Chapter Text
The sound of flesh tearing had always reminded Nanami of wet paper. He didn’t particularly enjoy the comparison—it made the act sound messy, crude. But there was no denying the truth of it. Each cut through tendon and sinew carried that same damp resistance, the same dull rip beneath his knife.
Victim number thirty-two didn’t scream anymore. He had, at first—loud and shrill and stupid. But fear had a way of burning itself out eventually, and now he just whimpered softly through a gag as Nanami made the final incision at the knee. Muscle parted with practiced ease, and the man jerked once before going still.
Nanami stepped back and let out a long, tired breath. He glanced down at his gloved hands, the latex tight and damp with sweat and blood. Three clean dismemberments: left arm below the elbow, right leg below the knee, one ear sliced precisely at the curve. Seven parts cut, three parts missing. The pattern maintained. The ritual honored.
The body twitched once more on the floor, and then silence took the room again. Nanami pulled off his gloves with slow precision, letting them fall into the waiting trash bag. His heartbeat was steady. Controlled. He felt... lighter. Like he could breathe again for the first time in weeks.
‘Strange,’ he thought, ‘ how long I held out this time.’ Eight months. That was a record. He had almost convinced himself he could live a normal life.
Almost.
But then came the endless emails. The pointless meetings. The choking gray of the office walls pressing in closer each day. Civility felt like a pair of tight shoes, polished but unbearable. Every polite nod, every paper pushed across his desk, was another thread pulling taut beneath his skin. He woke up every morning already tired, already irritated, and that bitter hum just grew louder with each passing day. It wasn’t until the week’s third late shift and the department head’s fourth asinine request that he felt the familiar itch crawl up the back of his spine. That insistent need to cut something open. To see the inside of someone who thought their life mattered.
He stared down at the remains in front of him. The man’s eyes had glazed over, but his mouth still moved faintly, a twitch of disbelief. As if he couldn’t accept that this was how it would end. Nanami almost pitied him. He leaned down slightly, checking the symmetry of the limbs. Satisfactory. Clean work, as always. The details mattered, even when no one else could appreciate them.
His mind drifted briefly. The first time... it had been messier. High school. A rooftop. A classmate with too many opinions and not enough self-preservation. Nanami hadn’t meant to kill him. Not at first. He remembered the sound of the aluminum bat more than anything, the way it rang out like a bell when it connected with the boy’s temple.
There had been blood, then panic. Then silence. And then... peace. Pure, quiet, euphoric peace. It hadn’t been about rage. It still wasn’t. It was about release. The way tension melted from his shoulders afterward, the way his thoughts stopped racing. The clarity. The quiet. Even now, standing over yet another life extinguished, Nanami felt that same crystalline stillness settling into his bones. Finally. He could think again.
He checked his watch. Efficient as ever, nineteen minutes from beginning to end. Nanami gave the corpse a last, clinical look before stepping over it and moving toward the door. “Thirty-two,” he murmured, not with pride, but with finality. A period at the end of a sentence.
The door clicked shut behind him, and the world outside welcomed him back with the indifferent chill of midnight air. Another faceless man in a pressed shirt and wool coat, heading home from who-knew-what in the city that never cared to ask.
***
Nanami’s apartment greeted him with stillness and the faint scent of old books and black coffee. He slipped off his shoes at the door, loosening his tie as he made his way into the small but orderly space. The city’s lights filtered in through the blinds, casting quiet stripes across the hardwood floor. Everything was in its place: clean, minimalist, perfectly curated. Just the way he liked it.
He opened the fridge and stared inside, eyes scanning neatly arranged containers.
Curry? Too heavy.
Grilled fish? Too boring.
Leftover soba?
He shut the door with a sigh and rubbed at the back of his neck. The post-kill clarity of yesterday was beginning to fade, replaced by a dull hum of domestic irritation. ‘Maybe just tea and toast. Or miso. Something simple.’
Before he could decide, there was a knock at the door. two short, eager taps followed by a muffled voice.
“Nanamin! You home?”
Nanami exhaled, not annoyed but not exactly enthused either. He padded over and opened the door to reveal Yuuji Itadori, all messy hair and wide eyes, holding a covered dish in one hand and a hopeful smile on his face.
“I made too much again,” Yuuji said sheepishly, lifting the dish like an offering. “Thought you might want some?”
Nanami blinked at him. “I never said you had to feed me all your leftovers Itadori-kun.”
“You didn’t! That’s why it’s a surprise,” Yuuji grinned, brushing past him into the apartment like he lived there. “Come on, you’ll like it. It’s not burned this time, I swear.”
Nanami followed him in with a quiet sigh, closing the door behind them.
***
They sat at the small dining table, sharing a lopsided meal of stir-fried vegetables and ginger pork, rice fluffed to perfection. Yuuji talked between bites—about a literature professor who wore bowties unironically, a classmate who thought Kafka was a brand of vodka, the existential agony of term papers.
Nanami mostly listened, nodding here and there, quietly chewing as the warmth of the meal settled into him. He found the boy’s company oddly grounding. Yuuji had a way of filling up the room without demanding anything from it, or from him. A rare talent.
The television murmured in the background, the volume low. Some variety show gave way to the late news, the anchor’s voice calm and practiced.
“…and in other news, Tokyo police are once again urging caution after the latest confirmed victim of the 7/3 Killer was discovered this morning…”
Yuuji’s chopsticks froze mid-air. He turned to look at the screen as images flashed: a blurred alleyway, police tape, a silhouette on a stretcher.
Nanami didn’t look. He just kept eating.
“They said it’s the thirty-second one, right?” Yuuji said quietly, almost to himself. “Seriously… that’s insane.”
Nanami offered a soft grunt of acknowledgment.
“I mean, how does someone even get away with that many?” Yuuji went on, his voice hushed, almost reverent in its unease. “And the way he… cuts them up. It’s sick. What kind of person does that?”
The question hung in the air between them like a match hovering above gasoline. Nanami slowly set down his chopsticks and reached for his cup of tea.
“People are always capable of more than we think,” he said, voice neutral. “Good or bad.”
Yuuji shivered. “Yeah, but… it’s like this guy’s a ghost. They never catch any trace of him, they just find the bodies” He looked back to Nanami, trying to smile but not quite making it. “Makes me glad I’ve got boring problems, you know?”
Nanami offered the faintest curl of a smile. “You should keep it that way.”
After dinner, they cleaned the dishes together. Yuuji hummed tunelessly as he dried a bowl, while Nanami wiped the countertop, his mind quiet but distant. The news had moved on to weather forecasts, promising rain by morning.
As they finished, Yuuji looked over at him. “Thanks for eating with me Nanamin. I know you’re always busy and tired and stuff.”
“It’s fine,” Nanami said, drying his hands. “And, you didn’t burn it this time.”
Yuuji beamed.
Nanami saw him out with a polite nod and locked the door behind him. Alone again, he stood in the dim light of his kitchen, listening to the silence creep back in. He poured himself another cup of tea and glanced toward the television, now playing some innocuous drama with overly dramatic music.
Thirty-two, a nice even number.
He took a sip and stared into the middle distance. "A ghost" Yuuji had called him. Nanami smiled, just faintly. Not a bad description.
***
The flicker of the television danced across the darkened room, casting light over white walls and red string. Satoru Gojo stood barefoot on the wooden floor of his private room, a steaming mug of cocoa in one hand, his other twirling a pushpin between gloved fingers. His eyes were fixed on the corkboard that took up most of the wall.
Clippings, photos, police reports, and hand-scrawled notes littered every inch of the board. Yellowed paper curled at the edges, each document neatly labeled with dates and victim numbers. A digital clock blinked in the corner of the room, marking 2:14 AM. The television behind him played the latest news report.
“...Tokyo police are calling this the thirty-second confirmed victim of the 7/3 Killer. The dismembered remains were found earlier today—”
Click.
Gojo muted it with the remote, eyes never leaving the board.
“Eight months,” he whispered, pacing slightly. “Two hundred and forty-eight days, give or take.” He stopped in front of one photo: victim thirty-one. A blurred image of a parking garage, taken at night. “Longest break in five years,” he muttered, a note of wonder in his voice. “I was beginning to think you’d moved on. Gotten bored or, even worse, retired.”
He chuckled softly, almost affectionately.
“No, no, not you. You’ve just been waiting for the right moment, haven’t you? Planning. Pacing yourself. Very responsible of you.” Gojo sipped from his mug, then set it aside with care. He reached out and ran his fingers along the string connecting the last three murders, tracing the crimson thread like it was a lover’s spine.
“So clean. So perfect. Still using the same ratios. Still so… you. ” He stepped back and admired the full board like it was a Renaissance painting. “My lovely 7/3,” he whispered. “You’re talking to me again.”
The room buzzed with silence, his excitement thrumming just beneath the surface. For a moment, Gojo simply stood there, eyes wide, heart pounding like a child on Christmas morning. Then a thought struck him. A sharp, electric snap behind his eyes. He turned on his heel and began pacing again, faster now.
“Ah.” A slow smile spread across his face, but his eyes stayed cold. “You want me to reach out to you.”
He reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out a fresh folder, labeled simply: PLAN C. “I’ve already come up with an idea,” he said, more to himself than anyone. “Something big. Something you can’t ignore.”
He pinned a blank sheet of paper onto the corkboard and scrawled three words in black ink: MAKE HIM LOOK.
“I'll make sure you can't ignore me.”
***
Two weeks.
Fourteen days since the last kill. Nanami had always found that the first few weeks after were the hardest. Not because of guilt, he’d buried any remnants of that long ago, but because of the pull. The hunger.
It crept in slowly, at first. A whisper of unease when he walked past someone speaking too loudly on the train. A phantom itch in his hands when a client misfiled the same document three times. But soon, it became something deeper—itching beneath the skin, buzzing behind his teeth. The space between kills never stretched easily. It bent like overstressed wire, always on the verge of snapping. And yet, he forced himself to wait. To keep his hands clean. To pretend.
He stirred his coffee slowly at his desk, watching the spiral of cream dissolve into black. Addiction. That’s what it was. A need dressed up as ritual. As balance. But at its core, it was compulsion. He was a man constantly denying himself a drug he could manufacture with a blade and a plan.
The spreadsheet open on his monitor was a blur of numbers he no longer cared about. The office hummed with fluorescent fatigue, conversations muffled behind frosted glass.
Nanami closed his eyes and exhaled slowly through his nose.
That was when the chaos arrived.
“Nanamiiii~!”
The singsong voice hit him first. Then the footsteps—two fast, lazy claps of leather shoes on tile before they stopped beside his desk. Nanami opened his eyes and looked up, already tired. Satoru Gojo stood there, sunglasses perched low on his nose, holding a tablet upside down like it was some ancient artifact.
“Explain this to me,” Gojo said, gesturing to the screen with a dramatic flourish. “In small, non-threatening words. What happened to our stock options this quarter? Did someone finally figure out we’re full of it?”
Nanami blinked slowly. “That’s a quarterly fluctuation due to international currency shifts. We discussed it in the last finance meeting. Which you attended.”
Gojo made a thoughtful noise, turning the tablet right side up. “Hmm. So I was there. Wild.”
Nanami returned his attention to his monitor, jaw tightening. “Why are you here, Gojo-san?”
“Can’t a boss check in on his hardworking subordinate?” Gojo leaned over the edge of the desk, his white shirt sleeves pushed up, tie hanging in a way that made Nanami’s already fraying nerves hum worse than usual.
He didn’t respond.
Gojo grinned, undeterred. “You’ve been brooding a lot lately. Even for you.”
Nanami fought the urge to sigh, or scream.
Satoru Gojo was infuriating in many ways. His voice, his arrogance, his complete inability to take anything seriously, the way he weaponized charm like a wrecking ball through workplace professionalism. But the most infuriating thing of all was the fact that Nanami was completely smitten by him. He wasn’t sure how that happened, but it was true, and no amount of internal scolding seemed to change it.
He cleared his throat and looked pointedly at his screen. “Some of us are trying to work.”
Gojo leaned back with a long, theatrical groan. “Boooring. Come on, Nanami. Live a little.”
“I’m not entertaining your mid-morning crisis.”
“Even if I brought you bread?”
Nanami looked up at that. Gojo held up a paper bag with a flourish.
“…It’s from that place you like,” Gojo added, singsong again. “Chestnut Mont Blanc?”
Nanami hated how effective that was. “…Five minutes,” he said.
Gojo beamed. “Knew you loved me.”
Nanami looked away, jaw tightening. He did, that was the problem.
***
The door clicked shut behind him with a quiet finality. Nanami loosened his tie with one hand and slipped off his shoes with the other, placing them neatly by the door. His apartment was dimly lit by the dying blush of sunset slipping through the blinds. He moved through it on autopilot, fatigue pooling in his limbs like cement.
His jacket was hung. His watch set on the counter. The kettle clicked on, and he reached for the remote, switching on the television without looking at the screen. He wasn’t watching. Not really. The anchor’s voice was just another part of the background noise. Something to drown out the buzzing static in his head left over from another long day of inane chatter and corporate gamesmanship.
“—breaking news tonight as police discover what appears to be the thirty-third victim of the infamous 7/3 Killer—”
The remote slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a clack.
Nanami turned to the screen, heart slowing—not from panic, but from a sharp, cold focus.
A photo flashed: a street cordoned off with yellow tape, police swarming like ants. The camera panned over a gurney, a black body bag half-zipped. The anchor continued: “Authorities believe this may be the latest in the 7/3 series due to the condition of the body, dismembered in the same pattern. Arm below the elbow, leg below the knee…”
Nanami didn’t hear the rest. He was already walking closer to the screen. At first, there was only confusion. Then disbelief. Then, slowly, something darker bloomed in his chest. Rage.
He watched the footage with a clenched jaw, eyes scanning every detail, every frame they offered, every post about it online. On the surface, it had all the hallmarks of his work. But looking deeper, it was all wrong.
The victim, a 22-year-old college student. Too young. Far too young. Aside from his very first kill, born from chaos rather than intention, Nanami had never targeted anyone under twenty-eight. There was an order to his choices. A system. His victims were selected carefully. This? This was a child. A thoughtless kill. A mockery. He felt his hands curl into fists.
An unblurred version of the crime scene photo had already leaked online. Nanami inspected it, eyes narrowing. The incisions were off by a few degrees. The angles wrong. The cuts too shallow, too hesitant. A performance. A parody. An insult.
He exhaled slowly, his chest rising and falling with tightly controlled breaths. Someone was trying to be him. Someone out there had dared to step into his world like it was a costume. A grotesque cosplay of a legacy they didn’t understand. A copycat.
Nanami turned off the television. The silence that followed was deafening. He stood still for a long moment, the shadows in his apartment stretching long across the floor. Then, slowly, he set down his phone. His hand was steady again. The anger hadn’t passed, it had crystallized into purpose.
He didn’t know who was behind it yet, but he would find out somehow. And when he did... they'd regret ever thinking they could be him.
***
The alley was quiet, suffocated by the weight of early dawn. No footsteps. No city sounds. Just the wet hum of fluorescent light flickering overhead and the ragged breathing of a dying man. Gojo crouched beside the body, his white gloves now pink-stained at the fingertips. His smile was bright. Unsettling.
“Sorry,” he said cheerfully, tilting his head. “I know you probably had hopes for a more meaningful exit. Dying at the hands of the legendary 7/3 Killer? What an honor, right?”
The man on the ground tried to speak through the blood bubbling in his throat, but it came out as a wet gurgle.
Gojo tsked.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, gently patting the man’s cheek with his gloved fingers, “you got stuck with the knockoff. The understudy.” He stood slowly, stepping over the arm he’d carefully severed at the elbow, just like in the reports. The leg was next, but not too clean—Gojo didn’t trust himself with surgical precision. Not yet. Still, he’d prepared. Studied. Measured. Every angle, every photo he could get his hands on.
This would pass for the media, for the police, for the masses who only saw numbers and blood. But not for him. Gojo stepped back and looked down at his work, brushing his silver-white hair out of his eyes. The cuts were in the right places. But even now, Gojo could feel the flaws in it. The artifice. The lack of grace that the real 7/3 carried like a second skin.
No matter. He hadn’t done it to fool the world. He’d done it to leave a message.
Gojo crouched again, adjusting the victim’s position slightly—just enough to recreate the posture of 7/3’s most famous kill. A detail only a true fan would know.
‘He’ll see it. He has to.’ A shiver crawled down Gojo’s spine, sharp and electric. His heart pounded in his chest like a love-struck teenager sneaking a note into someone’s locker.
They wouldn’t know. Not the police, not the press. Not yet. They’d slap his kill up on the wall with the rest of them, another number in a sequence of terror. But his lovely 7/3, he’d see the truth. He’d look at the photos. He’d see the flaws. The imperfections. Gojo smiled as he rose to his feet again, peeling off his gloves with the practiced ease of someone finishing a magic trick.
“You’ll come looking for me now,” he whispered to the empty alley, his voice light. “Won’t you?”
The sun was beginning to rise as he disappeared into the city, a ghost among morning commuters, whistling a nameless tune.