The first click.

The jungle was watching.
Kenji knew it. He could feel it the weight of a thousand silent stares from the trees themselves. His breath came in ragged gasps as he sprinted, feet slipping on damp earth. He shouldn’t have come here. Not at night. Not after the stories.
Just a legend, he’d told himself. Just a ghost story.
But now the air grew colder. The shadows between the trees seemed to shift. He glanced over his shoulder, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Nothing.
He spun back around and froze.
 From his left, a soft, mechanical sound cut through the silence.
CLICK..
A figure stood there, pale and still. A girl. Where her face should have been, there was only smooth, blank skin. In her hands, an old camera.
Time seemed to slow. Kenji’s eyes widened in understanding, in pure terror. He opened his mouth to scream
A massive, splintered branch from the ancient tree beside him shot forward like a spear, piercing clean through his chest.
He looked down, stunned, at the wood protruding from his torso a bloody, brutal donut.
The Faceless Girl tilted her head. A voice, soft and hollow, echoed not from a mouth, but from the air itself.
“Not… twelve days.”
The blank skin where her mouth should be seemed to curve upwards. A smile without a face.
Then, nothing.




The room was thick with the smell of stale coffee and defeat.
Around a scuffed conference table, the Special Paranormal Unit of the Osaka Prefectural Police sat in heavy silence. Case files for "The Faceless Girl" were stacked high, a monument to nine years of failure.
Head Officer Kaito "Kei" Tanaka finally slammed his fist on the table. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
"Again! It happened again! A college student, Kenji Sato found impaled in the jungle. Just like the others. She took his photo, and he was dead in minutes." His voice was raw, strained. "What are you all doing?! We need a backstory, a weakness, a motive Something! The Commissioner is breathing down my neck. If I lose my job over this, I'm taking every one of you down with me!"
He stormed out, leaving the room in a deeper silence.
After a long moment, Senior Detective Makio Yamazaki stood up, his chair scraping loudly. His face was a mask of exhaustion.
"I'm done," he announced to the silent room. "Tell Kei I'm done. Nine years. I've wasted nine years of my life on this. My marriage is gone. My sanity is hanging by a thread. And what do we have? Nothing. She's a ghost. A rumor that kills. I can't do it anymore."
He didn't wait for a reply. He walked out, and a piece of the unit's hope walked out with him.




The next morning, the Commissioner's office was icy with disapproval.
Commander Isao Sato, the old man who ran every police station in Osaka with an iron will, stood by the window, blowing a cloud of cigar smoke into the hazy sky. Head Officer Kei stood rigidly before the desk.
"Nine years, Tanaka," the old man's voice was low, dangerous. "Nine years, and this... thing... has killed over one hundred people on our watch. The public is terrified. The press is having a field day. This is your last chance. Solve this, or you are not only fired you will be the disgrace of the entire Osaka PD. Am I clear?"
"Crystal, sir," Kei replied, his voice tight.
He left the office, his future hanging by a thread thinner than a camera's shutter string.
Alone, Commander Sato stared out at the city he was sworn to protect.
"Faceless Girl..." he muttered to the smoky air. "What are you?"



That night, a middle aged man named Ryo, a self-proclaimed paranormal investigator, stepped into the edge of the jungle. A camera of his own hung around his neck. He was there to debunk the myth, to get the truth.
"See? Nothing," he whispered to himself, scanning the dark, quiet trees with his flashlight. "Just a story for fools."
He took another step.
From directly behind him, a soft, mechanical sound broke the silence.
CLICK..