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✦ CASE FILE: Jóhann J.

Height: 5’10”

Age: 24

Overview

He walks from country to country, job to job, name to name. And wherever he goes, someone dies.

Someone loses their mind.

A family collapses.

A community unravels.

No one ever connects it to him. They just remember him—quietly.

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January 13th.

The Elevator Incident.

It was the kind of building people passed by without remembering. Concrete and metal. Bland. Sixty stories tall with a name that sounded like it belonged to something else entirely. Most people didn’t notice it. Those who did didn’t ask why. It was just there.

Still, it was almost midnight when the last elevator opened on the ground floor.

She stepped in. Her badge said Maintenance. Her toolbox was heavy, clinking faintly with screws and switches. Floor forty-three, she tapped. The doors began to close.

But just before they sealed shut,

a pale hand slipped through.

The doors jolted. Opened.

He stepped in.

White hair. Neatly cut. A long wool coat. His skin like porcelain, eyes like frozen violets plucked straight from the snow. A kind smile on his face, polite and soft-spoken. She moved aside instinctively.

“Which floor?” she asked.

He smiled. “Forty-three.”

Her thumb hovered above the panel. “Already going there,” she said, trying to sound casual. A small laugh. Politeness. Civility. The doors closed.

The elevator hummed upward.

One minute passed.

Then two.

She adjusted her grip on the toolbox. The metal felt heavier than before. Her hand was clammy. The lights flickered—but only once. Barely noticeable.

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel him watching. Not just glancing. Watching.

Like she was a machine he was trying to figure out how to take apart without leaving a single bolt out of place.

He spoke suddenly. “Your badge is upside down.”

She looked down.

It wasn’t.

She gave a nervous chuckle. “Is it?”

When she glanced up again, he was still smiling.

Only—

he was closer.

She hadn’t heard him move.

There was no sound. No footsteps. No shifting weight. He was just… closer.

She pressed herself subtly into the far wall, her fingers tightening on the handle of the toolbox. The elevator felt smaller now. Narrower. Like the walls were breathing.

Ding.

The number thirteen lit up.

She frowned.

No one had pressed thirteen.

The elevator stopped. The doors didn’t open.

He blinked once, very slowly. “Strange,” he murmured. “Sometimes… these machines seem to forget themselves.”

She didn’t reply. The silence settled in like fog.

She tried the emergency button. It clicked. But there was no sound.

No buzz.

No static.

No voice.

Just the hum of the elevator.

And him.

“I don’t think this building has a thirteenth floor,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

He tilted his head, violet eyes glinting. “Doesn’t it?”

The doors opened.

But there was no hallway.

Just darkness.

Swallowing.

Still.

And then—

The lights inside the elevator shut off.

No flicker this time.

Just dark. Complete.

Her breath hitched.

She reached blindly for her flashlight.

Click.

It didn’t work.

But something else did.

A breath. Not hers. Close to her ear. Soft.

“I think you should scream now.”

She never did.

They found the elevator hours later on floor forty-three. Empty. Her toolbox was still there, lying open, a few screws rolled into the corner. No blood. No torn clothes. Nothing out of place.

Except the camera footage.

It looped. But no one had programmed it to.

And every time you paused the recording,

he was just a little bit closer.

-

Jóhann is very much a human, perhaps not like you and I but he most certainly is a human. Those who interact with him will say he is not human, that he is a Monster.

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✦ CASE FILE: Hiroki K.

Height: 6'1"

Age: 25

Build: Towering, solid muscle.

Vibe Summary

He’s the kind of guy who looks like he could crush a brick wall with his bare hands, but also probably picks up stray animals and pretends he doesn’t care. There’s a lot of tension in his posture—like he’s always ready to snap but doesn’t want to. He’s endured. He protects. But he’s also been broken more than once.

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CONTENT WARNING: general adult themes. Reader discretion is advised

The shatter comes before the scream.

Glass rains across the hardwood like silver confetti, a cascade of jagged stars. Setsuna bolts upright before Ryoji does, bare feet smacking against the cold floor. Somewhere between the adrenaline and the thud of her father’s footsteps beside hers, she already knows it’s him.

The boy who never knocks.

The boy who always comes back.

Yuichi stumbles through the window like it was a door he forgot how to open. He’s laughing—really laughing—the way people do when they���re already falling, and they’ve accepted they’ll never hit the ground. He’s a mess of cuts and glittering blood, smeared eyeliner, and a shirt torn at the collar like someone tried to rip it off or he begged them to. His skin is damp with sweat and streetlight and something else that smells too sweet to be just alcohol.

Behind him, there’s a woman standing by the curb with a cigarette between her fingers. She waves—smiles even—and then disappears into a cab with all the ceremony of a ghost who’s done this too many times to care anymore.

Yuichi doesn’t notice. Or maybe he does, but he’s already caught in the way Ryoji and Setsuna look at him.

Like a mirror that won’t stop cracking.

His grin twitches. Falters. Then drops.

“Didn’t have my key,” he slurs, stepping on a shard of glass without flinching. “Thought I’d come home.”

Ryoji’s voice is a blade. “You broke in.”

Yuichi staggers sideways, leans too hard against the wall like he’s melting into it. “You would’ve let me in anyway,” he breathes, and somehow that sounds more like an accusation than an apology.

Setsuna’s jaw tightens. Her eyes track the red marks on his throat, the bruises blooming like fingerprints. The silence in the room is not quiet—it’s thick and charged, stretched too thin to survive.

“Get the first aid kit,” Ryoji says, low. Not to her, but to himself. Like he’s saying it just to keep from doing something else.

But Setsuna doesn’t move.

“Who was that?” she finally asks, nodding to the fading taillights outside. Her voice is flat.

Yuichi licks his teeth, still grinning. “Dunno. She was soft. Or maybe I was. We traded names, and then we forgot ‘em.”

Then quieter: “You ever feel like your skin’s borrowed? Like you’re renting it?”

The room sways. It’s not the house—it’s him.

Setsuna exhales through her nose. “You’re bleeding on the rug.”

“Good. It’s mine now.”

Ryoji kneels. His hands, practiced and steady, reach for Yuichi’s wrists. “Let me see,” he says, already checking for deep cuts, internal damage, anything fatal. The same way he’s done a hundred times before.

But Yuichi flinches. Just a little. Like he’s only just realized he’s breakable.

He stares at Ryoji—too long.

“Why do you do this?” he asks. Not accusatory. Not even drunk anymore. Just small.

Ryoji doesn’t answer. But his grip on Yuichi’s wrist tightens, just a bit.

“I wanted to come home,” he mumbles again, dazed. “But I don’t know where that is anymore.”

And when he says home, what he really means is you.

-

The man who grips too tightly on to the past, the boy who in search of his mother’s warmth in the arms of a stranger and his girlfriend who sits in seething pain and silence. They watch the boy’s downward spiral, never actually intervening but quietly acknowledging that he will take them down with him.

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Neither spoke. Not at first.

“I passed by the grave today,” Yoshida said. He didn’t look up. “The flowers you left are withering. Peonies. You always choose peonies.”

Hiroki’s jaw ticked, just barely. “They’re her favorite.”

Yoshida nodded, like he knew that already. He finally took a sip. The pause after stretched, unbroken, as if the two of them had forgotten how to finish a conversation that had never started.

Then, like it was nothing at all, Yoshida reached into the inside of his coat.

A small silver chain, delicate. Childish. A butterfly charm at the end, blue enamel chipped at the wings. He held it between two fingers and set it gently on the table.

Hiroki didn’t move. But something flickered in his eyes.

“Misato left it behind,” Yoshida said simply. “Wonyoung dropped her toy next. You’d be surprised how easily people open their doors when you say you’re an old friend of their father.”

Still, Hiroki didn’t move.

“You’re not an idiot,” Yoshida went on. “You know where this is going.”

A silence hung heavy between them. Not cruel, not loud. Just inevitable.

“She likes that necklace,” Hiroki finally said. His voice was low, dull at the edges. “She got it at a vending machine with her allowance.”

Yoshida smiled softly. Almost fondly.

“They’re good kids,” he agreed. “You’ve done well for them.”

A long beat.

“You should keep doing well.”

It wasn’t a threat. Not quite. More like an offering.

Yoshida stood. Adjusted the cuffs of his blazer. Left enough money to cover both drinks, as if this were still just a casual meeting between friends.

But as he turned, he paused. Just for a moment. His tone was lighter now — amiable, almost teasing.

“You always said you’d never be like him,” he said. “But here you are. Making the same sacrifices.”

-

Two old friends meet. The light has left one man’s eyes while the blood leaves the other man’s face

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Old lovers. He clung too tightly to the past. She clung tightly to answers. They were never going to work out.

-

She doesn’t call him by name anymore.

Not aloud, at least.

When she does see him, like today—his coat soaked from the rain, shoulders heavy like he never learned how to put burdens down—she just says, “You’re late.”

And he never argues.

There was a rooftop once. Two cups of vending machine coffee. Three missed calls. And her laughter—a real thing, bright and boyish, kicking its feet off the ledge.

“What would you do if the truth ruined everything?” he’d asked.

She hadn’t answered. Only smiled, eyes sharp, and said, “Then it wasn’t the truth’s fault.”

Now, she watches him smoke on the edge of the pier, eyes trained on the water like it owes him something. He doesn’t look at her when he speaks.

“You still think I’m one of them.”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to.

“You think I leaked intel. That I traded names for my own skin.”

Still no response.

Asahi laughs without joy. “You’re not wrong, Ai.”

There’s a long silence. Then—

“But you’re not right, either.”

They were lovers, once. Not the kind you write poems about. The kind that leave burn marks.

She liked the way he asked questions no one else dared. He liked the way she said nothing and still made him believe in answers.

“You’ve changed,” she says, at last. It's not quite an accusation.

He shrugs. “So have you.”

Then: “You used to cry after briefings.”

She blinks, slowly. “You used to lie about where you went at night.”

They’re quiet again.

The mission report said the mole was someone close.

Ai marked his name in red. Then stared at it for three hours.

She’d seen the footage. She’d heard the voice—blurred through static.

But memory is a shape-shifter. And she remembers his hands holding her face in a train station bathroom the day her mother died.

“You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

She hadn’t answered then, either.

Now, in the present—if this is the present—he stands, walks over, and sets something in her palm.

A flash drive.

His eyes are steady. Tired.

“I’m not asking you to believe me,” he says. “I’m asking you to look.”

She doesn’t close her hand around it. She doesn’t drop it, either.

Just stares at it like a rusted bullet.

“You said you loved me once,” he adds.

Ai finally looks up. Her eyes are unreadable.

“You think that still means anything?”

Asahi nods. Because it does. Even if it shouldn’t.

They were never built to last. She chased truth like it owed her blood. He only ever wanted her to stop running.

Maybe that was love. Maybe it was war.

The tide comes in. The rain stops. The flash drive is still in her hand.

She closes her fingers around it, at last. Not out of faith. But because there are answers, and then there are endings.

And she is always collecting both.