Takumi was in class. As always, his mind was being elsewhere. However, unlike most times, he was concentrating hard. His eyes were fixated on the notebook. It read:

“Victim: Shimaya Aoki, female, 29 years old, a normal office staff.

Criminal: the infamous serial killer that has been on the news. Info: very limited. Motive: unknown. Gender: probably male.

Crime scene: …”

He closed his eyes. Almost instantly Takumi was brought back to the location yesterday. The images he saw were clear, the sounds he heard were vivid, and with some manipulation he can pause or skip the timeline in his mind; all of this can be done without missing any visual details. Nishimura Takumi came down with hyperthymesia about 3 months ago, shortly after his dad died. The syndrome had embedded everything he experienced deep into his memory ever since, with the addition symptom of frequent concentration loss. His eyes were turned into scanners: they captured everything and photocopied them perfectly into his brain.

He paused at the moment the flashlight revealed the lady`s body and started to investigate

(The serial killer seems to prefer using blunt weapons to torture his victims, prolonging the time it takes to kill, and the way they were assaulted showed that he was anything but professional. However, in some cases he had also used a wire to choke them to death. This blurs his motive, since if he was only doing this for stress relieve or pleasure, he would have been in a highly stimulated state, probably aroused. Combined with the fact that Kyoya found her relatively fresh, the criminal couldn`t have been so careful to kill her with the strings.)

Takumi looked at the messy bloodstains on the wall, and continued thinking

(If the motive was not for pleasure or stress relieve, what else?... Impossible. No human is able to do that if they did not have psychological problems. Moreover the scene strongly suggests that he was in a stimulated state when committing this. Maybe… What if he was a dog of some bigger organizations? Not plausible. The victims were normal people with no crime history, and the targets weren`t connected in any way. Something this big would need to stay hidden, not being discussed all over the news. However! One thing can be certain now, that there would need to be more than one killer. Someone who shared his motives, but impervious or at least not as sensitive to this kind of stimuli… what kind of personality would that one have?)

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“Could be a cold-blooded killer for all I can guess…” He mumbled.

His concentration faded and the “video” in his mind suddenly started playing. The short and quiet footsteps slowly approached him from the darkness. The extreme fear was once again experienced. Cold sweat ran down his spine as Takumi panicked: he was trapped inside this memory. Whenever memories incur strong psychological reactions, he would be thrown in a half sleeping state, fully re-experiencing the whole event without being able to escape.

“Ahh!”

Everyone looked at Takumi, some curious, some sarcastic. He was breathing hard, with sweat all over his body. The sensei got worried, and asked Kyoya to help him to the infirmary. Too weak to react, the big and tall Takumi was carried away by the small and short Kyoya.

The nurse was confused of Takumi`s condition, and so she simply told him to rest. Standing next to him, Kyoya glanced down:

“You know something about yesterday`s incident right? Just then I heard you talked about it”

“H-huh?”

“The second one couldn`t be human. That`s what you mumbled.”

Kyoya`s cold stare worsen Takumi`s condition, and he fell into a coma.

Later that day, Takumi recovered and got back to class. He intentionally avoided Kyoya, and did not talk to anyone. As soon as lunch break came, he jumped out of his seat and ran outside.

*Click* the lock made a satisfying sound, signaling that he had successfully picked it. Opening the door, he entered the forbidden school roof.

Sitting down, he pulled out his lunch box. Onigiri with pickled radish on top. It was cheap, so he didn`t mind eating the same thing every day. Just when Takumi was about to dig in, he heard footsteps coming up the stairway.