DHAKA TO TOKYO

DHAKA TO TOKYO

Chapter One — The Door They Should Never Have Opened

It was mid-October.

Since late afternoon, an unusual layer of ash-gray clouds had been gathering over the sky of Chattogram. The air carried the damp scent of rain, while cold winds rushing in from the direction of the Bay of Bengal drifted through the narrow streets, creating a strangely drowsy atmosphere across the city.

The classroom of the Humanities Department at Chattogram Government City College was almost empty after classes had ended. At the very back of the room, five best friends—Eva, Ruhi, Tanisha, Tanha, and Isha—sat gathered around a single desk.

They were seventeen to eighteen years old, and their HSC test examinations were only a few days away.

Yet their conversation that afternoon had absolutely nothing to do with exams.

Sitting on the desk was Eva's high-performance gaming laptop. Its screen was filled with rows of Japanese kanji characters, several blurry black-and-white archival photographs, and an encrypted browser window.

“Eva... are you seriously trying to access that Dark Web page?” Tanha asked, taking a cautious step backward from the laptop. There was a trace of worry on her usually lively face. “I really don't have a good feeling about this. You know you can't normally access those Dark Web sites with a regular browser. And those places can have all kinds of trackers!”

Eva brushed the strands of hair away from her face and laughed confidently.

At eighteen, Eva was fiercely independent and fearless. She feared nothing in this world except her Creator. Ghost stories, ancient legends, unexplained phenomena, and forgotten mysteries fascinated her—and researching them through logic and evidence had practically become an obsession.

“Oh, Tanha, that's exactly what's wrong with you guys!” Eva said, rapidly typing on the keyboard. “People are afraid of ghosts because they're ignorant! I don't believe some legendary ghost can suddenly appear out of nowhere and kill people. But the question is, why has Japan been so terrified of the name Aka Manto? How did dozens of people supposedly disappear from station bathrooms from the 1930s until today? I just want to know the logic and the data behind it.”

Ruhi leaned closer to Eva, her eyes fixed on the screen. She had always been enthusiastic about Eva's investigations.

“Eva, the forum you're accessing belongs to a former crime analyst from the University of Tokyo,” Ruhi said. “He wrote that Aka Manto isn't merely an urban legend. He believes it's some kind of cursed digital pattern—or possibly a bloodthirsty supernatural entity that tracks specific digital signals to find its victims.”

Isha sat beside them with her arms folded. She rarely showed fear, even when the conversation became disturbing, but her eyes were unusually alert.

In a calm voice, she said, “People say a figure wearing a red cloak and hiding its face appears in bathrooms and asks, ‘Red paper or blue paper?’ Those who choose red are supposedly skinned alive and drenched in blood, while those who choose blue are strangled to death. It sounds like nothing more than a story. But Eva... why did you suddenly start researching this?”

“Because...” Eva tapped her finger against the laptop screen.

“This morning, I cracked something.”

The other girls immediately turned toward her.

“A hacker group in Tokyo is hosting a Dark Web server under the name ‘Aka Manto.’ Hidden inside it was the original audio file from CCTV footage recorded in an abandoned public bathroom in Tokyo in the 1930s, along with an encrypted nine-digit dialogue code.”

Eva's eyes sparkled with excitement.

“I bypassed the dialogue code.”

“What?!” Tanisha grabbed Eva's hand in shock.

Although she was somewhat frightened, she couldn't hide her fascination with the speed of Eva's investigation.

“Eva, didn't you just say encrypted Dark Web files can contain trackers? Why would you open it?”

“Relax!” Eva laughed. “I've got a VPN and four layers of proxy protection running. Forget Dhaka or Chattogram—even their IP tracker thinks we're logging in from somewhere in Iceland!”

Eva pressed the Enter key.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then—

The laptop screen suddenly turned dark crimson.

At the same instant, the gentle breeze outside seemed to stop.

The fluorescent light inside the classroom flickered violently.

Tap... tap... crack!

A strange sound emerged from the laptop speakers.

It was heavy, distorted, and mechanical—almost like the sound of something sharp being dragged across rotten stone.

It didn't sound human.

Then a sentence echoed clearly from the speakers in Japanese.

“Aka ii kashira? Ao ii kashira?”

「赤いかしら？青いかしら？」

Eva stared at the screen.

Alongside the Japanese sentence, an automatic Bengali translation appeared:

[Will you choose the red cloak? Or will you choose the blue cloak?]

“Eva... turn it off!” Tanha screamed.

But before Eva could touch the keyboard, the entire screen turned blood-red.

Then, across the crimson background, black letters slowly appeared.

“IP IDENTIFIED: CHATTOGRAM, BANGLADESH.

YOU HAVE OPENED OUR DOOR, EVA.”

Nobody spoke.

The classroom suddenly felt colder.

Then—

From the bathroom corridor outside the classroom came a strange sound.

Tap... tap... thud...

Something was moving.

Slowly.

Something wet seemed to be dragging itself across the floor, inch by inch, toward their classroom.

Scrape... drag... tap...

Tanha froze.

Tanisha stopped breathing for a moment.

Ruhi stared toward the classroom door.

Even Isha's calm expression finally cracked.

And for the first time in her life, Eva felt something inside her chest tremble.

She had always believed that every mystery had a logical explanation.

But now, standing in an empty classroom with four terrified friends beside her, she couldn't stop one horrifying thought from entering her mind.

Had her obsession with uncovering the truth just awakened something that was never supposed to be found?

Something that had now found them.

Something that knew her name.

And something that had just walked through the door she had opened.