Tokyo, Japan

Early Summer

Her glove-covered hands gently touched the arms’ area of the victims and she suddenly felt a burst of memories coming from the recently deceased man. According to the missing person’s biography, he was a forty-nine years old American tourist named Johnny Seo, who travelled frequently for wildlife photography. He was last seen in the jungle in the border of Romania, with his bag left untouched, leaving behind a Nikon camera and a few sets of clothes as the only clues. Nothing was out of the ordinary from his camera, so the local police ruled the case as a voluntary runaway unless proven otherwise.

It had been about six months since he was last spotted by a local and six-and-a-half since he lost contact with civilisation, and just six days before, his corpse suddenly washed ashore in the southern China sea. His nephew immediately flew to the capital of China, but decided to conduct the autopsy in Japan, instead. There was a long list of procedure to be complied, but with a lot of money spent, the body was flown off from Beijing to Tokyo. His nephew in-law was a Japanese woman in her thirty, and this woman’s niece was her. Minatozaki Sana.

Not a single soul had known of her unique ability – or the so-called ‘sixth sense’ in modern term. She was not an indigo child by any mean; at least she didn’t develop symptoms according to the definition. Sana recalled the burst of pain that engulfed her when the ability first developed. She was eleven back then, having just had her very first period – an adolescent on her own. The deceased was her granduncle, who passed away at the age of 94. He was a respected figure in the neighbourhood, so his funeral ceremony was exceptionally lively and crowded.

Little Sana had only seen her granduncle for about once to twice a year – during the New Year greeting, and his birthday celebration. She quite liked him, too, because he was always very generous with the pocket money and gave her lots of sweet desserts whenever she visited. And so, she felt a little upset when it was her turn to pay her last greeting to his stilled body. Sana’s grandmother was clutching her tiny hands tightly as a moral support, in case this child was afraid of the corpse. That was when it hit her, and the first wave of pain was not merciful at all.

She found out that the second Elder of the Minatozaki family was not the man he was in public as he was in the family. He was brought back by Sana’s great-grandfather when he was eight months-old – a baby conceived from his external affair with another mistress. The wife was not happy then, so the granduncle’s early childhood life passed by unevenly, with daily beatings and very strict teaching. At the age of nine, he walked in on his father having with one of the maids. At the age of twelve, he lost his ity with a close neighbour aunt who always treated him kindly and invited him home just to give him candies. At the time it happened, she was thirty-two, her husband was rarely away, but it mattered not for her as she needed quick release. On the other hand, the young Elder of Minatozaki derived from the pleasure of flesh and started developing es and fantasies towards men and women alike.

Minatozaki Takuya moved out of the house when he was seventeen. His stepmother was glad to be rid of this illegitimate child and hurriedly threatened him to never come back anymore. He did not feel upset at all as it had been his long-time wish to live independently on his own. He was neither close nor distant towards his seven other brothers. The eldest – Sana’s grandfather – was one closest to him in age and the most civilised of all brothers. The Minatozaki did not have any daughter as they viewed it a shame to bear a girl when they could have had boys. Their perspectives were very much ancient, just like any other families of their time – that women were weaker and therefore, born house-carers and served no other purpose.

When he was twenty-five, Takuya was hard-pressed for money and for the first time in his life, he learnt swindling from a senior in the company he worked at. Soon, he profited millions, then billions, and he opened his own company right after he hit thirty. The woman he chose to marry was a hostess that he regularly ed and found convenient. She was, after all, a call-girl, so she understood very well the nature of men and would not complain a single word about his behaviour outside (and sometimes inside) the house.

As he got richer, his fantasies deluded further, and he was soon involved in child trafficking. Children were s, and they lacked the strength he had and could not resist his advances. He had a house in the suburban area where he kept several children that he visited occasionally. There was no limit to his ersion, and from an individual session, he soon expanded a circle of his own where he would abduct children from third-world countries to sell in his own nation. It was easy money, and he felt truly powerful and happy.

When the government noticed something was amiss and started sniffing around, Takuya shut down his business and transferred all the profit and sales to South Korea. Fifty years later, business was still booming and his children and grandchildren were taking care of it. Sana almost vomited from all the information. She almost could not believe it had it not been for this sudden force of memories playing inside her head like a flashback video. It was terrifying, and she hated it at first. She slipped down the floor and started crying, and even her grandmother’s coaxing would not shut the little girl from the mess she was becoming.

Twenty years later, Sana grew up to be a reputable neurosurgeon in a famous hospital in Tokyo. She stood beside her aunt almost too quietly as she stared blankly ahead, not a word of comfort nor pity. The forensic had declared Johnny Seo dead for a week from suicide, but Sana knew that could not be further from the truth. Over the years, she had seen similar cases as the one Johnny experienced before his death. Johnny did not commit suicide. His death was a play to fool the family who had been searching for him high and low. He did not die a week ago – it had been two weeks since. It was not a coincidence either that his body was washed ashore so close to Korea.

“A suicide?” Johnny’s nephew, Seo Kangjoon, asked in a mixture of disbelief and devastation. He imagined his uncle – a quirky old man who was obsessed with rare animals – committing suicide and thought of how ridiculous it sounded, but here he was – eyes closed and dead. Dead. He should have known. And yet, he couldn’t help that small flicker of hope that sat at the corner of his heart. This was not how he imagined their reunion would be. Six months gone and came back a ghost.

“Yes, it appears so, Sire. He might drown himself by jumping off the ship somewhere close because there is no signs of struggle or wounds,” The one in-charge replied quickly. He eyed his assistant who put away the tools to disinfect them one by one. Outside, a nurse silently whispered to the intern that this Johnny Seo appeared to be extremely unlucky as the day he disappeared, last spotted and washed ashore coincidentally added up to 666. Six-six-six – the devil’s favourite number. Kangjoon’s eyes darkened and Sana’s aunt didn’t appear so well, either. “Excuse me, Sire. I have to file a report to the police.”

“I don’t believe this,” There were traces of moist in Kangjoon’s eyes but he refused to let them fall. Johnny Seo had raised him well to his teen years before he went back to Korea to live with his parents. He was every bit of a father figure to Kangjoon, although he had his quirks and occasionally went on a long weekend trip to work. He never took Kangjoon on any of his trip, but when he came back, there would always be some odd-looking souvenirs from foreign countries. His fists hardened. “I don’t believe Uncle would just commit suicide. He loves his life so much.” A little bit too much at times.

“I know, Dear,” His wife gently took him into her arms as he sobbed into the silence. Johnny had treated the pair very well whenever they visited him in his home in Chicago. Even she felt a bit empty from the loss. “Sorry if we’re bothering you when you’re busy, Sana, and thank you for accompanying us.”

“My condolences, Aunt, Uncle Seo,” She graciously bowed a little. Even though Sana was a neurosurgeon, she was no stranger to death. In this industry and environment, the passing of another was but a daily occurrence to her. She had seen many dead bodies over the year and grew numb to it. Her aunt nodded and continued to console her grieving husband, completely oblivious to Sana’s rigid stare when they took Johnny’s body away. It was a pity that her touch worked only for the dead. If only she could read as much with her touch into the living as well…

Johnny Seo was not a wildlife photographer, nor was he obsessed with rare animals as others claimed him to be. Johnny Seo was a secret agent employed by the CIA. He had worked with them since his early twenty, and was often sent abroad on missions as a spy. No one knew this but his employer, so the neighbours took his pretense well without any kind of suspicion. The very last mission he went to was in Southeastern Europe. He was supposed to be investigating this trail of crimes left by a small organisation that led him to the border. That was where he met his demise by encountering a group of people with visible barcode tattoo.

There were about six to twelve of them and they all spoke accented English. It was hard to tell from the shadows what these people looked like, but Sana had felt Johnny’s immense fear when he saw them. One of them was the Leader, and he put on his hoodie that covered half of his face as he tilted his head and smiled. They were talking, but it was unclear what they were discussing. Johnny put up a gun to shoot, but the group dodged the bullet and suddenly, Johnny was writhing in pain on the cold hard ground. The hoodie man crouched down on the ground, and spoke very softly,

“You shouldn't have hidden him so well, Johnny Seo. A pity that a good man like you have to die because you know too much,” The Leader sighed and soon, others walked out of the shadows and surrounded him once again. Johnny convulsed the moment before his death, staring at those figures as they talked in hushed voices. Blood fell to the ground like a small stream, colouring the soil with a significantly brighter colour than before. A woman who spoke in high-pitch  her bright-red lips and grinned from beneath her cloak-cape, "Now what, Leader? We've lost his trail again." 

"Of course we have to go and hunt down his family members one by one," The second-in-command talked about the matter in an obnoxious tone, as if it was a given that the Leader would agree with whatever he suggested. He was also the one who moved against Johnny before the Leader could say anything. And yet, the latter still refused to speak up, keeping very mum about what he had done. "So crude," When he spoke, his voice was deep, in contrast to that baby-blue eyes and innocent elf-like face. "Mind your language, Ho-Seok."

The woman laughed out loud in satisfaction, "Hear that, 'ope?" Her French accent was very thick when she started speaking English, "You have absolutely no class at all."

Hoseok merely snorted but spoke no more. Everyone was waiting eagerly for the Leader to make a decision, and even Daniel who was usually calm could feel his palm sweating a little when he saw the calculative glint on the Leader's eyes. Sensing the Shield's gaze on him, he looked up and let the hoodie fell off his head, with a small smile that was widened by a hint of indifference and coldness, "You should stop contradicting Hoseok, Yeonwoo." She quieted down with pitiful, pleading eyes, but he merely glanced at her before he continued, "And I don't think his suggestion is that bad, although we shouldn't kill the innocent until proven otherwise."

"Yes!" The one with the biggest eyes and a pair of curvaceous lips almost yelled until Hoseok shot him a glare. He blinked his eyes in pretentious ignorance and spoke to everyone present, "I mean... We got to bring Irene back to her hometown, right?"   

A/N: Yasss, and welcome back people! Say hello to Doctor Sana (TWICE)!

And a new character in case you don't know who she is: Yeonwoo (Momoland). She's getting pretty popular lately.