Rain fell without sound, thin as mist, soft as breath.
Sendai's streets glowed faint gold under the sodium lamps, puddles rippling each time a police car rolled past.
Kenta woke to the silence first.
Then he noticed the gap outside.
The GR86 was gone.
No screech marks. No broken glass. Just a clean patch of wet pavement where the car had been.
He grabbed his jacket and the van keys.
The scanner Teo kept by the door crackled to life.
"Ongoing investigation. Harbor district. Possible link to organized transport cases."
He froze halfway down the steps.
He already knew the name they didn't say.
By the time the van's headlights cut through the fog, the city had gone pale with dawn.
Scene 1 — The Harbor Never Sleeps
The docks looked half-asleep — cranes stretching, gulls circling, engines rumbling deep in the water.
Kenta parked near the barricade and stepped out into the drizzle.
Across the pier, a line of police lights blinked through fog.
The GR86 sat by the water, its hazard lights still pulsing like a slow heartbeat.
Beside it, Teo stood alone — tall, still, collar raised against the wind.
A detective turned as Kenta approached.
Detective: "You must be the son."
Kenta: "He's not who you think he is."
Detective: "That's the problem. Nobody's sure anymore."
Teo didn't speak. He didn't need to. His silence said enough.
The officers kept their distance, talking in circles, waiting for something he'd never give them.
When they finally waved him off, he walked past Kenta without a word.
The kind of walk that doesn't end in escape — just endurance.
Scene 2 — The Kitchen Table
The shop stayed closed.
Rain streaked down the windows, muting the neon sign until it looked like a ghost caught behind glass.
Kaiya sat at the counter, her hair still damp, eyes on nothing.
Kenta stood by the doorway, soaked jacket hanging heavy.
The television replayed the same loop: Teo at the pier, cigarette smoke curling through floodlights.
The captions changed, but the words didn't.
Affiliation. Resurgence. Oni Syndicate.
Kenta: "They already decided who he was."
Kaiya: "Then we decide who he'll be next."
He dropped a small envelope on the counter. Inside, a photo — the GR86 at the Sendai docks, dated 2049.
Teo in the background, younger, sharper. The same car. The same sea.
Kaiya turned the photo over.
Nothing written on the back. Just salt stains that never quite faded.
Scene 3 — The Conversation
Teo came home before sunrise.
No cuffs. No escort.
He hung his coat, sat at the counter, and lit a cigarette.
The flame caught his face in soft orange — old lines, calm eyes.
He looked like a man who'd already given up arguing with history.
Kaiya: "What did they ask?"
Teo: "If the Oni still breathes."
Kaiya: "And what did you tell them?"
Teo: "That he retired."
Steam from the kettle ghosted through the air.
Kenta leaned forward, voice low.
Kenta: "They won't stop, will they?"
Teo: "Not until someone gives them an ending."
He tapped the ash into a bowl, the cigarette trembling slightly.
Teo: "There's a cargo ship leaving next week. Kurogane Line.
Old contact at the port — owes me a favor."
Kaiya: "Cargo?"
Teo: "Quietest kind."
She didn't ask how he knew them. She didn't have to.
Kenta did.
Kenta: "You're thinking of leaving?"
Teo: "Thinking doesn't fix things. Movement does."
Scene 4 — The Choices
The rain lightened by morning.
Kaiya spread a port manifest across the counter — shipping lanes traced in pencil, a dozen routes branching south.
Her finger stopped on one name:
Kurogane Line — Sendai to Manila, cargo clearance: confidential.
Kaiya: "We can leave quietly. No records, no papers. Just cargo space and timing."
Kenta: "And if we don't?"
Kaiya: "Then your father goes to prison for a city he already saved."
Teo leaned back, smoke trailing from his hand.
Teo: "I built peace out of fear. Maybe the only way to keep it is to disappear from it."
Kenta swallowed hard.
Kenta: "You said the Oni retired."
Teo: "He did. But no one believes it until he's gone."
The rain against the glass softened, rhythmic and forgiving.
None of them spoke after that.
Scene 5 — The Decision
The next morning, Harbor Noodles opened one last time.
The regulars came, quieter than usual — half of them probably knew something, none brave enough to ask.
Kaiya smiled as she served, but her hands lingered on every bowl a little longer.
Teo stood by the wall, looking at the old photo — Flowstate, arms over shoulders.
When the last customer left, he took it down and folded it into his jacket.
Kenta sat at the counter, finishing a bowl that had long gone cold.
He set the chopsticks down neatly.
Kenta: "We'll come back when the noise forgets us."
That night, the shop went dark.
The three of them walked together through the mist toward the pier.
Behind them, the neon sign flickered once — then went out for good.
The Kurogane Line cargo ship waited under dim floodlights.
Dockhands moved like shadows.
The GR86 idled beside the ramp, its headlights cutting through the rain.
They'd stripped it down to bare paint — no stickers, no marks, no legend.
Just a car and everything that still mattered.
Kaiya handed a folded manifest to a man in a coat.
He nodded once and signaled toward the ramp.
Kaiya (quietly): "No more ghosts."
Teo touched the car's hood, the metal cold and slick under his palm.
Kenta looked out over the water, then back at his parents.
Kenta: "Then it's decided."
The ramp lifted.
Engines groaned to life.
The city lights blurred behind fog and rain.
They didn't speak.
They didn't look back.
The ship's horn cut through the night — long, low, final.
"Some endings don't close. They wait for you to walk away."
End of Episode 16 — "Father's Ghost"