The rain had stopped, but the city still wept.
Detective Haruto Morita sat in his unmarked car, engine off, steam rising from the pavement like breath from a sleeping beast. The dashboard was littered with case files, coffee cups, and a single framed photo — faded, corner cracked — of a little girl in a pink yukata, holding a paper lantern.
**Miyu.**
Age 8.
Gone three years.
Cancer.
Fast.
Cruel.
The kind that steals a child's voice before her laughter.
He hadn't touched the case in months.
Not officially.
But it never left.
And now —
—it was leading him back.
Because the file on his lap wasn't about drugs.
Wasn't about theft.
Wasn't even about murder.
It was about **disappearance**.
About beauty.
About red.
> **Case #33-17**
> **Subject: Aya Kurenai**
> **Status: Active / Unverified Phenomenon**
> **Classification: "The Crimson Chain – 13th Cycle"**
He flipped it open.
Not police standard.
This was his *personal* ledger — black notebook, pages stained with tea and time, filled with handwriting that grew more frantic with every entry.
---
### 📄 **Case File – Entry #1**
> **Date:** October 3, 2023
> **Location:** NHK Hall, Tokyo
> **Observation:** Subject Aya Kurenai performed live. Mid-dance, secondary figure observed in mirror dimension — male, black kimono, red lining. Designated "Ren."
>
> Reflection of subject moved independently. Duration: 7.3 seconds. Confirmed via slow-motion analysis.
>
> Audience reported "chills," "déjà vu," "a feeling of being watched."
>
> One elderly woman (later identified as Madame Satsuki, retired dance master) whispered: "The 13th has begun."
>
> **Personal Note:** I've seen this before. Not here. In my dreams.
> Miyu, two weeks before she died, drew a picture.
> Me, standing in a field of mirrors.
> A woman in red, dancing on glass.
> She said: "Papa, that's the lady who sings when you cry."
> I threw it away.
> I was wrong.
---
Morita exhaled, fogging the windshield.
He pulled the sketch from his inner pocket.
Miyu's drawing.
Crude.
Childlike.
But unmistakable.
Him, in his old uniform, kneeling.
A woman in a red kimono, floating above a shattered floor.
And behind her —
—a man with storm-gray eyes, half his face made of mirror.
At the top, in wobbly kanji:
**"The Lady Who Dances So No One Forgets."**
He hadn't understood it then.
Now, he did.
Because this wasn't just a case.
It was a **pattern**.
And he had been blind.
---
### 📄 **Case File – Entry #5**
> **Cross-Reference:** 12 confirmed cases of artist disappearances (1703–2009). All followed same trajectory:
> - Sudden rise to fame after "transcendent" performance.
> - Wore red garments (kimono, dress, scarf) described as "unnaturally vivid."
> - Final public appearance: "flawless, but empty."
> - Vanished within 40 days. No bodies. No traces.
>
> Common thread: All performed a *forbidden dance* before disappearance.
> Designated: "The Unbinding" or "The Crimson Chrysanthemum."
>
> Surviving witnesses report: "She was still dancing… but not in this world."
>
> **Conclusion:** Not abduction. Not suicide.
> **Assimilation.**
> Subject is absorbed into a spiritual construct — designated "Mirror Theater."
> Perpetrator: "Ren" — entity feeding on artistic perfection via erasure of identity.
>
> **New Lead:** A sister, Yumi Kurenai, arrived in Tokyo 3 days ago. Carrying ancestral scroll. May possess counter-ritual.
---
Morita flipped to a new page.
He had spent the last week digging.
Not through police databases.
Through *shrines*.
*Libraries*.
*Folklore archives*.
And he had found it.
A scroll from the **Daisho Monastery**, written in 18th-century hand:
> *"The Crimson Chain was forged not to destroy the Mirror King, but to* remember *him.
> For he was once a dancer who loved too much.
> And when he forgot his name, he began to take others' to fill the silence.
> The Thirteenth must not break him.
> She must* recall *him."*
Morita underlined it three times.
Then, in red pen:
> **"This isn't about saving Aya.**
> **It's about saving* him*."**
---
### 🌑 Flashback: *Miyu's Last Day*
The hospital room was quiet.
Miyu lay in the bed, too small, too pale, her breathing shallow.
A single paper crane dangled from the IV stand — one he had folded for her, clumsy, crooked.
She reached for it.
"Papa," she whispered, voice a thread.
"Do you think I'll be forgotten?"
He took her hand.
"No. Never."
She smiled.
"But what if… I forget* you*?"
He kissed her forehead.
"Then I'll remember for both of us."
She closed her eyes.
And for a long time, she didn't speak.
Then, softly:
"There's a lady in red.
She dances in my dreams.
She says… she keeps names safe.
Even when people die."
A pause.
"She says… you'll see her when you're ready."
He thought it was the medicine.
The pain.
The mind slipping.
But now —
—he knew.
Miyu hadn't been hallucinating.
She had been **seeing**.
And the lady in red?
She wasn't a ghost.
She was a **guardian**.
Of the ones who were loved.
Of the ones who were lost.
Of the ones who *should not be erased*.
---
### 📄 **Case File – Entry #9**
> **New Hypothesis:**
> The red kimono does not merely consume.
> It *archives*.
> Every artist taken becomes a thread in an eternal tapestry of beauty.
> But memory is not gone.
> It is *trapped*.
>
> The Mirror Theater is not a prison.
> It is a* mausoleum of art*.
> And Ren is not just its king.
> He is its* first grave*.
>
> **Implication:** If the Thirteenth (Aya Kurenai) performs the Unbinding not to destroy, but to* release* —
> the trapped artists may return.
> Not as bodies.
> Not as souls.
> But as* memory*.
>
> And Ren?
> He may finally be allowed to* forget* —
> and thus, be free.
---
Morita closed the notebook.
He looked at Miyu's photo.
"I'm sorry I didn't listen," he whispered.
"I'm sorry I didn't believe you."
He touched the glass.
"But I do now."
"I see her."
"And I'm not letting her take you again."
He started the car.
Drove through the wet streets, past neon and shadow, toward the Hoshino Suite.
He wasn't there to arrest.
Not to interrogate.
To **witness**.
To **remember**.
Because he finally understood:
The case wasn't about solving a crime.
It was about **closing a wound**.
His own.
And the world's.
And somewhere, in the silence between heartbeats, a little girl in a pink yukata smiled.
And the lady in red began to dance.
Not for fame.
Not for eternity.
But for **those who still grieve**.