Kori stood barefoot at center of the weaponized combat bay. Two white knives the length of her forearm hung from the ends of a long white chain wrapped around her arms.
Mina watched from behind her monitors with her arms folded tight, tense.
Raizen and Hikari circled in. Their Luminite weapons pulsed faintly.
Raizen's grip was lower, better than before, elbows close, stance flawless.
"You've gotten better these few weeks since your duel with Keahi and Arashi" Kori nodded in approval. "Your weight is finally where it's supposed to be."
Hikari raised a brow "We can draw out a total of two percent multiplier from our weapons now. Like Mina said"
"Two percent and you look this pleased?" Kori said, making an amused face. "It matters, I have to admit. At two percent the luminite starts to consider you. "
Raizen exhaled. "Then don't hold back. Not with me."
"Top five - no, top three - worst decisions you could ever make in your life…" Mina muttered.
Kori's eyes shined for a second. She eased the chains from around her wrists and let them fall to the floor with a sound like coins.
"Mina, relax. I will not do anything that… Uh... Cannot be undone."
"That's not comforting at all" Mina sighed, her hand unconsciously touching the emergency button.
Raizen and Hikari moved better because of the stones.
Their swings ended where they actually meant to end, their balance recovered out of instinct.
Kori let them come. She turned her shoulder and a strike slid past. She lifted a wrist, throwing a knife and a chain effortlessly wrapped around Hikari's staff, and pulled so hard it completely snatched it out of her steady hands.
When Raizen stepped inside her space, Kori stepped out. When he spun, she already lazily drew circles with one of the chained knives.
"Stop defending!" Raizen protested, sweat at his temples. "Fight."
"What do you actually want?" Kori asked, raising her eyebrows.
"I want to see what's real. Don't hold back. I want your real power."
"Very well." Kori smiled.
"OH NO-" Mina shouted.
Raizen literally blinked and Kori wasn't in his field of view anymore. It wasn't a trick. There was no smoke and no magic, only a movement made faster than his body or eyes could understand. Then, he felt something.
One arm wrapped him around his chest in a casual hug. One chin resting on his shoulder. Cold steel kissing his throat. One of the white knives was one idea away of cutting into his neck.
He didn't know when he had stopped breathing.
It was the kind of speed that looked more like teleportation.
Kori's cheek touched his. She whispered right into his ear:
"This is my real."
Hikari hadn't moved. Her eyes were on Kori, then the chain, then on Raizen, trying to process what just happened.
Kori let Raizen go and the knife withdrew, chain dragging back across the floor.
"You're lucky" she said, completely unrelated to what just happened. "The stones in your weapons like you. They resonate nicely. That doesn't really happen often. So don't waste it."
Raizen swallowed, angry at his own surprise and angrier at the part of him that wanted to be impressed. "Then tell me how to make two percent mean something."
"But it already does, obviously!" Kori said. "Two percent is just proof. Just keep at it, and the rest will come."
Then, she let out a wide grin. "Hey, Mina! Tell them what the clankers read on my end, just for reference!"
Mina exhaled, visibly disappointed. "Let me see… 5987% Multiplier… Not your best numbers, Kori... Enough for today, personal advice. Before someone ends up in the walls."
---
They walked home quietly. Not because they didn't have what to say, of course, but because the exhaustion pulled them down. The corridor outside Takeshi's place was the same as always - a cracked tile that clicked underfoot, the door that wouldn't open if you didn't lift a bit as you pushed.
But inside, the table was neater than how they left it. No bowl out of place. No rag left wrung and forgotten, like they usually existed. The workbench was empty, everything tidy and organized.
A single envelope lay at the center, edges squared, paper the color white, like pure snow.
Their names, Raizen, Hikari, sat on it, in Takeshi's elegant handwriting.
Raizen picked it up, and gently broke the seal. The letter inside was thick, with expensive paper, the folds… Too careful.
He slid next to Hikari and held it between them so they could both see.
The letter read:
To Raizen and Hikari,
If you're holding this, I wasn't brave enough to say these words out loud.
So I'll write them the way I live - plain, honest, and not pretty at all. You deserve the truth, not the lies people use to feel less guilty.
I found them.
Or as close as a man like me can get.
The Moirai.
I don't know if you'll ever see their faces. I hope you never do.
And I don't expect to make it out from this, but I'm… Fine with that. Death isn't the part that scares me. I've seen things from the wrong part of the blade for too many times.
I need you to understand who I was, because you only met what was left.
Before the patch and the metal, before the quiet and restraint, I was loud. Fast. Proud in the stupid way young men confuse for strength.
People down here used to say I was the strongest in the Underworks.
That sounds good in drunk mouths. Back then, I thought strength meant arriving first and leaving last. I thought it meant a weapon that never hesitated. I thought it meant nobody could take anything from me.
Then the world proved how small those thoughts were.
I had a family.
Read that again if you need to. I don't say it often.
A wife who laughed with her whole face and wouldn't let a day end without a joke. A daughter with quick hands and quicker excuses, who stole pickled plums and swore it was the cat. She even practiced the innocent face in a mirror. Terrible at it.
They were my better part. My best part. The only part of me that ever got soft without feeling ashamed.
But I couldn't protect them.
That night, I was not at the door fast enough. I was not smart enough. I was not strong enough. I was just a man, bleeding and reaching for something that was already gone.
I keep replaying it in my head like a punishment I earned.
The silence after.
The way a room can still smell like tea and warm bread while your whole world is gone.
Neoshima once promised that softness could live.
When the Nyx attacks were worse, even before the Phalanx, the city built a place under its own bones. A bunker with elevated, multi-layered gardens grown under lamps. A map of the city copied below. Stores, workshops and power lines, all meant to keep people alive until the world above stopped dying.
That place is - was - our Underworks.
But time did what it always does. The lamps got dimmer. The maps got torn. The people with money forgot the stairs.
What was meant to shelter us became the place they threw anything that made the surface ugly to look at. Outcasts. Ordinary fighters. The loud, the poor… The inconvenient.
The Moirai stepped into that forgetting and wore it like a crown. They ruled over the Underworks.
Men with masks came through doors that shouldn't have opened. Finally, my door, too.
I fought. I bled. I lost an eye and a hand. They left me dear names to bury.
They thought that would end me. But they were wrong.
I stayed alive, with the price of becoming what was left.
For a long time, that meant only tracking them. Pinning notes. Pulling threads. Turning every rumor into a path. Turning every hint into a reason to wake up.
Revenge lived in me so long I stopped knowing where it ended.
It's like a small animal that eats you from the inside. It doesn't know what to do in a warm room. It doesn't understand laughter. It only understands hunger.
I tried to starve it by drowning myself in work.
The work ended up tasting like revenge too.
Then I met the two of you.
I wasn't looking for new blood to tend. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but all I wanted was a corner of the room where nobody would ask me what I was hunting next.
You asked me to teach you how to survive, so I took you to the only person I trusted with sharp edges. The only person that fights, not to spill blood.
And without meaning to… I remembered things.
I remembered how a house sounds when people come home at different hours and leave things in the wrong places.
I remembered how a table looks with three cups, not one.
I remembered that someone can say your name from another room without spite.
I remembered how laughter sounds when it isn't followed by wounds.
For almost a year now, you made the word "father" feel like it could still mean something.
I don't deserve that.
I don't deserve you.
But it happened anyway.
So listen to me now, because I'm going to say the parts that matter, even if they hurt.
You will want to follow me.
Don't.
Not because you're weak, but because if you follow, I will look back. And the second I look back, I'll die faster.
And I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm relieved I can write this instead of saying it to your faces:
I'm afraid for you.
I have watched men sell everything they ever had for the promise of a cleaner strike. For lifeless implants. For power not even they understood. I have watched them come back empty, or not at all. I have seen people experiment on orphans like they were spare parts, implanting pure luminite in them.
Power will come whether you earn it or not.
And that's the danger.
If you let revenge teach you how to hold power, it will break you. One day you'll wake up and realize you kept nothing but your blade.
You don't beat darkness by becoming it.
You beat it by staying upright while it tries to make you fall.
If you must cut, cut for the living, not for the ghosts: let your strength be filled with kindness. Embarrass the men who call cruelty a plan. If you can spare a life, do it. If you can't, don't be proud for stealing it.
Hikari, I saw how fast the world tries to move you. It's beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Don't let anyone convince you that being careful is the same as being weak. A steady hand ends more nightmares than a loud one.
Raizen, I watched you fail better than men twice your age succeed. Take that as a compliment. And please listen to this, because you'll hate it:
Protecting isn't the same as bleeding for every stranger who asks.
You don't throw yourself overboard to make the boat lighter.
You don't set yourself on fire and call it warmth for others.
Learn the difference.
I wanted to drag a line through the floor between Neoshima and the Underworks and make everyone to step over it.
No one would've listened.
Lines aren't erased with speeches. They're worn away by feet going both directions, every day, on purpose.
If I don't return, wear the line down for me.
Teach people to climb the stairs both ways.
Keep the world lit.
If you wonder whether I loved you, I will write this once so you don't have to guess. I did- I do.
It's there: in the cups I washed because you forgot. In the chair I fixed when you didn't even know it was broken. In the stupid way I learned to make noodles because I noticed my horrible stew wasn't eaten by me alone.
Fatherly love is a quiet thing, but it leaves traces. I'm sorry I kept it quiet for so long.
Now, I'm going to see if those masks bleed. If they do, the Underworks becomes a little safer. If they don't… Then at least I'll stop being a man who only knows how to wait.
There is something else I should say, because men like me pretend it never matters.
I don't think I deserve forgiveness.
But I still hope.
If you can forgive me, do.
If you can't, don't look back.
Forgiveness is choosing to walk through the door instead of spending your life leaning on it.
Live long enough to be kind when it's inconvenient.
Live long enough to be happy on purpose.
Live long enough to become the people I would have been proud to stand behind.
I only have one wish. Bring light into this dark world:
Keep the world lit.
And if I don't come back, let that be enough.
~ Takeshi, the one who wished to be called your father.