Chapter 29 — Meeting in the park

Tokyo never truly sleeps. Even past midnight, its veins pulse with faint neon and murmurs from the unseen.

Hiroshi sat alone on a rusted swing in a deserted public park, his black gloves stained with dry something — blood or ink, he no longer cared. The pale streetlights buzzed above like dying insects. Their glow made the world feel like a faded photograph from someone else’s nightmare.

A black mask covered the lower half of his face, smooth and inexpressive, while his hood hung low over his eyes. He looked... misplaced. Like someone the city forgot to erase.

“Ah, what a gentle night for little lies to blossom. Tell me, do screams grow sweeter under sakura trees?”
He swayed gently, back and forth.
The swing creaked. It felt like applause.

No one else was in the park — except the girl sitting on the second swing.
Her uniform was wrinkled. Her hair clumped with ash. Her face... oh, her face didn’t blink.

“Still following me, are you?” he muttered, voice almost a purr. “Persistent. Or perhaps... guilty?”

She didn’t respond. Just stared.

He turned to her and spoke louder, a manic cheerfulness in his tone.
“Let’s play a game. I ask the questions. You lie. I win. If you tell the truth, I cut off my own hand. Sound fair?”
He held up a scalpel between his fingers like a magician revealing a card.
His grin pressed against the inside of the mask.

But the girl was gone.

Of course she was. She never really stayed long. Just like memory. Just like regret.

A sharp laugh escaped him — abrupt and staccato. 

He stood suddenly and walked, his steps leading him nowhere and precisely somewhere. A vending machine blinked in the distance. A can of black coffee clattered into the tray below. He didn’t drink it.

Instead, he left it sitting there. Still cold. Waiting for no one.

He pulled out a notebook from inside his coat — dozens of pages, all handwritten in looping, feverish script.

Plans.

Names.

Patterns.

Tonight’s name was circled twice.

"Minato N."

He tilted his head and whispered to the wind, “How many more, I wonder? How many before someone sees past the fog? Before the puppets realize they’ve never had strings?”

Behind him, a man walked by with his dog — ordinary, harmless.

But Hiroshi froze.
For just a moment, the man’s face shifted.
It became... someone else’s. Familiar.

Dead.

He blinked. The man was normal again, humming some tired tune.

Hiroshi whispered, “Wrong face. Wrong time. Try again.”

He turned down an alley, disappearing like breath in winter air.

Excerpt from his notebook (page 134):

"No matter how elegant the blood spatter, the city forgets.
But I don't. I remember each scream.
It’s the only music left."