Chapter 1: The Dead in the Rain

The rainy season in Tokyo always carried a damp, clinging chill, as if the ancient city were being slowly drowned in murky gray. I walked back through a narrow alley beside the Tokugawa estate, holding a black oilcloth umbrella over my head. Rain dripped from the ribs of the canopy, making tiny pitter-patter sounds that stood out sharply against the silent night. Street lamps swayed violently in the wind and rain, casting long, twisted shadows on the ground that looked like ghosts struggling to escape.

I was thirty-five years old, named Munenobu Yagyu, and these days I was just a doctor who collected bodies from the slums. Three years ago, my reputation was destroyed by a forged medical record that had been planted against me—a coordinated purge by the underworld and the authorities. My wife and children vanished in a sudden fire, never to be found, leaving behind only a family letter burned in half. I had lost everything, save for hands that could still read pulses and examine bones, and a mouth filled with cold sneers.

The rain intensified. From deep within the alley came a stifled, ragged gasp. It didn’t sound like a beast; it sounded like the last breath being squeezed from a dying man’s throat. I stopped and listened. The sound of rain hitting the blue stone flags masked most of the details, but that rhythmic, deathly wheeze cut through the downpour.

“Is... anyone there?”

The voice was faint, but it had a desperate, icy edge to it. I lowered my umbrella and pushed through the wet weeds. In the shadows at the end of the alley, a man in tattered escort bureau robes was slumped against the wall. A broken arrow was stuck in his chest, the fletting still twitching slightly. Blood poured down the shaft, blooming into dark red flowers in the puddles at his feet.

“Who are you?” I crouched down and pressed my fingers to his wrist. His pulse was incredibly weak, like a thread about to snap.

“A messenger... from the Tohyou Escort Bureau.” He struggled to raise his hand and grabbed my sleeve, his fingernails digging into the fabric. “Don’t... let go...”

I didn’t pull away. Instead, I supported his head, letting him lean against my knee. This position would help keep blood flowing to his brain, and it gave me a better look at the tension in his facial muscles.

“What do you want to say?” I kept my voice low. Rain soaked my face, and I couldn’t tell if the water on my cheeks was rain or his tears.

“The manuscript... in my chest...” his breathing became more erratic, his throat bobbing. “They... are here... to take my life...”

He fumbled at his robe and pulled out a half-page of yellowed paper, shoving it into my hand. The edges were charred black, clearly a fragment rescued from a fire. It was covered in obscure, difficult-to-read characters.

“What is... this?” I unfolded the paper and squinted in the dim light.

“The lifeline... of my sect...” His eyes began to lose focus, his pupils constricting violently—a primal reaction to extreme fear. “The Yagyu Clan... old name... remember...”

Before he could finish, a point of cold light flared in the darkness down the alley.

"Don't let him leak the secret to outsiders!" A frigid voice cut through the rainy night, accompanied by the sharp sound of metal scraping.

Thwack!

The whistle of a crossbow bolt erupted beside my ear. I instinctively twisted to shield the half-page manuscript, while kicking the man’s body, which was rapidly going cold, out of the way. The bolt pierced his throat. A spray of blood spattered onto my face, salty and cold.

I grabbed the manuscript, scrambled to my feet, and sprinted into the deeper darkness of the alley. Footsteps echoed behind me—more than one. They were the rhythmic, urgent splashes of trained escort bureau killers or magistrate’s police booting through the puddles.

I had to figure out what that half-page of paper held before they caught me.

I rushed back to my cramped, shabby clinic, bolted the door, and lit the oil lamp. The rain still hammered against the window, but inside, the air was thick with the mix of medicinal herbs and old mold. I spread the manuscript on my desk and let my fingers trace the ink.

As a former competent physician, I had a near-obsessive knowledge of human anatomy, but deciphering ancient Han Chinese fragments required a different kind of logic. The handwriting on the manuscript was scrawled, with obvious pauses and hesitations between strokes; it was clearly not written by someone in a clear head.

I squinted, studying the start of the first line. On the character for "Life," the vertical stroke ended in an unnatural, sharp hook kicking up to the left. In casual writing, that hook would be smoother or crisper. This rigid, sharp angle only appeared when a person was extremely tense and their muscles were rigid.

Looking at the second line, the cursive connection of the characters for "Canal Transport" lacked the usual flow, as if the writer had been interrupted mid-sentence or was deliberately mimicking a specific writing habit.

“Lord Masumi Kitamura,” I muttered to myself, my voice echoing in the empty clinic. “You are the magistrate at the Machi Horyojo (Town Magistrate's Office), tasked with reviewing this manuscript. But did you actually understand the intricacies hidden here?”

I thought of Masumi Kitamura. That stubborn, upright official was probably losing sleep over the unknown origin of this half-page right now. He was ordered from above to investigate, but he was tormented by the law and his sense of justice. And this manuscript was exactly the knot he couldn’t untie.

I picked up a pair of tweezers and carefully scraped away a small smear of ink on the manuscript. Beneath it, a faint layer of underlying writing was visible. This was a classic "overwriting" technique; to hide the old words, the new ink was layered on top, but the old traces always remained.

I leaned closer to the lamp and tried to make out the underlying text.

"It... says 'Sawa' here," I whispered, my heart sinking as I read the two characters.

Sawa Horiuchi. The feared financial backer who made even the tough flinch. Cold, greedy, and treated lives like chips in a gamble. He monopolized the profits from canal transport in the capital. Anyone who tried to challenge his authority would end up just like that corpse in the alley—dead, with nowhere to bury him.

But the question was, how had this half-page manuscript ended up in Sawa’s hands? Or rather, why did he kill so brutally to silence the messenger?

I re-examined the characters for "Yagyu." My sect, the Yagyu Clan, had disappeared from the world of the jianghu years ago. Could that missing bloodline actually be connected to the Yagyu Clan?

“Munenobu Yagyu...” I stroked the half-page of paper, feeling its rough texture beneath my fingertips. It felt like touching a past that had been deliberately buried.

Suddenly, rapid knocking came from the door.

“Open up! It’s Masumi Kitamura!”

I took a deep breath, quickly hid the manuscript in the secret panel, and placed an ordinary medical text where it would be seen. I went to the door, unlocked the bolt, and opened it.

Masumi Kitamura stood in the rain. His official robe was soaked through, water dripping from the brim of his hat in clear beads. His face was pale, and his eyes showed anxiety and wariness that he couldn’t quite hide.

“Munenobu,” he squeezed into the room, bringing in a wave of cold, damp air, “what did you see in that alley?”

“I only saw a dying escort guard,” I answered calmly, my voice devoid of inflection. “He died from a crossbow bolt. The cause of death is clear: a penetrating injury to the throat. No other fatal wounds. If you suspect it was a mugging, the killer’s goal was only to silence him, not to steal anything.”

“Silence?” Masumi frowned. “What does a broke escort guard have that’s worth silencing?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” I turned and walked to the desk, lighting a fresh oil lamp. The firelight flickered on my face. “You should be asking who was trying to stop him from telling the truth. That voice sounded calm, like a professional killer. They didn’t want him to live long enough to see you, or anyone else.”

Masumi was silent for a moment, his gaze sweeping the room’s furnishings before landing on that medical book. “Did he leave anything behind?”

“A half-page manuscript,” I said slowly, not pulling it out immediately, testing his reaction. “It contains some clues about canal transport and old family names. If you want to investigate, you should go back to the office and get the proper paperwork. In here, I can only show you my medical books.”

“I don’t need paperwork,” Masumi stepped forward suddenly, lowering his voice. A flash of determination shot through his eyes. “I need the truth. Someone told me that this manuscript contains evidence that could shake the foundation of Sawa Horiuchi’s power. And you are the only one who can decipher it.”

“Decipher?” I let out a cold laugh. “Magistrate Kitamura, you’re a scholar and a lawman. If you can’t decipher a fragment, what is its value? And why drag in a useless doctor like me, who lost his wife and child?”

“Because of your name,” Masumi stared into my eyes, his voice trembling. “Yagyu. Your sect might be connected to those missing bloodlines.”

My pupils shrank instantly, and a storm rose in my mind. Sect bloodlines? My missing wife and children? The fire?

“Who told you that?” I tried to keep my tone steady, but my fingers gripped the edge of the desk so hard my knuckles turned white.

“Kana Asano.” Masumi said.

“The accountant?” I looked at him in disbelief. “An accountant for a commercial company who just tracks money in and out? How would she know the old tales of the jianghu?”

“Because she’s been tracking the flow of funds,” Masumi explained. “She found that in the last three years, a huge amount of money from Sawa Horiuchi’s banks flowed to the former stronghold of the Yagyu Clan. And the person who handled that money was one of the officials responsible for the forgery of your medical records three years ago.”

These pieces of information hit me like heavy hammers. I had always assumed the fire was an accident, or just simple revenge, but the flow of money suggested a much larger conspiracy behind it all.

“The manuscript,” I took a deep breath, forcing my logic back into control. “Give it to me.”

Masumi pulled the half-page fragment from his robe and handed it to me. His fingers were ice cold, and his eyes held a mix of pleading and trust.

“Once you’ve read it, tell me what’s on it.”

I took the manuscript. My fingertips touched the familiar ink, and a surge of indescribable sadness rose in my chest. I opened it and looked at those characters for "Yagyu" again.

This time, I didn’t just look at the handwriting. I combined it with the financial flow information Masumi had just given me and re-analyzed the writer’s psychological state.

“Look here,” I pointed to a dot on the character for "Transport" and said to Masumi. “This ink was wet by rain before it had time to dry, and then it was scorched by fire. This means the manuscript went through at least three different environments while being passed around. The first was a rainy night, the second was a fire scene, and the third...”

“What was the third?” Masumi asked.

“The third was a sealed room,” I looked up, my gaze piercing. “The writer inscribed the last few characters in extreme fear, but his hand was shaking, causing the strokes to deviate from the central axis. This deviation doesn’t look like illness. It looks like poisoning, or... coercion.”

“Coercion?”

“Exactly,” I nodded, my voice icy. “And the one doing the coercing was right behind the writer. Look at the final stroke of the characters for 'Old Name'. There’s a distinct hook backward. That’s a defensive writing habit, meaning the writer was twisting his body to dodge something.”

Masumi’s face drained of color. “You’re saying the person who wrote this manuscript did it while being watched?”

“It’s more than just being watched,” I added. “It was a targeted hunt on him personally. The crossbow bolt, the throat strike—these are precise attacks aimed at stopping his breathing, thereby stopping him from making a sound. This isn’t robbery. It’s a total silencing.”

The rain roared outside, as if narruring this cruel history.

Masumi stayed silent for a long time, then sighed deeply. “I’ll go find that official. But Munenobu, be careful. Sawa Horiuchi already knows you’re investigating this.”

“I know,” I tucked the manuscript away, hiding it against my body. “But the more he’s afraid, the closer we are to the truth. As long as he’s still around, I won’t stop.”

“What about Ayano Ono?” Masumi asked suddenly. “The abbess of the old temple. She has clues in the historical records there.”

A glint of light flashed in my eyes. “Did you contact her?”

“I told her to wait,” Masumi said. “Because she seems to be running from something. She’s tried to maintain a balance between religion and humanity, but this time, that balance has broken.”

I nodded. A plan was already forming in my mind. Ayano Ono might live in seclusion, but she had the temple’s archives spanning a century. Somewhere in them might be the hidden connection between the Yagyu Clan and canal transport.

And the price of all this was just beginning.