Chapter 1: Return to the Past
Tokyo, Japan, April 14, 1965
The rain hasn't stopped for hours. It poured over the city like it was trying to wash something away. At the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, a familiar case folder reappeared on the desk of Detective John Tran, now a ten-year veteran of the police department. It was marked:
SHIBUYA HIGH SCHOOL CASE – INACTIVE – 1960
Now, in 1965, it is active once again. A student was found dead at the same high school, under a similar scenario. Too similar. It was supposed to be over and forgotten.
The media caught sight of the lead within the first hour. The building was packed with reporters when Tran arrived at the scene with a cup of hot black coffee in hand. Behind him was his new partner, Detective Cassie Clark, who was straight out of the academy and assigned to this, her first major case. She loved food, had an easy smile, honestly would be the first one to die in a horror film, and never expected her first assignment to be a cold turned nightmare.
Her nerves were shot. She could barely manage to hold the door open without trembling. But she followed Tran into the storm, into Shibuya High School.
15:00 – Crime Scene
The hallways were silent. Too silent for a school. The walls seemed to absorb sound. Cassie leaned close to Tran.
“Detective Tran…where do we go from here? These students have no idea what's going on.”
He didn't look at her. Just kept walking.
“You know your job, Clark. If you don't…now’s a bad time to second-guess it.”
She paused, swallowed so hard, the light flicked above, and she followed.
From the eerie shadows of the old school, someone watched them. Quiet. Invisible. A presence that didn't belong there, except they knew every inch, every hallway, every creaky stair, everything.
Me.
My name is Renji Sato.
I was a student at this school once. I graduated a couple of years ago. But I’ve been here longer than most realize. Because five years ago, I made a choice. A permanent one.
Back then, in 1960, I was just a kid in Junior High. Quiet. Alone. Broken. The other students tormented me like it was a game. The teachers ignored it. And on top of that, they enjoyed it. My father was a violent alcoholic. My mother disappeared when I was ten. School was also no better than home.
Until one night, I snapped. The first victim was a classmate named Daichi Moriyama. He found out about the journals I kept, about what I wanted to do. He threatened to expose me, so I did what I had to. I couldn't let that happen.
It was supposed to end there, you know, like forgive and forget. But the feeling didn’t leave. The pain stayed. I wore a mask for years, blending in, graduating, disappearing.
Until now. Now I'm back at Shibuya High. New name. New face. A whole different identity.
But I never really left.
They call me Kiato Nakamura now. The quiet janitor, just hired last month. No one recognized me. Not even the teachers who once tormented me.
And for the student who died last night.
He was getting too curious. Too close to the truth. He found an old photo. One of Renji Sato in it.
Now it starts all over again. The voices, the pain.
Chapter 2: The Red Umbrella
The rain had stopped, but the air still felt thick, stuck to them like damp wool. Shibuya High looked different in the light of day, more alive, less haunted. But that's only on the surface. Inside, the air was thick, feeling like the chaos and echoes of yesterday were stuck in time.
Cassie sipped a vending machine coffee and stared at the stairwell where the student’s body was found a couple of days prior. It was all cleared now, well, most of it at least. The blood was gone, but not the feeling.
A custodian passed by with a mop bucket, nodding once at the detectives before slipping away through a side door.
“Where do we start?” Cassie asked
Tran didn’t answer her right away. He scanned the hallways before gesturing at her to the stairwell at the end. “There.”
They moved down the hallway, and the click of their shoes was the only sound heard in the hallway. When they reached the stairwell, it was sealed off with yellow police tape, but the custodian had already unlocked the access door. Everything was clean now, no trace of blood remained, but Casssie could still picture the scene from pictures that they’d reviewed the night before.
The student was a third-year student, found dead with blunt force trauma. Name: Haruto Aizawa. According to the principle, Haruto was quiet, smart, a little introverted, but had no enemies. No obvious reason to die.
Except that what was certain was that this wasn't suicide. Everyone had agreed on that.
Cassie crouched down to the base of the stairs, her eyes scanning the ground. A janitor had cleaned, but something red caught her eye in the corner of her vision, tucked behind a fire extinguisher case.
She reached out and pulled it free. A red umbrella. It was a classic style, wooden handle. Still wet. Tran turned around. “That wasn’t in the crime scene report.”
“No,” Cassie said. “It wasn’t.”
They quickly brought the umbrella back to the office and bagged it for prints. Forensics wouldn’t be fast, but it was the first physical clue they had.
Back at the school, they began to interview. Teachers. Students. Anyone who’d seen Haruto that day. Most of the facility gave quick replies, shock, sadness, and confusion. Cassie noted how many times the word “unexpected” came up as a response.
Only one student stood out. A girl. Her name, Miki Ueda, a second-year student. She wore oversized glasses worn-out sweater, she was fidgeting with the strap of her bag.
“ I saw him,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “ That afternoon. He was near the science lab.”
Tran leaned forward. “Did he say anything to you?”
Miki shook her head. “He looked… scared. Like he knew something was off.”
Cassie glanced at Tran. “ Did he ever mention feeling threatened?”
“No,” Miki said. “But last week, he asked me about an old photo. From the yearbook. He said something about it that did not match up.”
“Which photo?”
Miki hesitated. “He didn't show me. He just said that it was from the Class of 1960. He had found it in the library.”
Cassie’s stomach flipped.
“Where in the library?” Tran asked.
Miki looked up. “The archives room. But it’s always locked, so I'm not sure how he got it.”
The archives smelled like mildew and dust. Shelves of forgotten textbooks and student records lined the walls. An old desk sat in the corner with a lamp that barely worked. Cassie ran her fingers along the spines of old yearbooks, finding the one from 1960. As she flipped through the pages, a strange pattern emerged. One page was torn out, cleanly, with a box cutter or razor.
“Page 73,” Cassie murmured. “It’s just…gone.”
Tran looked over her shoulder. “That page would’ve been Class 3-C. The graduating class.”
Cassie’s mind jumped back to Miki’s words. He said something didn't match up.
“Do you think Haruto found something about the former student?” she asked.
Tran was quiet for some time, then he said, “I think someone didn't want him to.”
That night, Cassie sat at her desk, flipping through old staff records. Something felt wrong, like a piece was out of place.
Kaito Nakamura. The janitor. He’d only been hired for two months. No full background check. Just a quick note from a repair company and the principal's approval. Cassie stared at the name. It didn't sit right. It felt fake.
She quickly searched through the list of students from the 1960 yearbook. No one named Kaito Nakamura. No one named Renji Sato; either, that was the name that Haruto had scribbled in his notebook. Cassie circled noth names as her heart began to race.
Tran isn't answering his phone, she left a message.
“I think I found something. Call me.”
She started to pace in her apartment. The umbrella. The missing page in the yearbook. A fake name. None of it added up, or so she thought.
Then she found a note folded neatly inside her coat pocket. Five words, in near handwriting, read:
“You're not ready for this.” Her hands shook.
Across town, in a dim apartment with no name on the mailbox, Renji Sato watches the rain return through a cracked window pane. The girl was getting too close. He hadn't meant to leave the umbrella behind, it was careless. He liked Haruto. The boy was smart. Too smart. But Renji couldn't let him uncover the truth. The red umbrella was a mistake. But maybe it was also a gift. Now they were watching. Now they were listening. And soon they would all remember.
Chapter 3: Whispers
Renji Sato wasn't always a killer. He used to be a quiet boy in Class 3-C, back in the spring of 1960, before the crime, before the masks.
The school building was the same. Long, gloomy halls. Broken clocks. The sound of shoes on polished floors. But to Renji, this high school was a maze of unsaid insults and slammed lockers.
He was small. Wore thick glasses and read during lunch. He was alone.
They didn't call it bullying back then, the teachers would turn their heads and just say, “Boys will be boys,” when Renji would come out of class with bruises on his arms and books missing from his bag. One teacher even laughed when his glasses were broken in half during gym class.
Every single day, he wondered what he had done wrong to get all this mistreatment.
His worst bully, though, his name was Daisuke Ishida, the popular kid; it's always the popular kids. Everyone adored him: the teachers, the girls, and even the principal. He smiled when he stole Renji's lunch, when he shoved him into walls, and when he whispered cruel things to Renji's head that would stick like broken glass.
No one helped. No one cared.
Until one day, Renji stopped caring as well.
It was late, well after club hours and sports, and the school was nearly empty. Renji stayed behind, pretending to clean the science lab. He knew that Daisuke would come through the back hall, which was the shortcut to the train station. His heart was pounding like a drum. In his hand, hidden under his sweater, was a hammer he’d stolen from the repair room.
Daisuke walked right past him without saying a word. Renji didn't say anything either.
Renji lifted the hammer and brought it down hard. The sound was horrifying. So was the silence after. Daisuke dropped down like a puppet with cut strings. Renji stood there, staring at his body frozen in place. Not an ounce of guilt or fear was in his body. It was just quiet. For the first time, the world around him was still.
Renji hid the body under the stairs. It wasn't hard. No one ever cleaned there. By the time it was found, weeks had passed. The police called it a runaway. The family mourned his death, and the school eventually moved on. Renji felt powerful. Although this feeling didn't last him long, nothing changed. They still laughed, shoved, and ignored him.
So he left.
He changed his whole persona, his name. His face. Got plastic surgery and disappeared, like the earth had swallowed him.
Until now.
Now, Renj Sato was Kaito Nakamura, a janitor at the same school that had once destroyed him. He returned to watch, to see if things were different, to Hope. But it was all the same; the students still tormented the quiet ones, and the teachers still looked away. And there was Haruto.
Haruto reminds him of himself, smart, quiet, always watching. But Haruto was clever, too clever. He found out about the old yearbook and saw the mask. Renji didn't have a choice.
He didn't enjoy killing the boy who reminded him so much of himself.
Back at the office, Cassie stared at the name in the file again: Renji Sato. It was a lead from an old student record found in the study library archives. The name was scratched out of the inside cover of a torn page in the yearbook. She highlighted it. “Renji Sato,” she said aloud. “We’ve seen this name before.” Tran looked up from his files, “Haruto wrote it in his notebook, didn’t he?” Cassie said, “ Yeah, and there’s no record of him after 1960.” She pulled up the janitor's application again, Kaito Nakamura. No records before 1964. The math doesn't match. “What if they’re the same person?” she asked. Tran raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying that the killer we’re looking for is working here? Now?” Cassie nods. “ Hiding in plain sight.”
They returned to the school with an excuse of a follow-up visit. Most staff were gone for the day. Cassie spotted the janitor's closet. It was locked. She knocked, “Mr. Nakamura? Are you in there?”
No answer.
Tran took out his badge. Maintenance usually doesn't lock from the inside.” They forced the door open. Once inside, the room was cold and cramped. Cleaning supplies, gloves, all the normal stuff you could find in a janitor's closet. Except there was a faded photograph of a Class 3-C group, half burned at the corner, pinned on the wall. Cassie walked over and touched it. Tran pointed out a shadowy figure in the back row of the picture. “That's him,” he said, “I bet you anything that that's our guy.” Cassie nodded slowly. “Renji Sato.” She turned around, staring at the empty room. “He's watching us right now.”
Across the street from a diner window, Renji watched them leave the school. He took a sip of his coffee; they were close, and he could feel it.
Chapter 4: Last drop
Cassie gripped on the case file in front of the school. She was there alone, she had to make sure before she told Tran to go look for this guy. The halls were quiet. Too quiet. The rain outside had turned into a steady downpour, tapping against the window softly. It was hours after, but she knew that he would be here. He always was.
Her footsteps echoed as she moved past the lockers, the faculty staff room, the trophy case with names from another time. She paused for a minute in front of the old picture on the wall, Class 3-C, 1960. A smiling group of students frozen in black and white. She scanned the faces again.
No Renji Sato.
But her gut told her everything. She looked at the janitor's closet. The door was closed, and a small puddle of water had formed at its base, as if someone had come in from the rain not that long ago.
She stepped closer, the handle was cool under her fingers. She was about to knock on the door when a voice spoke from behind her.
“You came alone?”
Cassie’s soul nearly left her body. She turned around to see Tran in his coat, wet from the rain, holding a flashlight.
“You shouldn't be here by yourself,” he said with a frown. “I had to be sure,” she whispered. “He's in there.” Tran gave a slow nod. “Let's end this.” He stepped forward and knocked.
“Kaito Nakamura,” he said with a firm voice. “We know who you are. It's over.” There was silence, then we heard a soft click of a lock turning. The door creaked open. Renji Sato stood in the doorway with his purple janitor's uniform, damp from the rain. He looked older now, as if time had caught up to him in one night. He didn't look surprised.
“I'd been expecting you guys to be here,” he said. “Come in, might as well hear the rest of what you guys have to say.”
They followed him into the small, cramped, dimly lit room. A single light bulb swayed overhead, casting shadows on the wall. Cassie’s eyes landed on the old photograph tacked up beside an old calendar, Haruto Aizawa’s obituary, folded neatly beside it.
“I never wanted it to happen like this,” Renji said, sitting on an overturned bucket. “But nothing ever goes the way one wants, does it?” He looked up at them, eyes tired but firm. “I came back to see if anything had changed, if the school had changed. But it hasn't. The bullying and the fake smiles are still present .” He paused. “And Haruto saw all this, he reminded me of myself. Brave and curious.”
“But you killed him,” Cassie said almost under her breath, but not really.
Renji nodded.
“He was going to tell everyone everything, about my past and the present. He said that people needed to know the truth, and I disagreed with him. But he kept searching and digging up my past.”
Tran said nothing with an expressionless face. Cassie moved forward.
“Why did you come back?”
Renji stared at the wall. “Like I said, to see if anything had changed. But clearly not the students, the teachers, even the voices and whispers in the hallway are the same.” He took out a notebook that looked all beat up and ratcheted from faded pages.
“My notes from that year,” he said. “Every bruise. Every lie. Every time a teacher turned their back. I wrote it all down. I thought... if someone found it, maybe it would mean something.” Cassie carefully took the notebook. Hands shaking. “You didn't have to kill him, you know,” she said. “I know.” Renji replied, “But back then, when I committed my first kill, I thought it was the only way to make them feel how I felt. This time I don't know, maybe I wanted to be stopped.”
He began to rise to his feet, extending his arms. “I'll leave quietly.” There was no sense of victory in the air even as Tran took a step forward and took out his handcuffs. Nothing but silence.
Shibuya High remained quiet the following morning.
Cassie wandered the corridors by herself.
Everything had the same appearance. The announcements on the bulletin board were faded. The floor tile next to the science room is cracked. The hinges on the classroom doors were also squeaky.
However, something had changed.
She went down the corridor where Haruto was discovered. There was a single flower under the window. She had no idea who had left it.
She stopped and looked down.
Not all cases of justice were clear-cut. At times, justice didn't seem to be served at all. But truth mattered, and Haruto thought so too.
Cassie took a deep breath before she turned around to take leave.
Behind her, the hallway light flickered, and the rain was finally coming to a stop. You could see the small droplets dripping down the window.
While I was writing this story, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't know where I was going with this idea. I knew that I wanted it to be a crime mystery and for it to be short but not too short, so it could still have the details. I started writing this story at the beginning of this school year because it was the first thing that came to my mind for an assignment. I tried to keep it suspenseful and have a lot of imagery in it as well. I wanted to make sure it also had a twist, and as we read in the story, we see the twist be a change in POV’s as the story proceeds. I tried to explore a little bit of storytelling and other things I've never tried. Honestly, writing a whole story is something that I have never tried, and this was my first. Something that inspired me to write a crime murder mystery type of story is that I had been listening to a lot of crime podcasts like Rotten Mango. I enjoy listening to this podcast. I recommend it if you're into that type of vibe or if you just want to watch/hear something different. Overall, I think just what I watch after school is what inspired me the most to write this type of story. Anyways, hope you enjoy the story and leave some feedback on what I could improve on.