Chapter Text
Rain made everything look cleaner than it really was.
The alley behind the apartment complex gleamed silver beneath the police lights, puddles trembling every time another officer walked past. Red and blue reflections bled across wet concrete like watercolor paint. The body at the center of it all looked almost peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Yugi Amane crouched beside the corpse, gloved fingers resting lightly against the dead man’s wrist though rigor mortis had already settled in hours ago. The victim—male, Thirty, office worker according to the wallet—sat slumped against the brick wall with his head tilted slightly upward, lips curved into the faintest smile.
Like someone had whispered a secret worth dying for.
A camera flashed behind him.
“Still creepy,” one of the officers muttered.
Amane hummed absently in agreement. There were no visible wounds. No bruising. No needle marks. No signs of struggle.
The man looked like he’d simply… stopped.
The rain tapped softly against Amane’s umbrella where it leaned nearby. He adjusted his glasses with the back of his wrist and tilted the victim’s chin toward the streetlight.
There it was again. That expression.
Not happiness, but—relief.
Amane’s stomach twisted faintly.
“Yugi.”
He glanced up.
Police officer Minamoto Kou stood near the alley entrance, coffee in one hand despite the ungodly hour. His tie was crooked. His expression was worse.
“Tell me you’ve got something useful this time.” The man looked down with a hopeful expression on his face.
Amane looked back at the body.
The victim’s fingernails were clean, clothes neat, shoes polished recently. No defensive injuries, and no signs of panic before death.
The exact same as the last six.
“The killer spoke to him beforehand,” Amane said quietly.
A few nearby officers groaned.
“Yeah, no kidding,” one muttered. “The killer probably killed him beforehand too.”
Amane ignored that.
“He wasn’t surprised when he died,” he continued. “Look at the shoulders. No tension. No stress positioning in the jaw. Whatever happened, he accepted it.”
Kou rubbed his temple. “You’re saying the victim trusted them.”
“I’m saying,” Amane corrected mildly, “that he wanted something from them.”
That got the alley quiet.
Rainwater slid down the brick wall behind the corpse. Amane reached into the victim’s coat pocket carefully and withdrew a folded receipt sealed in an evidence bag.
The Kamome Cafè.
Three days ago.
Kou sighed the second he saw it.
“Again?”
Amane nodded once. The same location had appeared in four previous investigations.
Not enough to arrest anyone. Barely enough to call suspicious.
But patterns were patterns, and every single time—
“She was there too, right?” Kou asked.
Amane flipped open his notebook.
“Yashiro Nene,” he read aloud. “Part-time waitress. Twenty-two years old. Witness statements place her with the victim for approximately forty minutes.”
“Forty minutes,” another detective repeated. “That girl sure makes friends fast.”
“She’s pretty,” someone else said from further back. “Pretty people get away with murder all the time.”
Amane clicked his pen shut. “She also attended the funeral of victim three.”
Kou blinked. “Why? There are no known connections.”
“How strange. Are you sure there aren’t any connections?” One officer asked. “Not even family?”
“She claims he asked her for directions.” Another officer added.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the rain.
Seven dead.
All smiling.
All recently connected to the same girl.
It should have felt obvious, but something about it bothered him for some reason.
Amane studied the corpse again. A strange pressure pulsed faintly behind his eyes. A creeping headache overtook his senses. Not enough to wince, but enough to leave a minor sense of throbbing.
Like missing a stair in the dark.
He blinked hard once, and the sensation vanished. In its place, was a light fuzzy sensation.
“You okay?” Kou asked, with a frown.
“Mm?”
“You zoned out.”
Amane straightened smoothly. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep much.”
“That makes two of us.”
Kou handed him the coffee cup. Amane accepted automatically, murmuring thanks before taking a careful sip. Cold.
He made a face.
“You bought this hours ago, didn’t you?” He furrowed his eyebrows.
“I forgot about it.”
“That explains why it tastes like battery acid.”
One of the officers snorted.
Kou pointed accusingly. “You forensic people drink worse.”
“We have standards, actually.” He argued back, flatly.
“You microwaved curry in the lab last week.”
“Yes, it was very tasty.”
Kou eventually let out an exhausted laugh, cutting through the tension. Even Amane smiled a bit too.
Small. Easy. Familiar.
The kind of smile people trusted. That was probably why nobody noticed how tightly he still held the coffee cup, or how his eyes kept drifting back to the victim’s face.
Relief.
Every victim looked relieved. Like dying had solved something. The thought settled unpleasantly beneath his ribs.
Kou exhaled slowly before pulling a file from beneath his arm.
“We’re assigning surveillance.”
Amane looked up. “On Yashiro-san?”
“Until we know what the hell is going on.” Kou lowered his voice slightly. “Officially, she’s a witness. Unofficially…”
A suspect.
The word hung unspoken between them.
Amane opened the file. A photo paperclipped inside showed a girl with soft cheeks and wide ruby eyes standing outside the café in an oversized cardigan. Wind caught her hair mid-motion. She looked startled the moment the picture had been taken.
Not dangerous.
Not cunning.
Just ordinary. Which somehow made it worse.
“You think she’s doing it?” Amane asked.
Kou leaned against the alley wall. “I think seven people are dead.”
Fair enough.
“She’s either unbelievably unlucky,” the blonde officer continued, “or she knows something she isn’t saying.”
Amane studied the photograph another second. Yashiro Nene smiled awkwardly at the camera, like she hadn’t expected attention.
There was frosting on one sleeve. Strawberry, probably.
“We tried direct questioning already,” head detective Minamoto Teru said, cutting into the conversation. “Nothing stuck. She got emotional during the interrogation.”
“That’s not evidence.” Amane frowned, annoyed.
“No,” Teru agreed. “But it’s irritating.”
Amane almost laughed. Instead, he closed the file carefully. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
Teru’s expression sharpened.
“Get close to her.”