The rain had finally stopped, but the world still felt wet—like the earth itself was sweating out the day's tension. Nagisa Shiota and Yoku Hakumura had made camp in an abandoned rest stop somewhere between the Kyoto ruins and whatever remained of their next target. The kind of place forgotten by highway departments and time, where weeds pushed through cracked concrete and rust consumed everything metal.
A small fire crackled between them, built from broken furniture and dried wood scavenged from the surrounding forest. The flames cast dancing shadows against graffiti-covered walls, making the faded warnings and declarations seem alive, breathing with the rhythm of light and dark.
They'd been traveling together for months now. Long enough that silence between them had transformed from awkward to comfortable, from the quiet of strangers to the quiet of people who'd bled together, fought together, survived together. Long enough that Nagisa could read Hakumura's expressions like pages in a book he'd memorized.
And tonight, Hakumura's expression was the one that meant memories were surfacing—the ones he'd been keeping submerged, the ones that required more than silence to carry.
Nagisa poked at the fire with a stick, sending sparks spiraling upward into the darkness. "You know," he said quietly, "we've been doing this for a while now. Burning facilities. Exposing secrets. But I realized something. I don't actually know your full story. Just fragments. The orphanage. Your mother. Daiki. There are gaps. Things you haven't told me."
Hakumura didn't respond immediately. He sat with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, staring into the flames with the particular intensity of someone watching memories play out in the firelight.
"I've told you the important parts," Hakumura finally said, his voice carefully neutral.
"Have you?" Nagisa turned to face him directly. "Or have you told me the parts you could survive telling? The parts that didn't require you to go back to places that still hurt?"
Hakumura's jaw tightened. His hands, resting on his knees, clenched slowly into fists.
"I'm not asking because I'm curious," Nagisa continued, his tone gentle but insistent. "I'm asking because we're friends. And because if there are threats we haven't accounted for, pieces of your past that might come back to haunt us—literally or figuratively—I need to know. We both need to know."
The fire popped, sending a shower of embers into the air. One landed near Hakumura's boot, glowing orange before fading to black.
"You really want to hear it?" Hakumura asked, still not looking at him. "All of it? The parts I left out because they make the parts I told you sound like a mercy?"
"All of it," Nagisa confirmed.
Hakumura exhaled slowly, a sound that carried the weight of years. When he spoke again, his voice had changed—dropped lower, rougher, like someone dragging words up from a deep well.
"Then I'll tell you about Kurasaki. About what we really were. About how three children tried to escape hell and only one of us made it out still basically human."
Nagisa settled in, adding another piece of wood to the fire. The flames grew brighter, pushing back the darkness. And Hakumura began.
THE TALE BEGINS
"Fifteen years ago, the orphanage wasn't called Seabreeze Children's Home. That came later, after Mother Yuriko took over. Before that, it was Coastal Hope Academy—an actual legitimate facility for displaced children. Government funded. Properly regulated. The kind of place that did what it was supposed to do."
Hakumura's voice carried the cadence of someone reciting facts to avoid feeling them.
"But funding dried up the way it always does. Budgets got cut. Politicians found other priorities. The facility was going to close. And that's when UMA 8907 stepped in with 'private investment.' Within six months, everything changed. New management. New staff. New children arriving who didn't appear in any official records."
He paused, prodding the fire absently. "By the time Daiki and I arrived, it was already a hunting ground. We just didn't know we were the prey."
Nagisa watched him carefully, recognizing the defensive posture—arms wrapped around knees, body curled inward, voice steady but eyes too bright in the firelight.
"I didn't know she was our mother at first. They told us we were orphans. That our parents had died in an industrial accident. Car crash. Something that left no bodies to bury, just ashes and paperwork. We believed it. Why wouldn't we? We were children. Children believe what adults tell them because the alternative is too terrifying. And we were the perfect example of that saying."
His voice caught slightly on the last word.
"Daiki and I were separated immediately. 'Age-appropriate housing,' they called it. But really, it was isolation protocol. Easier to condition children who can't lean on family bonds. I was placed in the younger dormitory. Forty beds lined up like coffins. Most were empty. The facility could hold two hundred children. There were maybe fifty."
"Where were the rest?" Nagisa asked quietly.
Hakumura's smile was bitter. "That's what I asked. The older kids—the ones who'd survived more than a few months—they just looked at me with these hollow eyes and said, 'They graduated.' Like it was a school. Like there was somewhere to go after."
He fell silent for a moment, staring into the flames. "That's when I met Kurasaki."
KURASAKI
The name hung in the air like smoke.
"He was eight years old. Small for his age—malnutrition, I learned later. Gray eyes that seemed too knowing, too aware, like someone had installed a virus consciousness in a persons body. He'd been at the orphanage for six months. Six months was an eternity in that place. Most kids didn't last two."
Hakumura's voice softened, memory overriding bitterness.
"I met him on my third night. I was crying in the bathroom—the only place with any privacy—trying to be quiet about it because the other kids had already learned that showing weakness invited attention. But I was seven years old and my brother had been taken away and I didn't understand what was happening. So I cried."
"And he found you," Nagisa said.
"He found me. Came in without knocking, without making noise. Just appeared like a ghost. I remember jumping, trying to wipe my face, trying to pretend I wasn't breaking down. And he just looked at me with those gray eyes and said, 'You're new. Yoku, right?'"
Hakumura's hands unclenched slightly.
"I asked him how he knew my name. He said, 'I know everyone's name. It's how you survive here—pay attention, remember things, notice patterns.' And I asked him, 'Survive? It's just an orphanage.' And he said—"
Hakumura's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "He said, 'No. It's really not.'" The fire crackled, filling the silence.
"He told me everything that first night. About children who disappeared. About the basement levels we weren't supposed to know about. About Mother Yuriko and how her smile never reached her eyes, how her touch was always clinical, how she looked at us not like children but like inventory. About the 'medical examinations' that lasted hours and left kids different—quieter, more obedient, more broken."
"Did you believe him?" Nagisa asked. "Not at first. I thought he was trying to scare me. Maybe some kind of hazing ritual for new kids. But then..." Hakumura's expression darkened.
"Then I had my first examination."
THE FIRST EXAMINATION
"A week after I arrived, they called me to the medical wing. Clean. Sterile. The kind of place that smelled like disinfectant so strong it burned your nose and made your eyes water. Like they were trying to sterilize the air itself, scrub away evidence of whatever happened there."
Hakumura's breathing had changed, becoming shallower.
"Mother Yuriko was waiting. White coat. Clipboard. Smile that looked like it had been painted on. She introduced herself as Dr. Hakumura, the facility's medical director. Said we were just going to do a 'simple check-up.' Nothing to worry about."
He laughed, but it sounded like breaking glass.
"The examination lasted three hours. Neurological testing that involved electrodes attached to my skull. Pain threshold measurements where they applied pressure to my skull and recorded when I cried out. Psychological baseline assessments disguised as games—showing me pictures and asking how they made me feel, recording whether I showed empathy or fear or nothing at all."
Nagisa felt his stomach turn.
"When I cried because the tests hurt, she didn't comfort me. She just... noted it. Wrote something on her clipboard with this precise, efficient handwriting. And she said, completely clinical, 'Elevated pain response. Emotional regulation underdeveloped. Suitable for Phase One conditioning.'"
"You didn't understand what that meant," Nagisa said.
"No. But I understood the tone. The way she looked at me not like a human being, not even like a patient. Like data. Like a variable in an equation she was trying to solve."
Hakumura pulled his knees closer to his stomach.
"When I got back to the dormitory, Kurasaki was waiting. He took one look at me and knew. He asked what they did. I told him about the tests. And he said, 'They're not testing you. They're measuring you. Seeing what breaks you. What you can survive. Because broken things are easier to rebuild into what they want.'"
"Jeez," Nagisa breathed.
"I asked him why. Why would they do that? And he said something I didn't understand then, but I understand now. He said, 'Because broken things are easier to rebuild into what they want.'"
THE BOND
"Over the next few weeks, Kurasaki became my lifeline. He taught me the rules that weren't written down. How to make yourself small when the orderlies walked by. Which staff members were just doing a job and which ones enjoyed the power. When to volunteer for cleaning duty because it meant access to different parts of the building. When to stay invisible."
Hakumura's voice warmed slightly.
"He was brilliant. Not just smart—brilliant. He'd memorized guard rotation schedules after watching them for a week. He knew which cameras had blind spots. He understood the facility's rhythm like it was music and he could hear every note."
"He was planning an escape," Nagisa realized.
"He'd been planning it since his second week. But he needed help. Needed people he could trust. And for some reason, he decided to trust me." Hakumura smiled, and for the first time that night, it was genuine.
"We became friends. Real friends. The kind where you don't have to explain things because the other person just understands. We'd meet in the ventilation shafts—they connected all the dormitories, and if you were small enough, you could crawl through them. We'd talk for hours. About escape, about what we'd do when we got out, about the lives we'd have."
"Kurasaki wanted to be a teacher," Hakumura said softly. "He said someone had to teach kids the way they were supposed to be taught—with kindness, with patience. Not fear. He said he'd make sure no other kid ended up in a place like the orphanage. All because he admired school teachers."
Nagisa felt something twist in his chest. The parallel was too obvious—Kurasaki had wanted to be what Koro-sensei had been. What Nagisa had tried to be.
"And then Daiki found us."
DAIKI JOINS
"My brother was in the older dormitory. We weren't supposed to have contact—part of the isolation protocol. But Daiki was stubborn. He'd been watching, learning, figuring out how to navigate the facility. And one night, he followed me to the ventilation shaft."
Hakumura's voice carried both warmth and pain.
"I was terrified when I saw him. Thought we'd been caught. But Daiki just smiled and said, 'You didn't think I'd let you have all the fun, did you?' And then he met Kurasaki, and it was like... like we became complete. Three parts of something that only worked together."
"Daiki was the protector," Hakumura continued. "Older, stronger, willing to draw attention to himself so Kurasaki and I could avoid it. He'd get in trouble on purpose—breaking many rules, talking back to staff—so the orderlies would focus on him instead of us. He took punishments meant for us. Took the pain."
Hakumura's hands were shaking now.
"And Kurasaki was the strategist. The one who mapped everything, planned every detail. And I was... I was the heart. The one who kept us believing it was possible. That we could actually escape. That there was a world outside the orphanage where we could be children instead of subjects."
He looked at Nagisa directly for the first time since beginning the story. "We were going to escape together. All three of us. We had it planned down to the minute. And we almost made it."
"What stopped you?" Nagisa asked, though he already suspected the answer. Hakumura's expression hardened, grief calcifying into something colder.
"We found out the truth about Mother Yuriko. And we found out we were never supposed to escape at all."
THE REVELATION
"It was Daiki who discovered it. He'd been assigned to cleaning duty in the administrative wing—something they only trusted older kids with. He was wiping down filing cabinets when he noticed one had been left unlocked. He shouldn't have looked. He knew that. But he was eleven years old and desperate for any information about why we were there."
Hakumura's voice became mechanical, reciting facts to avoid feeling them.
"Inside was a personnel file. Dr. Yuriko Hakumura. Lead Researcher, Project Substrate. And underneath her name, family status: Two sons—Daiki, designated Subject 02, and Yoku, designated Subject 04. Assignment: Initial phase consciousness transfer experiments using genetic compatible subjects."
Nagisa felt the words like physical blows.
"Daiki stole the file. That night, in the ventilation shaft, he showed it to us. Kurasaki and I couldn't read all the technical language, but we understood enough. She wasn't just the facility's director. She was our mother. Our real mother. And she'd put us there. Intentionally. We weren't orphans. We were her test subjects."
"The file detailed her research proposal," Hakumura continued, his voice hollow. "She theorized that consciousness could be extracted from one person and transferred to another. But the technology wasn't ready. Transfer attempts kept failing. So she proposed a preliminary experiment: consciousness encoding. Taking a donor consciousness, encoding it into a medium, then imprinting it onto a living host."
"The medium was Erabus Energy," Nagisa said quietly. "Yes. And the genetically compatible subjects—the best candidates for successful integration—were her own children. Daiki and me."
Hakumura's hands clenched so tightly his knuckles went white.
"She was planning to kill Daiki. Extract his consciousness. Encode it into Erabus Energy. And then implant it into me. She was going to make me carry my brother's ghost inside my head."
The fire had burned low, casting the rest stop in deeper shadow. Nagisa added more wood, but the chill in the air wasn't from temperature.
"We decided that night we couldn't wait anymore. The escape had to happen immediately. Before whatever she was planning could be implemented. Kurasaki accelerated the timeline. Daiki volunteered to create a distraction. And I..."
Hakumura's voice broke.
"I was supposed to be the one who got out. Who made it to the road. Who brought back help. Because I was smallest, fastest. Because I had the best chance. Of course that never happened."
"But someone was waiting," Nagisa said. Hakumura nodded slowly. "Dr. Erabus."
THE FAILED ESCAPE
"The night we tried to escape, everything went perfectly at first. Daiki created a distraction—started a fight in the dining hall that drew the guards. Kurasaki and I slipped out during the chaos, made it past the first security perimeter, got halfway to the coastal road."
Hakumura's breathing had become ragged.
"And then every floodlight in the facility turned on at once. Day from night. And standing in the road, blocking our escape, was someone I'd never seen before. A figure in a white coat. Too pale. Too precise. Wrong in ways I couldn't articulate."
"Dr. Erabus Dalkuvinchi Mizukashi," Nagisa said.
"He was waiting for us. Smiling. Not surprised—pleased. Like we'd done exactly what he expected. And he said, 'Good evening, Subjects 04 and 09. I've been waiting for you to try this. Dr. Hakumura predicted you'd attempt escape within six weeks. You lasted seven. Impressive resilience.'"
Hakumura's voice dropped to barely audible.
"Kurasaki tried to run past him. Erabus didn't even look. Just moved—faster than anything human should move—and injected something into Kurasaki's neck. Kurasaki collapsed, but he wasn't unconscious. He was aware. Trapped in his own body. Paralyzed. And Erabus said, 'Non-lethal paralytic. I need you functional for tomorrow's procedure.'"
"And then the guards came," Hakumura continued. "Not security guards. Tactical operatives. Military-trained. They grabbed us like we were cargo. And Erabus walked beside us as we were dragged back, talking the whole time. Saying our escape attempt wasn't a failure—it was a success. That they needed to see how we performed under stress. How we cooperated. All valuable data."
Nagisa felt sick.
"They separated us after that. Daiki to one wing. Me to another. Kurasaki to a third. Mother Yuriko said it was 'to prevent further contamination of the experimental baseline.' She meant friendship. She meant hope. She meant everything that made us human."
Hakumura looked up at Nagisa, eyes wet with tears he refused to let fall. "I never saw Kurasaki again. Not as he was. Not as my friend. And Daiki..." His voice broke completely.
"Daiki lasted three more days before they killed him. And they made me watch to."
THE WEIGHT OF TRUTH
The fire had burned down to embers. The rest stop felt colder, darker, as if Hakumura's memories had sucked warmth from the world.
Nagisa sat in silence, processing everything he'd heard. The systematic cruelty. The calculated destruction of childhood. The transformation of hope into data.
"There's more," Hakumura said quietly. "About what they did to Daiki. About what they did to me afterward. About what happened to Kurasaki. But I can't... I can't tell it all tonight. It's too much."
"Then we'll continue tomorrow," Nagisa said gently. "By the fire. Until you've told me everything." Hakumura nodded, exhausted, looking smaller than Nagisa had ever seen him.
"Thank you," he whispered. "For listening. For not looking at me like I'm broken beyond repair." "You're not broken," Nagisa said firmly. "You're surviving. There's a difference."
They sat in silence as the fire died, both lost in their own memories—Hakumura's of a childhood stolen, Nagisa's of a teacher sacrificed. Two people carrying ghosts, trying to figure out how to honor the dead without becoming haunted.
Tomorrow, the story would continue. Tomorrow, Hakumura would tell him about Daiki's death, about consciousness encoding, about Kurasaki's transformation.
But tonight, they simply sat together in the darkness, two friends sharing the weight of trauma too heavy to carry alone.
Outside, the broken moon rose over the horizon—a permanent reminder that some wounds never fully heal, they just become part of the landscape of who you are.
To Be Continued...