Rain lashed the cemetery like it was trying to wash the dead away. The sky hung low, bruised in gunmetal and ash, thunder murmuring like a threat it never delivered. The mourners were sparse, black umbrellas jutting like broken wings around the grave. Satoru stood apart—tall, statuesque, hands buried in his coat pockets, soaked because he refused an umbrella. His white hair clung to his forehead. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t cry. Didn’t blink. The woman in the coffin had been his fiancée—on paper. An arranged merger between powerful families, business painted as love. Her sudden death—violent, a fall down the stairs—sparked whispers. But no one dared accuse. Satoru wasn’t grieving. He was performing. He lit a cigarette during the eulogy.

That’s when he saw it. A lone figure, far off at the cemetery’s edge. Dressed in black, holding an umbrella. Still. Watching. Too far to see a face, but close enough to bury a splinter in his memory.

Weeks passed. The world kept spinning—bloody handshakes, backroom deals, more of the same. But something began... curling. It started in a luxury cologne shop. Gilded everything. He brushed against someone near the oud section—didn’t apologize, didn’t look. But the woman didn’t move. She lingered. Watched. And when he turned, she was gone, before he paid, before he could ask himself why the hairs on his neck stood up.

Then came the signs. Doors ajar he swore he’d shut. Windows unlocked. Personal items slightly moved. His men found nothing—no bugs, no prints, no intrusions. He fired staff. Changed codes. But the wrongness stayed. Then the notes began. Handwritten. Intimate.

“You look better without the suit." “You smelled like sandalwood that day.”

He dreamt of stairs. Of wet tile. Of hands pushing something fragile into the dark.

He wasn’t afraid. Satoru Gojo didn’t do fear. What he felt was worse, curiosity. And under that, irritation. This wasn’t revenge. It was personal. An obsession without origin. And it was closing in. He started catching glimpses, shadows in reflections, glints of light off an eye. Too intentional for coincidence. He set traps. Traced everything. Came up empty.

Until one night, silence. Then, black.

Now, he knelt on cold cement. Shirtless. Shackled. Bruised. Blood in his hair. Iron bit into his wrists. His breath came rough, ribs aching with each pull. A single lightbulb swung overhead, casting long, oily shadows across the industrial basement. No windows. One door.

Then: footsteps. Soft. Deliberate. The door creaked open. A silhouette stepped in, black against black, haloed by flickering light.

He didn’t look up. He listened. Like a man raised to read danger from silence. Then slowly, he lifted his head. Cerulean eyes locked on the figure.

“...You.”

The silhouette froze. Still. Unbothered.

A scent drifted in. faint, familiar. Oud. Memory stirred, a perfume counter. A bump. A gaze that lingered. His jaw clenched. He twisted against the chains, muscles tensing, veins rising like ropes across his forearms. The iron groaned but didn’t give.

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “But you’ve made a mistake.”

Still nothing.

She stepped closer. Calm. Unhurried, something sharp glinting in her hand.

He watched her, eyes narrowed to slits. The light above buzzed. Water dripped in the far corner, counting seconds. Her presence filled the room like smoke, silent, suffocating, impossible to grasp.

And Satoru stared like a man trying to summon a face from the ruins of memory... But all he found was the hollow throb of déjà vu. And the sinking dread that whatever this was—it didn’t start now. It had always been there and he didn't notice...

The clink of the cold bowl of ice water echoes in the confined walls, the cloth in her hand a mockery of what was supposed to happen but instead it was a cloth dipped in cold water meant for his bruises, as if they were merely a accident of fate and not brought on him by the same hands treating them