Chapter 8 - The Stranger at the Glass
The first thing Akio noticed was the silence.
Not the gentle kind, not the kind that came after the pharmacy closed and the hum of life settled into soft order. This was a silence that pressed down on everything. A thick, deliberate quiet, as if the world itself had paused mid-breath and refused to exhale.
He stood behind the counter of Hukitaske Pharmacy, finishing the week's inventory under the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights. The clock on the wall read 11:47 PM. Outside, snow drifted like falling feathers—slow, circular, weightless. It painted the glass in frost-veined lace, obscuring the familiar view of Tokyo's narrow side street. Streetlights flickered, halos of orange trembling in the distance.
The air smelled of burnt sage, menthol, and tea tree—the residue of Raka's "Winter Vigilance" diffuser blend. He'd teased her earlier about its "witch-doctor" scent, but now, in the cold quiet of night, he found comfort in it. The scent made the place feel alive, still guarded somehow.
He should have gone home hours ago.
Raka had told him to rest. Misaki had threatened to "confiscate his paperwork by force." But Akio stayed, tidying shelves, checking expiration dates, pretending he still had tasks left.
Truthfully, he just couldn't bring himself to leave. Not tonight. Something about the air felt… unsettled. As if the snow outside wasn't natural, but a cover—an aesthetic laid over unease.
He sighed, rubbed the back of his neck, and bent over the counter to close the ledger.
That's when he heard it.
A sound too soft to be real.
The bell above the front door chimed.
Not loudly, but enough.
Akio's head snapped up.
The door creaked open with slow precision, the kind that didn't belong to a careless visitor. A gust of wind blew in, scattering loose papers from the counter. Snow swirled across the floor, white against the sterile tile. Then, a shadow stepped through.
A figure—young, tall, framed by the blue night behind him. His movements were deliberate, measured, like a pianist placing each note with control. He closed the door behind him without a word, sealing out the storm.
The air changed immediately.
Akio's pulse quickened. The persons face was pale, almost translucent in the fluorescent light. Black hair, slightly disheveled. His eyes—not empty, but clinical. Coldly aware. He wore a dark gray coat, unbuttoned despite the chill, and held something glinting in his right hand.
A syringe.
Akio's breath caught.
Not just any syringe—he recognized the make, the pattern of the steel cap, the faint blue line along the barrel. His body went cold. He'd held that model before. In another life.
The life that was supposed to be over.
The stranger stepped forward, his boots whispering across the linoleum. His voice was almost polite when he finally spoke.
"Subject Nine."
Akio froze.
That name—that designation—hadn't touched his ears in years, not since the night he woke up screaming in the research ward, reborn and broken.
He said quietly, "You have the wrong person."
The stranger's gaze didn't waver. "No. We never lose track of our subjects."
Akio's muscles tightened. Every instinct screamed danger, yet he couldn't move fast enough before the figure advanced, syringe glinting like a blade. He lunged, swift, precise.
Akio ducked low, reflex taking over. His shoulder collided with the persons ribs; both of them stumbled. The syringe clattered to the floor, spinning beneath the vitamin aisle. Shelves rattled. The bell above the door chimed again—mocking, out of rhythm.
They grappled—two ghosts wrestling between what was human and what was left of it. Akio slammed the person against the counter, panting.
"Why are you here?!"
The stranger's expression didn't change. His breathing was steady, eerily mechanical. Slowly, he reached into his coat and withdrew a folded piece of paper. Without breaking eye contact, he dropped it to the ground.
Akio frowned, confused. He released the person just long enough to glance at the paper. It was creased, ink bleeding from snow-dampened edges. Words scrawled in dark, hurried strokes:
"Experiment window ending. Time expired. We only extended it because you wandered. Couldn't identify by face. You're still Subject 9."
The world seemed to tilt sideways.
He read it twice.
Three times.
His hands trembled. "This… this can't be real."
The stranger spoke again, voice sharp as a scalpel.
"Your revival was an error. You were not meant to persist beyond forty-eight hours."
Akio's throat closed. "Then why am I still here?"
"An anomaly," the figure said, expression unchanging. "The regression compound was designed to measure neuro-elastic decay—how long a subject could maintain cognitive stability before collapse. You retained memory. Self-awareness. That was never intended."
Akio took a step back. "You turned people into experiments."
"We turned failures into data," the stranger corrected.
The words landed like a punch. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Akio's voice broke into anger. "I built something out of that failure! I've helped people—saved them! You call that an error?"
"You built nothing," the stranger said quietly. "We built you."
A pause.
"You were a tool, Dr. Hukitaske. A discarded vessel that refused to decompose."
The name sounded foreign now, like it belonged to a being who'd already died. Maybe it did.
Akio's breath hitched. "You think this is progress? Playing god with lives?"
The figure tilted his head. "Progress demands blood. You should understand. Weren't you the one who signed the first consent order?"
"I signed it to heal, not destroy!"
The stranger's mouth curved—an imitation of a smile, but wrong in every way. "You misunderstand. Healing and destruction are the same process. The body breaks to rebuild. The world evolves by pruning its weak."
Akio clenched his fists, shaking. "You're wrong."
"You were chosen," the stranger continued calmly, "because you were expendable. A forgotten researcher, a widower, a person no one would mourn. You had no ties left. No family."
Akio's gut ached. "I matter," he said softly. "And so do they. Every single person who walks through that door."
The persons expression finally shifted—something like disappointment flickering through the mask. "Sentimentality. Predictable. That's why you can't be allowed to continue."
He reached into his coat again. This time, Akio didn't hesitate. He lunged, slamming the stranger back—but the person was faster. There was a flash, a metallic click, and a sudden pulse of red light bursting from the device in his hand.
Then—sound broke.
A shriek of glass. A tremor that ran through the bones of the building.
Then the world exploded.
The Fall of Hukitaske Pharmacy
Flames roared out from the shelves in waves, devouring the air. Bottles burst like glass grenades. The herbal drawers erupted into sparks and smoke. Akio felt himself thrown backward—weightless, then crushingly heavy. He hit the floor hard. His head rang. His lungs filled with chemical ash.
For a moment, there was only ringing.
No thought. No sound.
Just the sight of orange blooming where warmth used to live.
He coughed, rolled over, dragging himself through shards and firelight. The smell of burning eucalyptus filled his throat. The ceiling groaned above, cracking open in veins of flame.
Somewhere to his left, the stranger's body lay under fallen beams, unmoving.
The paper—the note—fluttered across the debris like a dying moth.
Akio reached for it, fingers bleeding, skin blistered. He caught it just before it burned completely. Only half of it remained legible:
"Failed subject terminated. Self-destruct approved. Experiment officially closed. Glory to progress."
He stared at it until the words blurred into smoke.
A sharp crack tore through the air as another beam collapsed. Heat surged, forcing him to crawl toward the front door. His leg screamed in protest—something was wrong, fractured maybe—but he kept moving. Shelves melted. The air shimmered. Bottles popped open like fireworks. He could feel the fire feeding on memory, turning every corner of his reborn life into black ruin.
The waiting room—the place that had once been a refuge, a shelter for the lost—was now a furnace.
He thought of the little kid from the rainstorm.
Of Raka's teasing voice.
Of Misaki's crooked snowflakes.
Of Yamataro's clumsy laughter.
And of the dream that began it all—the soft voice of a child saying, "One day, I'll make fireworks for medicine."
Tears cut clean streaks through the soot on his face.
He stumbled to his feet, half-blind, half-numb. The glass door was shattered inward, snow blowing through the opening.
White against orange.
Cold against heat.
He dragged himself through, collapsing into the snowbank outside. The contrast of temperatures was agony. The night was still alive with the roar of flames, but the snow continued to fall—slow, peaceful, indifferent.
He turned his head toward the ruin of his pharmacy. The sign above the door, half-melted, still flickered:
HUKITASKE PHARMACY: OPEN FOR CARE.
Then it blinked out.
Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance—too far away to matter.
He coughed once, blood and smoke mixing on his lips. His hands trembled, blackened with soot. His body screamed for rest, for surrender. But his heart—his stubborn, human heart—refused.
He whispered into the falling snow, voice cracking:
"I'm… not done."
The wind carried the words away, dissolving them into the night.
Epilogue: The Snow After
They would call it an accident.
The fire inspectors would find traces of faulty wiring, perhaps, or a gas leak from the heater line. No one would mention the syringe fragments found near the counter. No one would understand the faint residue of the compound—the same one that once remade him.
By dawn, all that remained of Hukitaske Pharmacy was a skeleton of ash and glass, steaming faintly under the pale light. The snow around it had melted into gray slush, stained by soot.
Yet in the debris, something glimmered faintly. A half-melted metal tag, engraved with a single number: 9.
When the first responders arrived, they found no bodies—only the charred remains of one unidentifiable figure beneath the wreckage. No sign of Akio Hukitaske.
Some whispered that he'd died with his creation, choosing to burn alongside it.
Others said they saw footprints leading away from the ruins—faint, uneven, fading into the snow.
The truth was somewhere between.
Far away, on the edge of the city, a small clinic light flickered to life.
Inside, a person sat on the floor, back against the wall, breathing shallow but steady. His clothes were torn, his skin burned, but his eyes—those eyes—still burned brighter than the fire that tried to erase him.
He pressed his hand against his stomach, feeling his pulse. Weak, but alive.
Alive, again. Against all odds.
He looked around at the dim, empty room. A shattered mirror reflected half of his face, smeared with soot. The rest was shadow.
He whispered to the silence, almost laughing through pain:
"Fireworks for medicine, huh? Maybe you were right after all."
He pulled a charred scrap of paper from his pocket—the same one that read "Glory to progress." With shaking hands, he scribbled new words beneath it:
"Glory to survival."
Then he looked out the window.
Snow still fell, silent as before.
Each flake melted on the glass, sliding down in tiny, shining trails—like tears that refused to vanish.
He leaned his forehead against the cold pane, watching the city shimmer beyond it.
He was a person reborn twice now—once by science, once by fire.
And this time, he wouldn't run from it.
He would find whoever created that syringe, whoever called him Subject 9, and show them that survival itself was the truest evolution.
The snow reflected in his eyes like burning stars.
The storm had ended, but something new had begun—something colder, sharper, alive.
And somewhere in the distance, as Tokyo's skyline blinked under dawn, a soft voice seemed to whisper back from memory:
"Don't stop, Papa. Make it shine again."
Akio closed his eyes.
The silence breathed again.
And for the first time since the fire, he exhaled.
[End of Volume 2: After the Ribbons — The Pharmacy Beyond Dreams Above]