Some bonds are not broken by death—
they merely wait to be claimed.
(Case Records: PA2-01 to PA2-16 )
---
Archived on: 2025-12-25
—Midnight Sonata—
Aya called late in the evening.
She almost never contacted me at that hour.
For a moment, I watched the phone vibrate on the table before answering.
"Rhan,"
her voice was lowered, tightly controlled, as if afraid of being overheard,
"I need you to see a patient."
There was a brief pause on the line.
I heard her inhale—and stop.
"Medically..." she said at last,
"there's no explanation left."
---
The night road was empty.
Under the headlights, the asphalt emerged in short stretches, then vanished again into darkness.
Trees stood back from the shoulder, indistinct silhouettes.
Aya and I sat in the back seat.
Behind the wheel was the patient's father, Edward Blackwood.
Almost as soon as the engine settled into motion, he began to speak.
"That night," he said, carefully,
"just after dusk, my son told us he heard music outside."
He fell silent, as if weighing whether to continue.
"Mendelssohn's Wedding March."
I lifted my eyes to him.
Edward's gaze never left the road ahead, but his knuckles had gone white against the leather.
"He said it felt... vivid. Like a real wedding was taking place."
"But inside the house—it was just us. No one else heard anything."
The car filled with a quiet that had weight to it.
"The music stopped," Edward went on.
"Then he said a woman's voice was calling his name. From outside."
Beside me, Aya's shoulder tightened, almost imperceptibly.
"It told him to go with her."
"He was terrified. Couldn't sleep. Didn't finally drift off until nearly eleven."
Edward took a slow breath. When he spoke again, his voice was thinner.
"What came after... was past midnight."
"Around one o'clock," he said,
"we heard a violin coming from his room."
I spoke for the first time.
"Does he play?"
"No." The answer came immediately.
"He's always hated the violin."
As if afraid the statement alone wouldn't suffice, he added,
"If one comes on television, he changes the channel."
The car descended a slope.
Shadows slid across the windshield, swaying with the turn of the road.
"We tried to go in," Edward said.
"But the door was locked from the inside. The windows were latched."
"We could only stand in the hallway and listen."
"At first, the playing was steady."
"Measured."
"Then it changed. Became heavy. Aggressive."
"As if something long contained was being forced out."
His voice dropped.
"It didn't sound like music anymore."
"More like an outburst."
The sound came and went through the night,
finally stopping around five in the morning.
At daybreak, they opened the door.
In the center of the room lay a violin.
"We threw it out immediately," Edward said.
"Took it far away."
Adrian remembered none of it.
No music.
No violin.
No explanation for how it appeared.
They installed cameras soon after.
Every night, the feed went black.
Even with the lights on, nothing registered.
And then, stranger still—
The violin returned.
No matter how far it was discarded, smashed, or burned,
by morning it was back again.
Always intact.
Always in the same place.
Edward hired two guards to watch the room overnight.
They were found unconscious at dawn,
inside the room, with no memory of what had happened.
"After that," Edward said,
"no one would go in there anymore."
Something in him finally gave way.
"We tried everything," he said.
"Doctors. Psychologists. Shamans. Monks."
"No one could explain it."
"Adrian is fading."
The words caught in his throat.
"He cries even during the day now. Says he hears the wedding march again."
"He's barely more than bones."
"As parents... how are we supposed to watch that happen?"
"I'd take his place in a heartbeat."
---
I didn't respond.
Ordinary hauntings sought disruption—
illness, madness, death.
But this presence had lingered too long,
without driving him out,
without taking hold.
Almost as if—
it was attempting communication.
Aya's hand closed gently around my arm.
I turned to her. Her face had gone pale.
I pressed her hand once, reassuring.
She had been a ghost herself.
And because of that,
she knew better than anyone—
This did not align with known patterns.
---
—The Patient—
The car came to a stop before a villa perched on the hillside.
Its windows were dark.
Only the porch light was on, casting a narrow cone of yellow across the stone steps.
The front door opened almost immediately.
Edward's wife, Margaret, hurried out.
Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she hadn't slept in days.
"Please," she said, her voice breaking before she reached us,
"save my son."
She clasped her hands together, as though afraid they might shake apart.
"We'll pay anything—anything at all."
At the word pay, something cold brushed through me.
"Let me see him first," I said, cutting in before the sentence could finish unraveling.
Adrian's room was on the second floor.
The hallway carpet muffled our steps.
Family photographs lined the walls—birthdays, school ceremonies, moments frozen long before the nights began to matter.
I pushed the door open.
Before crossing the threshold, I extended my senses.
—Nothing.
No residual energy.
No lingering distortion.
No emotional imprint clinging to the air.
The absence itself felt wrong.
Unnaturally clean.
The boy lay on the bed, his frame reduced to angles and shadows.
His cheeks were hollow, his breathing shallow.
At the sound of movement, his eyelids fluttered open.
"Mom..."
His voice was scraped raw, barely more than breath.
"Who is he?"
"This is Mr. Arcturus," Margaret said quickly.
"He's here to help you."
Adrian's lips twitched, forming something that resembled a smile, but never quite became one.
"Even Dr. Aya couldn't do anything..."
"So what's the point."
He closed his eyes again, as if the effort had cost him more than he could afford.
I stayed where I was.
I scanned the room once more—the corners, the ceiling, the space beneath the bed.
Still nothing.
No pressure.
No resistance.
No sign that anything had ever been there at all.
I stepped back into the hallway.
---
Aya followed at once. "Well?"
"Too clean," I said.
Margaret stared at me, the word catching between confusion and fear.
"Clean?"
"There's no residual energy in the room," I explained.
"None on him, either."
"If I walked in blind," I added,
"I'd say he was suffering from extreme psychological trauma. Nothing more."
"But those things happened," Margaret said sharply.
Her composure fractured.
"People heard it. They saw the violin. We didn't imagine it!"
"I'm not saying you did," I replied.
I kept my voice even.
"I'm saying whatever caused it isn't here now."
"And that breaks every known pattern."
Aya's fingers tightened around my sleeve.
"Rhan," she said quietly,
"if this is too dangerous, we can leave."
I understood her concern.
This was the kind of case where instincts offered no warning—
because there was nothing left to sense.
"A little longer," I said.
I looked back toward the closed door at the end of the hallway.
"This case..."
"It shouldn't be empty."
The house remained silent.
And yet,
for the first time since arriving,
I had the distinct impression that something had already finished what it came to do—
and was simply waiting to be noticed.