We all wear masks
We all wear masks
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Young detective just passed his schooling after an internship with the police station. His life is going great, solving crimes, living his dream. He has the girl of his dreams, planning on a family and marriage. She is his whole world and then some. She seems perfect until he realizes she has fallen for someone else while he was planning his life around her. He gets depressed, his world has collapsed and his vision/mind becomes foggy with despair and sadness. His job is slipping, his dreams are all falling apart and he blames her. He wonders why the world is against him and why he can’t catch a break. His cases fall behind, and he couldn’t stop a premeditated murder of a family he was tipped off about beforehand. He begins to blame his ex for his failure and ruining his life. The only survivor of the murders is a little girl forced to live with her grandpa in a rural part of town. The grandpa is an older peaceful soul that takes care of himself and the ones he loves but stays away from the city and enjoys peaceful solitude. The MC visits the little girl often full of regret and sorrow. He continues to blame his personal life and his ex for the murders and causing this little girl this much pain. He has tea with the grandpa often, grandpa sees why he visits and sees through the MC’s perspective. The old man considered to be grumpy and hateful, despised by the town’s folk offers the MC some advice. He tells the MC to stop the blame, to look within one self and meditate on what caused his life to turn out the way it has and to open a new perspective on life. He tells the MC to wake up and see the masks people wear every day of their lives. He offers the MC some tea from an “ancient herb” and tells him the tea will awaken his true sight. The MC listens and hyper focuses on his own life and reactions to life. After looking within himself he realizes he was ignorantly in love with a woman who never wanted him. He gains the ability to see people for who they really are, he’s able to see the masks people wear to hide true intentions. He also gains an almost supernatural intuition. The MC can now see the “masks” people wear. If people have bad intentions he sees a red evil play mask, if they have good intentions he sees a white smiling mask. He vows to find the person that caused this murder and gets filled with rage craving revenge. He turns into a harsh detective not caring about how his reactions affect anyone else. Instead of giving anyone a chance he sees the evil mask and immediately becomes harsh, quick to pull a trigger, quick to assume the worst from those people and isolates himself outside of work because he can’t bare seeing the world for what it truly is. It’s devastating, frustrating, and lonely. The MC himself wears a mask daily, he hides his shame and humiliation behind a fake smile. At work he’s all business because he’s distracted from his own thoughts, picks up smoking and drinking to drown the thoughts constantly running through his mind.The MC gets put on probation from work for 3 months for killing a prime suspect the department was keeping tabs on for years and could’ve led them to the organization causing all these homicides. The MC spends half that time laying in bed, drinking, smoking, and not caring about his life or the outside world. He accepts the world is against him and gives up on everything. He stopped visiting the little girl and old man thinking he was a failure and was better off not being apart of their lives being no help to them. One day he decided to visit the old man. The MC only shows “weakness” to the old man and asks the old man why he did this, why is he seeing these things and how can they stop. The old man tells him once he drinks the tea he will never be ignorant to the world again. There is no going back but he tells the MC that he can decide what that ability means, he can decide if it’s a blessing or a curse. The MC spends the rest of his time meditating, and focusing on oneself to open a new perspective on these “curses” he has received. The MC goes back to work, quits drinking but still smokes, he tries a new approach to being a detective. He is quieter, but sharper, he never jumps to conclusions. He just listens, evaluates, and tries connecting the dots of every small case back to the one that started it all. He starts doing well, trusting his intuition and focusing on the masks people wear without drawing a conclusion based on that alone. He starts doing well but has few leads to the big organization he ruined the opportunity to catch. Homicides ramp up in the city, he’s the number one detective on the case and is told to figure it out or he will be fired and the case will become cold. The MC goes home and cries his heart out imagining himself losing his dream and the little girl never getting the justice for her family that she deserves.He looks in the mirror and sees his own mask, deformed and misshaped, half red and evil, half white and peaceful. He discovered the best way to perceive life is by balance and understanding the world looks different to everyone. The MC now understands you can’t have love without hate yet you can’t have peace without war. The MC locks in and hunts down murders, questioning them one by one to find a clue. Finally the cases start to connect, the killers all claim to be hired by one organization that wants to forcefully take over the city by murdering anyone that is a politician that is deemed “corrupt” so they can implement their own “justice” and “peace” to the city. They kill in cold blood, murder whole families, create labyrinths and traps that murder people while they supervise from hidden cameras. The detective focuses on this group and gets tipped off about a labyrinth created for the prime minister, in hopes of saving the prime minister the MC goes to where the labyrinth is and tells no one but it’s a trap Set up to kill the only detective that can find this organization, the MC. The trap is full of surprises and the MC finds small clues left behind by the organization. Some of the clues feel to personal, too targeted directly towards him like it was someone who he has known his whole life. He strongly feels that if he can escape this trap that he can finally solve this case and bring this group to justice. After suffering gunshot wounds, knife wounds, and pure torture for a week he finally escapes. He truly trusts his intuition and begins researching anyone he has been in contact with since the murders began. He wants to point fingers at the only person he spilled his heart out to, his ex, yet he feels as if it isn’t just. He feels as if he is just trying to blame her for all of his issues once again. The murders continue as he researches people. He can’t find any more leads. In the back of his mind he continuously has the thought of it being his ex. He mentions it to his boss and gets fired. He decides to do his own investigation and starts investigating his ex. Watching her be in love with another man, watching her now husband have everything he wanted. While watching them for a few nights he notices her dad and husband having private meetings. He followed her husband and found out he was one of the murderers, the MC watched him kill in cold blood yet couldn’t do anything about since he was fire he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. No authority. He secretly and purposely runs into his ex to warn her about her dad and husband yet she accuses him of being jealous and hateful and selfish/manipulative. The dad and the husband are the ones that set up the labyrinths. The MC finds plans for a new labyrinth and intends to sabotage it to ruin their murder attempt. Instead he is caught sneaking around the trap and ends up trapping the dad and husband in their own labyrinth in a panic. They both admit to the MC that the girl is a pawn in their scheme. They used her to get to him and throw the investigation off their tracks. Accusing him of being a jealous and vengeful soul. The MC has the ability to rage out and kill them and almost does but refrains. He leaves them in there over night collecting evidence, recording videos, and making them confess to everything from the murders to corrupting the girl and ruining their future. Finally his boss and an army of police arrive, they find all the evidence of the MC’s claims and see he was right. The organization gets shut down, the husband and dad get sentenced for life. The MC is a glorified detective now, got his job back, basically saved the city from a tyrant. He sees his ex and talks to her, he sees she has a half and half mask like himself. He swears to her that all he wanted was for her to be happy, he tries to win her back after the case is settled. She looks the MC in the eyes and tells him she never wanted help, she never asked for help, and she still sees nothing in the MC. She blames him, she can’t accept herself nor what happened. Her mask turns fully red, a rageful red. He sees her mask change, full of sorrow he simply walks away and wishes her the best on her journey. He’s accomplished and got the dream job he wanted, he’s viewed as the best there ever was and should be happy yet he’s full of sorrow for his ex, he simply wants the best for her but now it’s no longer in his control so he lets go. As he is walking into the station for work the next day he hears his name called from a ways away. A small dainty voice full of innocence. He turns to see who is calling his name and sees a pure white mask, so happy and bright it’s almost angelic. It’s the little girl and her grandpa. She runs to him, hugs him crying, falls to her knees and blesses him for everything he has done for her. Shows how truly grateful she is for bringing these people to justice. Then and only then is the one time the MC never questioned himself nor the decisions he made because he finally sees what he does this for. He finally realizes you can’t control the outcomes of life, only how you can react to it.
Chapters (7)
Chapter 1: Ordinary World
Kaito's good life, the cracks with Ren, the missed tip, and the murder that changes everything. Ends on the surviving girl's silent stare.
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Chapter 2: The Hermit's Tea
Kaito's world collapses fully — Ren leaves for good, his spiral begins, and he meets the old man and the girl. Ends with his first unconfirmed glimpse of a mask.
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Chapter 3: Red and White
Kaito's first real use of the mask-sight becomes his first real misuse of it. His isolation hardens, his partner grows uneasy, and he disobeys a direct order that ends with his gun raised on the prime suspect.
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Chapter 4: The Trigger
Kaito fires. The department's only lead dies with the suspect. Probation, rock bottom, and Master Kagen's pivotal second lesson close out Act 1.
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Chapter 5: Discipline
Kaito proves his change is real through repeated small wins, rebuilds trust with Priya and Ishii, and Hana is finally named on-page. Ends on a quiet, dreadful discovery: a new case file echoes the chapter 1 murder.
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Chapter 6: The Mirror
The organization's pattern is confirmed, Kaito is given a six-week ultimatum to solve it, and a mirror reveals his own reflection fractured into a half red, half white mask.
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Chapter 7: The Labyrinth
A trap built specifically for Kaito costs him a week of captivity but saves the Prime Minister's life. He escapes with a personal clue that points, unnamed, toward someone he once loved.
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