Case File: "Forest Investigation – Unnamed Client"
Date: Who knows anymore
Location: Somewhere between life and death
Investigator: Itsumi Matzuri
I never thought I'd write a note after dying. Guess there's a first time for everything. If anyone ever finds this, congratulations—you're either as unlucky as I am, or you're reading the ramblings of a dead man who somehow got a second shot. Either way, welcome to the circus.
Let's start with the obvious: dying is weird. One minute you're getting your head bashed in by a bull and stabbed by a lunatic doctor, the next you're floating in a white void, feeling absolutely nothing. No pain, no fear, no anger. Just emptiness. I thought that was it. I thought I'd finally escaped this hellhole, that maybe I'd get some peace. But no. Of course not. Peace isn't for people like me.
Instead, I woke up with my head in the lap of a woman I'd never seen before. She was beautiful in a strange, haunting way—skin pale as snow, hair black as midnight, eyes hidden behind a blindfold. If this was the afterlife, it was a hell of a lot weirder than I expected.
She called herself Kanari. That name hit me like a punch to the gut. My best friend, the only person who ever really understood me, was named Kanari. She died years ago, not long after my cousin Yurei. I remember her white hair, her laugh, the way she always tried to pull me out of my own darkness. This Kanari isn't her. The hair's wrong, the voice is different, and yet… there's something about her. The warmth, the calm, the way she makes the world feel a little less sharp. It's the same. And that's what makes it so damn uncomfortable.
I know she's not the Kanari I lost. I know that. But lying here, feeling her hand in my hair, listening to her gentle voice, it's hard not to remember. It's hard not to wish, just for a second, that things could be different. That maybe, in some twisted way, I'm being given a chance to make up for all the things I couldn't fix before.
What really gets me is how calm I feel. After everything—after the monsters, the ghosts, the pain, the endless running—I'm just… calm. I'm lying in the lap of a woman who could be a ghost, an angel, or something else entirely, and for the first time since I got here, I don't feel like I'm about to die. It's almost funny. This place has tried to kill me a hundred different ways, and now, here I am, feeling safer than I ever did in the real world.
Maybe it's the exhaustion. Maybe I'm finally losing my mind. Or maybe, just maybe, there's something about Kanari—this Kanari—that makes it okay to let my guard down, even if it's just for a moment.
I don't know what comes next. I don't know if I'll survive another day in this cursed house. But for now, I'm going to let myself rest. I'm going to let myself feel calm, even if it's just an illusion.
If you're reading this, take it from me: sometimes, the scariest thing isn't the monsters or the ghosts. Sometimes, it's the moments of peace that make you realize just how much you've lost.