Chapter 1: The Town of Perfect Smiles

The train didn't so much arrive as give up, sighing one last time before leaving me in a silence so deep it felt like a physical thing.

The station was the quietest I’d ever seen. Not just quiet, but… still. Like a held breath.

I stepped onto the platform, and the crunch of my own shoes on the gravel sounded obscenely loud, a violation of some unspoken rule.

I paused, listening, but there was nothing to hear. No distant traffic, no hum of electricity, not even the scuff of a broom from a station attendant.

The air was clean, too clean. It was stripped of the usual urban perfume of diesel oil, fried food, and human sweat.

It was just… air. It was like stepping into a museum diorama of a town, not the town itself.

Mizuchi. The name had been a ghost on a scrap of paper, the subject of a report so vague it was almost laughable.

‘Unsettling behavioral shifts,’ it said. ‘A collective amnesia. A uniform calm.’

The agency’s pencil-pushers had stamped it as low-priority, a curiosity for a slow week.

After a month of tailing cheating spouses and digging through corporate trash, it seemed like a welcome change.

Now, standing in that deafening silence, I felt the first cold trickle of real apprehension.

This wasn’t just different. This was wrong.

Walking into the town proper didn’t ease the knot in my stomach; it just tightened it.

The streets weren’t merely clean; they were sterile.

Each house was painted a cheerful, identical shade of white, each garden was a perfect rectangle of green, each flowerbed a soldier’s line of blooms.

It was perfect. And that was the problem. Life is messy. It leaves toys on lawns, it lets paint chip, it has weeds.

Here, there was no mess. There was no life. I saw no kids chasing a ball, no neighbors leaning on a fence to share the latest gossip, no one running late and juggling a coffee cup.

It was a set piece, waiting for actors who had forgotten their lines.

My first stop had to be a grocer. It’s the pulse of a small town; you hear everything there.

A little bell above the door chimed, a sound so bright and normal it was almost shocking.

A man stood behind the counter in a pristine white apron, his hands neatly folded in front of him. He didn’t look up at the sound.

“Good afternoon,” I said, my voice echoing in the small, tidy space.

His head turned, not with the natural curiosity of a shopkeeper, but with the smooth, deliberate motion of a machine.

His smile was immediate and wide, a perfect crescent moon of teeth. But it didn’t reach his eyes. They were calm, placid, and utterly empty.

“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome. How may we help you today?”

The ‘we’ stuck in my mind, an odd, unsettling choice of word.

“I’m just passing through. Lovely town you have here.”

“Yes. It is. We are very fortunate.” His voice was a monotone melody, practiced and devoid of any real feeling.

Time to poke the bear.

“I heard there’s been some… unusual happenings lately?”

The smile didn’t so much as flicker. It was painted on.

“Happenings, sir? Everything is as it should be. All is in order. We are all very happy.”

“Right,” I said, leaning on the counter slightly. “No strange sounds? People acting out of character?”

“We are all in character,” he replied, his head tilting a precise few degrees to the side. The movement was birdlike, unnatural. “We fulfill our roles. It is a perfect system. Would you like to buy an apple? They are very fresh.”

I declined and left. The bell chimed again behind me, a cheerful little sound that now felt like a mockery.

Next, I approached an old woman. She was on her knees, tending to a flower bed of identical, blood-red blooms.

Her movements were slow, precise, each snip of her shears exactly the same as the last, like a machine on a low, constant setting.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

She looked up. Same smile. Same dead, placid eyes.

“Hello. A beautiful day, is it not?”

“It is,” I agreed, feeling like a liar. “I was wondering if you could tell me about the town’s history. Anything… notable?”

“Our history is peace. Our present is peace. We tend to our gardens. We contribute. There is nothing else to note.” She snipped one perfect, red flower and held it out to me. Her hand didn’t tremble. “For you. A gift. To welcome you to our peace.”

I took it. The stem was cold, like it had been kept in a refrigerator.

“Thank you.” I gestured with the flower towards the center of town. A colossal, castle-like structure of dark grey stone loomed above the cute little roofs, ancient, imposing, and completely out of place. “What is that?”

Her smile finally changed. It didn’t fade, but it tightened, becoming thin and strained.

For a microsecond, a flicker of something, raw, animal fear, passed through those hollow eyes.

“The Center. It is where it all began. Where we found our peace.” She swallowed, a difficult motion. “You should not look at it for too long.”

“Why not?” I pressed, my investigator’s instinct humming.

“It is not for looking. It is for… being.” She turned her back to me with a finality that brooked no argument and began her methodical snipping once more. “Have a peaceful day.”

It was the same with everyone. The same hollow smiles, the same rehearsed lines.

“Perfect system.” “We are happy.” “All is in order.”

They were a chorus reading from the same terrifying script. And every single time I mentioned that building, the flawless facade cracked.

Just for a heartbeat. A twitch in the eye. A nervous tremor in a hand.

They were terrified of it, but whatever had been done to them forced the praise through their teeth.

They weren’t just brainwashed. They were programmed. And that castle… that monolith was the server.

It was housing the source code for this entire nightmare of peace.

My professional curiosity, that little itch that made me good at my job, was now a cold, burning need in my gut.

This wasn’t a case file anymore. This was a violation. It was wrong on a level so deep it made my skin crawl.

I had to know what was in that building. I had to know what this horrible, sterile “peace” had cost these people.

I found myself at the edge of the immaculate town square, my neck craned back to look up at the sheer, windowless walls of the structure.

It offered nothing, no flags, no decorations, no visible doors on the lower levels. It was just a giant slab of dark stone, a silent guardian of a terrible, humming secret.

I realized my feet were moving before my brain had even finished the thought.

I was walking across the empty square, the perfect red flower still cold in my hand.

The townspeople didn’t try to stop me. They didn’t shout or run. They just stopped their meticulous tasks and watched me go, their empty smiles still in place.

They looked like an audience watching a play whose tragic ending they already knew, like they were watching a moth fly towards a flame they knew was there but could no longer feel.