they could belong,
the moment they imagined a future
that did not end in hiding—
That was when the verdict was passed.
Not by gods.
Not by fate.
By people.
And the worst part?
Those people went home afterward.
Ate dinner.
Held their children.
Slept peacefully.
Evil rarely looks like hatred.
Most of the time,
it looks like routine.
So ask yourself—
If silence keeps you safe,
is it still innocence?
If rules protect you,
do you question who they destroy?
And when the fire finally spreads—
when the line between "us" and "them" collapses—
Will you swear you never knew?
Or will you admit
you knew exactly what was happening
and chose comfort anyway?
---
Kurokawa Central Police Station — Third Floor
No one spoke.
The third-floor briefing room was lit too brightly, the fluorescent lights humming faintly above them like a warning that never turned off. The glass board at the center of the room was transparent, yet it felt heavy—crowded with photographs, timelines, medical notes, and fragments of a life that had ended too cleanly, too quietly.
Miku Hayashi.
Her face stared back at them from every angle. School records. Certificates. Commendations. A girl who had done everything right.
Aiko stood closest to the board, arms folded, eyes fixed on the evidence as if it might rearrange itself under her gaze. Naomi remained near the side table, fingers clenched around a tablet she had already read twice. Kenji leaned against the wall, jaw tight, eyes flicking between data points. Souta and Renji sat stiffly, tension etched into their shoulders. Riku stared at the floor, unmoving.
Daisuke stood slightly apart.
Watching.
Captain Rei finally broke the silence.
"Perfect students don't vanish like this," she said quietly.
Naomi swallowed. "That's what makes it worse."
She stepped forward and tapped the board, pulling up Miku's academic profile. Straight As. Awards. Teachers' notes filled with words like disciplined, polite, exceptional. At home, she had been an obedient daughter. At university, an ideal student.
"Until a few weeks ago," Naomi continued. "That's when the changes start."
Aiko nodded. "She stopped submitting work on time. Started skipping conversations. Barely spoke to anyone."
"She wasn't failing," Kenji added, adjusting his glasses. "She just… stopped being herself."
"And no one noticed anything wrong," Captain Rei murmured.
Naomi hesitated. "Her roommate—Rina—said Miku never complained. Never cried. Never fought with anyone. Rina thought she was just tired."
"Tired doesn't explain this," Souta said.
Aiko glanced at him. "Nothing explains this."
Dr. Hanae stood near the far end of the room, hands folded tightly in front of her coat. She had been silent until now.
"When the body was brought in," she said, voice low, "there were no external injuries."
Everyone turned toward her.
"No cuts. No bruises. No signs of struggle," she continued. "At first glance, it looked like sudden death."
Aiko felt something cold settle in her stomach. "At first glance."
Dr. Hanae inhaled slowly. "When I began the examination… I hadn't touched her yet."
The room seemed to contract.
"The body collapsed."
Naomi's breath caught. Kenji straightened.
"The bones," Hanae said, choosing her words carefully, "lost structural integrity. They folded inward—on their own. No pressure. No force."
"That's not possible," Renji muttered.
"I know," Hanae said.
Her hands trembled slightly now. "Blood began seeping out—slowly, unnaturally—as if the body no longer knew how to contain itself. Muscles followed. They… deteriorated. Liquefied."
Silence.
"There was no resistance," she finished. "By the time I could react… only skin remained. An empty shell."
No one spoke.
Rain tapped faintly against the windows outside, the sound distant and unreal.
Aiko stared at Miku's photograph. "So the body destroyed itself."
"Yes," Dr. Hanae said. "And I've never seen anything like it."
Daisuke's eyes flickered—not to the photos, not to the medical reports—but to the people in the room. Their breathing. Their posture. The way fear settled differently in each of them.
Interesting, he thought.
Captain Rei exhaled slowly. "So we have no murder weapon. No suspect. No trauma. No motive."
"And a victim who was perfect," Naomi whispered. "Too perfect."
Aiko closed her eyes briefly.
"This isn't just a case," she said. "This is something else."
Daisuke said nothing.
But in his silence, something ancient listened.
___
By the time the clock on the third floor crept past midnight, the station no longer felt like a place of duty—it felt like a body that had stayed awake for too long.
One by one, the lights were switched off.
Files were closed. Chairs scraped softly against the floor. Voices lowered—not because anyone asked them to, but because the air itself demanded quiet. The case refused to move forward no matter how long they stared at it, and exhaustion had begun to dull even fear.
Captain Rei left first, coat draped over her arm. Naomi followed, whispering something to Kenji as they walked. Aiko paused at the doorway, her eyes drifting back to the glass board—back to Miku's photograph—before she turned away without a word. Riku left soon after.
Soon, only footsteps remained.
Then echoes.
Daisuke stayed behind.
He moved slowly, deliberately, as if time itself were something he could feel beneath his skin. He waited until the third floor felt empty enough to breathe again—until the hum of the lights sounded louder than the building itself.
He reached for his coat.
"Daisuke."
The voice cut through the quiet.
Renji stood near the elevator, sketchbook tucked under his arm, hair slightly out of place from hours of work that never truly ended. His eyes were tired—not just from lack of sleep, but from seeing too much and understanding too little.
"Heading out?" Renji asked.
Daisuke nodded. "Yeah."
Renji hesitated, then let out a small sigh. "My place is on your way. Mind dropping me?"
"Of course, Renji-san," Daisuke replied without hesitation.
They descended together. The elevator doors closed with a soft, final sound. Neither spoke during the ride down. The silence wasn't awkward—just heavy, like something settling.
Outside, the night had fully claimed Kurokawa. The streets were damp,i, reflecting streetlights like fractured glass. Daisuke's car waited quietly, untouched by the chaos of the day.
The engine hummed to life.
Renji spoke first. "This case… it's not letting go, is it?"
"No," Daisuke said.
A pause.
"You ever feel," Renji continued slowly, staring out the window, "like some cases aren't meant to be solved—only witnessed?"
Daisuke's fingers tightened briefly around the steering wheel.
"Witnessing is still a kind of understanding," he said.
Renji huffed out a quiet laugh. There was no humor in it. "You always say things like that, Daisuke."
The rest of the drive passed in fragments—unfinished sketches, messed-up schedules, the rain that refused to stop. Nothing too long. Nothing too deep. Just enough to pretend the night was normal.
When they reached Renji's apartment, most of the windows were dark.
Renji unbuckled his seatbelt. "It's late. You can crash here if you want. No point driving back alone."
Daisuke smiled faintly. Polite. Perfect. "I'll be fine."
Renji studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Alright. Drive safe."
The door closed.
And the moment Renji stepped away—
Something shifted.
The reflection in the windshield warped—not violently, not suddenly—but wrongly. The streetlight above flickered, and for a breath of a second, the reflection no longer matched the man sitting in the driver's seat.
His skin had lost its warmth. Pale. Almost translucent.
His hair caught the light as white—unnaturally so.
And his eyes—
Red.
Not glowing. Not theatrical.
Observing.
At the edge of the street, a shape gathered. Not solid. Not smoke. Something unfinished, like darkness learning how to exist.
It did not advance.
It waited.
Daisuke lifted his gaze, meeting it through the glass. His eyes narrowed—not in fear, but in warning. The air inside the car felt dense, pressurized, as though the night itself had been instructed to keep its distance.
The shape faltered.
Then thinned.
Then vanished—seeping back into the spaces between streetlights.
Daisuke exhaled.
When he finally pulled onto the road, the reflection in the mirror had returned to normal—black hair, steady eyes, human skin.
Just another rookie detective driving home after a long night.
But somewhere behind him—
The darkness remembered.
___
Renji stood for a moment after the car disappeared.
The street was quiet again, too quiet, the kind of quiet that pressed against the ears. The red tail-lights had already vanished at the end of the road, swallowed by a bend Renji knew too well.
Still—
Something tugged at him.
He turned back, instinctively, half-expecting to see the car still there. Or Daisuke standing beside it. Or nothing at all.
There was only the empty street. Damp asphalt. A flickering streetlight.
Renji frowned.
The feeling made no sense—no sound, no movement, nothing concrete enough to name. Just a faint wrongness, like realizing a room had gone cold long after the window was closed.
"…I'm tired," he muttered to himself.
He shook his head, pushed the thought aside, and climbed the steps to his apartment. The door closed behind him with a soft click. The hallway light went out.
The street remained.
Watching.
Aiko Tanaka's Apartment
Sleep refused to come.
Aiko lay on her back, staring at the ceiling as if it might finally give her an answer. The room was dark, but her mind was painfully bright—flooded with images she could not shut out.
Miku's body.
No—what had been left of it.
Bones collapsing without touch.
Muscle giving way as if it had never existed.
Blood seeping, not spilling, as though the body itself had decided it was finished holding together.
It defied anatomy. Defied logic. Defied everything Aiko had learned, everything she trusted.
"This isn't possible," she whispered into the dark.
But it had happened.
Aiko turned onto her side, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. Her chest felt tight—not from fear alone, but from frustration. From the unbearable sense that something vital had slipped past her unnoticed.
She replayed every detail.
Miku's records: perfect.
Academics: flawless.
Behavioral history: clean.
Except—
A few weeks.
A subtle shift.
Less talkative.
Assignments unfinished.
A presence fading before anyone thought to ask why.
"No one just… collapses," Aiko murmured.
Her hand clenched into the sheets.
What if they weren't looking for a cause—but a process?
Something gradual. Something prepared.
Her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the team. To Naomi's furrowed brow. To Kenji's silence. To Daisuke's stillness—always observant, always calm.
Aiko's eyes opened slowly.
"…Daisuke."
She didn't know why his name surfaced. There was no evidence. No logic. Just that same quiet feeling Renji had felt earlier—the sense of a shape just out of view.
She sat up, breath shallow.
Tomorrow, she decided.
Tomorrow, she would look again. From the beginning. From the smallest detail.
Because something had already gone terribly wrong.
Daisuke's House
The door closed behind him.
The sound echoed longer than it should have.
The warmth he had worn so easily all evening—the polite smile, the careful tone, the controlled posture—fell away the moment the lock slid into place.
Not dramatically.
Naturally.
As if it had never belonged to him.
The house was dim, lit only by a single lamp in the living room. Shadows pooled in corners that felt too deep for their size. The air smelled faintly of incense and something older—iron, perhaps, or ash.
Daisuke removed his coat slowly and set it aside with deliberate care.
His face did not change.
But the order around him did.
The silence sharpened.
The walls listened.
The floor remembered.
On the sofa sat Emiko.
Her posture was relaxed, legs crossed, hands resting lightly on her knee. She did not look surprised to see him. She did not smile either. Her eyes held the kind of patience that came from certainty.
Down the hallway, two doors stood slightly ajar.
Kaito.
Yui.
Fast asleep.
Their breathing was steady, innocent, untouched by the weight pressing down on the house.
Daisuke and Emiko did not look at each other at first.
They didn't need to.
"It has begun again," Emiko said softly.
Daisuke nodded once.
"The signs are aligning," he replied. His voice was calm—but stripped of warmth. "The vessel failed faster than expected."
Emiko's fingers tightened slightly. "Then the balance will demand correction."
Silence followed.
Not the comfortable kind.
The ritual was old. Older than the house. Older than the names they wore now. It did not care for intentions or excuses. It only responded to conditions being met.
And conditions were being met.
Emiko finally turned her gaze toward the hallway.
"They are still pure," she said. Not with hunger. With reverence. "Untouched by doubt. Untouched by decay."
Daisuke's eyes followed hers, stopping just short of the doorways.
"They must remain so," he said.
A pause.
Not disagreement.
Calculation.
Outside, the wind brushed against the windows, gentle, almost curious. Somewhere far away, a dog barked and then went silent.
Emiko rose from the sofa.
"We don't have much time," she said. "The world is paying attention now."
Daisuke stepped forward, the house seeming to shift subtly around him—as if acknowledging his presence fully at last.
"Then we proceed carefully," he replied. "As we always have."
They stood there, two figures in the dim light, bound not by affection or cruelty—but by purpose.
Down the hall, Kaito turned in his sleep.
Yui murmured something unintelligible and went still again.
The house exhaled.
And somewhere, far beyond its walls, the consequences began to ripple.
___