The Scarlet Room
Hiiro no Heya (純紅 の 部屋)
🩸 Prologue
They say there’s a door that wasn’t always there, a crimson gash in reality, its wood pulsing like a vein beneath the grain. Sometimes it looms behind a rusted maintenance hatch in the old subway, its red hum seeping through the damp concrete. Sometimes it materializes in the back hallway of a hotel, half-dissolved in its own neglect, the air around it thickening with a wrongness that clings to the lungs. Always, it bears the same shade, a red so deep it seems to bleed, etched with a sigil: an eye, unblinking, flanked by curling branches that twist like veins, crowned with fading blossoms that drip as if melting, and beneath, a keyhole glistening wet, as though it weeps.
Stand too close, and the door breathes against your skin, a faint vibration rising from its core, three dissonant notes, like a shamisen string plucked in a tomb, echoing from another life, another void. The air curdles with scents: ink, old silk rotting in the dark, the warm iron tang of blood, and a sweetness underneath, like perfume curdled into decay.
Behind it, she waits, not smiling, not blinking much, her presence a weight that presses the room into silence.
Ink ripples across her back, a living tapestry of dragons coiling with serpentine hunger, blossoms blooming and withering in reverse, whole cities ablaze in a nightmare of ash. The lines shift, not drawn but grown, veins of black and crimson pulsing under her flesh, as if her body is a canvas for something ancient and insatiable. They call her a geisha, but she does not pour tea, does not bow for show. She dances, a ritual that stirs the air into memory, a dance that heals nothing and erases everything.
Some whisper it mends broken souls; others swear it unravels them, threading their sins into the ink. But all agree on one truth: if she ever turns her back to you, run. For in Hiiro no Heya, the ink remembers you, and now, so does the room, its walls whispering with a hunger that never sleeps.
第1章 The One Who Asked Too Much
The magistrate entered like a man armored in his own arrogance, his robe a fortress of embroidered dragons, their silver scales glinting in the lantern light like tiny betrayals of his soul. He settled into the chair as if it had been carved from his own pride, the creak of the wood beneath him grudging obedience. The posture of a man who believed even silence should bow to his will.
“The Reverse Sequence,” he declared, his voice a calm blade slicing through the stillness. “I want to see it all. Backwards. Inside out.”
The Court warned him, their voices a chorus of shadows, as they always did. Those who demanded the Sequence rarely grasped the abyss they invited. But men like him, who forged laws from the bones of others, who wore power like a second skin, never believed consequences could touch them. He signed the form with a deliberate flourish, the parchment hissing as his blood met it, a faint chemical burn reacting to the heat of his hubris, as if the paper itself recoiled.
The attendants withdrew, their footsteps swallowed by the thickening air. One by one, the lanterns dimmed to a low, throbbing red, their light pooling like blood on the lacquered floor. The magistrate crossed his leg, breathing in the silence, mistaking its weight for reverence. The scent curled around him, burnt ink, wilted blossoms, a metallic edge that tasted like rust, and he smiled, blind to the trap closing around him.
From somewhere behind the walls, a single note began to hum, a taut three-stringed thread tightening, trembling on the edge of snapping. He thought it was fanfare, a prelude to his triumph. He didn’t hear the sound for what it was: a summons, not for him, but for the room itself, awakening from its long, patient slumber.
第2章 The One Who Never Spoke
The mournful three-stringed wail began before she moved, its notes humming from the walls themselves, no instrument, no player, just a vibration that bled through the lacquered floor, trembling the air like breath held too long, too afraid to release. The scent followed, not perfume but something ancient and rancid: burnt ink, pressed silk unraveling, the iron tang of blood masked by a sweetness that clawed into the lungs like a memory too vivid to escape.
She raised her head, a single, slow tilt that caught the red light spilling from the lanterns and the black silk of her robe whispering as it shifted. Barefoot, she glided forward, her steps too silent, as if the floor refused to bear witness. When she bowed, every lantern flickered, the shadows leaning closer, stretching into claws that scraped the edges of the room.
Then the dance began.
Her movements were deliberate, soft enough to mimic humanity, exact enough to betray it as something else entirely. The ink across her back stirred, alive under her skin, blossoms opening with wet, sucking sounds, bleeding into ash, then closing again; dragons arching, biting their own tails with jagged teeth; a city burning in reverse, its towers collapsing upward into a sky that wasn’t there. The patterns writhed, coiling like smoke, as if her flesh were a prison for something desperate to break free.
The music deepened, pulling notes from nowhere, echoing as if the room held a memory older than stone. The rhythm pressed against the magistrate’s ribs, burrowing under his skin, her steps syncing with his heartbeat until he couldn’t tell which led the other. Each gesture drew invisible lines through the air, lines you could almost hear: the hiss of ink turning liquid, the pulse of heat beneath the floorboards, the faint sigh of the walls, remembering what they had devoured.
She turned once, too slowly, and the magistrate’s vision bent with her, the room darkening at the edges, the lantern light thinning into threads that seemed to strangle the air. The stringed notes warped into a pulse, a whisper: ka...me...ru..., a word without translation, a sound that sank into his bones like a curse. The ink on her back shifted, coiling into spirals that lingered, multiplying, their edges curling into eyeless faces that watched from the shadows.
And then, silence, thick, suffocating, a silence that rang with the promise of something worse to come.
第3章 The Memory Unfolds
The final echo of ka...me...ru... lingered like smoke, swallowed not by the air but by the room itself, collapsing into a silence so complete it vibrated with intent. Then came the shift, a drop in temperature that bit into the magistrate’s spine, a pull of gravity that bent the world around him. The floor beneath him softened, no longer lacquer but wet stone, slick with something that glistened red in the torchlight that replaced the lanterns’ glow. The light stretched thin, a memory unfurling, and he blinked to find himself standing, no longer in Hiiro no Heya but somewhere deeper, somewhere lost.
He smelled smoke, not incense, but the sharp, human stench of burning flesh under oil. Chains clinked behind him, too precise to be imagined, their rhythm syncing with the shamisen’s hum, now buried beneath the floor. Shadows pulsed against the walls, heartbeat-like, stretching into shapes that defied form, clawed hands, gaping maws, eyes that burned without light.
Before him stood not the geisha, but a figure in dark robes, her elaborate hair adorned with twisted branches that seemed alive, writhing like serpents reaching toward the vaulted ceiling. Her face held an otherworldly pallor, eyes fixed forward with terrible purpose. Flanking her were two shadowed attendants, their faces masks of malevolent intent, their forms seeming to melt into the darkness that surrounded them.
Monstrous shapes emerged from the crimson murk, gnarled, skeletal hands with taloned fingers stretched from the walls, some clutching chains that draped across the chamber floor. The creatures loomed massive and grotesque, their silhouettes writhing against the blood-red stone, mouths agape with rows of jagged teeth, eyes glowing with hungry malice.
At the far end of the chamber, a doorway opened onto a field of stars, a portal to some impossible void, its brilliant light casting the entire scene in stark relief. At his feet lay a pale figure, motionless, wrapped in burial cloth, an accusation made flesh.
The magistrate fought for breath as the acrid stench of charred flesh filled his lungs. His pulse aligned with some hideous rhythm thrumming through the stone itself, each beat stripping away his carefully constructed lies. This was no mere vision, this was judgment, a truth forged in blood and shadow, and he could no longer deny his place within it.
第4章 The Breaking Point
She kept dancing, the spectral three-stringed resonance returning with a soft sound at first, then sharp, its notes stretched to a pitch that scraped the walls, trembling through his bones like insects clawing to escape. The magistrate tried to turn away, but the air had weight, each breath a struggle against a metallic tang flavored with rust and sorrow.
The ink on her back moved faster, no longer fluid but alive, rolling over her shoulders in heavy rivulets. Black turned to violet, violet to red, as if it remembered the color of blood spilled long ago. When it reached the small of her back, it defied her body’s shape, choosing its own gravity, falling like oil and memory. The droplets hit the floor, spreading into tendrils that crawled toward him, their movement a slow, deliberate hunt. The smell hit first, charred silk, scorched paper, the faint sweetness of plum wine left to rot in the heat.
He tried to speak, but the word died in his throat, choked by the ink that touched his shoe. Every lantern flickered to darkness, the only light now a sickly glow from her skin, her body a lantern of dusk and motion as the ink writhed. On the walls, the ink began to write, names, his names, not the titles he claimed but the whispers of those he’d erased. Each letter flared like a wound opening, then cooled into dark glass, the walls pulsing with confession, alive with his sins.
He stumbled back, the chair catching him, but still she danced. The eerie three-stringed dirge warped into a low, droning hum, a single endless note that made the floor vibrate, his pulse matching its rhythm, his breath fracturing around it. When he looked up, she had turned her back to him, the ink climbing higher, wrapping her like armor, sealing her spine in black flame. Her movements slowed to one final arc of the fan, one perfect step, and the tendrils reached him, rising along his legs, coiling, tasting, recognizing.
The hum stopped.
The silence was absolute, a void so deep it felt like falling into the earth’s core. The ink paused, then spoke, not in words but in a pulse inside his skull, a recognition that whispered: I remember you. He tried to rise, but his body betrayed him, the chair holding the shell of a man undone by his own reflection.
The room exhaled, long and low, like the end of a prayer that never reached its god, its walls leaning inward as if to claim him.
第5章 When the Ink Becomes a Mirror
He could no longer tell if he was breathing or being breathed through, the air trembling with copper and plum smoke, the scent of burning silk and cold rain merging into a miasma that coated his throat. The geisha stopped, her final step leaving no sound, her back to him as the ink settled into stillness, as if the room waited for its reflection to catch up.
Then the walls began to move.
At first, he thought it was the lantern light shifting, but the shadows crawled upward, pooling in the corners, folding into shapes that defied reason, clawed hands, eyeless faces, mouths that gaped without sound. The ink on the floor lifted, thin as thread, weaving through the air until the room pulsed with living calligraphy. Symbols took form, fractured and illegible yet achingly familiar, curving, bleeding, blurring into his own faces, every version of himself he’d buried.
She turned her head, just enough for one eye to meet his, not with accusation but with knowledge, the kind that cannot be unlearned. The ink on her back rose like breath drawn from her skin, unfurling into the air. The dragons and blossoms had vanished, replaced by his image, perfect, mirrored, alive. He saw himself, not as the magistrate, but as every reflection he’d erased: the girl, the cell, the blade, the silence after, circling him, whispering return, return, return in voices that weren’t his own.
The room’s red glow dimmed until only his mirrored face remained, shimmering above her shoulder, his smile wide, practiced, false. Then the ink cracked, the reflection splitting, and he felt the fracture run through his body. His spine bowed inward, his jaw twitching in a stutter of disbelief. The sound that escaped was neither scream nor word but the tearing of memory, a wail that echoed in the void.
He reached out, fingers grazing the air between them, and the ink surged forward, cold and alive, recognizing him. The mirror collapsed, and he fell without falling, the chair catching the husk that remained, his eyes fixed on nothing, the faint pulse of his throat stuttering once, twice, then stilling into a rhythm only the room could hear.
The geisha faced the wall once more, the ink withdrawing, sealing her in silence. A single stringed, low note hummed in the air until it slowly faded as the room settled into the smell of iron and the echo of her steps as she left him behind.
第6章 Afterlight
When the doors reopened the next morning, only the room remained. No magistrate, no blood, not even the trace of a footprint on the lacquered floor, yet something had shifted. The red light glowed softer now, almost compassionate, its silence deeper and pulsing, as if freshly fed.
The scent lingered, ink and iron, sweetened faintly by plum and smoke, a perfume of the damned.
On the far wall, the velvet chair remained, empty, perfectly aligned, as though waiting for the next offering. Behind it, ink glistened wet against the paneling, writing something new: The ink remembers you. And now, so do we. The characters pulsed faintly, their light breathing like a sleeping heart, a sigil of the room’s eternal hunger.
END.
— no-one
Thoughts you didn’t think, written for you anyway.
If the room remembered you,
what would it write?