Ongoing
The Silence of Water
853
5
Sep 07, 2025
A2,271words
Synopsis

Ayaka Mizuno once had everything: a husband, two children, and a rising career as a manga artist. One sleepless night, exhaustion led to a car crash. Ayaka survived. Her family did not.

Two years later, still haunted by guilt, she retreats to Shiomori, a secluded village in the Nagano mountains. There she discovers Tsukuyomi Lake, a mist-covered body of water feared by the locals. Legends say it lures the living with voices of the dead.

At first she dismisses it. Then she hears her children’s laughter, and sees her husband’s shadow ripple across the surface. Each day the lake shows her more—fragments of joy, echoes of blame—until memory and illusion blur.

Drawn deeper into the fog, Ayaka must face a final choice: endure a reality of silence, or surrender to the water and the family that calls her home.

Note from author

This story was born from my fascination with how memory can comfort and betray us at the same time. I wanted to explore grief not through spectacle, but through silence—how the past lingers in every reflection, and how easily we can lose ourselves when we chase what is gone.

The Silence of Water is inspired by the atmosphere of Silent Hill and Shutter Island, works that taught me that true horror often lies in ambiguity: in the space between reality and illusion.

Writing this novel was my way of asking a question that has no easy answer: do we cling to pain in order to keep the people we loved alive, or do we let ourselves be carried into the depths of forgetting?

Thank you for reading, and I hope Ayaka’s journey resonates with you in some way.

This story was born from my fascination with how memory can comfort and betray us at the same time. I wanted to explore grief not through spectacle, but through silence—how the past lingers in every reflection, and how easily we can lose ourselves when we chase what ...

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