The glittering skyline of Tokyo framed the penthouse like a picture in a gold-trimmed museum. Inside, beneath a cascade of crystal chandeliers and oil paintings worth more than most families' homes, sat a girl who hadn't smiled in years.
Amaya Himura, seventeen. A piano prodigy. A genius composer. A golden girl in the public eye… and a porcelain doll behind closed doors.
She sat at the grand piano in her father's gallery-like lounge, fingers trembling slightly as she played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor. Every note perfect. Every emotion—forced. Behind her stood her father, Daisuke Himura, a titan of finance, sipping brandy with cold disinterest.
"That last phrase," he muttered, not even turning to look, "You bent the tempo. Again."
Amaya's fingers froze. She swallowed hard.
"I thought it added soul," she said softly.
Her father's footfalls were slow. Heavy. Deliberate.
"Your job is not to feel. Your job is to perform."
She flinched as the glass of brandy shattered beside her. He didn't raise his hand this time. He didn't need to. The scars weren't on her skin. They were in her silence.
That night, Amaya ran.
Dressed in a coat too light for the cold, she wandered the neon-lit streets of Shibuya—just another face in a sea of strangers. She ended up where no cameras watched, no paparazzi followed. A small shrine tucked between forgotten alleyways.
And there, waiting beside an old stall that hadn't been there a moment ago, stood him.
The old man. His cane tapped lightly against the stone path. His hat shadowed his face, but the glint of his eyes pierced through like moonlight.
"You're early," he said, as if they had an appointment.
She blinked. "I… don't know you."
"Oh, but I know you, Amaya Himura. A perfect angel in the wrong kind of heaven."
He pulled out a key—not black and jagged like Ren's, but glimmering gold, simple and elegant. It shimmered with a warmth that made her chest ache.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"The Key of Heaven," he said. "For the ones who have lifted you. Loved you. Protected you. You may judge them. And if they are truly good…"
He turned to an invisible space in the air and twisted his cane. There, for just a heartbeat, a gate of light cracked open. Warmth spilled out. A feather drifted onto Amaya's hand. It dissolved into gold dust.
"They shall be rewarded beyond this world," he finished, smiling faintly.
She looked at the key. "And if they're not good?"
The old man tilted his head.
"Then Heaven will turn its face… and Hell will answer instead."
And with that, the stall vanished. The man disappeared.
All that remained was the golden key, glowing softly in her trembling hands.
Meanwhile...
Back in his apartment, Ren Kurosawa jolted awake—
He felt something shift.
Like a lock, turning on the other side of fate.