The knife didn't belong in a kitchen.
It was a standard stainless steel blade, designed for dicing vegetables and carving poultry.
But in my hand, it felt like a ghost.
An extension of a limb I had tried to amputate three years ago.
I stood in the dim light of the kitchen, the clock on the microwave humming at 3:14 AM.
The rhythm was wrong.
The city of Kyōgan never truly slept, but its heartbeat usually had a predictable cadence—the distant roar of the mag-lev trains, the hum of neon signs, the occasional siren.
Tonight, the silence was too heavy.
It wasn't the absence of sound. It was the presence of a void.
I sliced through a cold radish.
One. Two. Three.
The pieces were identical to the millimeter.
Habit is a terrifying thing. It survives even when the soul wants to forget.
"You're counting your breaths again, Araya."
Her voice was soft, barely a ripple in the dark, but it anchored me instantly.
I didn't turn around. I didn't need to.
I could feel the shift in the air as Yura leaned against the doorframe.
She didn't smell like the iron and ozone of the city.
She smelled like cedarwood and the tea we had shared before bed.
A scent of home. A scent of a lie I was desperately trying to make true.
"The rhythm is off," I said. My voice sounded like gravel grinding against silk.
"Is it the wind?" she asked.
She walked closer, her footsteps light, but not the practiced silence of a killer.
It was the natural grace of someone who wasn't hiding from her own shadow.
She stopped a few inches away. She didn't touch me.
She knew that at 3:00 AM, my body was still a fortress with the gates locked tight.
"No wind tonight," I replied.
I set the knife down.
The metal clicked against the granite countertop.
A small sound, but in my ears, it echoed like a sword hitting a stone floor in the Kōgen Temple.
Yura shifted. I could feel her "sight"—that strange, intuitive perception of hers.
She wasn't looking at my back. She was looking at the tension in my shoulders, the way my weight was distributed on the balls of my feet.
"You feel it too," I whispered.
"It's not a feeling, Araya," she said, her voice dropping a fraction.
"It's a pressure. Like the air is being squeezed out of the room."
She moved past me to the window.
The Izura District stretched out below us, a sprawl of grey rooftops and flickering streetlights.
It was a place for people who wanted to be forgotten.
Refugees, failed businessmen, and ghosts like me.
"Look at the crows on the wire across the street," she murmured.
I looked.
Six of them.
Usually, they would be tucked into their feathers, oblivious to the world.
Tonight, they were facing our window.
Still.
Waiting.
"They aren't sleeping," I noted.
"They're watching the door," she corrected.
My hand hovered near the kitchen knife again.
I forced it back.
If I picked it up with the intent to kill, the life we had built here would shatter.
Three years of normalcy.
Three years of being 'Kagero Araya', the quiet man who worked at the logistics firm.
A man who paid his taxes and helped his neighbors with their groceries.
But the Kōgen Clan didn't believe in retirement.
They believed in utility.
And when a tool stops being useful, it is melted down or discarded.
"Go to the back room," I said. It wasn't a request.
"Araya—"
"The floorboards in the closet. Under the winter coats. There is a heavy ceramic jar."
She went still.
She knew what was in that jar.
She had never asked, and I had never told, but the silence between us was an agreement.
The jar didn't contain memories. It contained the means to end them.
"Is it happening?" she asked. Her voice didn't shake.
"The message has been delivered. I just haven't found the envelope yet."
She nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement, and disappeared into the hallway.
I was alone in the kitchen again.
I closed my eyes.
I stopped listening to the city. I stopped listening to the crows.
I started listening to the house.
The refrigerator's compressor.
The settling of the wood.
And then, a sound that didn't belong.
A rhythmic tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was coming from the front door.
Not a knock.
A vibration.
I moved.
I didn't run. Running creates wind. Wind creates noise.
I flowed through the darkness, my feet finding the spots on the floor that didn't creak.
It was a dance I had performed a thousand times in the mansions of politicians and the bunkers of warlords.
I reached the door.
I didn't look through the peephole. A peephole is a target for a needle or a high-pressure burst.
Instead, I knelt and looked at the gap beneath the door.
No shadow blocked the light from the hallway outside.
The hallway was empty.
I reached for the handle, my fingers light as a feather.
I turned it.
Slowly.
The hinges were oiled—I saw to that every month.
I opened the door an inch.
Nothing.
I opened it wider.
The hallway was indeed empty, but something was hanging from the outer doorknob.
It was a small, silk thread.
Attached to the thread was a single white flower.
A camellia.
My heart didn't race. It turned cold.
In the dialect of the Kōgen, the camellia had a specific meaning.
The flower doesn't lose its petals one by one.
When it dies, the entire head falls at once.
It is the symbol of a clean decapitation.
It was fresh. The dew was still on the petals.
Which meant the messenger was still in the building.
I stepped out into the hallway, leaving the door ajar.
The air here was colder.
The fluorescent light at the end of the corridor flickered, casting long, stuttering shadows.
"I know you're here, Jin," I said quietly.
Silence.
Then, a low chuckle echoed from the stairwell.
It wasn't the sound of a hidden enemy.
It was the sound of an old friend watching a tragedy unfold.
A man stepped out of the shadows.
He was tall, wearing a charcoal coat that seemed to swallow the light.
His face was a map of scars, the most prominent one bisecting his left eyebrow.
Jin Takamura.
The man they called the 'Wolf of the South Gate.'
My former sparring partner.
The man who had taught me that a blade is only as sharp as the resolve behind it.
"You've grown soft, Araya," Jin said, leaning against the concrete wall.
"You didn't notice me until I was at your door. Three years ago, I wouldn't have made it past the lobby."
"I wasn't looking for ghosts three years ago," I replied.
"And now?"
"Now I'm looking at a man who is standing in the wrong place."
Jin smiled. It was a jagged, unpleasant thing.
"The Elder isn't angry, you know. He's actually quite impressed. To disappear in a city of twenty million... it took skill. But even the best rabbit leaves a scent if it stays in the same hole for too long."
"What do you want, Jin?"
"Me? I want a drink. And maybe a reason to see if you can still hold a sword."
He straightened up, his posture shifting from relaxed to predatory in a heartbeat.
"But the Clan? They want the Key back."
"I destroyed it," I lied.
Jin laughed, a dry, rasping sound.
"You don't destroy a masterpiece, Araya. You hide it. You cherish it. You build a little life in Izura to protect it."
He took a step toward me.
I didn't move, but the 'Flow' began to settle in my mind.
The hallway became a grid.
The distance between us: 4.2 meters.
The flickering light: intervals of 0.8 seconds.
The weight of the camellia in my peripheral vision.
The exit behind him.
The knife in the kitchen, twelve steps away.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?" Jin asked, his hand moving toward the inside of his coat.
"Don't make me remind you why I was the one who was allowed to leave, and you were the one sent to find me."
Jin stopped.
The air tension Yura had felt earlier suddenly spiked.
He saw it in my eyes.
He saw the 'Araya' that had been buried under three years of domestic peace.
The weapon was unsheathing itself.
"This was just a courtesy call," Jin said, his voice losing its playful edge.
"The others won't be so polite. Raiden is already in the city. And Elliot is... well, you know Elliot. He doesn't like flowers. He likes results."
Jin turned toward the stairs.
"The camellia is a gift, Araya. Keep it. It'll look good on your wife's casket."
He was gone before I could reach him.
I didn't chase him.
Chasing was a trap.
I walked back into my apartment and closed the door.
I locked it.
Not that it mattered.
Yura was standing in the middle of the living room.
She held the ceramic jar in her hands.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.
She didn't ask what happened.
She looked at my hands.
"Your knuckles are white," she said.
"They found us."
"I know."
She walked over and placed the jar on the coffee table.
She reached out, and this time, she touched me.
Her hand was warm against my cold skin.
She forced my fingers to relax.
"What do we do?" she asked.
I looked at the camellia I had brought back inside.
I dropped it on the floor and crushed it under my heel.
The white petals turned into a bruised, brown smear.
"We don't run," I said.
"Then we fight?"
I looked at the jar.
Inside was a short blade, a series of specialized needles, and a black obsidian key that didn't open any physical lock.
"No," I said, my voice cold and hollow.
"We don't just fight. We remind them why they were afraid of the dark before they joined the Clan."
I walked to the window.
The crows were gone.
The street was empty.
But on the glass, there was a faint fog from my breath.
The peace was dead.
The ghost was back.
"Pack a bag, Yura. Not for a trip."
She looked at me, her emotional intuition reading the shift in my soul.
"For a war?"
"No," I whispered, looking out at the neon glow of Kyōgan.
"For an ending."
In the distance, the first siren of the morning wailed.
And for the first time in three years, I didn't count my breaths.
I waited for theirs to stop.