"The rain turned red in the lights; voices blurred into sirens. As Yakanuke's world dimmed, memories unspooled through the noise…"
He could feel nothing — not pain, not air, not even the cold that pressed against his skin. Just the sound of rain, relentless and steady, like a metronome counting down the final seconds of a life unlived. Flashes of umbrellas. A citizen crying out. A siren splitting the silence.
Then the city lights smeared into long ribbons of red and white. Somewhere, deep within that blur, Yakanuke heard his own heartbeat slow.
And then — the sound of rain became the sound of memory.
He was back in Seiho High.The smell of chalk dust and disinfectant filled the air. The sound of sneakers squeaking across the polished floors.
He remembered that day — the day he first saw Akio Hukitaske.
Yakanuke had been standing near the stairwell, notebook clutched against himself, too afraid to enter the classroom full of strangers. He was a transfer student then, a quiet one with eyes that spoke more than his words ever could.
Akio had been laughing with his friends, his smile bright even under the dim fluorescent light. When he turned, their eyes met for a fraction of a second — enough for Yakanuke to look away immediately, pretending to study the cracks in the wall.
"Hey," Akio had said, walking up to him, voice warm but curious. "You're the new guy, right? Yasahute something?"
"Yakanuke," he'd muttered, almost under his breath.
"Cool name," Akio had smiled. "You sitting with anyone at lunch?"
It had been so simple. A small gesture, nothing more. But for someone like Yakanuke — who had grown used to silence, to being invisible — it was the beginning of something he didn't know how to name yet.
The sirens grew fainter. The world shimmered between past and present.
He was lying on the street still, but his mind had long left the cold pavement. In his fading consciousness, he walked through corridors of memory — rooms filled with laughter, regret, and the scent of medicine.
He saw Hukitaske Pharmacy, the first place he'd felt alive after the Yaka years began.He could see Akio behind the counter, sorting herbs and compounds with methodical precision, humming softly to himself.
"Don't mix the powder yet," Akio had said once, glancing at him. "You have to wait until it settles."
Yakanuke had laughed quietly. "You sound like an old person, you know that?"
"Maybe I am," Akio had replied, smirking. "But I'd rather be an old person who saves lives than a young one who forgets why he started."
That line stuck with him. Who forgets why he started.
Yakanuke had forgotten. Somewhere between his dreams of medicine and the corridors of Yaka's laboratories, he had forgotten what it meant to help, not harm. He'd spent years documenting experiments on innocent subjects, justifying his work as "research."
He'd told himself he was observing, not participating. But in truth, every note he wrote, every report he filed, was a chain that held another life in captivity.
And still, Akio had smiled at him, as though the being he saw was worth trusting. Worth saving.
The world around him flickered again.
Now he was back in the Yaka Lab, his white coat drenched in artificial light. The hum of machines, the quiet breathing of test subjects asleep in glass chambers — the soundscape of a persons damnation.
He'd been called The Journalist there — Yaka's recorder, the observer of experiments too cruel to speak aloud.
"Your eyes are your greatest tool," the Director of Yaka had told him once. "You see truth without emotion. That's rare, Yakanuke. Cherish it."
But it wasn't true.He did feel.He felt too much.
Every child who trembled in their sleep. Every failed test that ended with silence. Every line he typed into his reports—Subject 405. Termination: necessary.The words burned through him, even as he wrote them.
And yet, when he saw Subject 9764 awaken — the kid named Akio — he couldn't stop watching.
He had regressed, taken on a false identity, just to stand closer to him. To study him. To understand the miracle Yaka had created.
But it wasn't science that fascinated him anymore.It was Akio's heart.
He'd written in his private log — words never sent to Yaka:
"He still smiles, even when the world tells him he shouldn't.He still believes in people, even when I've stopped.Maybe that's what real medicine is — not chemicals, but faith."
The memory shifted again.He saw himself standing on the rooftop, the night Akio awoke, the rain dripping from his coat as he whispered into his recorder:
"Subject 9764: Awakening successful. Name: Akio Hukitaske.""Now, let's see what you'll become, my dear pharmacist."
He'd told himself it was professionalism — curiosity.But in truth, it was affection.It was the first time in years he'd felt something real.
And when Yaka ordered him to erase himself from Akio's life — to vanish, to let the person forget — Yakanuke obeyed. Because obedience was all he had left.
He'd used Yaka's neuro-wipe technology on himself, cutting away every memory of Akio to keep the secret buried. But memories, like wounds, never truly healed. They scarred — and scars remember.
The rain on the pavement grew louder. He could almost feel his heartbeat syncing with the rhythm of the drops.
Then — the hospital lights.
He opened his eyes to white ceilings and the sterile scent of disinfectant. His head throbbed, his vision blurred. A nurse gasped softly when she saw him awake.
"You're lucky," she said, relief in her voice. "You were hit, but no major injuries. The driver—he stayed until the ambulance came."
Yakanuke tried to speak, but only a rasp escaped. His throat burned like paper ash. He started to cough and his not so bad injuries, began to open up again. And he began bleeding out as the nurse ran and screamed out for help out of fear and pity. And then after allot of coughing and rasping... he died.
"I… remember," he whispered. "Everything."
He was walking through memory again — the corridors of his own sins.
He saw Akio again, this time older, standing in the ruined pharmacy, clutching a vial of crimson serum — the Scarlet Helix.He saw himself leaving the scene, unseen, his mind fractured between loyalty and love.He saw the fire.He saw the pharmacist's tears.
And then he saw nothing but rain again.
Hours later, against the doctor's orders, Yakanuke walked out of the hospital. His clothes were damp, his steps uneven. The night air bit at his skin like frost.
The city felt quieter than usual — as if holding its breath for him.
He passed the café across from the intersection. The same one Akio used to drag him to after work."You always look like you need sugar," Akio had said once, laughing as he handed him a coffee too sweet to drink.Yakanuke had scowled, but smiled despite himself.
Now, that café's window was still lit, warm and golden. Through it, he could almost see their reflections — two younger people laughing, unaware of the future that could of been waiting for them.
He stepped forward.
Headlights flare, the world slows, and everything fades to black before we hear the sound of rain again.
When the world returned, it was quiet. Too quiet.
There was no pain now. Only the faint scent of lilies.
He was standing before his own coffin.
The lid gleamed in the dim funeral hall light. A few people wept in the corners, though none knew who they were mourning. The hospital had listed him as an anonymous donor — no family, no records, no one left to claim him.
He watched as the lid slowly closed, sealing him from the world he'd tried so hard to understand.
From outside the window, he caught sight of Akio. The pharmacist was walking with his friends, all of them fresh from mourning his "death." They were laughing—Hikata must've told another one of his dumb jokes. Their carefree voices drifted through the air, and the sound hit him like shards of glass.
They didn't stop. They didn't even look at the building.
Because they didn't remember him.
"Akio…" he whispered, voice breaking. "You promised to never forget those who helped you."
He fell to his knees, clutching at air. The more he shouted, the more his words dissolved into the wind.
"Please… just look at me once. Please…"
But the world kept turning. The sound of laughter faded down the street, and Yakanuke's transparent hands trembled as they began to dissolve.
Tears — pure light — streamed down his fading face.
"I'm sorry, Akio Hukitaske…If I had another chance, would I have done better?Because in the end, my name—Yakanuke—means is Yaka.And Yaka is the perfect end to such a horrid existence I lived in…"
The wind carried his words into the night sky.His silhouette flickered, fading like the last page of a forgotten story.
The camera lingered on the empty street, on the faint echo of rain, on a single droplet that slid down the glass of the café window.
And then — the final line appeared in white text against black:
"Goodbye Yasahute Yakanuke — The Yaka Journalist, and one of Akio's forgotten friends."
THE END?...