"Alright, men. Every single one of us is already aware of what the problem is, so there is no reason to waste time going over it again with more explanations. What we have to do is track down the yandere who took her life, and we'll put an end to the bastard ourselves."
After hearing those words, the rest of the police force erupted into motion.
Chairs scraped violently against the floor, folders snapped open, and papers scattered across desks as officers rushed between stations, phones pressed to their ears and case files clutched against their chests.
The room filled with hurried footsteps and the sharp ringing of telephones, everyone scrambling to piece together Hina's death before the press could turn the investigation into another headline about police incompetence.
Amid the chaos, Harold's partner, Joe Bert, remained rooted beside him, his gaze darting from one officer to another.
His brow tightened as he watched evidence being pulled from cabinets and photographs pinned onto boards, his fingers repeatedly brushing the edge of Hina's case file without opening it.
Around him, the station seemed to spin faster by the second, yet Joe stood still, struggling to understand what had just happened or where they were supposed to begin.
"In what way can we obtain some kind of hint or indication that would point us toward the location of the person responsible, and also help us determine whether that individual was genuinely a yandere?" The person working alongside Harold said this to him.
"Thanks to the device that I built myself, you don't need to concern yourself with the possibility that this might end up killing me, because I already tried it out on a dead body a few days back." He explained this to the joe before he made his way to the centre of the room, the very spot where the corpse was lying.
Harold drew the small device from his pocket, and the room seemed to lock in place around him. Every face turned toward the object in his hand, eyes fixed on its dark barrel and compact frame.
Someone's hand froze halfway to a doorknob, another person stood rigid with one foot lifted, and a chair scraped against the floor before falling silent. A faint label caught the light along the side of the device saying, "MEMORY SAVER".
Harold's grip tightened as the last movement in the room disappeared.
"What exactly is that device you've got in your hands?"
"I'm delighted that you asked, since this machine allows whoever is using it to enter the memories of any person, but only under the condition that the individual is already dead before the user turns it on." Harold offered this explanation, and then he placed the device against Hina's head.
He pressed the memory-saver gun against the dead girl's temple, his fingers curling tighter around the trigger. The longer he stared at her lifeless face, the more the urgency gnawed at him.
He had no idea how much time the weapon would give him inside her memories, and every second spent standing there was a second wasted.
His finger finally tightened. A violent flash erupted from the barrel, swallowing the room in white. Harold's body jerked as something invisible tore through him, wrenching his soul free and dragging it forward.
His vision blurred, his body vanished beneath him, and the world dissolved into darkness as he was pulled into the girl.
He landed hard on a cold floor. The darkness peeled away, revealing four walls closing around him. A single dim light hung overhead, casting long shadows across the locked room.
Harold pushed himself upright and scanned the unfamiliar surroundings, his gaze stopping on the chair in the centre. The girl was bound to it, wrists secured tightly behind her and ankles fastened to the legs.
Yet her chest rose and fell with each frightened breath, and her eyes moved beneath the dim light. Her skin held warmth, her face still carried colour, and there was no trace of the wounds that had claimed her life.
Harold's eyes lingered on her for a moment before the realization settled in: this was not the room where she had died. This was a fragment of her past, preserved inside the maze of her memories.
"I'm in." He glanced around, then lowered his voice. "No one can see me like this. Even if I make a sound, no one will hear me."
"Hey… hello? Where is everyone?" Hina mutters, shifting against the restraints. "It's pitch black… I can't see a damn thing."
A sudden noise snapped Harlod's head toward the door, and he slipped into the closet, pulling the door nearly shut as hurried footsteps approached. The lock clicked, followed by the slow creak of the room's door swinging open.
Through the narrow gap, he caught sight of a girl stepping inside, a black mask covering her face while strands of pink cotton-candy hair spilled freely down her back. With every step she took, the air around her hands trembled, rippling outward in faint waves that rattled the closet door and made the floor beneath him quiver.
"Hina. Poor, poor Hina." The girl's kinetic gloves crackled as her fingers curled into fists. "You really think I'll let this slide after what you did? After what you stole from me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, you crazy bitch," the restrained girl spat, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah, you do. You went on a date yesterday with the boy I love, the boy who belongs to me. My senpai."
Her eyes narrowed beneath the mask, the faint glow of her gloves intensifying as a low hum filled the air. She leaned closer, her breath steady as the corners of her lips slowly curled upward beneath the mask, her body shifting forward as energy gathered around her fingertips.
Hina and Harold remained unaware of the expression hidden from them, while her hand lifted, poised to strike, but then the tied up girl's voice got louder.
"Oh, him?" The girl tilted her head, a playful smirk curling across her lips. "Yeah, I did, and it's not like I slept with him and stole his virginity, oh, wait, I did."
"You did WHAT!?" The yandere's smile vanished under the mask as her fingers slowly closed around the knife beside her that she just picked up.
"He never told you?" Hina leaned closer, her smirk widening as she watched the colour drain from the yandere's face even under the mask. "He came over to my place, and let's just say we got pretty close; afterward, he told me it felt better than those kisses you gave him."
The knife flashed beneath the mask as the yandere brought it down. The first strike missed anything vital, but the second found Hina's kidney. Her body jolted against the floor, her scream ripping through the room. The girl's grip tightened around the handle.
She struck again, into a lung, then between ribs, then lower into the abdomen. Each impact was driven by the same image burning behind her eyes: Hina with her senpai, taking something the yandere believed belonged to her.
No matter how many times the blade fell, the image refused to disappear.
"OWWWWWW! WHAT THE FUCK?! OKAY, OKAY, STOP!" Hina gasped, her voice cracking as she tried to crawl away. "I didn't, fuck, I didn't even know he had someone! PLEASE!"
The yandere didn't answer. Her breathing came out unevenly beneath the mask as she raised the knife again. Hina's pleas became distant beneath the pounding in her ears. One final strike silenced her as the room fell still.
The yandere stared down at the body for several seconds before lowering the knife, her fingers slowly loosening around the blood-slick handle.
"Finally, you're dead." Her voice was quiet, almost relieved. She crouched beside Hina and tilted her masked head. "I'll give you a grave befitting your betrayal. You should be grateful, really. Senpai will never have to look at you again."
The time was up. The memory gun's effect vanished, and Harold was ripped back into his own body. His vision snapped into focus, the police station replacing the horrifying scene he had witnessed.
For a moment, he remained perfectly still, his uniform settling around him as he stared ahead. He had seen the killer reduce Hina to something resembling a broken teddy bear, yet his expression remained firm, his instincts forcing him to stand his ground.
"What did you see?" Joe asked, his work partner's voice cutting through the silence.
Harold didn't answer. His gaze slowly dropped to his hands, his fingers trembling in front of him. He curled them into fists, trying to steady them, but the shaking only worsened. His blue hair did little to conceal the fear in his widened eyes as the memory replayed itself behind them.
"Death. I saw Death."