Aya
The hospital in Tokyo smells like bleach and lost hope. It is a scent I have grown to loathe over the past forty-eight hours. They kept me for "observation," which is just a medical term for making sure I don't collapse from the sheer weight of the horrors I've seen.
I sat on the edge of the narrow hospital bed, staring at the small television mounted on the wall. The news was on mute, but I didn't need sound to understand the headlines. Pictures of Kaito Mori—or the man who called himself Kaito Mori—flashed across the screen. They showed the Tokyo Central Hospital, then the Mitso woods, and finally a grainy photo of a young, unscarred Haruki Sato.
The "Surgeon of Shadows," the media was calling him. A man who had successfully stolen a life and operated on the world's perception of reality.
A nurse walked in, her footsteps soft on the linoleum. She set a plastic tray of lukewarm food on my rolling table. "You need to eat, Takeda-san. You lost a lot of blood from that wrist injury."
"I'm fine," I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. "When can I leave?"
"The police still want to talk to you. Detective Ishii's replacement is on his way."
Ishii. My stomach churned at the name. He was currently sitting in a holding cell, facing charges of obstruction of justice, evidence tampering, and perhaps even complicity in murder. He had traded his badge for the chance to hide the monster he had helped create. He had looked at a killer and seen a son.
I waited until the nurse left, then I reached into the drawer of the bedside table. I pulled out my phone. The email was still there.
"The real secret is still buried under the oak tree. See you soon."
The words haunted me. If the man I had been dating—the man Ishii shot—was the one who killed Sakura, then what was left to find? What could possibly be buried under an oak tree that was more significant than my sister's heart?
I thought back to the night Sakura disappeared. She hadn't just gone to meet a "Gentleman." She had mentioned a "treasure." We were children; we were always burying things—time capsules, shiny rocks, secret notes. But the way she said it that night was different. She was serious.
"If I don't come back, Aya, check our spot. The oak tree that looks like a giant's hand."
I had forgotten those words. I had buried them deep in the basement of my subconscious to survive the grief. But now, someone—the scarred man in the yellow raincoat—was digging them up.
I stood up, wincing as the movement pulled at the bandages on my wrist. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't wait for the police to ask me more questions that I didn't have the energy to answer. I needed to go back. Not to the shrine, but to the forest.
I changed out of the hospital gown and into the clothes I had arrived in—they were cleaned, but they still carried the faint, indestructible scent of Mitso. I slipped out of the room when the hallway was empty, using the service stairs to avoid the nurses' station.
Stealing a car would have been too much, but I had enough cash in my coat pocket for a very long taxi ride.
"To Mitso," I told the driver as I climbed into the back of his cab. "And please, hurry."
The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes widening as he recognized my face from the news. But he didn't say a word. He just put the car in gear and drove.
The forest was different during the day. The sun was out, but it offered no warmth. The shadows under the cedars remained long and sharp. I had the driver drop me off a mile away from the police tape that still cordoned off the shrine. I didn't want to be seen.
I walked through the brush, my boots sinking into the mud. I knew this part of the forest. This was our playground. I navigated by instinct, turning left at the crooked stream and right at the moss-covered boulders.
And then, I saw it.
The Oak Tree. Its branches reached out like gnarled, twisted fingers. We used to call it "The Hand of God."
I knelt at the base of the trunk. I didn't have a shovel, so I used a sturdy branch and my own hands. I dug frantically, the dirt getting under my fingernails, stinging the cuts on my palms.
Clink.
The branch hit something hard. Not a rock. Metal.
I cleared away the earth until I saw the corner of a small, rusted tin box. It was an old tea tin, the kind our mother used to keep in the pantry. I pulled it out of the ground and sat back on my heels, my heart racing.
My hands were shaking as I pried the lid open. I expected more hair. More jewelry. More morbid trophies.
But the box didn't contain anything belonging to Sakura.
Inside was a stack of old, handwritten letters and a series of photographs. I picked up the first photo. It was a picture of a young woman standing in front of Tokyo Central Hospital. She was beautiful, with a radiant smile and a stethoscope around her neck.
I turned the photo over. In elegant, faded ink, it said: "Emi Mori - 1985."
Emi Mori. Kaito's mother?
I looked at the letters. They weren't love letters. They were medical reports. Detailed, terrifying accounts of "behavioral experiments" performed on a child.
Subject: Haru S.Age: 7Observation: The subject shows a complete lack of empathy. He has begun to dissect small animals with surgical precision. He does not cry. He does not scream. He only watches.
The letters were addressed to Detective Ishii.
I felt a wave of nausea hit me. Ishii didn't just hide Haruki's sins after he killed Sakura. He had been involved from the very beginning. He and Emi Mori—a woman who was supposed to be a healer—had been studying Haruki like a lab rat. They hadn't tried to stop the monster. They had documented his growth.
But there was one more thing in the box. A small, modern USB drive. It looked out of place among the rusted tin and yellowed paper.
I pulled my laptop from my bag—I had taken it from the hospital, a habit of a woman who lived through her work. I plugged the drive in, my breath hitching as the files loaded.
There was only one video file.
I clicked play.
The screen flickered to life. The quality was poor, recorded on a hidden camera. It showed a basement room—the same basement I had seen in Kaito's house. But it was ten years younger.
Sakura was there.
She was tied to a chair, but she wasn't crying. She was looking directly at the camera. And she wasn't alone.
"You won't get away with this," she said, her voice steady.
A man stepped into the frame. My breath stopped. It wasn't Haruki Sato. It wasn't the man I had dated.
It was Ishii.
"Oh, Sakura," Ishii said, his voice sounding nothing like the broken old man I had seen at the shrine. It was cold. Analytical. "You were always too curious. You shouldn't have followed Haru. You shouldn't have seen what we were doing."
"You're the one who's sick," Sakura spat. "Not Haruki. You're the one making him do these things."
Ishii laughed. "Haruki is a blank canvas. I am simply the one holding the brush. And today, we are going to see how he handles a 'significant' loss."
The camera panned slightly, and I saw a young boy—the real Haruki—standing in the corner. He was holding a scalpel, his eyes wide with horror. He was trembling.
"Do it, Haru," Ishii commanded. "Show me what you've learned. Prove that you are more than just a boy. Prove you are a surgeon."
The video cut to black.
I sat in the dirt, the laptop screen reflecting the tears streaming down my face.
The man I had dated—the man Ishii had shot at the shrine—wasn't the original killer. He was the victim. Ishii had groomed him, forced him to kill Sakura to "break" him, and then when Haruki eventually snapped and tried to escape, Ishii had "erased" him by giving him Kaito Mori's identity.
The "Surgeon of Shadows" wasn't Haruki. It was Ishii.
And the man in the yellow raincoat? The scarred one?
"He was the only one who tried to save her," a voice said behind me.
I spun around.
Standing ten feet away was the man in the yellow raincoat. Up close, his scars looked even more painful, but his eyes were clear. He wasn't holding a shotgun anymore. He was holding a small, red ribbon. Sakura's ribbon.
"I tried to stop the fire," the man said. "Ishii set it to kill me. To kill the only witness. But I survived."
"You... you're Haruki," I whispered.
"No," the man said, a sad smile touching his scarred lips. "I'm not Haruki. Haruki died in that basement the moment he touched that scalpel. He became the monster Ishii wanted."
"Then who are you?"
The man pulled back his hood. Under the scars, there was a familiar bone structure. A familiar tilt to the chin.
"My name is Kaito Mori," he said. "The real Kaito Mori. Ishii killed my mother because she wanted to stop the experiments. He tried to kill me, too. He gave my name and my life to that boy as a reward for his 'evolution'."
The pieces of the puzzle finally slammed together with a force that left me breathless.
Ishii hadn't shot an impostor at the shrine to protect me. He had shot his "masterpiece" because the masterpiece had become sentient. The man I dated had started to love me—in his own twisted way—and that love was making him weak. It was making him want to confess.
Ishii had killed him to keep the experiment a secret.
"He's coming, Aya," Kaito whispered, looking toward the path. "Ishii didn't stay in that cell. He has friends in high places. He's coming to finish the 'cleanup'."
I looked at the USB drive in my hand. The evidence that could bring down not just a detective, but an entire legacy of madness.
"Then let him come," I said, standing up and wiping the dirt from my face. "I'm tired of running."
In the distance, I heard the sound of a car door slamming.
The surgeon was coming for his final operation. But this time, the patient was ready to fight back.