Aika waited until the next morning before searching for the box.
It was buried beneath her bed, wedged behind old blankets and faded receipts she hadn't touched in years. Dust clung to the corners. She dragged it out slowly, her heart thudding with every inch.
She hadn't looked through it since her mother died.
Inside were fragments of a life barely remembered: a ceramic rabbit from her childhood, a single ballet slipper, a cracked CD player. But beneath it all, folded and brittle, was a paper with her father's name.
Renjiro Hoshino.
Signed on an old hospital form.
Next of kin: unknown.
Address: redacted.
Her hands trembled.
She found only one photo—different from the one on her kitchen counter. This one was older, stained by time. Her father stood in a hallway with two men in dark suits. One of them had a blurred face, motionless even in stillness. The other held a cigarette like a weapon.
Written on the back, in faint ink:
Keep this away from her.
Her blood went cold.
⸻
Later that day, she walked the back streets of Shimokitazawa, where her mother once worked at a secondhand bookstore. Aika had never liked this part of town—it smelled like metal and rain, and the alleys were too narrow to see who was behind you.
She found the shop still standing. Faded awning. Same rusted wind chime.
Inside, a woman with silver hair and tired eyes looked up. Recognition flickered in her face.
"You're… her daughter."
Aika stepped closer. "Do you remember my father?"
The woman's mouth twitched.
"Renjiro," Aika said more clearly. "Renjiro Hoshino."
The woman's face hardened like stone. "You shouldn't be asking that name."
"Why?"
"Because the people who knew him are dead. And the ones who aren't… don't speak his name unless they're ready to follow."
Aika's stomach twisted. "Follow what?"
The woman leaned forward, her voice low and heavy. "The trail of blood he left behind."
Before Aika could speak again, the woman pointed to the door.
"We're closed."
⸻
The street felt colder when she stepped outside. The sun had vanished behind a thick ceiling of cloud, and wind hissed through the alleyways like someone whispering her name.
She clutched her bag tighter.
Then she saw it.
Across the street—half-shielded in shadow—stood a man in black, watching her. Motionless.
Her heart stopped.
She blinked, and he was gone.
⸻
Elsewhere
"She's digging," Daizen's second-in-command said. "Went to the bookstore in Shimokitazawa. Woman recognized her."
Daizen didn't look up from the knife he was slowly cleaning. "She's meant to be recognized. Let the memory wake slowly."
"And the woman?"
He shrugged. "If she opens her mouth again, close it."
The silence that followed was not empty—it was loaded.
The man nodded and left the room without another word.
Daizen sat alone in the dark again, watching the city blur behind his window.
"She's starting to remember," he murmured.
Then, softer—
"Now let's see what happens when the past remembers her back."