The Lament of the Forgotten Fan

  Tokyo’s neon skyline pulsed in the rain, reflections swimming in the uneven asphalt. Kazuya Mori lit a cigarette with shaking hands, the ember flaring bright against the dark. He had been walking aimlessly for hours, his thoughts spiraling inwards, consuming him. His bandmate was gone. His old manager was gone. No explanations, just absence—like they had been plucked from the world. His new manager, a stranger with an ever-present smile and cold eyes, had appeared as if waiting for the vacancy. It didn’t feel real. None of it did.

  He should have known this was how it would go. He believed in stories. Horror stories. The kind that wrapped around your mind like barbed wire, pulling tighter until you bled. He had always loved them. Urban legends, ghost tales, things that lingered at the edge of perception. But now, he was inside one. And he was beginning to understand what it felt like to be trapped.

  Then, he found the alley.

  It had appeared before, when he was at his lowest, as if it knew. Always in a different part of the city, but unmistakably the same. Narrow, impossibly deep, lined with walls that felt like they had no end. It shouldn’t have been there. Tokyo’s streets were mapped, built upon layers of history, yet this place defied all logic. And each time, he had stopped just short of stepping in, held back by something unseen. But it was waiting. Patient.

  Tonight, he felt it watching.

  A whisper in the wind. Barely there. A fragment of a song curling through the air like a memory just out of reach. He shook his head, forcing himself to keep walking. His paranoia was getting worse. He had been hearing things—lyrics scrawled in notebooks he didn’t remember writing, voices in the static of his radio. And the song—always the same mournful lullaby, lingering at the edges of his mind, waiting for him to listen.

  He didn’t tell his wife. She had been patient with him, through the failures, the controversies, the vanishing of people he once called friends. He told himself she wouldn’t understand, but the truth was, he didn’t want her to be afraid. Not yet.

  But the whispers followed him home.

  He sat at his desk, flipping through his old lyrics, and there it was. Scribbled between the margins, over and over, in jagged handwriting that didn’t quite look like his own:

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  You have to sing.

  The ink was still wet.

  Kazuya slammed the book shut, heart pounding. The whisper in his mind shifted, splintering. The lullaby wasn't just a song anymore. It was crying. A chorus of voices, overlapping, pleading.

  He turned on the radio. Static. Then—

  "Kazuya..."

  His breath hitched. He turned it off. The apartment was silent. His wife was asleep in the next room, unaware of the crack in reality that was widening beneath her feet.

  He had to end this.

  The next night, the alley was waiting. He stepped inside.

  The city faded behind him, swallowed by the dark. The walls stretched upwards, endless, pressing in. The whisper became a melody, threading through the air like silk. It was familiar. Too familiar. Because he had written it. Or thought he had.

  "You remember now, don’t you?"

  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He turned, and she was there.

  Pale skin. Hollow eyes. Lips curved in something that wasn’t a smile. He knew that face. He had seen it in a hundred crowds, a thousand blurred memories of fans screaming his name. But he had seen it most clearly the night she disappeared.

  "I wrote your song," she whispered. "And you stole it."

  The walls shuddered. Kazuya felt the weight of it, the truth pressing against his ribs. He had stolen from many people. Ideas, melodies, words. But hers had been different. Hers had been something pure, something born from love. And he had twisted it. Used his fans to silence her. Mocked her until she had nothing left but the void.

  "Please," he rasped. "I didn’t—"

  She raised a finger to her lips. Hush.

  Behind her, figures emerged from the dark. His former bandmate. His old manager. His publicist. Their mouths moved, but the only sound was the song. The lullaby. They were singing, but their voices had been stolen, leaving only an echo of something once human.

  Kazuya stumbled back. "No—no, this isn’t real—"

  She tilted her head. "Then sing. Sing the song you took from me."

  His throat locked. The words—he knew them, had sung them a thousand times on stage, had heard them on the radio, in the charts, in the mouths of his fans. But now, when he tried to force them out, nothing came. Only silence.

  The shadows surged forward.

  He saw his son standing in the alley’s entrance. "Daddy?"

  His heart stopped. "Go back!" But the child’s face twisted, blurred, the features peeling away like smoke. Not his son. The ghost.

  He turned to run, but the figures closed in. His wife’s voice cut through the air, distant, afraid.

  "Kazuya... why are you singing?"

  His breath stilled. He wasn’t singing. But his voice was. The lullaby poured from his lips, a sound he could not control. It rippled through the alley, weaving into the night, stretching toward home.

  His wife was hearing it. Soon, she would see the alley. Soon, she would step inside.

  The ghost’s smile widened. "Now you understand."

  He tried to scream, but it was too late. The alley swallowed him whole.

  The next night, the alley appeared somewhere else. And from within the dark, a new voice sang, calling for the next soul to answer.