Kurogane doesn't sleep.
It only pretends to.
By day, the city is full, bustling with life—trains screaming overhead like restless spirits, people rushing through their daily routines, vendors shouting over one another, the wind drifting calmly between buildings. Children play in narrow streets, laughter echoing off concrete walls that have seen better years.
By night, the city changes.
Street lamps bathe the roads and sidewalks in pale light. Alleyways stretch longer than they should, twisting into shadows that feel deeper than darkness. Figures rush past, faces blurred, footsteps echoing a second too late—as if something is following just out of sight.
There's an old rumor that circulates through Kurogane, passed between drunks, night workers, and people who swear they've already lost something they can't get back.
They say that at exactly midnight, a building appears.
Not a shop that was always there.
Not a place you can find twice.
It slips into the city like it belongs—wedged between structures that weren't touching moments ago. Narrow. Tall. Unmarked. A single lantern hanging above its door, burning red no matter the weather, no matter the wind.
They say you don't find the building.
It finds you.
And only if you're carrying a regret heavy enough to pull you off your path.
Most people walk past without ever noticing it. Others glance at it, feel something twist in their chest, and keep walking—too afraid of what they might ask for if they stepped inside.
The few who do enter never talk about what they traded.
Only that when they came back out, the city felt… different.
Like it remembered something they didn't.
The Black Lantern House settles into place, brick and shadow locking together as if it's always been here. By morning, it won't be.
I lean against the wall and light a cigarette I won't finish. The smoke curls upward, swallowed by the night before it can decide what shape to take.
The air changes, it always does before a customer arrives.
I piece out a tall, slender figure of a man in the alley, pretending not to look lost. Mid-thirties, maybe. Office clothes wrinkled, tie loosened like he tried to choke himself out of a bad decision and failed. His shadow drags behind him—too long, too heavy, clinging to his heels like it doesn't want to follow.
I flick the cigarette away and let the shadows stretch just enough for him to notice the building. His eyes widen—not in awe, but in recognition. Like something inside him finally found the word for the ache it's been carrying.
He steps closer.
"Is this…?" he starts.
"The Black Lantern House," I say. "You're on time."
He swallows. "I didn't mean to come here."
"No one does."
The lantern hums softly above us, reacting to him now. That's always how it starts.
"I heard a rumor," he says. "That this place—"
"—lets you change the past," I finish. "One moment. One choice."
His hands tremble. He presses them together like he's trying to keep something from spilling out.
"I just want to go back," he says. "Ten seconds. That's all. If I'd been faster—"
I hold up a hand.
"We don't do ifs out here," I tell him. "Only prices."
He looks at me then, really looks at me, like he's trying to decide whether I'm real.
"What happens if it goes wrong?"
"Then I clean it up," I say. "And the city remembers something it was never meant to."
The door behind me opens on its own.
Warm light spills out. The smell of old paper, dust, and something sharper—regret, if it had a scent.
The Owner is waiting inside. They always are.
I step aside and gesture toward the entrance.
"Last chance to walk away," I say.
He doesn't.
The door closes behind him, the lantern flares once, and somewhere deep beneath the city, something shifts—just enough to remind me why I hate this job.
And why I can't leave.