The rain hadn't stopped for two days.
Detective Ryoko Tanaka sat by the precinct's wide window, watching the city blur into watercolor streaks. Beside her lay a new file—one she hadn't dared to open until now. A fresh body had been discovered in the drainage tunnel beneath District 4, matching the spiral pattern.
The victim was Maika Tsujimoto, a freelance investigative journalist. Her last known report, emailed to a confidential source before her death, mentioned one name repeatedly: "Kureha."
Kureha Saimura.
Across town, Haratu Sota stood in silence beneath an overpass, the body site already swept clean. His long coat fluttered in the wet breeze, and his gloved hands clutched Maika's cracked recorder, salvaged from her pocket. It still worked, albeit barely. He pressed play.
"They don't know I'm here," Maika's voice crackled. "Kureha was never missing—she was hidden. Not by strangers, but by someone who once loved her. They called it the Spiral Witness Program... they wanted to record time through human memories."
Haratu's eyes narrowed.
Maika had been close to something. Too close.
---
The investigation's center had shifted. Haratu now believed the murders weren't just physical. They were symbolic—each death a node in a web that spanned not only time but memory.
Ryoko joined him at his apartment that night. Maps now stretched across the floor. Strings of red thread connected victims in bizarre, non-linear patterns. Haratu didn't even look up.
"She was killed three days ago," he muttered, "but her killer died a week before that. And that killer was executed by someone who should've died a month ago."
"You're saying... this isn't just a cycle anymore," Ryoko whispered. "It's folding in on itself."
"Exactly."
Haratu stepped aside, revealing a central node pinned to the board: Kureha's image.
"She's not just in it," he said. "She might be the fulcrum."
---
Meanwhile, deep within an abandoned subway station, a young man leaned against the flickering wall. His eyes were violet—unnaturally so. His name was Shin Kurobane, and he had just returned to the city after years of being presumed dead.
He remembered Kureha.
He remembered everything.
"You can't erase time," Shin whispered to no one. "You can only trap it... and hope it doesn't break free."
Behind him, symbols—like coiling spirals and inverted clocks—glowed faintly on the tunnel walls. He pressed his palm to one.
It pulsed.
And far above, the chrono-core embedded in Kureha's chest shimmered for the first time in weeks.
---
Ryoko dug through Maika's last contacts, finding a half-burnt receipt for a noodle bar in District 7. It was dated the day before Maika's death. She went alone, leaving Haratu to review the audio logs.
There, she met a quiet man behind the counter. When she showed him the photo, he nodded. "Yeah, she met someone. Pretty boy. Black coat. Had... weird eyes. Violet, maybe. Left without finishing his meal."
Ryoko froze. She called Haratu.
"It's him," Haratu said. "Shin Kurobane. He was listed dead in the Saimura Lab Explosion three years ago. Kureha's father died in that explosion too."
"You think he's part of this?"
"I think he's the next node. Or maybe... the one who finally breaks the cycle."
---
That night, Kureha sat alone in an abandoned greenhouse. Her chrono-core beat like a second heart.
"They're coming for you," Shin's voice echoed from memory.
She looked up as the doors creaked open.
Haratu entered slowly. Not threatening. Observing.
"You left this behind," he said, offering her Maika's recorder.
Kureha didn't move. "She wanted to save me. I told her the truth."
"And now she's dead."
Silence.
Kureha finally looked at him. "Then help me end it. Help me stop the spiral. Before it reaches the one death that starts everything."
Haratu's expression didn't change, but his mind raced.
What if the first victim... isn't the beginning?
What if the spiral starts with the last death?
And what if that death is... his own?