With his hands still trembling and tears trapped beneath his eyelids, Masahiro turned on Lisa's phone, still in disbelief over her absurd death. He was there, surrounded by the shattered pieces of her life—and of his own despair.
He unlocked the phone of his late wife and, to begin with, opened the messaging app. The first thing he found was a slew of missed calls to his number—calls he had obviously never received. Since entering the house, it had been clear that he was completely cut off from the outside world. There was no way a call could have ever reached him.
Scrolling through the chat, he found a series of unanswered messages.
"Masahiro, where are you? Why did you run away?"
"Masahiro, are you okay? Please answer me."
"Masu, I'm so worried. I'm coming to find you."
"Please, just answer me so I know you're safe."
"What's happening to you? I don't recognize you anymore... please, answer me."
Every word hit him like a dagger to the heart. He had never felt such unbearable pain. He could still hear Lisa's voice in his head, calling out in worry—and in a moment like this, she would have been the one to comfort him.
Once again, a cry began to rise in his throat and soon overwhelmed him, growing more and more desperate. The guilt inside him grew heavier, more real.
And the house laughed at him.
"HAHAHAHA, PATHETIC... YOU'RE PATHETIC! Crying and breaking down like this, as if this wasn't always your fate! It doesn't matter what you built... it doesn't matter what you made of your life. You were always meant to end up here. Everything you ever had was always mine."
Masahiro clutched at his hair, squeezing handfuls of it as if trying to tear it out, gritting his teeth while his tears fell onto Lisa's phone.
"YOURS? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? WHAT IS ALL THIS? WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU?"
He was drowning now in a deep, dark lake of despair. His life had just been shattered before his eyes, and he had nothing left to fight for. Not knowing who was doing all this to him—or why—only made the confusion worse.
He was alone, with an invisible enemy who had apparently been there his whole life.
It was all so senseless, so incomprehensible, that he began to doubt even himself, his own sanity.
What if it was all in his head? What if all he had to do was walk to the entrance, open the door, and leave?
But he knew it wasn't that simple.
He had tried to leave. Many times. It had never worked.
All he could do now was keep searching the house.
Continuing his investigation, he noticed a chat with Ryoka. There were several missed calls and messages that clearly showed Lisa had tried everything to reach him, with no success.
"Ryoka, Masahiro has disappeared again. Is he with you by any chance?"
"Please answer, I'm really worried about him."
"Have you vanished too? Please, I need your help to find Masahiro."
"I'm coming over to check."
And then the messages abruptly stopped.
Masahiro stared, baffled. That didn't sound like the Ryoka he remembered. In fact, thinking about it now, nothing Ryoka had done since his return to Kyoto had made any sense.
But had Lisa really never noticed?
He closed the messaging app and this time opened the photo gallery. He was desperately hoping to find something useful at last.
But something wasn't right.
The gallery didn't look like Lisa's at all.
All her old photos—everything she'd collected in a lifetime—were gone, mysteriously deleted.
Yet the gallery wasn't empty. It contained exactly 32 photos.
Most were dark, indecipherable.
But some were more disturbing.
They featured Lisa, but not in any normal way. They weren't selfies. She wasn't posing.
They looked like they had been taken secretly... with her own phone.
There was Lisa on the subway.
Lisa on the streets of Kyoto.
Lisa near the house.
And then… a photo of a coffin.
The image was partially corrupted, but Masahiro could recognize the Kyoto cemetery.
Lisa had been there? But why?
He was sure the name on the coffin would help him understand everything—but unfortunately, the name wasn't visible. Only the dates.
"12/04/1989 – 06/11/1999"
Those dates felt so familiar… but without a name, he couldn't place them.
The more he stared, the more his head began to ache.
What if this—this coffin—was what Lisa had been trying to show him?