When Kentaro finally stirred, it felt like his brain had rebooted mid-crash. His vision blurred, swimming in static, blinking rapidly as the world around him slowly came back into focus.
Not sky. Not sun.
A ceiling, cold, metallic, gleaming faintly with strips of LED white. Foreign. Too clean.
He wasn't outside anymore. He was lying flat on something soft but sterile. A bed?
No… not a bed. A slab.
The last thing he remembered was flames, chaos, rifles aimed at Rin.
Now, silence… and the ceiling staring back at him like an interrogation lamp. Sound crept in next, like a radio frequency being tuned.
"Vitals stable."
A voice. Sounding like a female. Distant, as if it were echoing underwater.
Kentaro's head jerked to the right…
A woman stood by a nearby console. She hadn't moved a muscle since he'd awoken, only her eyes shifted, locking onto his, like she had been waiting for the exact millisecond of consciousness. She wore a white lab coat, no badge, no name, no expression.
Cold. Professional.
When she realized he was awake, she didn't speak. She turned, precise, like a machine, and walked toward a glass door on the far wall. The heels of her boots clicked in eerie rhythm against the floor. She reached the panel beside the door and entered a passcode.
HSSSSSSK.
The seal released, and the door parted like it was letting in a secret.
She stepped through, gliding.
No words. No smile. Just… the echo of her presence disappearing down a corridor Kentaro couldn't yet see.
And all he could think was.
Where the hell am I now…
Her shoes made no sound against the metal floor. Her long, white coat didn't sway; even the fabric obeyed her presence. As she neared, Kentaro finally saw her face clearly. Her face was smooth, unreadable. Almost too calm. But it wasn't kindness in her eyes. Nor suspicion. She looked at him, the way someone stares at a problem they already solved... and just wants to confirm the result.
"Hey Kantaro, I'm Haruka. Haruka Kurobane."
Kentaro stared at her for a second, blinking only once.
As she stood right next to him, she wasn't tall. Her presence made her seem that way. Her golden brown hair was tied in a high looped ponytail, smooth and precise. Thin frame glasses rested on her small, button nose, but she did not need them, they were a habit.
A signal, " I am calculating." they seemed to say
Her voice was soft. Not shy, but measured. Every word chosen like a surgeon picks tools. Her face barely moved when she spoke. That's what made it eerie, almost as she'd practised being human... and just so happened to be good at it.
Eventually, Kentaro snapped out of it before sitting up and replying.
"Um.. hey there, it's actually Kentaro, not Kantaro, and, where are we?"
He said, questioning everything.
Haruka looked at him, unsure if she should tell him or leave it to 'Her'.
She took a seat at the end of his 'bed', before slightly adjusting her glasses as if trying to buy herself some time to figure out what she had to say.
"Ren," Haruka began, her voice low and measured, "I'd explain everything-" she paused, adjusting her glasses with a crisp click, " but you wouldn't believe me… not until someone you trust tells you."
She locked eyes with him, intensity simmering in her gaze. Kentaro's heart skipped, and he dropped his head, exhaling in frustration, until something snapped.
"Tenka," he blurted out, bolting upright as if electrified. Haruka flinched, surprised by his sudden shift, but before she could speak, Kentaro rushed on.
"There was a girl with me, dark reddish eyes, black hair. S-she was right next to me, w-with everything falling apart. Is she… is she okay?" Words tumbled out in a nervous rush. Haruka hesitated, then reached out and flicked his forehead, soft but firm. Kentaro jumped, bewildered.
"What was—?"
Haruka ignored the question and brushed her glasses back into place. Her voice dropped to a gentle reassurance. "Tenka is alive, Ren. And everyone else in that classroom… they were saved."
Relief washed over him, and he exhaled in a shaky sigh. "I'm so glad…"
"But," Haruka's tone darkened, "not all came back unharmed." Kentaro's relief hardened into confusion as he recalled the collapsing ceiling.
"How? I saw them get crushe-"
Haruka got up and stepped toward the glass door, voice soft with purpose: "You'll need to ask the commander."
Her lips curved into a reassuring smile, but already the door was sliding shut. Kentaro called out:
"The commander?"
She paused, just before disappearing into the steel corridor beyond.
"Everything will make sense soon," she promised, her voice fading. "Rest now. The commander will meet you later."
The door hissed closed. Kentaro sat in silence, his mind racing.
He glanced down. His left leg bore a faint scar, the memory of Rin's kick. Gingerly, he poked it. No pain. Not anymore. The fact it healed surprised him, but encouraged him too. He swung his legs off the edge and rose unsteadily. The glass door at the room's end stood silent, unassuming, but behind it lay answers waiting in the wings.
This is when he decided to take in his surroundings of the room he found himself in.
It was spotless
Too spotless.
The walls were smooth and silver white, almost glowing with a bright light that was on the roof, which had no clear source of electricity like a wire. Apart from the glass door, which also acted like a window. There were no other windows, no clocks, just a faint hum of energy running through the unseen circuit. Kentaro continued to walk until he got to the door, and unlike Haruka, the door wouldn't open for Kentaro. He tried to see if he could slide it open by pulling the door sideways, but it would not budge. So with nothing else left to do, he turned back around, now facing his bed.
The bed he'd woken up from wasn't a bed per say; it was more like a platform, padded just enough to avoid a lawsuit.
Clear panels glowed faintly in the ceiling. Everything about the room felt like it was meant to observe, not to heal. ''What the hell, how does she expect me to sit here with nothing to do. At least some manga would've helped." Kentaro whispered to himself.
For the next hour, Kentaro paced the sterile, featureless room, a tight loop that was beginning to feel more like a cell than a recovery ward. His thoughts spiraled endlessly, chasing the same impossible questions.
Rin.
Who was she, really? What was her goal? Her smile hadn't left his mind since she vanished, haunting, half-playful, half… desperate. But it wasn't just that expression. It was her voice. That final whisper before everything went dark.
"If you want to save me…"
The words repeated over and over. Had she truly said that? Or was it some misfired neuron, his mind grasping at fiction?
"If she did want me to save her… then how?" he muttered aloud to no one, as his feet traced the same squeaky arc across the polished floor. "What the hell am I even supposed to do?"
Each time he thought he was calming down, another flash of her revolver, or that swirling red energy, surged back into his head. His hand briefly touched the faint scar on his leg. Proof she was real.
And then there was Tenka.
For a moment, he stopped walking.
Was she okay?
His memory played the image of her face before the ceiling caved in. He hadn't seen her since. Haruka had said she was safe… but Kentaro couldn't shake the worry tightening in his chest. Tenka wasn't just some childhood friend. She was the only constant he had. The only person who really—
He shook the thought off.
After another few laps, his legs finally gave out. He collapsed onto the edge of the plain white bed with all the grace of a sandbag, elbows to knees, head sinking into his hands. A long breath dragged out of him. No matter how hard he tried to ground himself, this place, this new reality, his mind kept circling back.
Rin's voice. That look in her eyes.
And Tenka, somewhere out there, carrying truths he still didn't understand. The weight of it all pressed in like fog. Thick. Suffocating. And growing heavier by the second.
Then he heard a hiss.
The glass door slid open. Kentaro's head shot up. Eyes locked forward, tense, and on alert.
No surprise.
It was Haruka.
She stood at the threshold, gaze sharp and locked onto him. She didn't speak. Didn't blink. Just entered the room, soundless, ghostlike, as if the floor itself refused to acknowledge her steps. The same ice-cold aura she'd worn like a second skin earlier was still there, untouched. She stopped halfway between him and the door, perfectly centered. Still silent.
Kentaro stood up. He was ready to unload. What was Rin? What happened to Tenka? What the hell's going on with the colle-
But before a single word left his mouth, Haruka calmly raised one hand and pushed her glasses up with her index finger.
"I know you have a lot of questions..." She said, her voice was soft, but carried an edge like steel hidden under silk. "But right now, I need you to follow me. Once we reach our destination, you'll get the answers you're looking for."
Kentaro scowled. He opened his mouth to argue. Too late. She was already turning around.
"Tsch... guess I don't have a choice." He muttered, trailing behind her toward the door.
As they exited the room, the hallway beyond was shorter than he expected, barely twenty feet long. But at the end stood two absolute units of men, dressed in all-black fitted shirts that clung to biceps the size of Kentaro's hopes and dreams.
He leaned in close and whispered under his breath, "Damn... they got muscles on top of muscles."
Haruka's head snapped toward him in a fluid, robotic motion. No expression. No blinking.
"Don't say that near them. They'll make you drop the soap."
The delivery was dead serious.
Kentaro froze. Eyes wide. Forehead instantly sweating.
"Roger that, ma'am. No jokes. Got it. Loud and clear."
They passed the muscle mountains without a word exchanged. The next hallway was nothing like the first. Long, narrow and seemingly endless. No windows. Just panel after panel of dull silver metal, lit by a soft, recessed lighting. It gave the illusion of walking through the inside of a machine.
The floor was weirdly soft, like it absorbed pressure with every step, muting sound. But what truly got under Kentaro's skin wasn't the silence. It was as if the entire hallway felt like it was holding its breath.
But things finally changed when Kentaro saw it. A towering door at the end of the seemingly endless corridor. Unlike the sleek, clinical glass that had sealed his earlier cell, this entrance was heavy, metal, and intentionally oversized. Twin doors at least double the height of a man stood like silent titans, locked in place by magnetic seals that pulsed faintly red. The size wasn't just for aesthetics; it meant something. Where the commander was, Kentaro guessed, power followed and intimidation by design. Haruka stopped a few paces short of the door. She didn't knock. She didn't call out. She simply adjusted her glasses, slowly, precisely, and muttered without turning back.
"Don't speak unless she addresses you first. She doesn't tolerate dead air or noise without weight."
Then, the doors parted with a deep, mechanical thump followed by a hiss of pressure release. Cold, conditioned air swept out like a breath held too long.
The doors hissed open, not into the cavernous war room Kentaro imagined, but into something much tighter.
A command nest.
The space was circular and sunken, almost like a miniature theatre built from glowing panels and metal veins. The ceiling was low and curved inward, lined with fibre-optic strips pulsing a faint crimson-teal rhythm, like the room itself was breathing.
Cables ran like vines across the floor and walls, some neatly managed, others clearly shoved aside in a rush. Half the terminals flickered with real-time data, while the other half displayed idle screens that someone definitely forgot to update. There were mugs with sarcastic quotes, stale snacks, a scattered deck of cards on one console and for some reason, a pair of cat ears resting proudly on a control panel.
"This... is where they run the world from?" Kentaro whispered to himself.
At the centre of the room, six officers manned their station in a curved line around a glowing holo-core. Each one looked like they belonged to a completely different anime-different attitudes, uniforms tweaked against regulation, each with a distinct vibe.
Despite the chaos, they worked like clockwork.
And overlooking it all, on a raised ledge that commanded silence without asking for it, stood her.