A Misunderstanding....
Scene 1: Street No. 414 (Outside the Shashimi Café)
The asphalt was slick, catching the greasy, jaundiced glare of a dying streetlamp that buzzed like a trapped hornet... bzzz-zzzt, bzzz-zzzt.
Amagai’s knees were sunk directly into the dirt-caked puddle pooling around Derek’s shoulder, the greasy water soaking right through the denim of her jeans. She wasn’t just crying anymore; she was hyperventilating, huff-huff-huff, the freezing autumn air catching like jagged glass in her throat with every desperate chest-heave.
“Why? Wh--- Derek, stop it. Wake up.”
Her fingers twitched violently against his collar, digging into the cheap nylon of his jacket until her nails turned white, then split.
“It’s a joke. I know it’s that stupid prank from last week. Get up. Hey! Look at me!”
Her voice cracked, splintering against the damp brick walls of the empty alleyway. There was no answer. Only the low, wet, terrifying gurgle of blood settling deep in Derek’s chest--- gurgle-gurgle- as his lungs collapsed.
The metallic stench of it rushed into her nose, hot and thick, suffocating the smell of rain and garbage.
From the dark mouth of the intersection, a shadow shifted. The man stepped forward just enough for the flickering light to hit the heavy, synthetic weave of his oversized black jacket. It hung off his frame, bulky and anonymous.
A cheap black cap was shoved low over a featureless cloth mask that moved slightly against his mouth when he spoke.
“Amagai, right?” The voice didn’t sound entirely human—it was muffled, scraping out from behind the damp fabric like sandpaper on stone. “Lucky girl. Enjoy the extra time. We’re meeting again real soon.”
A wet, rasping laugh rattled in his chest--- heh-heh, kha-kha-haaa-
A sound so casual it made her skin go entirely numb. He didn’t rush at first. He just turned, his heavy boots slapping against the wet pavement in a steady rhythm,
slap, slap, slap- before he broke into a hard run, his silhouette instantly swallowed by the absolute dark of the avenue.
Amagai barely registered his departure. Her brain was working at a furious, agonizing speed, rewriting reality and stitching together any frantic lie to keep from looking down at the reality beneath her hands. Then came the footsteps, frantic, uncoordinated, loud.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
“A-Amagai? Oh God. No, no, no... what did you do?”
She snapped her head up. Hirohito was standing fifteen meters away, his hands hovering near his face like he was trying to shield his eyes from a horrific glare. He looked frail under the dim light, his chest heaving under his jacket.
Amagai let out a sharp, wet sound- half a sob, half a manic, terrifying laugh:
ah-ha... ha-ha-ha-haa!
She didn’t realize her right hand was wrapped tight around the handle of the kitchen knife still deeply buried in her brother’s ribs. Her palms were entirely crimson, the blood already turning tacky and cooling in the night air, gluing her skin to the hilt.
“Hirohito! Look at him,” she breathed, her lips trembling so violently she could barely form the syllables.
“See? This dumb idiot is doing it again. Tell him to stop. Tell him he won the bet. He’s ruining my clothes, Hirohito... tell him to wake up right now!"
Hirohito didn’t move an inch closer. His boots stayed glued to the pavement, his eyes wide and tracking the dark stains on her fingers.
“You... you did this. You’re a murderer, Amagai.”
His voice dropped, losing its panic and replacing it with a cold, hollow disgust that cut deeper than the wind. “Never look at me again. You deserve to rot for this. I’ll make sure you do.”
With trembling fingers, he yanked his phone from his pocket, pressing it to his ear. His eyes never left the bloody knife in her grip, treating her like a wild animal cornered in a cage.
“Hello? Yes, sir. Homicide. I’m witnessing a homicide right now,” he stammered into the receiver, his voice echoing off the brick.
“Street 414, right by the Shashimi Café. The killer is right here. Fifteen meters away from me. She’s still holding the weapon. Get someone here now.”
He clicked the phone off with a sharp clack, the heavy silence rushing back over them like ice water.
“What are you saying?” Amagai shrieked, pulling her hands away from the body and pressing them to her own head, smearing Derek’s hot blood across her cheeks, her eyelids, and into her hair.
“Who are you talking to?! What criminal? Hirohito, listen to me! It was a mask- a man in a black mask---”
He didn’t listen. He didn’t even blink. He took three deliberate, panicked steps backward into the deeper shadows of the street---
shhh-shhh-shhh.
Completely cutting off her words and casting his verdict in the dark.
The distance filled with the rising, metallic wail of a siren approaching from the left avenue-
WEE-WOO-WEE-WOO--- the sound bouncing violently off the high-rises.
“Derek, please!” Amagai screamed, clamping her bloody hands over her ears to block out the deafening noise.
“Wake up! It’s too much! If the cops get here, I swear to God I’ll actually kill you! Derek!”
The cruiser screeched to a halt at an angle-
SCREEEECH!—
Its tires smoking on the wet asphalt. Blue and red lights painted the brick walls in violent, nauseating pulses. Hirohito stepped toward the opening door of the vehicle, his finger pointing straight through the strobe-light chaos.
“Sir. She did it. She’s right there. Don’t let her move.”
Amagai went entirely still. The screaming stopped. The frantic bargaining in her head died. She just stared at Hirohito through the flashing lights, her vision blurring as the blood dried tight on her skin.
“The truth is,” she whispered, her voice dead, flat, and quiet under the rumbling idle of the police engine, “you never trusted me. You just wanted an excuse to kick me out. You don’t even know what a best friend is, do you?”
A cruel, desperate smirk twisted the left side of her lips. As the two heavy officers grabbed her upper arms, dragging her roughly up from the wet asphalt, she didn’t fight.
They shoved her into the hard, cold plastic back seat of the cruiser, slamming the door with a heavy metal thud--- SLAM!
Through the scratched, rain-streaked glass, she watched the medics hoist Derek’s heavy, unmoving form into the back of an ambulance, a white sheet already pulled over his face.
Then, the sky finally broke.
RUMBLE-CLAP!
The rain didn’t fall clean; it was heavy, thick, and greasy with the city’s industrial soot, dropping in dark-grey smears across the pavement---
Pitter-patter-splat-splat.
Hirohito stood completely alone under the sudden downpour. Suddenly, as the ambulance pulled away, his knees gave out. He hit the ground hard, slamming both hands over his mouth to choke back a violent, gut-wrenching sob.
He collapsed entirely onto the wet concrete, his clothes soaking in the filth of the street, his body shaking so violently that his internal agony was laid bare, completely indistinguishable from the black rain.
Scene 2: St. Jude’s Hospital (Morgue & Storage)
The air in the basement storage room smelled aggressively of industrial bleach, cold steel, and the faint, underlying sweetness of old iron. It was a suffocating kind of clean.
“Sir, isn’t this... body number twenty? The one from the café street this afternoon?”
Akio adjusted his scrubs, the stiff, unwashed fabric chafing uncomfortably against the back of his neck. He’d only been a junior surgeon here for seven days, and the absolute, heavy quiet of the dead-room still made the hair on his arms stand up. Every shadow felt too long.
His senior, Dr. Vance, didn’t look up from the steel tray where he was organizing a row of clean scalpels, clink, clink, clink.
“Well, look at you, rookie. Glad to see you’re actually using your eyes instead of just staring at the clock. I was looking at the entry wound myself before you walked in. Something is completely off about the whole intake file.”
“Sir, when we took the oath, we swore to protect life,” Akio said, his voice earnest but building with a nervous tension.
He stepped closer to the stainless-steel table where the covered shape of Derek lay.
“That commitment doesn’t stop just because a heart did. If there’s an error on a chart, internal or external... it’s our job to mark it accurately. We owe that to whoever is on this table.”
“Calm down, kid. Save the speech for the board,” Vance muttered, his voice dry.
“Let’s just wait for the coroner’s official postmortem panel before we start rewriting city paperwork.”
Three sharp, rapid knuckles rapped against the heavy steel fire door,
Knock-knock-knock!
The sound echoing loudly in the sterile room. A nurse in faded green scrubs slid inside, her shoes squeaking loudly against the linoleum--- squeak, squeak.
She held a thick manila folder tight against her chest like a shield.
“Come in, nurse. What do you have for us?” Akio asked, turning away from the table.
“The expedited charts you asked for from the intake deck, Doctor,”
She said, handing them over with a tired, overworked sigh, haaa-ah. “The police precinct wanted these fast-tracked, so they just dropped them off.”
“Perfect. Thank you, sister,” Akio said, a brief flash of relief breaking through his exhaustion. “Now I can actually submit these to administration, log my hours, and get out of here before midnight for once.”
Vance leaned over the counter, his eyes narrowing to small slits behind his glasses.
“Hey, New Blood. Weren’t you just losing your mind over number twenty a second ago? Check the trauma layout in that file while you have it open. Satisfy your curiosity.”
“Right. Let’s see...” Akio flipped past the standard toxicology screens and the initial paramedic assessments, rustle-flip--- until he hit the detailed trauma chart.
His fingers froze against the crisp edge of the paper. His breath hitched, gasping.
“Akio.” Vance’s voice lost all its usual cynical edge. It went completely hollow, dropping an octave. “Is that...?”
Akio had never heard the older man use his first name like that. It felt wrong. A heavy chill rippled down his spine. “Sir? What is it? Look at this line right here... are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Look at the depth analysis, Akio. Look at the entry angle of the blade.”
Akio scanned the recorded numbers, his eyes darting frantically across the page.
“This... this is completely impossible. The police report filed it as an assault by a sixteen-year-old girl. A domestic dispute. Sir, a kid of her stature couldn’t generate this kind of downward force. Look at the bone chipping. The trajectory matches someone at least six feet tall, striking downward with professional precision. Don’t you think-”
“I think we shut our mouths,” Vance cut in sharply, his hand reaching out to slam down on the edge of the dissection table.
THUD!
His knuckles were white. “If we challenge the official intake from the precinct, we’re done. Fired. Blacklisted from every hospital in the state by morning. Don’t even think about it, junior. Put the file down.”
“I told you before, sir,” Akio said, his voice turning hard, all the timidness of a rookie vanishing as he slammed the manila folder shut.
WHAP!
“I don’t break my word. And I don’t ignore the facts staring me in the face. I’m taking this directly up to the board of directors. If the police lied, someone needs to answer for it.”
He turned sharply on his heel, rushing toward the heavy double doors with the paperwork tucked firmly under his arm.
“Akio! Dammit, think about your career! You have a family! Wait!”
Vance yelled, his clunky rubber clogs squeaking loudly against the bright linoleum- squeak-squeak-squeak, as he bolted down the hallway after him, his white coat billowing behind him.
“Dad--- stop. Why is he wrong?”
The voice echoed from the dim shadows of the intersecting corridor, cold, sharp, and unexpected enough to make Dr. Vance freeze mid-stride, his breath catching in his throat.
Vance slowly turned his head toward the figure standing just under the flickering fluorescent light of the hallway. “You? What the hell are you doing here at this hour?”
