#internet sleuth reader teaming up with police officer deuce spade to help find and capture naoh >:)

[merakiui]

okay but what about mangaka jade who is known for writing some of the most batshit insane stories? they’re always so bloody and graphic, scenes depicting victims having their organs removed are always so… realistic in their portrayal some internet users have begun suspecting him of the bodies found around the city! but it’s just fiction, of course - it’s not like he derives any pleasure from seeing the human body disfigured beyond belief, until it’s but a lump of flesh and organs in disarray. just don’t question too much when you receive a request to model for mangaka! jade, even if the location he sends you is hours away from the city >_<

OOOOOO imagine being an internet sleuth trying to decipher the strange and mysterious mangaka known only by the pen name: naoh. They're a very talented artist and storyteller, but they're just so shrouded in anonymity! naoh never attends any conventions or events, but they do self-publish and sell their works through doujinshi and manga websites. naoh is rather particular when it comes to their work. They never resell works that have already been published. In essence, once a work is sold out it's never going to be sold again, and they only ever create a maximum of two works each year with limited numbers of copies. naoh themself isn't very active on their social media, only ever posting the rare WIP or an update on when a new work will be up for sale. Despite their quiet social media presence, they have gained quite the following. naoh never follows anyone on their account, and it seems like they rarely engage with fellow mangaka and creators with similar interests. They work alone.

You're a fan of naoh's work. The way they draw the human body is fascinating. It's something that could be seen in an anatomy textbook; it's always so realistic and yet still so eerily beautiful and stylized! You'll never forget how they draw emaciated bodies. It's an image imprinted in your brain: horrifyingly realistic and skeletal, a figure so gaunt it's quite literally skin and bones drowning in clothing that can no longer fit comfortably. You've always wondered how they manage to draw such visceral scenes (like the ones depicting clinical dissections or decaying corpses). And then there's the way they depict fear. It's almost always raw, stretching the characters' features into something horrific. It looks so real; it feels tangible. Fans often speculate if naoh has a job in law enforcement or any other profession that deals with the more grotesque and graphic sides of humans, which could be references for some of their horror stories and could explain why they're so good at depicting details.

But then there are the fans who go beyond simple, innocent curiosity and begin to ask disturbing questions: What if naoh isn't with law enforcement? What if, rather, they're the exact opposite: a criminal? It feels like a silly theory, but when you flip through the physical copies of their work and compare the plots to the yet-to-be-solved cases throughout the past few months you begin to spot a few minor similarities. They're never glaring; after all, naoh is a master of crafting both cutthroat terrors and subtle horrors. The type that builds suspense over time. The type that crawls into your head through your ear to whisper nonsense at night. The type that slowly forms a picture over time, but once you realize this it will have been too late.

In their most recent work, a young man is out for a hike when he takes a stumble and falls down a dangerous slope, landing on a rocky outcrop that breaks his leg and leaves him trapped many feet above the ground. He tries to call for help, but no one seems to hear his voice. He spends days on the outcrop, slowly losing hope and sanity. By the end of the story, he's so certain he's going to die that he drags himself over to the edge and free-falls to the ground below. He lands in a spattering mess of shattered bone and stringy, bloody muscle. A lump of a human. The cruel twist is that his hiking partner had actually left to get help as soon as he had fallen and that the man had only been stuck up there for ten hours. Not even a full day, yet panic seized him and left him in hysterics. Had he remained calm and waited, he would have been saved.

It's a terrifying concept made even more scary when you realize there was a story just like this that hit the news. Only it wasn't a man who had slipped. A woman had been out for a run through mountainous woods; she was training for an upcoming cross-country journey through uneven terrain when she sustained blunt force trauma to the head. Many suspect her running buddy to be at fault, as she was never found, and it's theorized she's still on the run. The woman had attempted to flee, but with her head injuries her senses were vastly impaired and she took too many wrong turns. Police suspect she unintentionally ran herself to the edge of a cliff. From there, the story is foggy and difficult to piece together, but it ends terribly: she was found at the very bottom days later, decomposing in thorny bushes, her body mangled and twisted and smashed beyond recognition. The pathologist noted her body was in such disrepair that it's unclear what truly killed her, whether the fall or injuries she had sustained prior to the fall.

And it isn't just this story that somewhat mirrors naoh's works (often it's a setting or a circumstance or a facet of the true crime itself incorporated. Very rarely is it about the victim). You read up on very long threads regarding naoh and their identity, and slowly you find yourself doing research of your own. You have no idea where to start, so for now you keep track of each story you hear on the news and try to match pieces of it to naoh's works in hopes of learning anything new. Unsolved cases, though plentiful and murky, are where you turn to, as well as the discussion boards online. So many people are convinced naoh is a killer. After reading a few rational theories, you're beginning to think so, too. (Though something tells you it could be coincidence, or it could be naoh taking inspiration from reality. They might not even be a murderer like some think; it might just be hateful people trying to sully their name.)

One day, while scouring naoh's social media for any clues, you get the idea to type the pen name into the search bar as if it might yield something interesting. And the first thing that pops up is: Sodium hydroxide (NaOH), known commonly as lye or caustic soda, is... You stop reading and scramble to grab naoh's first-ever work: a work in which that same chemical plays a major role in murder. NaOH is a substance that, when heated to a certain degree, can dissolve a human body into a syrupy liquid in just three hours.

And that's the pen name of a mangaka who writes and illustrates horror stories about the sordid sides of humankind. A mangaka who might just be a murderer racking up a horrifying kill count, and no one knows anything about them or where they might be in the world. Most of all, no one knows where they'll strike next and who will fall victim to a dangerous killer.

naoh is a mangaka catalouging their murders, and you're determined to prove it.