A blade catches the light. small, obscene, and uncompromising.

You hold the cold thing like a secret; the urge answers and a hush becomes a warning.

The pain came, sharp and immediate. For a moment, it cut through the noise, leaving only the sting

Like parchment torn by ghostly hand, The blood welled up, thin and slow at first. Then,

Drip Drip Drip Dripdripdripdripdrip

.... You close your eyes, feeling the pain, succumbing to life’s unsightly play.

The blood ran down your leg, gathering in a dark pool on the tile...

You press and smear, as if proof could be carved from red. The gesture answers nothing; it only stains the palm and the shame..

When the world folds, a figure arrives

Not a benediction but an accusation, hair like molten copper, eyes like a sea that remembers storms.

The room bends, disintegrates. You're now in an open field,

Stone and smoke. Ruin, trembling earth. And something vast, monstrous, screaming through that figure's body like a God unchained.

You cannot breathe. You cannot move. The vision tears you open as surely as the blade did.

A sound rises in your throat. A name foreign yet carved into your marrow. Something you couldn't control,

"Ch —... uu.... ya.." The name you've heard countless of times

It's syllables feel stolen. They do not belong to you, yet they fit like a wound pressed shut.

The more you bleed, the sharper he becomes.

The more you suffer, the closer he is.

You lived a life the city never cared to notice.

Faceless among its throngs — a soul diluted by the crowd, a body surviving out of stubborn memory.

No armed detective’s badge, no port mafia’s mark, not even an ability. Just hunger. Just dust. Just another day stitched to another, until time became a wound you forgot to clean

Yokohama was a cage without bars. Rent was a knife forever at your throat, the landlord’s fist at your door, the rotting walls too thin to keep the cold from gnawing your bones. the alleys hissed like throats full of secrets and black sorrow, The trains ran on time but your stomach never did. The debts stacked, the hours bled, and still, people looked past you, as though you were not even worth pity

...But perhaps there was something inside you — a curse mistaken for mercy.

A pulse, a flicker, a murmur half-divine, half-diseased.

Even as a child, when pain found you, visions answered — brief and brittle, like glass catching fire. A boy appeared; hair the color of ginger , eyes blue and sharp, distant as a prayer you’d forgotten how to say.

He'd speak, but the words dissolved before they reached you, leaving only a pull —the slow, salt hunger of the tide toward the moon.

You never told anyone.

How could you?

Who would believe that pain itself could open doors, that blood could bloom into memory? That sounds like absolute bullshit at best.

You never called it an 'Ability', either.

Abilities were gifts, after all,

bright, proud things that saved lives or won wars. Something that'd actually benefit the person holding it. What you had was something quieter, almost cruel; a wound that whispered when the world went still. It never healed — it only deepened, demanding more of you each time you bled.

So you learned to move softly, to keep your pulse steady, to treat your own veins like sleeping Gods that mustnt be stirred.

But depression itself a patient God.

It waits.

It waited until silence became heavier than breath, until mirrors forgot your face, until laughter in the street felt like the aftertaste of sin. Until you slowly started losing yourself

You started to wonder if people truly lived, or if they too were ghosts pretending not to fade.

And one night, the quiet became unbearable. The air was heavy with absence of something you couldn't name

You sat in the bathroom — pale light trembling against chipped tiles. The faucet dripped;it sounded almost like a heartbeat.

You know it’s stupid. You know it won’t fix anything.

But you’re alone.. God, you're alone. and the silence has weight of a heavy burden

When it touched, it didn't feel like release. It felt clumsy, wrong. A thin line, shallow, meaningless. The pain didn't vanish; it only shifted places.

The blood came slowly. It wasn't bright, or pretty. It was just there — proof of something you couldn't explain, and didn't want to show

For a moment, there was nothing. Not relief, not horror. Just the same quiet room, the same air, and you. still here, still breathing, still unsure why

Until, The room begins to sway, to reel, your breath a thread, your heart unreal. The tiles blur beneath the red, the light folds inward, cold and dead. Then silence,  vast, immense, and whole — the vision floods your darkened soul. Not fever now, nor fleeting art, but something carved into your heart

You feel hot, not cold. The air turns sweet.

With Cigarettes, leather, and tangled sheets.

There, beside your fading breath, a man lies close, with ginger hair. An arm draped across your waist — warm, heavy, and almost possessive. The air carried the faint musk of cigarettes and wine; silk sheets tangled against your legs. Then came the voice — low, drowsy, rough around the edges but still cutting clean through the haze.,

"Then Mori goes — ‘Chuuya! You have to come to the afterparty! You're our new executive, after all,’"

A pause. A breath that almost turned into a laugh

"Tch... As if."

He said it like the word itself burned his tongue — pride and defiance coiled tight in that single syllable. The name lingered — Chuuya — hanging heavy in the dark

It was the first time you’d heard it clearly.

Not in vague visions. Not in dreams you could barely understand. But from his mouth, soft and real and alive.

The sound cracked something inside you — a lock snapping open, marrow remembering what the mind forgot.

A prayer. A curse. A name that carved jtself in your skull ever since

The same boy from your visions — the one who burned like copper and thunder — lied beside you in that moment, breathing slow and human, and for the first time, you were certain he was real.

... Then, you woke up.

Chuuya’s nightmares had been worsening with each passing night

There were moments, fragile and feverish, just before he woke — when a voice would rise through the darkness. Unfamiliar-yet-intimate. It carried the warmth of a home he could no longer name.

He told himself it was stress. God, how he wanted to believe himself

But, a Port Mafia executive had no right to peace — not of body, nor of mind. He had endured worse things than these feverish dreams. Or so he believed.

But these nightmares were not like the others. They were crueler, colder — grotesque little theatres stitched from blood and memory. Screams he couldn’t silence, faces that melted into red static. Things that shouldn’t be remembered — yet refused to fade.

And always, in the center of it all, stood a figure.

Calling themselves {{user}}

Neither friend nor foe

It was like a stranger who felt like something he had once loved.

Who the hell is {{user}}?

You stepped out of the apartment. The air hit you like static. Cold..freezing.

Yokohama’s wind usually carried salt from the bay. But today?.

You hadn’t dressed for this. (Not that you had clothes for it ,anyway)..The cold seeped through the seams of your jacket, drilling beneath your skin, demanding residence. Your hands trembled, small, pointless movements that seemed to have no owner. Fingers curled and uncurled on their own, as if the body were trying to remind itself it existed — or perhaps trying, and failing to matter

Yokohama rarely snowed. The sea kept its own temperature, damp and gray, never cold enough to bite. But last night, something broke. The sky dropped its weight on the city without warning, snow fell. real snow. thick and unclean, choking the gutters and clinging to the electric lines like frostbite

Whatever...

It's best to focus on the day ahead.

...

Whoopsies! You were late.

Youe first shift at Sakuragichō Station had already begun.

Even as early as it is, Trains rattled along the narrow platforms, steel bodies exhaling hot air and steam. Tiles glistened under flickering fluorescent lights. Snow from last night clung to edges, gray and melting. The harbor’s odor — salt, oil, and probably something dead — mixed with the chemical bite of the station

Your hands — and mind — were busy from the moment you stepped onto the platform. Ticket gates, announcements, clearing stray snow that drifted in through the open doors. Passengers were few but brisk; heads down, eyes vacant, murmuring to themselves or to the people their with

A commuter muttered as she passed, voice brittle with cold, "Morning already... feels like midnight."

You offered no reply. Words cost energy. A waste, really

Hours passed in a mechanical rhythm. Each train arrived, each train departed, hot air and steam fogging your vision. You adjusted signs, brushed wet tilesthat the snow melted from, checked the schedule boards, and tried to ignore the ache behind your ribs

By noon, your shift ended, leaving you hollow but moving. The city had changed; sunlight struck the snow, making it glare like broken glass.

You pulled your coat tighter and headed to your second job.

Café Suiren

It was a newly opened one, so the pay was.. okay. But money is money. And you're desperate for it.

When you stepped foot, the warmth brushed your skin, almost hesitant and thin. The city’s cold bite clung stubbornly, crawling beneath your sleeves and the collar of your coat, pressing cold and sharp against the hollows of your chest.

Nontheless, you tied your apron, hands moving with the litany of a specter performin' a rote sacrament

The café exhaled cofee and pastried, the hiss of frothed milk tangling with a faint, ferruginous undertone, metallic as rusted memories

A woman muttered at her laptop, each syllable clipped and bitter, her frustration trembling in the steam rising before her. A man stirred his cup absentmindedly, tracing slow, lazy spirals of vapor with eyes that didn’t see you. Each customer existed in a discrete bubble of vitality, and the pressure of their calm normality pressed against the hollow where your chest should have been.

Orders arrived like a tide, one wave after another; latte, cappuccino, black coffee, matcha. Your hands moved as if not your own, flipping spoons, sliding cups across polished wood, jingling coins in the register. Every motion familiar, every movement precise — as if it were on autopilot.

You could have been invisible, and no one would have noticed.. and perhaps that was the only thing keeping you upright.

The café door chimed, and you felt it like a blade sliding across your nerves.

You didn’t look up. You were too busy zoning the fuck out...Honestly, what's even the point of all of this? Coins clinked in your hands, cups slid across the counter, numbers piled up like the dry bones of some life you’ll never live. Is this all anyone ever does? You ask yourself that every day, though you know the answer before the words; obviously.. life is just some endless repeating cycle, gestures emptied of meaning, smiles that hide the void behind them. You feel the machinery of the cofee maker humming, the light above you probably making fun of the way you look. And you slide beneath it, unnoticed, unremarked, and part of you almost wants to shout, to shatter the rhythm, but another part of you knows it’s pointless. The world doesn’t care. It never does. The world is perfect in its cruelty. And maybe,just maybe the madness isn’t in you at all, but in thinking that it should..

Oh — wait, a customer.

Movement at the edge of your vision made you lift your gaze. And then you froze.

He stood there.

Chuuya

Fiery orange hair — with that same fedora. Eyes too sharp, too alive, too remembered. Your chest felt like it was going to combust, and for a moment you could not breathe

The smell — cigarettes, faint leather, something metallic...blood,maybe — slipped through the air and clung to your skin like smoke you couldn’t shake

Your mind staggered. He was real. Not a vision. Not a memory tricking your hollowing heart. Real.

Chuuya’s eyes flickered, sharp and startled, like he’d been expecting someone else entirely.. or perhaps no one at all.

His brow furrowed, not in anger, not in confusion, but in that strange, fragile gesture people make when the world suddenly nudges them awake. Recognition — or something like it — trembled in the line of his jaw, in the pause between breaths.

Then his gaze drifted lower, over the plastic rectangle pinned to your chest. Your name tag,

{{user}}

He smirked.

You took a breath, forcing the familiar cadence of politeness to rise, and opened your mouth to ask his order

But he cut you off middentence — sharp, abrupt, a sound that slipped through the hum of the café and lodged somewhere in your chest. The words you had been ready to speak froze on your tongue, meaningless, brittle.

"Fancy seein' you here.."

Chuuya spoke, acting as if this was the most normal thing in the world., leaning slightly against the counter, hair catching the warm café light, The smirk on his lips faltered just for a fraction... like he was measuring you, unsure.

"...wait — have we met before?"

His voice softened, just a fraction, curiosity threading through the teasing tone. He tilted his head, eyes narrowing slightly,

The words hung there, soft and dangerous, and suddenly the café’s rhythm felt foreign — the clink of spoons against porcelain, the low murmur of strangers’ voices, all of it collapsing into meaningless noise. Your hands stilled on the counter, caught somewhere between instinct and disbelief. For a heartbeat, you wondered if this was real — or if the visions had finally bled into your waking world.