Chapter 4:The weight of Names
1104 Words
Detective Kuroda stopped writing.
The small apartment grew very quiet after Ren’s words.
Outside, traffic hissed softly through wet streets below, but inside Apartment 207, even the air seemed to hold still.
“You’re certain?” Kuroda asked carefully.
Ren sat at the kitchen table staring at the notebook.
“No.”
The detective waited.
Ren appreciated that about him. Most adults rushed silence because it made them uncomfortable.
“She never said his name,” Ren continued quietly. “But a few days before…” His throat tightened briefly. “Before it happened, I heard her talking.”
“On the phone?”
“I think so.”
“What did she say?”
Ren closed his eyes.
Fragments returned slowly.
His mother standing near the sink late at night. Voice trembling. Thinking he was asleep.
“You need to stop calling.”
Pause.
“No, Ren doesn’t know anything.”
Another pause.
Then the sentence that kept replaying in his head:
“I already paid for what happened.”
Ren opened his eyes again.
Kuroda’s expression had sharpened slightly.
“What happened?” the detective asked.
“She didn’t say.”
“Anything else?”
Ren thought carefully.
The memory felt slippery.
“She sounded scared,” he admitted. “But also angry.”
Kuroda nodded slowly and wrote something down.
The scratching sound of his pen irritated Ren suddenly.
Not because of the detective.
Because it made everything feel official.
Evidence. Statements. Case details.
His mother had become paperwork.
Kuroda seemed to notice the shift in his expression.
“You don’t have to force yourself,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re functioning.”
The correction caught Ren off guard.
Kuroda leaned back slightly in the chair.
“There’s a difference.”
Silence settled again.
The detective opened the paper bag he’d brought and placed a warm container on the table.
“Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Ren stared at him.
“You always this bossy?”
“Only with stubborn people.”
“That seems inefficient.”
“It is.”
Another tiny almost-smile threatened to appear on Ren’s face.
It vanished quickly.
Kuroda noticed anyway.
Again, he didn’t comment.
Smart.
Ren opened the container reluctantly.
Curry rice.
Still warm.
The smell alone made him realize how long it had been since he’d eaten properly.
“Convenience store?” he asked.
“Restaurant downstairs from the station.”
“Taste expensive.”
“You wound me.”
“You look like a man who burns water.”
“That happened once.”
“So it’s true.”
The detective sighed dramatically.
For a few minutes, the conversation drifted into strangely normal territory.
Tiny observations. Dry humor. Silences that weren’t painful.
It confused Ren.
How could the world still contain ordinary moments after something like this?
Then Kuroda spoke again.
“Do you know why detectives ask questions repeatedly?”
Ren looked up.
“To catch lies?”
“Sometimes.”
The detective folded his hands loosely.
“But mostly because grief changes memory.”
Ren frowned slightly.
“When people experience trauma, the brain protects itself. Details disappear. Then return later.”
His eyes moved briefly toward the notebook.
“Small things become important.”
The room grew colder somehow.
Ren looked down at his food.
“There’s something else,” he admitted quietly.
Kuroda waited.
“The night she died…”
His fingers tightened around the spoon.
“The man looked at me.”
The detective’s expression sharpened instantly.
“Directly?”
Ren nodded once.
“And smiled.”
Saying it aloud made the memory worse.
The stairwell. Rainwater. Cold eyes.
That smile.
Kuroda became very still.
“Can you describe him better now?”
Ren tried.
Really tried.
But frustration twisted through him immediately.
“I can’t remember his face properly.”
“That’s normal.”
“No, it’s not.”
The anger in his voice surprised both of them.
Ren stared at the table.
“I remember my mother’s coffee mug.” His breathing grew uneven. “I remember what song she was humming.” “I remember the stain on her sweater from three months ago.”
His voice dropped.
“But I can’t remember his face.”
Silence.
Then Kuroda said quietly:
“Your mind remembered what mattered most.”
Ren laughed once.
A hollow sound.
“That’s convenient for him.”
The detective didn’t answer.
Because there was no good answer.
—
Kuroda left an hour later after insisting Ren save his number properly this time.
“Call if you remember anything.”
“You’ve said that three times.”
“And I’ll say it four.”
At the doorway, the detective paused.
“Ren.”
“Hm?”
“You don’t have to carry this alone.”
The sentence lingered after he left.
Ren stood in the apartment listening to retreating footsteps downstairs.
Alone.
The word felt different now.
He walked slowly into his mother’s room again.
Moonlight filtered faintly through thin curtains.
The notebook still rested on the bed.
If anything happens to me—
Four unfinished words.
Ren sat down quietly.
Then his eyes drifted toward the closet.
Half-open.
Inside hung rows of ordinary clothes.
Sweaters. Aprons. Work uniforms.
And near the back—
a small cardboard box.
Ren frowned.
He didn’t recognize it.
He pulled it down carefully.
Dust coated the edges.
Old.
Inside were photographs.
Most showed ordinary things: younger versions of his mother street festivals school ceremonies
Then Ren found one that made his heartbeat stop.
His mother.
Much younger.
Standing beside a man whose face had been scratched out violently with something sharp.
Not crossed neatly.
Destroyed.
The damage was aggressive enough to tear through the photograph itself.
Ren stared.
On the back, written in faded ink:
Some mistakes follow you forever.
Cold spread slowly through his chest.
Another photograph slipped loose from the pile.
This one showed his mother standing in front of a university building beside three other people.
All smiling.
One face was scratched out again.
The same person.
And in the corner of the photograph—
partially visible—
stood a young man in a dark coat watching the group from a distance.
Even blurry, something about him felt wrong.
Ren’s pulse quickened.
Then he noticed something else.
At the bottom of the box rested a sealed envelope.
His name was written on it.
For Ren.
His hands trembled slightly as he picked it up.
The envelope had already been opened once before.
Not by him.
Someone else had read it first.
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