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Hayato pressed the phone to his ear.

Silence, at first.

Then a voice — low, clipped, deliberate.

He listened.

His expression didn't change.

Not once.

"...I understand."

A pause.

"I'll take care of it."

Another pause, longer this time.

"I'll be proceeding forward."

The call ended.

He lowered the phone slowly, staring at the blank screen as though it still held the voice inside it.

Then he turned.

"Get me the department."

Within minutes, the corridor that had been silent only moments ago erupted into motion.

Officers scrambled between desks.

Phones rang without pause.

Printers spat out page after page of names, addresses, transaction records.

Hayato stood at the center of it, arms crossed, eyes scanning the chaos like a man reading a map only he could see.

"Listen carefully."

The room fell quiet.

"Every unit sold under the name 'Echo Board' — I want it seized. Every single one."

"Pull sales records. Online orders, cash transactions, resellers, secondhand listings. I don't care how small the lead is."

"If someone bought one three streets from here or three countries away, I want their name on my desk within the hour."

An officer raised a hand.

"Sir — some of these were sold in person. No paper trail."

"Then you knock on doors."

Hayato's voice didn't rise.

It didn't need to.

"Every board in circulation is a door left open. I want every single one of them closed. Tonight."

"And the source?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"We already know the source."

He reached for his coat.

"Prepare the raid team. We move on the maker within the hour."

Behind the modest stall, behind the friendly smile he wore for strangers, Masanori Shiba sat alone in candlelight, phone pressed to his ear.

"...Are you sure about this?"

The voice on the other end didn't answer immediately.

He waited.

Then, quietly—

"...Okay then."

He ended the call.

Set the phone down.

And rose.

The room around him had changed.

The warm, ordinary walls of his home had been stripped bare, replaced by carvings that seemed to breathe faintly in the candlelight. Symbols overlapped symbols, layered so many times they no longer resembled language — only intention.

At the center of the room stood a long wooden box.

Sealed.

Waiting.

He knelt before it, pressing his palm flat against the lid.

"...Forgive me."

Somewhere behind him, a voice spoke.

Soft.

Hesitant.

"Won't you reconsider?"

He didn't turn around.

"There's still time to stop this."

His hand didn't move from the box.

"...No."

A long silence stretched between them.

"There's no going back now."

The candle flames bent sideways, though no wind stirred the room.

He began to chant.

Low.

Steady.

Each word heavier than the last, as though he were pulling something enormous through a door far too small for it.

The wooden box trembled once.

Then stilled.

By the time the raid team reached the house, the street outside had gone unnervingly quiet.

No dogs barked.

No wind moved.

Even the streetlights seemed dimmer than they should have been.

Hayato raised a hand.

His unit fanned out around the perimeter, weapons drawn, moving in practiced silence.

The door was forced open.

Inside, the air felt wrong — thick, still, faintly metallic.

They found the carvings first.

Then the melted candles, wax pooled across the floor like something had bled there.

Then, at the center of the room—

The box.

Sealed shut, its surface etched with the same symbols that lined the walls.

No one spoke.

"...Sir."

An officer's voice cracked slightly.

"It's already done."

Hayato said nothing.

He stepped further inside.

That was when he saw him.

Masanori stood near the far wall, calm, hands folded in front of him as though he'd been expecting this visit for years.

"...You're late."

Hayato raised his weapon without hesitation.

"Where is it."

Masanori's eyes drifted toward the box.

Then back to Hayato.

He smiled.

"You already know."

A single shot rang out.

Masanori's body collapsed before the echo had even finished traveling down the hallway.

No one moved for a long second.

Then Hayato lowered his weapon, his expression unreadable.

"Search the rest of the house."

"Destroy every board you find. All of them. I don't want a single piece of wood left standing."

His subordinates scattered through the rooms, and within minutes, the sound of splintering wood and shattering carvings filled the house.

Hayato remained where he stood, staring down at the sealed box.

His phone rang.

He answered without looking away from it.

"...Yes."

His superior's voice was sharp, impatient.

"Did you get him?"

Hayato's jaw tightened, barely.

"He attacked us the moment we entered."

"We had no choice."

Silence stretched from the other end.

Then, cold and clipped—

"...Understood."

The line went dead before Hayato could say another word.

He lowered the phone slowly.

For a moment, he simply stood there.

Then he typed a short message on his phone and sent it without hesitation.

He's dead.

A second later, his subordinate's voice called from deeper inside the house.

"Sir! You need to see this!"

Hayato walked toward the voice, stepping over broken fragments of carved wood.

At the back of the house, hidden behind a false wall, stood another sealed container.

Smaller.

A coffin.

His subordinate's hands trembled slightly as he pried the lid open.

Inside...

A body.

Still.

Silent.

Hayato stared down at it for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the dim light.

He said nothing.

He didn't need to.

Sora's apartment was quiet that evening.

The four of them sat huddled together on the living room floor, blankets pulled over their shoulders, none of them speaking much since the night before.

Mochi lay curled in Eishin's lap, unusually still.

The television murmured quietly in the background — none of them really watching it, until—

"—breaking news this evening."

Sora reached for the remote.

Turned up the volume.

A reporter stood outside a house wrapped in police tape, red and blue lights flashing behind her.

"Authorities have confirmed the death of local resident Masanori Shiba, following what officials describe as a violent confrontation during a police raid earlier tonight."

The room went still.

"Investigators say the raid was connected to an ongoing inquiry into recent disappearances and the unexplained neurological cases that have plagued the city over the past several weeks."

The reporter paused, her expression tightening.

"But that isn't the only discovery made at the scene tonight."

The screen cut briefly to blurred, censored footage.

"Police also recovered a body from the property. Preliminary reports identify the victim as a young woman named Lysara—"

Eishin's breath caught in his throat.

The remote slipped from Sora's hand.

No one in the room moved.

No one spoke.

The reporter's voice continued somewhere far away, distant, muffled beneath the sudden roaring silence inside Eishin's mind.

Lysara.

Her name echoed in his head like something refusing to be real.

Mochi lifted his head slowly, ears flattened, eyes fixed on Eishin as though he alone understood exactly what had just shattered.

To be continued...