1. Two weeks ago.

A sudden rain cloud hung above Yumekyo, drenching graves and Silvah’s coat alike. The drops pattered on her skin. In a pattern that was rhythmic. Almost a lullaby. Asha stood next to her, staring out into the cemetery. The raindrops didn’t touch her.

‘They told me I’d find you here.’

The voice came from behind. Silvah didn’t turn—she knew who it was. They came to a stop next to her. The pattering stopped, and the shadow of an umbrella consumed Silvah’s own. She placed a hand on the arm holding it, and gently pushed it away, allowing the rain to once more envelop her in its wrath.

‘I fought to bury them together. Hopefully it wasn’t presumptuous of me?’

Silence. Silence except for the storming of the heavens, which grew heavier by the second.

‘How do you like them?’

Silvah’s hair stuck to her skin, and she could barely see through the strands covering her eyes.

The grave of the Nighthart family was a monument. A resting place for four. A large granite slab, standing upright, was split in two halves. The left half of the stone bore the name of her father, Arthur Nighthart, etched in bold lettering. Below his name began the phrase: ‘Where you go…’, which was finished on the right half of the slab, where stood the name, Narie Nighthart. Below stood the last part of the sentence: ‘…I go, my dear.’

Engraved on her father’s half was a dragon. The sight of it made Silvah grip her crutches harder.

‘It wasn’t my idea. He asked for it himself.’

Silvah inhaled deep. Her breath came out as a cloud of white in this late time of winter.

‘I was only angry at myself, Uncle,’ Silvah said.

Behind the stone of her parents, just a little behind, were two smaller, unmarked plots—Silvah, on the left of Father. Asha, on the right of Mother—awaiting a time when they would be needed. She chuckled, and the laugh was an ugly one.

Silvah fished inside the pocket of her coat and removed a sheathe. It was for a long dagger, but it was empty. Painted onto the red piece was a depiction of a winged creature. Silvah crept forwards, her crutches impaling the wet earth, taking grime with them.

Standing still next to her sister’s reserved place, her eyes fell on the epitaph above all the graves:

‘We know not where we are headed, but we tread the path hand in hand.’

She placed the empty sheathe on her sister’s stone. The gesture left no words to be spoken for it said the promise itself. She would be back.

Silvah turned and sauntered off. Asha was standing in the same place. She was wearing a white sleeping gown, which would’ve been too cold not to freeze to death in if she was really there.

Uncle Kenichi watched Silvah. He was dressed in an all-black suit, as was his wont, the dragon tattoo on the side of his neck barely visible. His face was a mask.

‘I would tell you that revenge only leads to emptiness,’ Uncle said. A strong gust of wind rushed over them, swaying his umbrella. ‘To free your mind of it and live your life, since blood will only lead to more blood…’

He trailed off, went into his pocket and lit a cigarette. His drag was deep.

‘But we both know those words ring hollow at a time such as this.’

‘Do you believe them yourself?’ Silvah said.

He paused.

‘I do,’ he eventually said. ‘However…if the Ryūjin-kai did this…curse me, heavens, I would find and cut their throats all the same.’

Silvah strode forwards. Her body was still weak from the three weeks she had spent in coma and every step was like moving a mountain. She came to a stop next to her uncle and Asha. Her voice was a whisper.

‘There will be no more blood after I’m done.’

And she continued past him, the rain swallowing her fading silhouette.

2.

A week passed in a blink—time Silvah sorely needed. She wanted to do nothing more than chase after her sister, but her crutches wouldn’t get her far. Instead, she used the time to recoup. To regain strength in her limbs.

Once her strength had returned, she decided, mostly on a whim, to visit a food and drink place—Cafe Dallas. It was near the university she attended part time: Yumekyo University. Or was attending since she was still on ‘medical leave’.

She wanted to scoff and curse. There was nothing medical about getting knocked into a coma. The trauma had even cost her her memories. Mostly of the week leading up to the incident but also the day of the incident itself.

But she remembered clearly how this Cafe was the last place she had visited with her sister before meeting up at her parent’s house. Silvah held her head down, her nails digging into her forehead. How could she not remember a thing?! Not even the tiniest damned detail!

Her knee slammed the bottom of the table she was seated at. It was hard enough to rock her drink and send some of it reeling, causing an older couple to her left to shoot her disgruntled looks.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sorry. she mouthed, and the couple went back to their pastries.

Calm yourself. Both the nurse who took care of her and the doctor assured her her memories would come back. She just had to wait.

But waiting any longer was not in the cards. Her sister was out there, somewhere. Kidnapped and lonely. Waiting for Silvah to come rescue her. And if her time as a member of police had thought her anything, it was that missing person’s cases didn’t decrease in difficulty over time.

So Silvah flipped through the stack of pages in front of her. The documents of the case were easy enough to acquire once Silvah used her status as a detective of the NPA. Technically, she wasn’t allowed on the case, but Mirio, her team’s information specialist, hadn’t banned her credentials from the records.

It could’ve been an accident. It wasn’t. The tiny geek was more meticulous than anybody Silvah knew. He’d done it on purpose.

She’d thank him later, when all this was said and done.

The last sip of her banana milkshake went down her throat, and Silvah’s gaze went to the seat on the other end of the table. Asha’s transparent form was seated across from Silvah, her sinuous black hair tumbling down the red velvet coloured backside of the couch. A beige strip of lace kept her similarly dyed blouse together at the top.

Silvah wasn’t sure on which day it had started. But sometimes she could envision her sister as if she was really there. There was never any interaction between them or for her sister and anyone else, and a dark corner of Silvah’s mind whispered she was going insane. Well then let me go insane. If it meant she could enjoy her sister’s silent presence.

Asha was staring out at the street, chin resting on her hands, so Silvah couldn’t see her sister’s eyes. She was grateful for it. Those deep pupils would swallow her, remind her of the times she read Asha stories from her lap.

Curse the Heavens, but her sister was more beautiful than she had been on that last day.

A lady with her hair in her bun and wearing a simple orange and white skirt approached their table. Her sister didn’t stir.

‘Would you like to order another drink, Ma’am?’

‘Please,’ Silvah said. She thought for a second, spying on Asha’s side-profile. ‘Hot chocolate.’

The woman left to procure her order.

Silvah forced herself to ignore her sister and focus on the documents. There weren’t a lot. Only three sheets. Three sheets containing the history of an entire case.

She went over the first. There was a date, 31st of December 2020—approximately four weeks ago—and the name of the investigator who had led the case, Tama. Silvah’s senior. There was also a short summary of the state the corpses had been found in, which Silvah skipped. The first day she’d awoken, the police had shown her a photo. She didn’t need to see them again for the bile to rise and waste what her savings had paid for—the memories were enough.

And there she was, the waitress, with her hot chocolate.

‘Thank you,’ Silvah said, her gaze barely lifting from the stack as she took her drink.

What she was really looking for…there, on the bottom of the second page. The list of suspects. Silvah let loose a morbid chuckle. Her name was on the list. Though someone had written between parentheses, ‘highly unlikely’. How thoughtful.

More relevant was the name of a man, Rinshou Danto.

The notes on the last page said a witness (who wished to remain anonymous) had seen him loitering around in the neighbourhood but that was all. That particular trail had ended up dead. His wife, a woman named Rinshou Yuki, had filed for their divorce papers, subsequently left the house, and taken shelter at her mother’s. The suspect had been stalking her, begging her to reconsider. He said he was (others had overheard him shouting this at top of his lungs outside his ex-wife’s home), ‘a changed man who would rather chop off his own dick and cut open his stomach, than cheat one more time.’ Funny. Even more so because the last sentence in the notes said they got back together.

Not what Silvah was looking for, though.

The next and last prominent suspect on the list was more intriguing. Late at night, the day after the incident, a man wearing a top hat and overcoat had been spotted standing in front their home. Two passerbys, an old lady and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Chinju (who Silvah knew), had shouted at him: ‘Sir, you’re not allowed to be there.’ The man hadn’t answered, not moving an inch from where he stood. Mrs. Chinju was dutifully wary and dialled the police while her husband walked up to the gate of the home to get a better look at the suspect. The notes said the husband and man shared a few words: ‘Did you hear me?’ and ‘My apologies, I was lost in thought.’ According to the statement, the man then strode past the side of their home into the backyard.

There was an officer stationed nearby—as was protocol for the home of a recent crime scene—who answered the emergency call of the grandmother within the minute. When he went into the backyard, the man was gone. Tama had ordered a forensic artist to the home of the couple at seven the next morning. Some would call it too early to be proper. Tama didn’t care. He wanted to pounce on the suspect as soon as possible. Silvah silently thanked her senior.

But it was for nothing. The husband had died in his sleep.

A line at the end of the note revealed that while the husband had been old, he had no prior medical history. He was healthy as can be. It matched the official statement of the medical examiner: ‘a sudden and unexpected cerebral haemorrhage.’ What were the odds of that happening, the night before he could give his description?

The forensic artist had instead taken the statement of Mrs. Chinju, who had been too distraught at the death of her husband to remember much of anything, but she had tried nonetheless, knowing Silvah’s family were the victims. The police force had gone door to door in the neighbourhood with the resulting sketch.

Nothing.

It stinks, Silvah thought, sipping of her drink. Reeked of foul play. But how in the world could anyone induce a haemorrhage in another? That, and the Chinjus slept in one bed. The grandmother had noticed no one else in the room. Police verified there were no signs of breaking and entering their house either. No. Everything pointed at Mr. Chinju dying peacefully in his sleep the night after he saw the face of the suspect. Everything else was a reach. A figment of a hopeful imagination.

Silvah looked at her sister, felt her blood boil, then turned back to the documents before she could lose her cool.

Three more suspects were on the list. Two of them were unlikely to be anything more than dead links. However, one, a man called Nesumi Hisashige, had broken into their home two weeks into Silvah’s coma. The police only caught him three days after the fact. No previous criminal record, and he had an alibi for the night her family was murdered and when the mystery man had shown up. Which meant he was nothing more than an opportunistic rat who’d taken advantage of their home being empty and unguarded. Combined with the fact that he didn’t confess to stealing anything, and the police didn’t find anything among his possessions, he was let go with a fine.

Though Nesumi didn’t confess, and the police didn’t find anything on him, Tama had taken a few pictures of her home and asked Silvah if she noticed anything missing. The empty dagger sheathe near their sofa was an easy mark. There was one more item, though. Father had always kept a slew of strange items in the basement. One of them had disappeared. Silvah couldn’t remember what it had been, but she knew it was important. So important that she was certain her parents were killed over it and her sister kidnapped.

If Nesumi had stolen it, it would be where her knife was. So, the knife became her starting place. Not only because it was a lead. But also, because she had made a promise—one she would need the blade for.

Silvah finished her drink. Her sister was still seated as she had been fifteen minutes ago. Somehow, if she leaned forward enough, Silvah got the idea her sister would smell like lavender.

‘What are you looking at, I wonder,’ Silvah said.

There was no answer.

Silvah closed her eyes and sighed.

‘All I want is to hold you in my arms again,’ she said, stopping a tear. Then she got up and paid the bill.

Best time to catch a rat was at night. She’d get there early.