“You’re here for 047,” Reina said, not turning around. Her fingers hovered over a keyboard. “Listen first.”

As Kaito left the hall, the black drive pulsed one last time. And for a fleeting second, the rain outside synced with the rhythm of Chie’s piano. The whole world, for one bar, became a Vocaloid.

The collector was a woman named Reina, a former producer who had gone feral with grief. She didn’t want money. She wanted songs —the ones no machine could write.

A voice filled the hall. It wasn’t Miku’s famous, sanitized squeak. This was raw. It cracked on the high notes. It breathed in the wrong places. It was Chie’s Miku—a digital ghost built from hours of her daughter tweaking parameters, layering vibrato, adding a gasp at the end of each phrase. The song was unfinished: a simple piano ballad about a girl promising to meet her father under a cherry tree that had been cut down ten years ago.

Kaito accepted the job for the money. He stayed for the mystery.

Kaito felt his chest cave in. He wasn’t listening to code. He was listening to a eulogy.