Chapter 2 - The Anonymous Arrival
The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
Tokyo was caught in one of those rare, endless downpours where the whole city seemed to dissolve into reflection—lights stretching thin and watery across pavement, thunder rumbling like a tired god in the distance. The neon signs outside flickered half-heartedly, their colors bleeding down the walls in electric veins of red and violet.
Inside the Hukitaske Pharmacy, all was dim.
Power had gone out an hour ago, the street grid failing under the weight of the storm. The emergency generator coughed itself to sleep after a few minutes, leaving only a single flashlight in the center of the table. Its beam swung and jittered every time the wind rattled the shutters, carving restless shadows across their faces.
Akio sat closest to the light. The others gathered in a half-circle around him—Raka to his left, tapping the dead cigarette between her fingers; Misaki to his right, posture stiff, eyes sharp; Hikata across from him, trying to look casual but failing; Rumane leaning against the counter, his expression unreadable; and Yamataro crouched by the window, peering through the slats as if the rain itself might hide an enemy.
The flashlight illuminated something in the middle of the table: a thick black envelope, sealed in wax that looked too deliberate, too calculated. It wasn't mailed. It had been slid under the door an hour ago, right after closing.
Even the envelope seemed to hum with unease.
Akio hadn't touched it yet. He had just stared at it—long enough for the beam of light to cast a trembling white halo around its edges. The paper wasn't ordinary stationery. It had a strange texture, almost slick, like something manufactured in a lab rather than a print shop. His stomach twisted the longer he looked at it.
"This came from them," he said finally, voice barely more than a whisper. "It has to."
Raka's voice was dry. "You sure? Could be a weird customer returning a bill."
Misaki shot her a look. "A weird customer who seals notes in chemical-grade parchment and drops them at midnight in a thunderstorm?"
"Hey, Tokyo's full of eccentrics," Raka muttered.
But her eyes didn't leave the envelope.
Hikata leaned forward, elbows on the table, his usually easy grin fading. "It's from the lab, isn't it? The same ones who… who sent the first message."
Akio said nothing, but his silence was answer enough. The hum of the rain filled the gap. It was that kind of silence that made people start hearing their own heartbeats.
Misaki clasped her hands together, the knuckles white. "Then open it, Akio. Whatever it is—they wanted you to see it. Let's not waste time."
He nodded slowly. His hand trembled just once before he steadied it.
The blade of the scissors scraped through the edge of the seal.
The sound was too sharp in the quiet room—paper tearing, glue snapping, the hiss of something private being unwrapped. It felt like surgery. Or confession.
The envelope opened.
Inside was another layer—folded black paper, thicker, colder. He peeled it open. The flashlight's beam caught on the faint reflection of embossed letters, neatly typed and centered, as if whoever wrote it had done so with precision bordering on obsession.
The message read:
We are not backing down.
Next arrival: Block.
No signature. No logo. No trace of origin. Just two sentences, sterile and confident. A ghost's handwriting.
Akio stared at the paper, the words slicing through him. He'd seen their tone before—back when the lab had communicated with their subjects in cold, clinical memos.
Back when he had been one of those subjects.
He could almost hear the hum of the test room again—the sharp tang of antiseptic, the hum of machines, the emotionless voices behind the glass walls. "Subject Nine, increase dosage by point-five milligrams." "Subject Nine, record response." "Subject Nine, failure confirmed."
His heart pounded against his ribs.
Subject Nine.
He thought he'd burned that name to ash.
Raka broke the silence. "Next arrival? What's that supposed to mean? Another message?"
"Or a person," Misaki murmured. "An arrival… sounds like a code name."
"Block," Hikata said. "Like… a codename for an agent? Or maybe a weapon?"
Before Akio could respond, a faint metallic click cut through the rain's rhythm. Everyone froze.
It came from behind the shelves.
Then—a hiss. A thin, sharp, rising hiss like gas escaping a valve.
Akio's eyes widened. "Get down—!"
The explosion ripped through the pharmacy like thunder.
A wave of heat and smoke slammed into them. The flashlight fell, spinning wildly across the floor, its beam slicing the chaos into violent flashes—Misaki diving, Raka pulling Akio sideways, Hikata shoving Yamataro behind a toppled shelf. The shockwave shattered glass and sent papers spiraling through the air like birds caught in a storm.
Then, silence again—broken only by the staccato drip of rain leaking through the cracked ceiling.
Akio coughed, eyes burning, lungs seared by smoke. He pushed himself up, palms scraping over debris. The pharmacy's front counter had been blasted open; a section of the wall hung in tatters, smoking. Sparks jumped from a severed power line.
"Everyone okay?!" he shouted.
A chorus of weak groans and coughs answered.
Raka sat up first, brushing dust from her face. "You're still alive, so yeah—guess I did my job."
Hikata emerged next, his hair singed at the ends but grin intact. "Could've been worse. Could've been—y'know—dead."
"Thanks for the analysis," Misaki snapped, brushing shards of glass from her sleeve. But her tone softened when she saw Akio bleeding from a cut on his temple. "Sit still. Let me—"
"I'm fine," he said too quickly.
Rumane, coughing, pulled the black envelope from under a fallen board. It was half-burned now, but the words on the paper still glowed faintly under the flickering flashlight.
We are not backing down.
Next arrival: Block.
Akio's jaw tightened. He took the note from Rumane's hands, staring at it until his vision blurred. "They're not just sending messages," he said. "They're testing us. Probing. Seeing how far they can go before we break."
Raka spat into the corner. "Then we don't break."
Akio met her gaze, and for the first time since the fire, there was no trace of fear in his eyes—just fury, cold and focused. "You don't understand. These people—this organization—they don't stop. When I escaped, I thought they'd cut their losses. But this isn't about the experiment anymore. It's about control."
Misaki frowned. "Then tell us. Who are they really?"
Akio hesitated. The truth pressed against his throat, but he swallowed it. Some truths weren't ready yet—not when the very mention of them could drag the past back in full.
"They used to call themselves the R.E.L.I.C. Division," he said finally. "Research and Evolution of Living Intelligence Compounds. They were trying to force evolution. To create humans who could adapt faster—heal faster. But it wasn't science. It was madness."
"And you were part of it," Hikata said quietly.
Akio didn't look at him. "I was trapped in it."
The rain hammered harder, masking the tremor in his voice. "They never saw us as people. Just equations that bled. I thought I buried that life when I walked out of their lab. But apparently, they didn't bury me."
A low rumble of thunder rolled overhead.
Raka leaned back against the wall, exhaling smoke she didn't have a cigarette for. "So what do we do now?"
Misaki looked around the shattered room. "We rebuild again? Like always?"
"No," Akio said softly. "Rebuilding isn't enough anymore. They'll keep coming until they erase me—and anyone connected to me. Until we make them stop."
The flashlight flickered once, twice, then went out. For a moment, they were plunged into total darkness. Only the lightning through the window gave shape to their silhouettes.
Then Misaki's voice—calm, clear—cut through the dark.
"Then we fight."
Her words hung there, echoing between the walls, bold and steady.
Akio felt something stir deep in his heart—a quiet spark of resolve that had survived fire, guilt, and now, the rain.
The backup light clicked on again, weak but steady. It cast their faces in amber glow. They looked exhausted, bruised, defiant. A mismatched family forged from catastrophe.
Akio folded the burned note carefully and slid it into his coat pocket. The word "Block" still glared up at him like a scar.
He rose slowly, his shadow stretching tall across the ruined counter. "Then that's what we'll do," he said. "If they want to send someone—or something—called 'Block,' let them. We'll be ready."
Raka gave a humorless grin. "You sound like you're about to declare war."
Akio met her eyes. "Maybe I am."
The storm outside intensified, rattling the windows hard enough to shake dust from the rafters. A distant siren wailed through the night, swallowed by thunder.
Hikata broke the silence with a nervous laugh. "Guess I better reinforce the pharmacy again, huh? Maybe add a few blast shields this time."
"Make them look cute," Misaki said dryly. "We're still running a business."
Yamataro snorted. "A business that keeps getting bombed."
"Occupational hazard," Rumane muttered, limping toward the first aid kit.
Raka looked at Akio, serious again. "They won't stop, you know. You said it yourself. What makes you think we can?"
Akio turned toward the rain-streaked window. Outside, lightning flashed, carving the street into silver and shadow. For a heartbeat, he saw his reflection—pale, scarred, haunted. But behind it, he saw something else: the faint reflection of his friends standing together, unbroken.
"Because they think we're still experiments," he said. "They don't understand what we became after we escaped them."
"And what's that?" Raka asked quietly.
He turned back, eyes steady. "Human. Together."
No one replied, but they didn't need to.
The rain began to lighten, shifting from torrent to drizzle. Outside, the horizon glowed faintly with the approach of morning—a gray, uncertain light, but light all the same.
Akio took one last look at the ruined room: the overturned shelves, the shattered glass, the fragments of their second beginning scattered across the floor. Then he set his jaw.
"Get some rest," he said. "Tomorrow we start something new."
"Like what?" Hikata asked.
Akio's eyes narrowed. "We trace the word Block. Find out who—or what—it is. And when they arrive…"
He looked around the room, meeting each gaze in turn. "We'll be waiting."
The others nodded.
No more running. No more rebuilding in silence.
This time, they would strike back.
Outside, the first birds dared to sing again. The storm was passing, but its echo lingered in every heartbeat inside that dark room.
The lab had made its move.
Now it was their turn.
[Next: Chapter 3 — Operation Erasure Begins]