It was a dark and stormy night. Dark clouds loomed overhead, raining heavily on everything below in rapid succession. Lightning occasionally flashed, illuminating the wet darkness around the reporter if only for a split second, followed by the deafening boom of thunder. Even under his raincoat, the reporter could feel moisture, if not from the heavy rain, from the condensing moisture produced by his body. He was nervous.
The reporter, under his right arm, tightly gripped a folder with stacks of paper inside. He held it close to his body, hoping to protect his precious documents from the merciless rain. His heavy rain boots thumped along the sidewalk, colliding with the ground more so from their weight than his steps, splashing water whenever they landed. He swallowed the dry lump in his throat, a sure sign of nervousness.
"What the hell kind of assignment is this?!" he asked himself. "It's not like I asked to go around interviewing people. I'm supposed to be finding new, exciting stories! Not about the lives of your average Joe. And they have me trotting through this downpour in a fucking welfare raincoat. I don't get shit for pay for what I put up with, that's for sure."
Houses lined the empty neighbourhood streets. They were traditionally built Japanese houses with aspects of western architecture to their style. It was a quaint neighbourhood, each house walled off from the other with their own cherry trees in the yard. The reporter glanced at his hand to see the number 223 scribbled in black ink. The ink was beginning to flow off his hand and stain his skin from all the rain, but it was still comprehensible. Then he stopped. Before him loomed a house, looking just like any other on the street. But the numbers carved so elegantly into the right pillar of the gate, with the kanji "Kagatoshi" engraved so elegantly in marble stone just above the address confirmed his surroundings. This was the house.