The rain fell in steady sheets over the city, cloaking the streets in a shimmering blur. Neon signs flickered on and off, casting strange reflections on the puddled pavement. Haratu Sota sat in silence inside a dim café near the eastern precinct, the steam from his untouched cup of coffee swirling upward like a silent wraith.
He had read the new report five times.
Another body had been found.
Another unnatural pattern.
But this time, something had changed.
"This one left a voice message," Ryoko Tanaka's voice crackled through the earpiece, breaking the silence.
Haratu's eyes narrowed. "A message?"
"Yes. The victim was recording something. It's only thirty-five seconds, and it's fragmented… but you need to hear it."
He stood up, coat slung over his shoulder, and walked out into the rain without another word.
—
At the precinct, the forensics lab had already isolated the voice recording from the deceased's phone. Haratu, Ryoko, and Chief Inspector Masuda sat in the small analysis room, the only sound being the soft hum of the servers behind the glass partition.
The audio played.
—if you're hearing this… I know I'm next. I saw his face—he wasn't supposed to be here—
Static cut in.
—he smiled. It was the same as the photo. The one from… twelve years ago—
Another break.
—Don't trust the ones who know your name without you ever telling them—
And then a final chilling whisper.
—He said the cycle was never broken. Only bent…
Click.
The room fell into dead silence.
"A photo from twelve years ago?" Ryoko whispered, scribbling notes furiously. "Could be linked to a past case. Maybe even the original incident that triggered the cycle."
Masuda grunted. "Still no idea how they're dying before they even kill someone. And this message—it's almost like he's talking about a ghost."
"No," Haratu said quietly, "not a ghost. Someone real. Someone who planned this cycle a long time ago."
He paused, eyes distant.
"Ryoko. We need to find every murder case twelve years back that involved a mysterious photo."
"And anyone still alive connected to it?" she asked.
"Especially them."
—
Meanwhile, in the heart of the city, in an abandoned apartment complex under renovation, a woman in a charcoal coat stood by the shattered window of a top floor unit. Her eyes were dull gray, her hair cut short, and her lips moved soundlessly as she read from an old file.
"Miyako Saionji. Age thirty-four. Former criminal psychologist," she muttered. "Presumed dead. But they didn't find a body, did they?"
She tucked the file back into her bag, fingers briefly resting on a pendant hanging around her neck—a cracked silver disc with a spiral engraving.
Behind her, a shadow moved.
"You're digging in old graves again," came a soft male voice.
She didn't flinch. "Old graves are where this story began, Kuro."
Kuro, clad in black with eyes like a faded starless night, stepped beside her. "Do you want to tell him the truth? Or keep testing him?"
"I want to see how far he can go before he realizes who's been pulling the strings."
"Haratu Sota," Kuro said thoughtfully. "Do you think he'll solve it?"
She looked down at the city, neon lights blinking through the mist.
"If he doesn't," she said, "then the next spiral begins."
—
Back at Haratu's apartment, he sat before his wall of evidence. Photographs, red strings, scribbled notes, and case files formed an intricate web that had grown far beyond the original three victims.
He replayed the message again, closing his eyes to the voice.
Twelve years ago… a smile in a photo…
He dug through an old locked drawer. There, deep within a sealed envelope, was a case file he'd been given when he first joined the force. A cold case.
Case #0413-C: The Spiral Man.
He hadn't thought about that name in years.
According to the reports, five victims had been found over three months, each killed by someone who was already dead. And in each scene, a small disc was left—a silver spiral, identical to the pendant in the voice recording.
He'd never connected it to this case… until now.
"Chief Inspector Masuda," he called over the line, "Do we have any remaining evidence from Case 0413-C?"
"Just one box. No DNA, no confirmed suspect. But I'll have it sent over."
As the line clicked off, Haratu turned to the one photo included in the file. It showed a young man smiling in a group picture outside a psychiatric institute. In the corner, just barely visible, was a woman.
Her eyes were dull gray. Her hair short.
The same woman Ryoko had spotted once at a crime scene, lingering in the background.
"Miyako Saionji," Haratu whispered.
Suddenly, the pieces clicked. If she was alive—and if she had been a psychologist back then—was she the one who designed the cycle?
And if so… why?
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
Ryoko stood at the door, holding a report. "You're going to want to see this. We found another disc—on the rooftop of the building the last victim died in. And fingerprints."
Haratu's gaze sharpened. "Whose?"
She hesitated.
"Yours."
He froze.
"Mine?"
Ryoko nodded, voice taut. "And it wasn't a match pulled from the precinct records. It was matched to a private security report from twelve years ago. The same case you just asked about."
Haratu stared at his hand.
Twelve years ago, he had been just a trainee, sent to observe a psychiatric institute in a minor role. He remembered nothing unusual. But someone had been watching even then.
Someone who had bent the cycle… long before it started.
Haratu Sota's hands tightened into fists, his knuckles pale under the room's harsh fluorescent light. The report Ryoko had handed him sat like a weight in his lap. His fingerprints—found at a fresh crime scene from a case whose roots ran twelve years deep. A time he could barely remember. A case long thought buried.
"That has to be a mistake," he said, voice cold but laced with a rare hint of uncertainty.
Ryoko shook her head. "We triple-checked. Same pattern. Same ridge detail. It's not from now… it's from then."
"Then someone preserved those prints," he muttered, standing abruptly. "Deliberately. Waiting for the right moment to place them."
"You were a trainee back then," Ryoko added, almost gently. "They could've collected your prints from something at the institute—an object, maybe a pen, clipboard…"
"Or a disc," Haratu cut in. His mind moved fast now, racing across timelines and half-forgotten faces. "They knew I'd one day come back to this. That I wouldn't let it go."
Ryoko crossed her arms. "But why you? Why loop you into this?"
Haratu turned to the board behind him, pulling out a pinned photo from the Spiral Man file. The group photo.
"There," he said, tapping the edge. "That's me. Just in the background. I was only supposed to observe, not even investigate."
Ryoko leaned in. The young Haratu stood awkwardly beside a doorframe, half-cut from the shot.
"And there," he added, pointing again, "Miyako Saionji."
It was faint, but the gray-eyed woman was there—barely distinguishable—sitting with a patient under a tree. Her hand rested on their shoulder. Her eyes, even in the low resolution, were hauntingly focused on the camera.
"She knew I was there," Haratu whispered. "She planned this from the start."
—
Across the city, in a worn-down church turned sanctuary for the homeless, Miyako Saionji sat before a circle of candles, a worn notebook on her lap. She hummed softly—an old lullaby.
Behind her, Kuro approached with careful steps. "The pieces are almost all in place," he said. "And Haratu's caught the thread."
"Good," she replied, without looking up. "He was always the one meant to see it through."
"You're risking exposure," Kuro warned. "The others won't stay hidden if he digs too deep."
Miyako flipped a page. Symbols littered the paper—concentric spirals, arcane scripts, names both alive and dead.
"I never meant to hide forever. Let them come. It's time we all paid for what we did."
She closed the book and blew out one candle.
"One by one."
—
Back at the precinct, Haratu and Ryoko sat in a private interview room with an elderly man named Dr. Hikaru Masashiro—the last surviving staff member of the psychiatric institute involved in Case 0413-C.
His hands trembled as he reached for the cup of tea Ryoko offered.
"I knew you'd come eventually," he said to Haratu, voice frail but lucid. "She always said you would."
"Who?" Haratu asked, though he already knew.
"Miyako," the doctor replied. "Back then, she was brilliant. But disturbed. She had… theories. About recursion. Time loops. Human behavior that could be patterned into… cycles."
Ryoko leaned forward. "She believed she could predict crimes?"
"No," Masashiro corrected. "She believed she could design them. Shape people's decisions. Not just one murder… but an entire chain. A perfect cycle where guilt and justice collapse into each other."
Haratu's stomach tightened. "She tested it?"
Masashiro nodded solemnly. "She used five patients. She made each believe they were righteous. That their act would avenge the one before. Each time, she left something behind—one of those spiral discs. To reinforce the illusion."
"And you allowed this?" Ryoko asked, horrified.
"No!" the doctor coughed. "I tried to stop her. But she vanished after the fifth death. Burned all records. And the institute was shut down not long after."
Haratu leaned back, mind swimming. "Then someone resurrected the cycle. Or it never truly ended."
Masashiro looked Haratu dead in the eye. "She said one more thing. That a child who watched from the corner would become the next designer… or the one who breaks the spiral."
The room went silent.
Ryoko turned to Haratu slowly.
"You were that child."
—
That night, Haratu returned to his apartment alone. The city outside buzzed with late-night traffic, but the walls felt oppressively silent.
He stared at his reflection in the window—older now, colder—but still holding onto a part of himself he didn't fully understand. A memory drifted in:
A younger Haratu. A warm summer afternoon. Sitting in the corner of a hospital garden. Watching a woman speak gently to a patient. Her voice melodic. Her eyes unwavering.
"Justice and guilt," she had said, "are not opposites. They're reflections."
She had seen him that day. And she had smiled.
Rain hammered the city like a warning. Haratu Sota walked briskly under the flickering streetlights, the sounds of midnight echoing through narrow alleys. The name Miyako Saionji pulsed in his mind like an infection that had never healed.
He didn't go home.
Instead, he stood before the crumbling façade of the old institute, now a skeleton of concrete and rusted metal. It had been shut down years ago, abandoned to weeds and whispers. Yet someone had recently been here.
A broken lock.
Fresh boot prints in the wet ground.
He stepped inside.
The stale air inside the building clung to his lungs. A few corridors remained mostly intact, but the paint peeled like scabs, and shattered glass lined the floor like fallen teeth.
Haratu turned on his flashlight and followed the hallway marked Wing C. His footsteps were deliberate, quiet. Each door he passed bore a nameplate—faint, scratched.
And then he saw it.
Room 13C – MIYAKO SAIONJI
It shouldn't have been there. Her room had been repurposed, erased from all records. But someone had restored the plaque. He hesitated a moment, then pushed the door open.
Inside was a shrine to memory.
Photos—grainy and yellowed—lined the walls. Patients. Notes. Spiral diagrams. Pages pinned in obsessive arrangements. And in the center of the room: a new disc, freshly printed, glowing faintly with a silver sheen.
It had his name etched on it.
HARATU SOTA
His breath hitched.
Suddenly, a faint voice from the corner: "You finally came."
He spun around, hand on the grip of his hidden weapon.
Miyako stood in the shadow.
Older, thinner, her silver hair falling loosely around her face. But her eyes—those calm, storm-colored eyes—hadn't changed. The candlelight flickered across her sharp features.
"Why?" Haratu demanded, voice taut. "Why bring me here? Why leave that disc?"
She stepped forward. "Because the cycle is about to break… or begin anew. And you must choose."
Haratu narrowed his eyes. "You manipulated people into killing. You experimented on minds—on trauma. That's not justice."
"No," she said softly. "But it was truth."
She gestured to the photos behind her.
"Every person who killed did so believing it was right. Each was given a story, a reason, a pain that justified the blade in their hand."
Haratu walked past her, inspecting the board. Among the pictures, he saw new faces—victims from the recent murders. The cycle hadn't just restarted. It had evolved.
"You think you're some architect of fate," he said coldly. "But you're just a coward trying to control chaos."
Miyako smiled faintly. "And yet here you are, standing in the center of my design. Following the trail I left. Solving the puzzle."
He turned to her sharply. "Because I wanted to stop it!"
"Did you?" she asked. "Or did you want to understand it? To feel what I felt?"
There was silence. Then Haratu whispered, "What do you want from me now?"
She stepped closer, her voice barely audible.
"I want you to finish it."
He blinked.
"What?"
"I'm dying, Haratu," she said. "The spiral must either end in you… or through you. You are the Final Variable. The 'child of the corner' as I once called you. I gave you this mystery not to destroy you—but to prepare you."
"Prepare me for what?" he asked.
Miyako reached into her coat and pulled out a small notebook. She handed it to him.
Inside were names.
Dates.
Predictions.
And a name he recognized immediately—Ryoko Tanaka—dated two weeks from now.
He looked up, shocked. "You're saying she's next?"
"No," Miyako said quietly. "I'm saying you'll be forced to choose. Her life… or the cycle."
Haratu's heart thundered.
"I'll never let it come to that."
"You say that now," she replied, and stepped away. "But fate is a spiral. It always pulls inward."
Before he could stop her, she dropped a flare to the ground.
The room ignited.
Flames licked the paper, the boards, the photos.
Miyako turned once more before stepping into the smoke.
"Find the others, Haratu. Before the next loop begins."
And she vanished into the fire.
—
Outside, sirens howled. Ryoko stood beside a firetruck, shouting Haratu's name as smoke billowed from the windows. A silhouette emerged through the haze—his coat charred, soot covering his face—but his eyes burned with clarity.
He stumbled toward her, clutching the notebook tight.
"She was there," he rasped. "She gave me names. She's passing the spiral to me."
Ryoko helped him to the car, eyes wide. "Then we stop it. Together."
As the institute collapsed behind them, Haratu opened the final page.
One last name stood alone.
Haratu Sota – Designer or Destroyer – TBD
He shut the book.
The cycle wasn't over yet.
But maybe—just maybe—it could be broken.