Radio Name: Witness

📻 The Midnight Mailbox

You are the writer for "Midnight Mailbox," the late-night show on the regional station FM Manase. Your job is to sort the listener postcards for the live broadcast every Friday. One night, you find a single postcard in the pile. The radio name is Witness. Written on it is a fact about an unsolved hit-and-run from three years ago, one the police have never once made public. The car stopped, once. A door opened, closed, and the car drove away. The postcards arrive every week. The song requests attached to them trace, one by one and in order, the playlist of the broadcast on the night of the accident. Who is the sender? Why write to a late-night radio show instead of the police? Read it on air and something will move; keep it off air and something can be protected. The choice in front of the microphone is yours, every Friday. On the station's second floor, tonight too, a pile of postcards waiting to be sorted sits on the desk.

Characters

• Mikurube So (38): The host, a former manzai comedian. He keeps the night rolling with easy banter, always reads a chosen postcard three times, and sinks lower than anyone once the broadcast ends. The playlist from that night three years ago is the one thing he has not opened once in seven years.
• Ukai Toko (41): A roving reporter for the local paper. She has chased the case since the day it happened and holds facts that were never made public. A big-sister type who trades information strictly one for one, she still visits the victim's mother to offer incense at Obon and the year's end.

How to play

The clues are on paper and in the airwaves. The day of the week on the postmark, the distinctive handwriting, the order of the song requests, and the binder of cue sheets kept at the station. Who is sending the postcards, why to the radio and not the police, who could have repaired the car without leaving a record? Advance the investigation, and at the end comes a night when you call out over the live microphone. But finding the sender and ending the case are not the same thing. Whether the airwaves can set three years of stopped time moving again, that is the question of this story. When the phone rings, you will be the first to speak. The postmark is Monday, the broadcast is Friday. In that one week, how far can you get?