Chapter 3 - The Child With No Birthday
The Scarlet Helix was gone.
Reduced to smoldering fragments beneath Kyoto's labyrinthine undercity, the once-feared research complex had finally met its end. What was left of it was a tangle of ash, molten metal, and the ghosts of ambition.
It should have been victory. Yet as Akio Hukitaske walked away from the site, the smoke curling skyward behind him, it didn't feel like triumph. It felt like something quieter — a requiem for every broken dream that bled into that place.
He had emerged from the fire not unscathed, but tempered.
The shadows that once consumed him had lost their teeth.
He had stood beside Hikata — his oldest friend, his brother in arms — and torn the mask off an empire of cruelty. The truth had burned, but truth always does.
Now, standing at the threshold of peace, Akio realized how silent the world could be when the storm was over. Silence wasn't the comfort he thought it would be. It was haunting.
The past had been buried, but it still whispered.
And one whisper — soft, persistent — kept calling him back to a wound he had left untouched for far too long.
He had to see her again.
Unsent Letters
The pharmacy was alive again.
It smelled like chamomile and citrus balm, the air thick with steam and laughter. Rumane was scolding Hikata for rearranging the prescription drawers again; the radio hummed softly in the background with morning news and distant music.
Customers came and went — a rhythm that felt like breathing.
Elderly couples brought home-cooked dumplings as thanks. Children left crayon drawings taped to the counter. The walls were lined with handwritten notes of gratitude from strangers whose lives the small pharmacy had touched.
But behind Akio's calm expression, another rhythm pulsed — a quieter, heavier one.
In the inner pocket of his coat was a creased letter. The paper had yellowed at the edges. The envelope was never opened, yet he knew its contents by heart.
From her.
Kaede.
His ex-wife. The person who once laughed with him over burned rice and rainy mornings, who held their daughter while the sun rose behind their old apartment. The one who stayed long after the world stopped making sense.
And the person he left behind when he chose to become someone else.
He remembered that night vividly — the sterile light of the lab, the glass syringe reflecting his trembling face. "Relife Serum," they called it — a scientific resurrection, a restart for the damaged and dying. But rebirth comes with its own kind of death.
He had taken it, convinced he could rebuild. But in doing so, he had erased himself from the life he once promised to protect.
The letter had come a year later.
"I'm glad to hear you're doing better, Akio. Truly. I hope this new path brings you peace. I've remarried. I have a good life now. But I still think about you sometimes. I hope, someday, you'll write back. Even if just to say hello."
He never wrote back.
At first, he told himself he was too busy. Then he told himself she was better off not hearing from him. Then… he just stopped telling himself anything.
But the mind doesn't forget what the heart avoids.
A Promise Reopened
That night, Kyoto's rooftops gleamed under a pale crescent moon. Akio stood atop the pharmacy, the city's hum below him, clutching a steaming cup of barley tea. The wind brushed against his face — gentle, like a hand on a wound that had just begun to close.
Hikata climbed up after him, carrying a second cup. "You keep brooding like that, people'll think you're writing poetry again."
Akio smirked faintly. "I was just thinking."
"About her?"
He nodded.
"She wrote to me, years ago. I never answered. I told myself it was because I didn't want to make things harder for her, but that was a lie."
"What was the truth?" Hikata asked, sitting beside him.
Akio looked out over the glittering cityscape. "I was ashamed. Of what I became. Of leaving her to carry grief I was too cowardly to face. Our daughter's death— it broke us both, but I ran from it. From her."
Hikata's eyes softened. "You thought staying away was mercy."
"I thought it was atonement," Akio said. "But maybe it was just fear dressed as virtue."
They sat in silence, the kind that fills the air when there's nothing left to hide.
Finally, Akio said, "This weekend is her… our daughter's day. The anniversary. I haven't been there in years. Kaede always went alone."
Hikata set his tea down. "Then don't let her go alone this time. Go. You've rebuilt cities in your soul, Akio. You can rebuild one bridge."
Akio laughed quietly — not from humor, but from gratitude. "You always make it sound simple."
"It usually is," Hikata replied. "We just make it complicated."
The House by the River
Kaede lived in a small house beside the Kamo River, where cherry blossoms drifted across the water like paper wishes.
Akio stood at the gate for nearly a full minute before knocking. His hand trembled once — just once — before steadying.
When the door opened, time didn't rush backward like he thought it might. It simply… paused.
Kaede looked older. Her hair, streaked with silver, framed a face that still carried both gentleness and resolve. She blinked once, and then smiled.
"You finally came."
Her voice was exactly as he remembered — calm, unflinching, like a melody he'd once memorized and forgotten to hum.
"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me," Akio admitted.
"I wasn't sure either," she said softly. "But I think… now is the only right time."
She led him inside. The house smelled like sandalwood and miso soup. Photographs lined the shelves — Kaede with her husband, with friends, with her students. And tucked among them, one photo that hadn't moved: a little kid with bright eyes, holding a paper flower.
Their daughter.
Akio sat quietly across from her in the living room. Neither spoke for a long while. The tea steamed between them, untouched.
"I owe you so many apologies," Akio finally said.
Kaede shook her head. "You don't owe me anything."
"I do," he said firmly. "I vanished without saying goodbye. I made choices I didn't explain. You deserved better than silence."
Kaede's eyes softened. "You were grieving, Akio. We both were. We just… grieved in different languages."
He swallowed hard. "I told myself I was sparing you pain. But I was really just sparing myself the sight of it."
For the first time, she looked at him — really looked. "You always thought love meant saving people from sadness. But sometimes love just means standing beside them while they feel it."
Akio's throat tightened. "Her memorial's this weekend," he said. "I'd like to come. If you'll let me."
Kaede nodded. "Bring lilies. She loved those."
The Grave Beneath the Willows
The cemetery rested at the city's edge, where the earth met quiet riverside willows. The branches swayed like they were whispering to the stones.
Kaede arrived first, carrying a notebook of poems. Akio followed, holding a bouquet of white lilies tied with a ribbon.
Her name — their daughter's — was etched into the marble, faintly weathered by time. Beneath it, a line Kaede had chosen years ago: "To the child who taught us to see the sky."
Akio knelt. His breath hitched as he traced the letters. "I've been gone too long," he whispered. "I don't deserve to speak her name, but I will anyway."
Kaede stood beside him, listening to the wind move through the branches.
"She'd be thirteen now," Akio said softly. "Old enough to roll her eyes at her own father."
Kaede smiled. "She got that from you."
He laughed quietly through his grief. "Probably."
They lit a small candle together, its flame trembling against the wind. Akio placed the lilies beside it, their scent clean and bright — life reborn from the soil of sorrow.
Kaede began reading from the notebook — small, delicate verses her daughter had once scribbled about stars, flowers, and impossible dreams.
When she finished, they both stood in silence, listening to the river's murmur.
Akio whispered, "I was so afraid of coming here. I thought if I didn't face it, the pain would fade. But pain doesn't fade when you ignore it. It just waits."
Kaede turned to him. "Then stop waiting."
He looked at her, eyes glistening. "I'm sorry, Kaede. For all of it."
She nodded once. "Apology accepted. But not because you asked for it. Because it's time."
Ashes and Apologies
They walked back toward the city, their steps quiet against the cobblestone.
"Do you still blame yourself?" Kaede asked.
Akio took a moment before answering. "Every day. But I'm learning to forgive the person who didn't know better."
Kaede smiled faintly. "You know, I saw your interview. The whole country did. The way you spoke about redemption… it didn't sound like a scientist. It sounded like a father trying again."
He chuckled softly. "I don't know what I am anymore."
"Then let that be your peace," she said. "You don't have to be anything. Just be."
They reached her gate. The same spot where the past had begun unraveling years ago.
"You're always welcome here," Kaede said, her voice steady but kind. "Not as a ghost, not as a stranger. As a friend."
Akio bowed his head. "Thank you."
"Bring lilies next time," she added, smiling through the evening light. "They make the house smell like memory."
Return to the Pharmacy
By the time Akio returned to the pharmacy, dusk had rolled across the city. The streets shimmered gold in the lamplight.
Inside, Rumane was wiping down the counter. She glanced up when the bell chimed. "You're late."
Akio smiled. "I was visiting someone."
She studied his face — the calm in his eyes, the weight that had lifted. "You look… different."
"I think I am."
Rumane poured him a cup of green tea and slid it across the counter. "So? Did you say what you needed to?"
"I said what I should've years ago," Akio said. "And I listened to what I was too afraid to hear."
He turned toward the photo on the wall — a little kid with sunlight in her smile, surrounded by the friends who helped him build his second life.
"The past doesn't vanish," he murmured. "It just waits for us to walk back through it with open hands."
Rumane leaned on the counter, smiling softly. "Then I guess you finally stopped running."
Akio took a slow sip of tea. The taste was warm, earthy — alive. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I think I finally did."
Outside, the wind rustled through the city, carrying the scent of spring.
And for the first time since the fire, Akio felt something he hadn't felt in years.
Not guilt. Not redemption.
Just peace.
[Next: Volume 4, Chapter 4 — Sickly Tommorow]