Chapter 5 - The Night I Was Rewritten
The pharmacy was closed. The fluorescent lights in the back room buzzed quietly above them, flickering ever so slightly like a heartbeat waiting to give out. The snow outside had stopped falling, but the cold hadn't left. It crept through the window seams, curling around skin and bones.
Akio stood in the center of the room, the faint blue glow of the syringe on the table casting a ghostly shimmer on his face. He hadn't touched it. Not since the day it was found. But he hadn't thrown it away, either.
The others were gathered in silence. Raka leaned on the wall with her arms folded, lips pressed in a frown. Yamataro sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, his jaw tense. Misaki shifted nervously, hands clutched around a cup of now-cold tea. Rumane and Hikata sat at the far end, both unusually still. Akazuchi, face half in shadow, watched Akio the hardest.
They had waited long enough.
Rumane finally broke the silence. "Akio... you knew what that was. You didn't flinch. You didn't even look surprised. And when we were about to ask you, you could feel it. You changed the subject."
Akazuchi nodded. "And now Block 9's gone. You can't keep us in the dark anymore."
Yamataro leaned forward. "What aren't you telling us?"
Akio didn't respond right away. He took a slow breath and stepped closer to the table. The light from the syringe flickered against the glass of the cupboards, like a phantom memory.
He spoke without looking at them. At first, his voice was calm.
"I wasn't always who I am now. Not in the way you think. I wasn't always a pharmacist. Or even someone you'd remember. I was a ghost of a person."
He closed his eyes.
"My name was still Akio Hukitaske. But back then, I was 32 years old. Burnt out. Disposable. I worked at a video game company that fed on overtime and drained your soul. I used to think I'd make something meaningful. Something people would remember. But instead, I helped design microtransaction menus and glitch patches. I hated myself more with each day."
The room didn't move. Not even a cough.
"My daughter was the only thing that kept me grounded. She was smart. Kind. She was... she was my reason for moving forward with my hellish life back then. But one night, she was hit by a drunk driver. Just like that, my world stopped. My marriage crumbled. I lost the apartment. My job didn't care. I didn't care. I drank. I stopped answering calls. I stopped eating. And no one missed me."
He paused, fingers curling slightly.
"Then... he found me. I was slumped outside a shuttered bookstore. Snow falling. Half-drunk. Ready to disappear. A figure appeared out of nowhere. Young, in a clean lab coat. He looked at me like I was a test subject. Like I wasn't a person anymore. And he said:
'You look like someone who'd volunteer without realizing it.'
Before I could answer, he injected me with something. A sharp sting in my neck. Cold. Burning. Like being erased."
Misaki's tea clinked gently against the floor as she set it down.
"When I woke up, I was in a school infirmary found on the streets. Fourteen again. Same mind. Same memories. Different self."
Yamataro muttered something under his breath. No one could hear it.
Akio continued.
"I thought it was a hallucination. A punishment. A coma dream. Maybe even a chance to do it all over. But... it wasn't a dream. I found out, slowly.
I was Subject 9."
His voice hollow at that.
"It was a project. An experiment. A hidden program buried beneath real pharmaceutical companies and fake clinics. They picked people like me. The unwanted. The broken. People who wouldn't be missed. And they tested how far they could push human knowledge. How much they could erase. How much they could control.
The ones who followed orders? They vanished. Gone. Clean slates.
The ones who resisted?"
He looked up.
"Burned. Erased. Hunted."
He walked to the window and looked out at the dark street. The pharmacy sign buzzed in the distance.
"When I built this place, I thought I could be free of it. That I could start over without fear. But the lab never forgot. They let me live long enough to think I was safe. And when I wasn't useful to them anymore, they started sending messages. Bombs. Fire. Syringes."
He turned back to them.
"I didn't tell you... because I didn't want it to be real. Because I didn't want to lose you."
Misaki wiped her face, tears streaking down her cheeks. Raka looked away, blinking quickly. Akazuchi rubbed a hand down his jaw.
"You're an idiot," he said softly.
Raka punched his arm. "A brave idiot."
Rumane finally looked up. "You should've trusted us."
Yamataro spoke last. "But we're still here. And we're not leaving."
Akio nodded. For the first time in hours, he allowed himself to smile.
"Then we fight," he said. "Together. We protect what we built. We protect each other."
The syringe still glowed faintly on the table.
But now it felt like a memory.
And the family he had found would carry him forward.
[Next: Chapter 6 — Operation Phoenix Begins]