The silence that followed Hartmann's departure was a living thing.
It crawled into the corners of the room, heavy and damp, tasting of salt and the metallic tang of the knife. I watched Mika. She was still leaning against the door, her forehead pressed against the wood as if she were trying to melt into it, to become part of the architecture and escape the reality of the last ten minutes.
She had lied to the law.
She had sacrificed her integrity on the altar of a story she didn't even fully understand yet.
"You did well, Mika," I said.
My voice felt like it was coming from a great distance. The pain in my shoulder was no longer a sharp sting; it had evolved into a dull, rhythmic throb that pulsed in time with the cursor on the screen.
*Throb. Blink.*
*Throb. Blink.*
"Don't touch me," she whispered.
I hadn't moved. I didn't need to. The space between us was already filled with things far more intrusive than a human hand.
I looked at the laptop. The text was glowing with an unnatural intensity, the white of the digital page reflecting in the pools of blood on the floor.
*The editor chooses the shadow over the light,* the screen wrote. *She realizes that morality is a luxury of the talentless. To be part of a masterpiece, one must first learn how to bury the truth.*
"You're not writing that," Mika said, her voice trembling as she finally turned around. Her eyes were hollowed out, the vibrant intelligence I had always admired replaced by a raw, bleeding shock. "You're not even touching the keys, Ryo."
I looked at my hands. They were resting on my lap, stained and shaking.
"The Muse has its own rhythm now," I said. "I'm just the witness. Like you."
Nox was behind her again, his form shimmering like heat haze over a summer road. He leaned down, his non-existent breath ruffling the stray hairs at the nape of her neck. She shivered, her hands clutching her elbows.
"He's here, isn't he?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Whatever it is that's doing this to you. Whatever it is that killed that man and turned your prose into a weapon. I can feel it. It's... it's cold. Like ice being pressed against my soul."
I didn't answer. I couldn't explain Nox to her because I didn't fully understand him myself. Was he a demon? A hallucination? Or simply the personification of the darkness I had been suppressing for thirty years?
"The shoulder, Ryo," she said, her editorial instinct flickering through the fog of her trauma. "It's bleeding through your shirt. If you don't treat it, you'll pass out before the next chapter is finished."
She was right. The adrenaline was fading, and the room was beginning to tilt. The edges of my vision were fraying into darkness.
"The kitchen," I muttered, staggering to my feet.
Every movement was an agony. The knife had gone deep, slicing through the muscle of my deltoid. It was a clean strike. A professional strike. Mika had more violence in her than she realized.
I sat on a kitchen stool. She moved toward the first-aid kit I kept under the sink—a remnant of my days as a clumsy student. She moved like a sleepwalker, her actions dictated by habit rather than will.
She pulled out the antiseptic and the bandages.
"Why didn't you let them in?" I asked as she began to cut away the fabric of my shirt.
Her hands paused. The cold steel of the scissors brushed against my skin.
"Because I read the first chapter, Ryo," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. "And I realized that if the world doesn't see the end of this story, then everything I've ever believed about art is a lie. If a crime this terrible can produce something that beautiful... then beauty has no soul. And I have to know if that's true."
She poured the antiseptic onto the wound.
I hissed, my fingers gripping the edge of the counter until the wood groaned.
"Art doesn't have a soul, Mika," I gasped through the pain. "It has a price. You've just started paying yours."
She worked in silence for a long time. She cleaned the blood, her touch surprisingly steady. As she bandaged the wound, I watched her face. She was beautiful in her despair—a tragic heroine destined for a final act she couldn't foresee.
Nox was watching her too. He was salivating, the shadows around him deepening as he fed on the exquisite tension of her internal collapse.
"She is perfect," Nox whispered in my mind. "A collaborator who hates herself. That is the purest fuel, Ryo. The conflict between her conscience and her curiosity will write the middle of this book for us."
"Is that all people are to you?" I thought. "Fuel?"
"People are just unfinished sentences, Ryo. I'm just providing the punctuation."
Mika finished the bandage. She stood back, her hands covered in my blood. She didn't wash them. She just stared at them, as if they belonged to someone else.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now," I said, standing up and feeling the strange, artificial strength returning to my limbs, "we check the reception."
I walked back to the living room and opened my email.
There were thirty-seven messages.
The first was from the Editor-in-Chief.
*Subject: THE MANUSCRIPT. URGENT.*
*Ryo, Mika sent over the first twenty pages. I don't know what you've done, but the CEO has already called the legal team to draft a worldwide exclusivity contract. This isn't just a book. This is a cultural shift. We're leaking the first five pages to the press in an hour. Get ready.*
I scrolled down.
Messages from critics. Messages from other writers I used to envy. Even a message from my father in Kyoto.
*Ryo. I read the excerpt in the digital preview. It's... disturbing. It reminded me of your mother's final days. What have you done?*
I closed the laptop.
The world was already beginning to scream for more. They didn't know about the man in the bathtub. They didn't know about the detective at the door or the blood on the floorboards. They only knew the prose.
They were the accomplices now. Millions of them.
"They love it," I said, looking at Mika.
She let out a short, hysterical laugh. "Of course they do. They're vultures. They want to see the car crash, as long as the blood is described in perfect metaphors."
"And you're the one who showed it to them."
She flinched. The truth was a mirror she wasn't ready to look into.
I felt a sudden, sharp vibration from the desk.
It wasn't my phone.
It was the paperweight.
The crystal sphere was vibrating, a low-frequency hum that made the pens on the desk rattle. The red center was no longer a swirl; it was an eye. A dark, vertical slit that seemed to be scanning the room.
"The deadline is moving, Ryo," Nox said, his voice turning harsh, losing its playful edge.
"What do you mean?"
"The world's attention is a lens. It focuses the energy. But energy requires a constant stream of information. If you stop writing now, the feedback loop will break. And if it breaks... the void returns."
"I just finished Chapter Five! I'm exhausted!"
"The Muse doesn't sleep," Nox hissed, his form expanding until he filled the entire ceiling, a canopy of suffocating darkness. "The world is hungry. If you don't feed them, they will come for you. Hartmann is just the beginning. The police, the media, the fans... they will all tear this apartment apart to find the source of the genius. You have to keep them busy with the story."
I looked at the laptop.
A new email popped up.
It was an anonymous address.
*Subject: I saw what you did.*
My heart stopped.
I clicked it.
There was no text. Only an attachment.
A photo.
It was taken from the building across the street. It showed me standing at the window earlier that morning, holding the kitchen knife, with Nox's shadow visible behind me.
"We're not the only ones watching," I whispered.
Mika saw my face and rushed over. She read the subject line and turned even paler, if that was possible.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"I don't know."
Nox let out a low, predatory growl. "A rival. Or perhaps... a fan who wants to be part of the plot."
The doorbell rang again.
Not the detective. Not the heavy pounding.
It was a soft, rhythmic tapping.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
Like a pen hitting a page.
I walked to the door, my hand hovering over the lock.
"Ryo, don't," Mika whispered.
I looked through the peephole.
There was no one there.
Only a small, white envelope slid under the door.
I picked it up. My hands were shaking again. I opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper with one sentence written in elegant, hand-lettered ink:
*The ending of Chapter Six is missing a death. Would you like a suggestion?*
I looked at Mika. I looked at the shadow of Nox.
The game had expanded. I wasn't just the writer anymore. I was a character in someone else's draft.
"Someone knows," Mika said, her voice a ghost of a sound.
"No," I said, the fire of a new, darker inspiration beginning to burn in my chest. "Someone wants to collaborate."
I walked back to the laptop. I didn't care about the pain. I didn't care about the police.
I had to know who was writing back.
"Sit down, Mika," I said, my fingers finally touching the keys.
"Why?"
"Because we're about to receive our first piece of fan mail."
*Chapter Six: The Anatomy of a Collaborator,* I typed.
*The protagonist realizes that he is not the only monster in the city. There are others. Others who have been waiting for someone to give their darkness a voice. And now, the chorus is beginning.*
The screen flashed red.
The paperweight glowed.
And in the hallway, the sound of retreating footsteps echoed like a heartbeat.
"Who are they, Nox?" I asked.
The demon smiled, his teeth like rows of broken glass.
"Your readers, Ryo. And they're dying to meet you."
I pressed 'Enter'.
The room went dark.
And the next sentence began with a scream from the apartment next door.