While nothing else he's created has quite lived up to Erased's level of excellence, it's not for lack of trying on Kei Sanbe's part – both of the other mystery titles previously released, Island in a Puddle and For the Kid I Saw in My Dreams are very good. But The 13th Footprint's first volume comes closest to recapturing the magic of Erased with its plot points slowly interweaving to form a picture that, while still far from clear, is starting to take on an interesting, and potentially dangerous, shape.

The book opens with the news of an apparently fatal fire. Three bodies were found in the ashes, and we're taken through a slow, multi-page spread as we view the detritus of three lives: a school backpack. A skeletal baby carriage. A bike. And a corner of paper with the number 10 written on it. A small pile of offerings sits in the rain, distinct footprints walking away – but not to it. As far as atmospheric setups go, it's remarkably effective.

It doesn't take long for us to realize that the bodies in the ashes are the family we follow in the rest of the book. Scrolling back to June of the same year (the fire happens in September 2019), elementary school teacher Touya and his wife Haru have just built the house of their dreams to celebrate both the upcoming birth of their second child and the release of Ao, their older son, from the hospital. Touya and Haru have taken pains to make the house a home for Ao, who, although they don't say as much, we can assume has cancer, which has gone into remission, something he says it has done before. When Ao comes home, his parents tell him that they have hidden stickers of his favorite character in various locations around the building, encouraging him to explore on his own to find them and any other secrets he can unearth. It's warm and cozy, and the entire family is thrilled to be together again, with everything looking hunky dory.

So, of course it's not. Touya, who shares first-person perspective duties with Ao, immediately begins receiving strange postcards, some of which haven't gone through the mail system. Each card has a number and an event that's slated to occur at a set time, as well as a message telling Touya to prevent a tragedy. He's concerned and confused, but decides to check the cards out anyway, on the off chance they're telling the truth. When he goes to the places mentioned, the events do come to pass, and while Touya is glad he can save lives, he's also very unsettled by the entire situation. He's also at least tangentially aware that the numbers on the cards are going down – so someone is counting down to something. We can wonder if that “something” is the house fire, but Touya's unaware of that future, which makes the situation all the more tense.

Meanwhile, with Ao, we explore the home that Touya and Haru designed. While it looks like just a regular old single-family home, albeit a large one, as Ao explores, he discovers secrets that begin to make the place take on a vaguely sinister air. What at first looks like a child's dream - a secret attic sounds great as a hideout – begins to sound less lovely when we consider the rest of what's happening, questioning who the secret attic could hide. When postcards foretelling fatal accidents are mysteriously appearing and Haru's mother dies in a house fire, suddenly it doesn't look so innocent.

There's also more in the past than Touya necessarily likes to acknowledge, although that's more out of concern for Haru (whom he's known since early childhood) than a wish to forget. Haru's mother died in a fire, and she's been so scarred by the loss that she gives the impression of being always on edge, which adds to the tension of the overall book. What would she do if Ao got worse? If she knew what Touya was doing? If something happened to the baby? Her fragility is more of a wild card than anything else because we spend so little time in her head and mostly see her through Touya's eyes, which may not paint an accurate picture.

The 13th Footprint's first volume is mainly set up, but it's a lesson in how to do it well. As more and more of the pattern becomes clear, the stakes are only going up for the family. Will it culminate in their fiery demise? I'm not going anywhere until I find out.