"Who are you?"
The question left my mouth sharper than I intended.
I didn't stand, but my posture straightened instinctively. My gaze locked onto him, cutting past the clown paint, past the spectacles, searching for something human beneath the performance.
He didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
If anything, his smile deepened—just a fraction.
Whoever he was, he isn't here by accident. And the way he just mentioned my name is all too real.
"Relax, relax. I already told you didn't I?" He countered with his always anticipatingly confident aura.
And yes, he was undeniably right.
"You know that's not what I meant. How do you know me?" I answered, my glare still peering through his eyes.
He's confident past a masked clown. He's peculiarity is much compromised, when I asked who he was I inwardly grimaced at the validity of his reply.
I just didn't want to admit it sounded stupid.
Not to someone like him.
"You're quite the egoist I see." I said with an unreadable smile and silent chuckle. "You know... you know that your question was stupid and you were just too embarrassed like a wee baby to say that."
"What's your business with me?"
My voice came out colder this time—sharper, edged with something that bordered on hostility. I met his stare without hesitation, letting the aggression show in my eyes.
But he noticed everything.
Rio adjusted his spectacles with a slow, deliberate motion, the chain of his pocket watch swaying faintly against his chest. His smile didn't falter.
"Straight to the point," he murmured, almost approvingly.
I didn't return the sentiment.
My hand remained resting near the white envelope, fingers brushing its edge
I had the growing suspicion that whatever his business was—
It had already begun.
"How do you know me?"
"Because I know your name."
"That's not what I meant."
"That is certainly what you meant."
He tilted his head slightly, the movement refined—deliberate. His smile curved like a blade being tested for sharpness. Then he laughed—light, polished, aristocratic. The kind of laugh you'd expect in a chandelier-lit ballroom, not a cafeteria.
It clashed violently with the clown makeup.
"Are you portraying the fool?" I asked, my voice flattening into a tense monotone.
His eyes sharpened behind the glare of his lenses.
"How could a genius like me be a fool?"
No bravado. No raised voice. Just quiet, immovable confidence.
His smile didn't twitch.
It was a perfect poker face—so controlled it felt manufactured. Untouchable. Unreachable. Like something that existed outside record, outside history. As if no archive, no database, no system I could access would ever truly contain him.
Ever since this man approached—
I felt like I wasn't the one in control of the conversation.
"You're overreacting. I'm only here to tell you something."
He spoke gently—almost courteously—but the refinement in his tone carried a pressure beneath it. The curve of his smile sharpened, unnecessarily intimidating, like it existed purely to provoke.
"I'll give you two choices."
"And if I pick neither?"
His glasses caught the light as he tilted his head.
"You'll see."
The pause that followed was deliberate. Measured. He let the silence swell until it pressed against my ribs.
Then—
"You will sacrifice someone."
My fingers tightened against the edge of the table.
"Who will you choose? Tsukiyo… or your best friend Hiro?"
Everything dropped away as if the world had swung violently backward and left me suspended in empty space.
"What did you do to them?"
My voice came out lower than I expected.
"Nothing," he replied, almost amused. "I'm merely presenting two choices."
His gaze didn't waver.
"You sound accusatory," he added lightly, a faint, playful mockery slipping into his tone.
As if I were the unreasonable one.
As if he hadn't just placed a blade between two names I cared about.
And the worst part—
He didn't look like a man making a threat.
He looked like a man conducting an experiment.
A very sick experiment.
He glanced down at his pocket watch, flipping it open with a smooth, practiced motion. The faint ticking seemed louder than it should have been.
A small frown touched his painted lips.
"Ah. Time."
Without another word, he snapped the watch shut and gave a casual wave—dismissive, almost polite. No goodbye. No reassurance. Just a gesture, as though concluding a meeting that had gone exactly as planned.
Then he walked away.
Not hurried. Not cautious.
Unbothered.
He swallowed himself in a silent shadow, yet his presence lingered like a stain in the air—unwarranted, intrusive, petruding into my thoughts long after he disappeared from sight.
I remained seated.
Cold.
My mind began constructing crude explanations, desperate theories, anything that would make his words less real. A prank. A bluff. A coincidence.
But beneath the logic, something older stirred.
Something I hadn't felt in years. Something dormant left unchecked.
Psychological fear.
Not the loud, panicked kind.
The quiet kind. The one that gives you goosebumps over nothing.
The kind that settles in your bones and waits.
With him I felt as if my weaknesses were exposed, I felt vulnerable... almost futile. He talked as if he knew me my whole life.
Lines of code still compiled. Reports were still submitted. Errors were identified and resolved with the same mechanical precision I was known for. On the surface, nothing faltered. I even hurried through my assignments, finishing ahead of schedule as usual.
Performance intact.
But inside, something had shifted.
More than one coworker glanced at me longer than necessary. I caught my reflection faintly in the dark screen of my monitor—
And understood why.
My eyes looked empty.
Not tired.
Not stressed.
Just… blank.
Like something behind them had momentarily powered down.
The stakes got higher.
The walk to the train station... the walk to the train station felt heavier than usual. My eyes felt heavy and the world blurred in a sort of silence.
I slipped into a reverie I couldn't control.
A quiet, dangerous one.
Somewhere in the folds of it, an ugly thought surfaced—
Do I even want to keep going like this?
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't loud.
Just a faint, intrusive whisper that lingered longer than it should have.
The train doors opened with a metallic chime, snapping me halfway back to reality.
My stop.
I stepped onto the platform.
A few homeless men lingered near the stairwell, wrapped in worn blankets. Posters peeled from concrete walls. A group of thugs shoved a pedestrian near the exit, their laughter sharp and careless.
I walked past them all.
Didn't slow down.
Didn't intervene.
Didn't react.
The spaces between people felt thin—compressed, suffocating. My chest tightened, a faint tingling convulsion sparking beneath my ribs.
I kept moving.
Ignored everything.
Because if everything is meaningless—
Then nothing demands your attention.
"Everything is a worthless bit."
If I die. Will anyone care about me? Can I find purpose in this world?
It doesn't matter.
"I'm home."
"As soon as I got to my apartment, I immediately dropped my bag onto my sofa and took a bath."
"I felt like cooking something mundane, some stake and potatoes. Not really the Japanese norm but it makes America laughable."
"Speaking of Japanese norm, I don't think I follow them very well so it's nothing important."
"I'm talking to myself. I'm giving an internal monologue out loud."
Oh lord I'm going insane.
"Why am I naked in bed? Well... whatever." A notification buzzed on my phone.
Tsukiyo?
*You said we're buying a new phone. Text me where to meet.*
"Sure. Meet me 10 AM at that cafe I saw you go to a few minutes back."
*You saw me?*
"Don't play dumb you know you saw me too."
*You're right, so 10 AM right?*
"Yep."
And she left it on seen.
I crashed my phone on the counter, not even bothering to pick it up and charge it.
"I'm gonna crash out in my dreams."
*8 hours later*
The blaring alarm unleashed a torturing assault in my ears, "7 AM ALREADY?!"
"Ugh… whatever. I slept a good eight hours…" I muttered, shuffling toward the kitchen and pouring myself coffee.
I took a sip.
"…Good might not be the word for it."
Sleep had come, yes.
Rest hadn't.
Still, my body moved with a strange urgency. I showered, dressed in my better clothes—not formal, but intentional. Presentable. Calculated effort without looking like effort.
Then I left.
The café wasn't far, but the walk there felt longer than usual. Anticipation tightened subtly in my chest, a quiet hum beneath my ribs.
When I pushed open the door, the soft chime announced my arrival.
She was already there.
Tsukiyo sat near the window, posture straight, hands folded neatly atop the table.
She was wearing the same dress from the day we met.
At least—it looked identical.
But something about it felt untouched. Not worn again. Not reused.
More like a replica.
Another set.
As if she owned multiples of the exact same version.
Her white hair fell flawlessly over her shoulders, unmoved by time or circumstance.
And when her gray eyes lifted to meet mine—
She was already waiting.
"Hi, seems like I'm late" I said, brushing a hand through my hair as I approached the table.
FYI: This chapter has been MASSIVELY improved my AI. AI has been used in this chapter, the story still stems from my but it has been MASSIVELY polished and improved by AI in terms of vocabulary/ writing and proofreading. But for the most part the story is still made by me, and it follows my storyline that I still had to plan out.
Reminder: I am doing this entirely for fun and please do not harass me for AI usage for I am simply just writing down stories I like.