Chapter 30 — The Mirror Cracks Quietly

The underground metro station near Shibuya’s old underpass had long lost its charm. Tiles were cracked, lights flickered like dying stars, and advertisements from forgotten years peeled off the walls like dead skin.

Hiroshi sat on a bench at the far end of the platform, one leg crossed over the other, twirling a pen like a conductor before a symphony.

No train was scheduled to arrive.
He knew.
He had made sure.

A woman in a red coat stood at the opposite platform. She looked worried. Maybe waiting. Maybe lost.

He tilted his head, watching her silently.

“Tell me, dear stranger... if you met a version of yourself you didn’t recognize, would you kill it? Or... invite it home for tea?”
His voice was soft, intimate — like a whisper traded in the dark between sinners.

The woman didn’t respond. Of course she didn’t.
He blinked. She was gone.

Just another ghost of his cracked reflection.

A laugh escaped him — choked and raw. He stood and approached the tracks, leaning just close enough to see his face in the filthy metal.

His mask reflected back, but the eyes beneath it… weren’t his.

They never were.

“Who are you pretending to be today, Hiroshi?”
“I don’t pretend. I simply rotate masks like phases of the moon.”

Suddenly, footsteps echoed from the tunnel.

But no lights. No sound of a train. Just the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of shoes.

A young man emerged from the darkness — casual, maybe twenty, maybe less. He wore headphones. He looked normal.

And yet... Hiroshi’s fingers twitched.

The boy passed him without noticing, but Hiroshi turned sharply, his mind painting blood where there was none.

“Don’t do it.”

He paused. That voice wasn’t real. He knew.
He turned.

The old man with the glass eye stood again — the one who had appeared before.
Or rather, the version of his father that only showed up when he hadn’t slept in three days.

“You’re boring tonight. Where’s the poetry, old man? No lecture on morality? On consequence?”

The illusion didn’t reply. Just stood there. Bleeding from a wound that never healed.

Hiroshi stepped closer and whispered, “I’m not afraid of you anymore. You’re just a pattern in the static. A smear on the lens. A leftover echo.”

The old man dissolved into dust, drifting upward as if gravity had given up.

Suddenly — a ringtone.

Real.

Emiko.

He stared at the phone buzzing in his pocket, heart accelerating.

He didn’t remember giving her his number.

He didn’t remember her ever asking.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he crushed the phone under his boot slowly, watching the screen fracture like glass over a sleeping eye.

The name blinked until it died.

[END OF MESSAGE: EMIKO]

He sighed.

“Almost broke character, sweetheart. Almost.”

From his coat, he pulled a folded photo: a crime scene from last week. Carefully orchestrated. Beautiful in its own fractured way. A hidden message in blood, readable only from above.

It hadn’t been discovered yet. He knew that too. He had time. Always just enough.

As he walked out of the station, he muttered to himself:

"The city's waking up. And soon, it’ll remember what it buried."

And behind him, the tunnel remained dark.

But in the far distance, a train horn screamed — though none were scheduled.