The sudden, brutal intensity of the Tokyo rain was shocking. It didn't just fall; it slammed against the glass, turning the evening street outside the pharmacy into a slick, mirroring sheet. The shop's bell chimed violently as Marina burst through the door, her delivery satchel damp and her cheeks flushed with the cold. She hadn't even seen me until she stumbled, and we collided gently near the display of cough syrups.
"Oh! Yamataro! I am so sorry," Marina exclaimed, quickly steadying herself. "The wind just shoved me in here. This rain is absolutely vicious."
I steadied the bottle I'd been examining, giving her a reassuring smile. "Vicious is Tokyo's middle name, Marina. Don't worry about it. Come on, you look half-frozen."
We quickly moved toward the back corner of the store, where Akio—who had rebuilt the place with a quiet, furious dedication—had installed a small, industrial space heater disguised by shelves of bath salts and imported teas. The heater was already humming, radiating a welcome blast of dry warmth. We kicked off our damp shoes and settled onto the small, mismatched chairs Akio kept tucked away for quiet consultations.
"Honestly, this is heavenly," Marina sighed "It's good to be here. Just... calm."
"Calm is good," I agreed, stretching my hands toward the warmth. "A true rarity in this city, and certainly a rarity in my life." I tucked a stray strand of dark hair behind my ear. "It reminds me of why I ended up here in the first place, actually. The pursuit of calm."
Over by the back storeroom, a distinct, powerful thumping sound began. We both glanced over to see Raka, the magnificent, terrifying brute-granny who now called this place home, entertaining a small group of neighborhood kids who had darted in to escape the downpour. She had rolled up her sleeves, and her massive, rope-like arm muscles were flexing as she hoisted a crate of bottled water—her favorite demonstration prop. The veins stood out on her arms like rivers on a topographic map.
"See, kids? That's what happens when you eat your vegetables and don't skip leg day! Pure muscle power!" Raka bellowed, her laugh a deep, throaty rumble that made the glass bottles vibrate.
The kids cheered and giggled, fascinated by the raw display of strength. Raka roared in mock triumph, loving the audience.
I chuckled and turned back to Marina, the warmth of the heater and the absurdity of Raka a strange comfort. "Speaking of life changes and finding calm... I was wondering, are you interested in a story? A quiet, gentle tale about how your amazing fiancé and I actually became friends, and how my own life led me to peaceful moments like this?"
Marina's exhaustion seemed to melt away, replaced by genuine curiosity. "Absolutely. Akio never really tells me anything about his past that doesn't involve chemicals or near-death experiences. I'd love to hear another perspective."
I leaned in, my voice dropping to a low, intense murmur, suddenly hyper-focused.
"Then you should know one thing first, Marina," I warned, my smile fading. "This isn't a simple tale of friendship. This is the story of how I suffered. It's the story of how my life was a relentless, chaotic whirlwind of despair, and how, in the end, Akio was the one who pulled me out. You're my friend, and you're carrying his future. So, you deserve the truth. A warning: there's nothing calm about the path that led me here. It starts happy, then gets very, very dark."
The First Dream: The Alchemist of Joy
My life started with a dream, a beautiful, simple thing fueled by Tokyo's glittering neon. I always wanted to be an office worker who made video games. Not for fame, not for money, but for a moment of pure, blinding, radiant joy.
Even as a child, I was hyper-aware of other people's despair. It was an almost physical pain for me to witness. I'd see them—the overworked office workers, the stressed mothers, the quiet, lonely kids. Their eyes were dull, defeated, shadowed. But occasionally—only rarely—I would see a shift. I'd see a small child, maybe one who was filled with their own little cloud of sadness, look up at a tiny video game screen. And for just a slim, precious moment, their eyes would light up with imagination and eternal joy. The despair would visibly lift, replaced by a momentary, glorious happiness.
It was a form of alchemy, transforming sadness into immediate happiness. I became utterly convinced that video games were the ultimate remedy, the best way to cheer people up. I felt bad for every person I saw who looked defeated, and I knew a digital world was the best way to give them an escape.
So, I worked. I coded, I studied, I pushed myself relentlessly. I saw the coding skills I had learned over the years as my best bet. By the time I reached university, I applied for the hardest computer science program, determined to make my passion my profession. I loved it. I poured my heart and soul into the logic, the art, the complexity of it all.
When I finally landed a job at a decent gaming company and posted my first actual, small indie game, the joy was immense. People loved the game's gentle, hopeful tone. For a year, I lived off the warmth of that accomplishment. I was finally an alchemist of joy.
But the industry... it's brutal. The critiques started small, then grew sharper, more personal, more relentless. You're not innovative enough. The graphics are subpar. The story is saccharine. I started checking the forums constantly, letting every negative comment burrow deep into my skin. I began to equate the criticism with the worth of my entire existence. I wasn't creating joy anymore; I was inviting judgment, and the despair I was trying to fight in others was consuming me.
Eventually, the pressure became too much. The criticism suffocated the dream. I couldn't handle the crushing weight of constantly failing to meet expectations. I quit. I quit the one thing that had ever given me purpose.
The Spiral Begins: The Second Dream Denied
My second dream, my safety net, was pharmacy. My grandfather had always been a chemist, and I loved the precision, the controlled environment of medicine. I had spare classes over the years, learning rudimentary chemistry and biology.
But I never got to pursue it seriously.
One evening, my grandmother got very sick. She was my only caregiver, the one family member I could rely on. I had to get a job—a quick job, one that paid bills immediately. Pharmacy school was too long. Coding was too emotionally draining. I needed raw cash, fast.
My only realistic choice was office work.
It started off okay, but every day was a step away from my potential, a step toward bland, crushing conformity. I watched my grandmother deteriorate, and I watched my own sanity follow, collapsing under the weight of the endless spreadsheets. I desperately wanted to go back to pharmacy, or even back to video games, but the financial demands felt like a permanent, iron lock on my future. It was too late.
I worked. I worked until my eyes burned and my fingers cramped. I was doing it for her, for the living expenses, but I was killing myself in the process.
The explosion of trauma happened one rainy night.
The Trauma: The Argument and the Family Sin
My grandmother, bless her worried soul, had been warning me constantly. She knew that overwork could kill a person, and she was terrified I would die young from exhaustion. She kept telling me to take breaks, to sleep, to slow down. I kept ignoring her, shoving her concern away with justifications about rent and medication. Her love felt like an attack.
"Yamataro! Listen to me!" she had yelled, her voice hoarse with panic. "I won't watch you kill yourself for this miserable money! Stop it! I'm worried about you!"
Her worry felt like an accusation of my failure. I snapped. Years of repressed trauma, guilt, and exhaustion boiled over and met her panic with a savage cruelty.
"What is the point of being alive at this point?!" I screamed back, tears of bitter fury streaming down my face. "I'm doing this so we can afford living! And it's your fault anyway!"
I hit the rawest nerve, the darkest corner of our family history. "We used to have heaps of money! But you went ahead and killed your own daughter, didn't you?! You got arrested, you killed my mother! And you wasted all her money saving me from my strict father! He would have killed me and beat me, but you still did something just as bad! You're obsessed with me because you killed your own daughter and only ever truly loved me!"
The truth was, my grandmother, in a desperate attempt to protect me from my abusive father, had ended her own daughter's life (my mother's) in a terrible, messy incident involving a huge sum of money. She had been arrested, lost everything, and was now obsessed with me, viewing me as the precious daughter she'd failed. Her efforts to save me from my father had cost her everything, but the act itself created a new, unbearable trauma.
The air went dead silent. The truth, ugly and dripping with pain, hung between us.
I grabbed my umbrella and stormed out of the house. I didn't even bother to tie up my office worker suit properly, I ran through the muddy, persistent rain, every footstep hammering home, the trauma.
That night, I started drinking. Hard. The guilt was unbearable. I had yelled at the only person who had ever protected me, and I had thrown her most horrible crime back in her face.
The Descent: The Scars of Loss
When I finally returned home later that night, soaked, tipsy, and shivering, it was to the sight of flashing blue and red lights. Police tape sealed the door. My grandmother had been robbed and killed—a brutal, senseless act in our home.
I had nothing left. The police, cold and efficient, handed me the necessary papers. Because both my grandmother and my estranged father (who had recently died in a similarly messy incident) had no other heirs, their meager life insurance and remaining funds—the same cash that had been the subject of our final, devastating fight—were legally mine.
I finally had money, but I had lost everyone in the process. The money felt like an absolute curse, bought with the death of everyone I had ever loved.
Because I had blamed myself for every death—my mother's death by my grandmother's hand, my father's terrible end, and now, my grandmother's senseless murder following our fight—I simply wandered through Tokyo. I worked meaningless, countless office jobs, switching companies every few months, a self-destructive whirlwind of despair and overwork, somehow still alive, but with no dreams left in my eyes.
My drinking problems got worse. I began wasting the money on alcohol, trying desperately to silence the echoing guilt.
The Unexpected Sanctuary
My path was predictable: a downward spiral into oblivion. Until one evening.
I was drunk, utterly covered in rainwater, stumbling blindly through the pouring city night. I fell through the door of a small, quiet neighborhood pharmacy—one I had subconsciously frequented for months, drawn by some strange, persistent feeling.
I'd never looked at the owner, but I had always felt a pull, a strange sense of sameness—a feeling that he, too, carried the scent of deep despair. His name, I knew from the sign, was Akio Hukitaske.
I was shivering, soaked, and slumped on the floor in a miserable, defeated heap.
He didn't yell. He didn't call the police. He simply looked at me, his eyes carrying a depth of pain that matched the raw, exposed trauma in mine.
He walked over, grabbed a clean cloak, and a few warming supplies from the back. He placed them silently beside me. He didn't offer advice or pity. He offered two simple, quiet words that cut through my haze: "Just breathe."
He then went back to restocking his shelves, dedicated and focused, just as he always seemed to be. He didn't demand I leave. He gave me a silent sanctuary.
I returned the next day. And the day after. I was always quiet, always keeping my distance. I was curious, haunted by the feeling that we were the same. Until one evening, he began talking to me. Simple questions at first, about the rain, about the city. Then, about the strange smell of the herbs. Small conversations that soon became big ones.
He didn't try to fix me. He didn't pity me. He simply existed beside me, carrying his own quiet storm, but always dedicated to his work. He was the only person who saw my despair and offered not judgment, but warmth.
That, Marina, is how it started. That human, your fiancé, the one everyone thinks is just a slightly eccentric pharmacist but also a hero? He was the first person in years to treat my brokenness not as a flaw, but as a condition that could, perhaps, be managed.
And that, my dear friend, is how I first met Akio Hukitaske, and how I first stumbled toward the promise of healing.
TO BE CONTINUED...