Kaizen stared at the keypad phone's display screen and felt something cold and heavy settle in his stomach.
The image showed a fat man sitting peacefully on a wooden bench that overlooked a golden wheat farm stretching into the distance.
The man's face bore an expression of extreme happiness, the kind of blissful contentment that made the entire situation infinitely worse.
His shirt hung open down to the last button, and where there should have been a normal chest, Kaizen could only see white bones curved outward in an unnatural arch, as though the ribcage had been carefully bent backward and splayed open like the petals of some grotesque flower.
In the center of that hollow cavity where a heart should have been beating, there was instead a single brilliant red rose in full bloom, its petals perfect and undisturbed.
The graphic violence of the image hit Kaizen like a physical blow and he had to look away quickly.
