Aya
The rain in Tokyo doesn't just fall; it erases. It washes away the neon reflections from the pavement and turns the city into a blurred, grey watercolor. I stood outside the National Police Agency, my shoulder aching from the rough handling of the guards, watching the black sedans disappear into the mist.
Tanaka's words echoed in my skull like a persistent migraine: "Aya Takeda no longer exists."
I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the business card I had found. The small, rectangular piece of cardstock felt like a live wire against my skin. The bookstore in Jinbocho. It was my only lead, a thin thread of hope in a world that had suddenly become a labyrinth of lies.
I didn't have money for a taxi anymore. My credit cards had been swallowed by the ATM an hour ago, the machine flashing a cold, red "Account Terminated" message that felt like a death sentence. I began to walk. My boots, still caked with the dried mud of the Mitso forest, felt like lead weights. Every person I passed—the salarymen with their transparent umbrellas, the students laughing over their phones—seemed like a potential threat. Was that man in the trench coat watching me? Was the woman at the ramen stall a plant from Ishii?
When you realize that the police and the predators are the same people, the entire world becomes a cage.
I reached Jinbocho as the sun began to set, though the grey clouds made the transition almost imperceptible. The district was a maze of narrow alleys packed with second-hand bookshops, the smell of old paper and dust thick in the air. I found the address: The Serpent's Eye Books. It was a tiny shop tucked between a laundry and a closed-down tea house. The windows were piled high with yellowing encyclopedias and medical journals from the early twentieth century.
I pushed the door open. A bell chimed—a lonely, thin sound.
The shop was silent. Row after row of floor-to-ceiling shelves created deep canyons of shadow. At the back, sitting behind a counter lit by a single, flickering lamp, was a woman. She looked to be in her late sixties, her hair pulled back into a bun so tight it seemed to stretch the skin of her forehead. She didn't look up from the book she was reading.
"We're closing," she said, her voice like dry parchment.
"I'm looking for the 'Chapter Eleven' section," I said, my voice trembling.
The woman froze. She slowly closed her book and looked up. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent, and filled with a weary kind of recognition. She looked at my bandaged wrist, then at my face.
"You look just like her," she whispered. "Sakura had the same stubborn set to her jaw."
The breath left my lungs in a sharp wheeze. "You knew my sister?"
"I knew her heart," the woman said, standing up. She limped around the counter, gesturing for me to follow her into the dark recesses of the shop. "Literally. I am Dr. Sato. I was the chief pathologist at Tokyo Central before Ishii had me erased. Just like he's trying to do to you."
She led me to a heavy mahogany shelf labeled Internal Medicine. She pulled a specific volume—a thick, leather-bound tome on human anatomy—and the entire shelf swung inward with a heavy, oiled groan.
Behind the shelf was a room that looked like a high-tech command center crossed with a surgical suite. Monitors lined the walls, displaying flickering blue feeds from what looked like hospital security cameras. In the center of the room, lying on a cot, was the man I had seen in the yellow raincoat—the real Kaito Mori.
His scarred face was pale, and he was hooked up to an IV drip. He opened his eyes as I entered, a flicker of a smile crossing his lips.
"Welcome to the morgue, Aya," he rasped. "This is where the 'dead' come to plan their resurrection."
I stood in the doorway, my mind reeling. "Tanaka told me the USB drive was empty. He said the body of the imposter vanished. He said Ishii escaped."
"Tanaka is a liar," Dr. Sato said, sitting at a computer terminal. "But he was right about one thing. The drive was empty. Because I told Kaito to swap it. We couldn't risk that data falling into the hands of the National Police. They aren't investigating Ishii; they're protecting the 'Harvest'."
"The Harvest?" I asked, walking over to the monitors.
Dr. Sato clicked a mouse, and an image appeared on the screen. It was a list of names, hundreds of them, with dates and medical codes. I saw Sakura's name. I saw Haruki's name. And at the very bottom, highlighted in red, I saw mine.
"Ishii isn't just a rogue detective with a hobby for human experiments," Sato explained. "He is the lead procurer for a global syndicate. They call it 'The Centrifuge'. They believe that by studying the anatomy of extreme trauma—both physical and psychological—they can develop a new class of pharmaceuticals. Drugs that can suppress fear, enhance focus, and eliminate empathy. They are trying to manufacture the perfect soldier. The perfect worker. The perfect sociopath."
I looked at the scarred man on the cot. "And Kaito? Why is he part of this?"
"Because I am the failed prototype," Kaito said, struggling to sit up. "Ishii didn't just steal my life. He used me as the baseline for his trauma studies. He burned me to see how the skin would regenerate under stress. He killed my mother to see how the grief would affect my neural pathways. I escaped, but I've been living in the shadows of his empire ever since."
"And the man I dated?" I asked. "The one who looked like you?"
"Haruki," Kaito said, his voice softening. "He was the 'successful' version. Ishii broke him completely, then rebuilt him into the perfect tool. But Haruki had one flaw Ishii couldn't fix. He had a memory of Sakura. A sliver of guilt that wouldn't die. That's why he targeted you, Aya. He didn't want to kill you. He wanted to see if your face could wake up the part of him that Ishii had murdered."
I felt a tear slip down my cheek. The man who had held me, who had talked to me about perfection, was a victim of a crime so vast it defied comprehension. He wasn't the monster; he was the monster's masterpiece.
"Ishii didn't escape," Dr. Sato added, her eyes fixed on the screen. "He was taken to the 'Black Wing'. It's a sub-level of Tokyo Central that doesn't exist on any blueprints. That's where the Harvest is happening. That's where your sister's 'treasure' is being kept."
"Treasure?" I remembered the tin box. "I found the letters. The photos."
"The letters were just the tip of the iceberg," Kaito said. "Sakura found the ledger. The real one. It contains the names of the investors. High-ranking politicians, CEOs, even members of the Diet. That ledger is the only thing that can burn the Centrifuge to the ground."
"Where is it?" I asked.
"It's in the one place Ishii thinks you'll never go back to," Sato said.
I looked at her, the realization dawning on me. "The hospital. The morgue where they took her body."
"Precisely," Sato said. "But you can't go in there as Aya Takeda. You're dead, remember? You have to go in as someone else. Someone who belongs in the shadows."
She walked over to a metal cabinet and pulled out a white lab coat and a forged ID badge. The name on the badge was Dr. Naomi Ito. The photo was mine, but the eyes had been digitally altered to look colder, more clinical.
"For the next forty-eight hours, you are a specialist in neuro-trauma," Sato said. "Kaito will guide you through the vents. You have to find the ledger, and you have to find Ishii. Before the Centrifuge decides to 'clean' the entire wing."
I looked at the lab coat. It was the same color as the one Kaito—the fake Kaito—had worn. It was the color of the men who had destroyed my life. I reached out and took it. The fabric was cold and stiff.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked Dr. Sato.
The old woman looked at the screen, at the long list of names. "Because I'm the one who signed the death certificates for the first ten subjects. I thought I was doing it for science. I thought I was helping humanity. I was wrong. I'm not helping you for justice, Aya. I'm helping you because I want to be able to sleep without seeing their faces."
I put on the coat. I felt the weight of it on my shoulders, a heavy, white shroud. I looked at myself in the small mirror on the wall. The designer was gone. The sister was gone.
In her place stood a woman who looked like she could hold a scalpel without flinching.
"Tell me what I need to do," I said.
Kaito leaned back against his pillow, his scarred face illuminated by the blue light of the monitors. "First, we have to get you into the basement. And to do that, you're going to have to commit your first 'surgical' theft."
The journey to 75,000 words was beginning, and the path was paved with the bodies of the people I had lost. I wasn't just writing a story anymore. I was performing an autopsy on my own soul.