The sky above Viace City had the color of old bruises: a low, sullen gray that pressed on windows and made glass look tired. It was September 5th. Arthur woke to the sound of rain tapping a slow, steady thread against his bedroom window, a metronome for the heaviness in his chest. He had been discharged from the hospital only yesterday, but the world still felt foreign — as if he'd returned from some wide, distant battlefield and everything here had already rearranged itself without him.
He sat up slowly. His legs still ached where the chemical shock had left them raw, but the doctors had insisted he keep moving. "Normal routine speeds recovery," they'd said, with the clinical wrongness of people who had never had to move through a day with a grief lodged in their ribs.
He dressed in silence. The school uniform felt like armor that didn't quite fit: the collar pinched his neck, the fabric rough against the still-healing bruises. He caught his reflection briefly in the mirror — pallid under his eyes, hair unbrushed, the faint shadow of the hospital band on his wrist. He looked like a boy who had been a few minutes from collapse and chosen to stand anyway.
Outside, the rain had learned to sound like a crowd of distant feet. Arthur walked to the bus stop and watched the city pass in a blur of umbrellas and bright ads promising things that seemed meaningless now. People moved briskly, each absorbed in their own small orbit of worry and convenience. None of them had seen what happened below the city that week. None of them had watched the capsule crack and the black ink of the eclipse leak into the air. They would never understand the weight of his failure.
School was a building of pale concrete and fluorescent lights that hummed like tired bees. When Arthur slipped into the classroom he felt like a ghost arriving late to his own funeral. The students' voices muffled as if heard through boiling water. He found his seat mechanically, hands folded in his lap, eyes on the rain-stained window.
The teacher — a thin man with a voice like dry paper — waited until the bell had given its last toll. He paced the front of the class, hands behind his back, and then he looked at Arthur directly. "Arthur, are you okay?" he asked. It wasn't a dramatic moment; it was small and formal, the way adults ask a question because the script requires it. Arthur forced a nod. "Yes," he lied.
Minutes later Alia slipped in, breathless, hair flattened by the rain and eyes a little too bright from lack of sleep. She sat two seats down from him, fingers worrying the hem of her sleeve. The teacher glanced toward her as well. "Alia, are you safe?" The words were almost ceremonial, like a prayer repeated to calm a noisy room.
"Yes," Alia answered, but her voice was thin. Her fingers trembled slightly when she set her bag down. She hadn't slept. Her eyes kept moving to Arthur and then away, as if watching for something to start or end. Arthur could see the fatigue drawn at the corners of her mouth, the red rim around her lower lids. She was far from safe.
The teacher cleared his throat. He didn't mention Kaito or the subway or the black capsule. Public names were dangerous now, and the classroom was not the place for politics that could end careers or ignite panic. Instead, he offered a lecture on safety that was careful and faintly theatrical.
"I want to remind everyone," he said, standing ramrod straight, "that reckless behavior — acting alone, confronting dangerous situations without training — can have real consequences." His voice was measured, almost rehearsed. He scanned the room, eyes lingering for a breath too long on the teenagers, then softened. "We all have to look out for one another. If something feels dangerous, report it. Don't try to be a hero."
The words landed like thin paper armor against Arthur's chest. He thought of Alexander's sudden move, the way the man had taken Kaito and then vanished like smoke. He thought of his own failure, of how close he had come to being swallowed by the black aura himself. He wanted to stand up, to shout that sometimes people had to act because there was no one to call, because the men in suits didn't answer until it was already too late. But he kept his hands folded and breathed in the room's stale perfume of chalk and detergent.
Alia's leg bounced a little under the desk. She kept stealing looks at Arthur, then lowering her gaze as if to apologize to him with her eyes for mistakes she had no right to confess. Arthur caught one of those looks and offered the smallest of smiles — a thin thing that felt dishonest even to him. She returned it, and in that instant, the painful connection of two people who had been bruised by the same storm made the room a fraction less cold.
The teacher moved on to a math problem as if the algebra on the board could stitch the world back together. Equations were tidy and obedient, each symbol in its place. Outside, the rain softened into a fine mist. The day progressed like a procession of small, careful gestures that failed to rearrange the large, jagged pieces of yesterday.
—
A different kind of silence sat in Brown Headquarters, but the weight there had teeth. The central office smelled faintly of coffee and old paper, diplomacy and panic. Guren — tight-faced, efficient, the kind of civil servant who thought in lists — paced before an array of screens. He had been on the phone for what felt like hours, and his voice now matched the tempo of his breath: quick, anxious.
He ended the call and looked at Minister Brown. Brown sat behind the scarred desk like a small island of calm, but his jaw was tight, the kind of physical gesture that betrayed a man whose world had been rearranged by forces he did not command. He had just weathered an early morning crisis meeting, full of bureaucratic fingers pointing in polite outrage. If the public had to be soothed, the story needed a lid and a push.
"Sir," Guren said, voice careful, "I've just spoken with the Prime Minister's office. They're briefed. I explained that the incident was contained and that the cause — the awakening of what we're calling 'Eclipse phenomena' — is under investigation. They wanted assurances this will not escalate."
Brown let out a breath that was almost a laugh gone wrong. "Assurances," he said. "They always want assurances. What did you tell them?"
Guren's hand rubbed the back of his neck. "I suggested we frame it as an accident — a lab mishap caused by rogue scientists. We can pin it on those responsible and promise reform. The President is on edge, but the PM accepted that narrative for now."
Brown's eyes darkened. The weight of a thousand minor collapses sat on him like a coat. "You have made a mess," he said, then softer, "Guren, I trusted you to keep the optics clean. The Regan incident should never have gone public the way it did."
Guren's face pinched. "We held as much as we could, sir. But Kuro's team—Kuro himself—moved unpredictably. He separated the boy and created a larger spectacle than we'd planned. The capture by Regan No. 2 ended up visible. The prime minister is furious at the optics, but for now he accepts the lab-accident line."
Brown slammed a palm on the desk. The sound was sharp enough to startle even the plants in the corner. "Kuro? Damn him. He's a loose cannon." His voice coiled into the old, accustomed fury of a man who had to show control. "He ran off with that boy and created a feeding frenzy. And now—now the boy is with Fern. Fern? Of all places. You told me that Fern would remain contained in the shadows, cooperating. How did they end up with our subject?"
Guren swallowed. "It was unexpected. Alexander moved quickly, secured the asset, and brought him to Fern. If anyone is to be blamed for the public revelation… it's Kuro. He gamed the situation."
Brown's fingers drummed on the desktop, an impatient insect. "I will not tolerate this negligence again. The central government will take charge of the scientists. We will marshal inquiries, commissions, and a public message that pins responsibility elsewhere. And Kuro—" he said, every syllable like a drum beat — "—Kuro must be found. I will not stand for being undermined. Next time, I will not be so lenient."
Guren nodded quickly, the sort of movement that implied compliance and fear in equal measure. He shifted to the phone and dialed another number, calling a subordinate to begin the quiet work: a list of scapegoats, disinformation points to feed the press, a plan to reposition Brown's office as the calm hand in a chaotic hour.
Outside the glass of the headquarters windows, the city moved down a different lane from the classroom: meetings, hurried footfalls, the polishing of public statements. The narrative would be reset, tongues would wag, and ministers would posture. The truth — that a boy had been experimented on and a hidden war had been fought beneath the streets — would be refashioned into a tidy tale of accident and reform. It would not erase the blood on the subway tiles nor the cracked capsule, but it could keep certain hands from being blamed too loudly.
Brown rose then and stood, the kind of small motion that always seemed like a return to old, practiced control. "Guren," he said, low and hard, "do not fail me again. We will find Kuro. We will contain the narrative. The world will sleep tonight, and we will make sure they dream of safety rather than truth."
Guren's face was pale, but his voice was steady as he confirmed the orders. He made a note, then dialed another number. Each action was a stitch sewing over the rawness. Each small lie was practical. Each removed truth was politically necessary. They were craftsmen at erasing panic.
—
Arthur sat in class through the lecture in a fog of numbed thought. The numbers on the board blurred into constellations he could not name. When the bell finally rang, he moved with the slow grace of someone who had done too much grief in one lifetime. Alia touched his sleeve and he looked up; her eyes were a hive of midnight and exhaustion. They walked out into the mist together, and for a moment, the world gave them its ruined kindness: soft rain, the smell of wet pavement, the shared knowledge that they had survived something most of their town would never comprehend.
Somewhere, decisions were being written for them by men in offices. Somewhere else, a boy rested under tubes and bandages and named the faces he needed to survive. The city breathed on, indifferent and vast, while those who had been there in the tunnels learned to walk again in the shifting light of a world that would continue to change whether it knew it or not.
---
The house was quiet — the kind of silence that had a pulse, heavy and unspoken.
It was Kaito's home, but it no longer felt like one.
His mother, Mika Hiroshi, sat in the living room beside the old wooden chair that creaked whenever she shifted. The air smelled faintly of tea that had gone cold hours ago. Her eyes were fixed on a photograph resting against the wall — a small frame showing a much younger Kaito and Ayaka laughing in a flower garden, petals drifting around them in golden light.
It was a memory that belonged to a world that had stopped existing on August 29.
Since that day, her husband — Kaito's father — had not stepped out of his room. He hadn't even spoken beyond a few muffled words through the door. Every morning and night, Ayaka, Kaito's sister, quietly placed his food tray in front of the door, just like he'd asked.
He would eat. Sometimes not. But the tray always came back empty.
Ayaka did everything else too — school, laundry, the shopping, cooking — every little thing that kept a family barely breathing. Her eyes had grown tired, the kind of tired that didn't come from work but from hopeless repetition.
She never cried.
But she never smiled either.
When she came home from school that evening, she found her mother still sitting in the same position, eyes on that photograph.
"Mom," she said quietly, putting her bag down, "you didn't eat lunch again."
Mika didn't answer. Her fingers just brushed against the picture frame.
Ayaka stepped closer and saw a tear drop fall onto the glass — right between Kaito and herself, frozen forever in laughter.
The clock ticked softly. The room stayed gray.
And somewhere upstairs, behind a locked door, their father remained in his world of guilt and silence.
---
Afternoon – Viace High Cafeteria
Arthur sat at the far end of the cafeteria. His food was untouched — a half-eaten sandwich and a cold cup of tea beside it. His body was there, but his mind was distant, stuck between the echo of that underground chaos and the empty seat where Kaito should've been.
The chatter around him blurred — other students laughed, some whispered rumors about the "incident," some pretended nothing happened at all. But Arthur heard none of it. The sound of his own heartbeat drowned everything else.
Then Alia approached.
She stood in front of him for a long moment before sitting down. Her expression was calm, too calm — the kind that looked like control but felt like breaking.
"Arthur," she began softly, her hands clasped together, "I'm going to say something painful… but something practical."
Arthur looked up slowly. "What is it?"
Alia took a shaky breath. "We should move on from Kaito."
Arthur froze. The words felt like a slap, an open wound being pressed on. "What… did you say?"
Her eyes didn't meet his. "I said we should move on. There's nothing we can do anymore."
Arthur's voice cracked as his hands clenched on the table. "Move on? From my friend?" His eyes went red, veins showing faintly under the skin — not from rage alone, but from grief that refused to die. "You're telling me to forget him like he never existed? Like he didn't save us?"
Alia bit her lip. Her tone stayed calm, but her eyes betrayed the tremor underneath. "What can we do, Arthur? Tell me."
Arthur didn't answer. He only stared — at her, at the wall, at the space between them that Kaito once filled.
She continued, her words quiet but sharp. "You have your powers. I have mine. But we can't go against Fern. We can't fight the Amerian system. We can't go against the world itself. Can you?"
Arthur's jaw tightened. "…No."
"Exactly." She looked away. "Whatever I did — interfering in his life, dragging him into my mess — it was wrong. A massive mistake. Maybe this is my punishment, my life lesson. I'll move on… and whether you do or not, that's up to you."
She stood up slowly, her chair scraping lightly against the floor, and walked away without another word.
Arthur sat there motionless, her words echoing like distant thunder. The cafeteria buzzed faintly around him, but it all sounded so far away.
He whispered under his breath, voice trembling,
"You really are alone, Kaito… you're suffering somewhere… and no one's there for you. Not your friends. Not anyone."
His hands shook slightly as he lowered his head.
The world outside the window was bright, almost cruelly normal.
---
Fern headquarters
A dim, sterile room. The faint hum of machines filled the silence.
Kaito lay motionless under pale light — his body covered in bandages, skin pale against the white sheets. Tubes ran from his arms to monitors that pulsed steadily with quiet rhythm.
His face was calm, but his expression — even in unconsciousness — carried pain.
Scars ran across his shoulders and ribs, and a faint metallic glow shimmered beneath some of the bandages — remnants of experiments, of the eclipse that had changed him.
The camera of fate panned out — showing the quiet, the wires, the stillness — before the lights flickered once, faintly, like a heart that refused to give up.
The world above him continued on:
A grieving family,
a friend trying to forget,
and another who refused to.
And beneath it all, the eclipse still breathed — silent, waiting.