The city was too quiet that night.Not peaceful—just muted, as if someone had turned down the volume of life itself.
Ren Ishikawa sat in the back seat of an unmarked police car, watching raindrops slide across the window.Each droplet caught a reflection of the neon skyline — fractured lights merging into one long pulse, like a heartbeat hooked to a dying machine.
He always thought Tokyo looked most honest when it rained.
The Call
"Another case," Detective Arisa Kondo said from the front seat, eyes on the road."Same signature. Emotional collapse, no external injuries."
Ren didn't look up from his tablet."Location?"
"Shinjuku District. An abandoned concert hall. Victim's a music therapist—forty-two, female.Her neural implant logged forty-three simultaneous emotional frequencies before it overloaded."
Ren finally looked at her reflection in the window."Forty-three? That's not humanly possible."
"Yeah," Arisa sighed. "Unless she was feeling for a crowd."
The Scene
The old concert hall smelled of dust, wet concrete, and faint ozone.Rainwater dripped through the cracked roof, echoing like soft metronomes.Rows of broken seats stretched into the dark, their shadows twisting under the faint blue lights of the forensics drones.
The victim sat on the main stage, perfectly upright — eyes open, lips parted as if mid-song.Around her, a dozen small speakers formed a circle.Each one emitted a faint, ghostly hum — fragments of voices, layered like a half-remembered choir.
"Help me.""Please, don't go.""It hurts."
Ren crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the data field.
He touched his earpiece. "Play back the implant's last recorded feed."
The speakers glitched, then replayed thirty seconds of auditory data — hundreds of overlapping voices, all screaming in different tones of grief.Children, adults, strangers.It was a storm of emotions compressed into sound.
Arisa flinched. "What the hell is that?"
Ren's expression didn't change."Her therapy network," he said quietly. "She absorbed her patients' feelings to heal them. But someone hacked the system. Fed her every archived trauma at once."
He stood. "She drowned in empathy."
The Note
On the piano near the stage, Ren noticed a single sheet of music.No lyrics — just a title scrawled in black ink:
"Nocturne for One."
Ren froze.His throat tightened, though his voice remained steady.He flipped the page over. On the back, written in delicate handwriting:
"To the boy who taught me silence."
Arisa saw his hand hesitate. "You okay?"
He nodded once, too quickly. "Collect this for analysis."
But his eyes lingered on the note longer than they should have.
Flashback II — "The Music Room"
Seventeen-year-old Ren sat alone in the school's old music room.The piano was slightly out of tune, the air thick with chalk dust and forgotten echoes.He wasn't supposed to be there.
He liked that.
The room was one of the few places where silence felt alive.
The door creaked open. Miyu Takahashi peeked inside."There you are," she whispered, smiling. "You really don't like people, do you?"
Ren looked up from the keys."They talk too loud," he said."Maybe you're just listening too carefully," she teased, walking closer.
She ran her fingers along the piano keys. "My mom says music is emotion you can control. Do you believe that?"
Ren shrugged. "Control is an illusion."
She laughed softly. "Then maybe that's why you like silence—it doesn't lie back."
Ren almost smiled. "Maybe."
They sat there for a long time, saying nothing.The kind of silence that didn't feel empty.
Present — "Echoes"
Back in the concert hall, Ren stood at the edge of the stage.The hum of the speakers grew louder, shifting pitch as if reacting to his presence.
He turned to Arisa. "Mute all channels except the emotional resonance trace."
The system filtered the voices, isolating one frequency — a calm, steady tone, faintly melodic.
Arisa frowned. "What is that?"
Ren closed his eyes. "A voice. Mine."
She blinked. "Yours?"
He nodded."I used to record anonymous voice journals on the net when I was seventeen. The system must've pulled one of them."
Arisa hesitated. "Then the killer isn't just targeting victims… they're targeting you."
Ren's lips curved slightly — not quite a smile."Maybe. Or maybe the city's just holding up a mirror again."
Later That Night
Ren returned to his apartment near Akasaka.Sparse, organized, cold. Every object had a place.The window showed a skyline of endless blue-white light.
He placed the music sheet on his desk, staring at the words again."To the boy who taught me silence."
For a moment, he let himself remember the warmth of that dusty music room, Miyu's laughter, the sound of rain tapping against the glass.Then he folded the note and slid it into a drawer — beside a small, burned notebook that hadn't been opened in ten years.
Closing Scene
Outside, the Mirror Network broadcast its nightly feed — glowing screens floating in the sky, showing faces, data, confessions.Tokyo whispered with digital ghosts.
Ren watched his reflection in the glass.His voice was quiet, almost tender.
"The more I study people," he said,"the more I understand why silence is sacred."
And somewhere in the distance, from a speaker long disconnected,a soft piano note played by itself.
End of Chapter 2 — "The Silent Choir."