Chapter 9 - When the Light Returns
Scene 1: The Dust on the Door
It had been exactly thirty-one days.
Thirty-one days since Akio had last walked through the pharmacy's creaking door. Since he'd felt the old wooden floorboards beneath his feet. Since the dust had been disturbed by his careful steps and the air filled with the scent of brewed tea and dried herbs.
Tokyo had changed in those thirty-one days, or maybe Akio had.
The streets bustled the same. The trains ran on time. Children still laughed as they chased each other across crosswalks. But to Akio, everything shimmered with a kind of newness—like the world had shed its skin while he was away, and was inviting him to see it again.
The pharmacy stood quietly on the corner, a lantern swaying gently in the morning breeze. He hesitated. His hand trembled slightly as he reached for the door.
Then—he stepped inside.
Scene 2: The Silence Before the Song
He was greeted by silence.
No customers. No clattering tools. No voices.
Just the soft rustle of wind.
Then suddenly—
"SURPRISE!!!"
The room exploded in color.
Balloons burst from behind the counters. Streamers rained from above the shelves. A banner unfurled above the herb cabinet:
WELCOME BACK, AKIO!
Confetti filled the air like petals in spring. Raka danced in circles wearing a comically oversized party hat. Hikata had rigged some sort of fog machine and was dramatically posing with his arms outstretched like a rock star. Rumane clapped her hands and laughed—a sound so full of life it made Akio's stomach ache and the rest of his friends were there to.
"You really thought we wouldn't throw you the weirdest welcome-home party in the city?" Hikata said, grinning.
Akio stood still, overwhelmed.
"I... I don't know what to say," he whispered.
"Then don't," Rumane said, handing him a cup of barley tea. "Just feel."
Scene 3: The Embrace of Joy
The tea was warm. The scent of toasted grain filled his lungs. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the pharmacy was not just a place of work—it was a sanctuary.
They played music. They shared stories. A cake was brought out, shaped like a bottle of herbal tonic. Raka made a speech that started tearfully and somehow ended with a reenactment of Akio's most grumpy moments.
"And then he said, 'Raka, if you don't label these tinctures properly, we're going to give someone hallucinations instead of a cough cure!'"
Laughter filled the room. Real laughter. Healing laughter.
Scene 4: The Memory Table
Later in the afternoon, Rumane led Akio to a small table in the corner of the pharmacy. Upon it were photographs.
Kaede. Their daughter. The lantern festival. The willow.
"We kept them here while you were gone," Rumane said. "Not to mourn. But to remember."
Akio's hands touched each frame gently.
There were no words. Only the press of memory and the hum of hearts nearby.
Scene 5: The Lantern Rekindled
That evening, they lit lanterns once more.
Not down a river, but across the shelves.
Each one glowed with handwritten messages.
Welcome back.
You are home.
We missed you.
Akio stood in the center, the light dancing across his face.
He spoke, voice trembling:
"For a long time, I didn't know if I could ever come back. Not just to this place. But to you. To myself. I thought I had broken too much. Lost too much."
He looked around.
"But you waited. You remembered. You believed. And now... I believe too."
Tears. Not just his. But shared.
Scene 6: The Final Note
The party ended late.
But Akio stayed behind.
He walked through every aisle. Touched every drawer. Lit incense at the shrine in the back.
He poured one last cup of tea.
And then, as he looked in the mirror behind the counter, he saw not just himself...
...but the reflection of those he carried.
And for the first time, he smiled.
Not just because he had survived.
But because he had returned.
[Next: Volume 4, Chapter 10 — Regression Unwritten]
Chapter 10 - Regression Unwritten
Scene 1: The Quiet Day That Wasn't
Morning light crept through the blinds, casting long golden bars across the pharmacy floor. The party decorations were mostly gone, swept away in the silent hours between dusk and dawn, but a few confetti stars still clung to the corners. Akio sat at the counter, his hands wrapped around a cup of fresh tea, watching the dust settle in the light.
It should have been a quiet day.
It wasn't.
By midmorning, the doors burst open with a rush of people: a mother clutching her toddler with a strange rash, an elderly person doubled over from back cramps, a pair of teenagers who had tried mixing herbal weight-loss pills with energy drinks. It was chaos, human chaos.
Akio moved with grace, his senses sharp. He assessed, checked for injuries, soothed, and healed.
But behind every smile, every quiet murmur of reassurance, he carried a storm.
Scene 2: Letters in the Drawer
Between waves of patients, Akio found time to open a drawer in the back of the pharmacy labeled only "Kaede."
Inside were notes. Dozens.
Some were old recipes. Others were sketches of their daughter, reminders of festivals, a list of books she wanted to read together someday.
One was a letter she had never mailed:
Akio, my love...
Even if you never read this, I want the words somewhere in the world. I want them to echo against wood and glass and medicine bottles. I want them to remind you that you were never a shadow in our lives. You were the sun. The storm. The silence.
Forgive me for fading before I could finish our story.
He folded the letter slowly, placing it back.
"Our story isn't finished," he whispered.
Scene 3: A Visit from the Old Ghosts
Later that evening, Hikata found Akio out back by the compost heap.
"You're quiet today," he said, lighting a cigarette and offering one to Akio, who declined.
"I was thinking about him," Akio said. "The criminal who took her. Her husband."
Hikata nodded slowly. "You ever think of going to see him?"
Akio looked up. The sky was beginning to bruise with twilight.
"I already did."
Scene 4: The Prison Walls
Flashback.
Two weeks prior. Cold air. Cement walls. A hallway lined with cameras.
Akio stood face to face with the criminal who had worn the skin of a framer and stolen Kaede's trust, money, and life.
He looked nothing like Akio remembered. Hollow. Greasy. The eyes were the same—cowardly, desperate.
Akio sat. The criminal laughed nervously. "You here to yell at me? Spit? Hit me?"
"No," Akio said. "I came to understand."
The criminal sneered. "Understand what?"
"How you sleep with my words echoing in your perfect mind. How you live with yourself."
"I don't. That's why I need money. Needed it. To disappear."
"So you used her?"
"She was lonely," he shrugged. "You left."
Something in Akio cracked. He lunged forward, hands on the persons collar, slamming him into the wall. Guards yelled. Sirens blared.
"She... CARED FOR YOU!! She gave you everything and you ended her! You think loneliness is an excuse?"
The criminal trembled. Akio's grip loosened.
"I'm not the one dying slowly every night," the figure whispered.
Akio stepped back, shaking. He looked at him like a stranger staring into the soul of a rotted building.
Then turned.
"You don't deserve to speak her name."
Scene 5: The Willow and the Stone
Akio returned to the gravesite that same evening.
The willow tree bent low, as if listening.
He laid two new lanterns: one for Kaede. One for the person she could have become.
"I almost became like him," he admitted. "Lost in bitterness. Ready to destroy. But I won't let him take more than he already has."
A breeze stirred. The lanterns flickered.
Behind him, Rumane stepped close.
"You did what most can't," she said. "You faced the fire and walked through."
He didn't speak.
Instead, he knelt between the graves.
"I am still burning. But now... I burn for you and my time with that criminal and getting over my fears to face his face are finally over in my opinion."
Scene 6: The Wall of Names
Back at the pharmacy, Akio unveiled something new.
A wall covered in wooden plaques. Each one hand-carved. Each one a name: patients, friends, family, lost and found.
Above it, a sign:
Those We Heal, Heal Us Too.
Raka added a name. Hikata bowed. Rumane lit incense and everyone else did to.
Akio added Kaede's. Then their daughter's.
And then, with slow reverence, his own.
Because he was still healing.
Because his name, too, belonged to the story.
Scene 7: The Tea Ceremony
The chapter closed with a tea ceremony in the garden.
Natsuko had returned.
They poured five cups: for the living and the dead.
Under moonlight, Akio lifted his cup.
"To grief. To family. To the terrible elegance of surviving."
They drank.
And in the silence that followed, the stars seemed to weep.
[Next: Volume 4, Chapter 11 — The Shape of Light]
Chapter 11 (FINALE) - The Shape of Light
Scene 1: The Grave Beneath the Maple Sky
The wind howled gently across the hilltop cemetery. Time stood still under a pale sky as the gravestone shimmered in the weak morning light.
DR. AKIO MURASAKI HUKITASKE
He Healed. He Lived. He Remembered.
Ten years had passed since Akio had saved a part of the world. But in another place, not so far away, the story had gone terribly wrong.
A small kid stood before the gravestone, eyes wide with confusion and awe. He held his mother's hand. The adult looked solemn but peaceful. Her eyes carried the weight of memory—and of relife.
The kid looked like Akio's late daughter—same eyes. Same soft bright hair. He even carried her kindness in his expression. But his presence wasn't a haunting echo.
He was the future.
Behind them, an adult stood quietly. Marina Hukitaske. The once-assistant. Now the silent witness of both the end and the new beginning.
Scene 2: The Lost Timeline
In another Tokyo, under a sky perpetually overcast, Akio Hukitaske did not celebrate anniversaries. He had no pharmacy. He had no light.
When Kaede was killed, when the truth about her second husband's twisted plan had unraveled, Akio never recovered. Worse, he never reached out. He had the chance to take Hikata's hand that day—but he didn't. And because of that choice, his friends had died all because he never took their hands at the beginning of Volume Three and these events fore played in such a way the same way in the next Two Volumes as we already know but he lost but didn't win because his friends were never by his side and he fought for his own despair but lost, not won.
The people involved in the age-regression syringe survived his retaliation. They hunted down his allies. Rumane was gone. Her last message never reached him. She died protecting the children who came to the pharmacy.
Others perished while trying to bring samples of the serum to the press.
Even many more, who had once vowed never to leave him, was taken.
Only Hikata and Raka survived.
Akio watched it all burn. And when he stood before the ruins of the pharmacy, ash falling like snow, he gave up.
He shed his white coat.
And became something else.
Scene 3: The Retired Ghost
Now a doctor in a rotting underground clinic in west Tokyo, Akio no longer smiled. His long hair was tied behind his head with frayed rubber bands. His coat was stained, once white now black with time and filth. His tie hung limply. He wore no badge. He didn't need one.
His name was a myth.
Patients feared him. Loved him. Respected him. But none of them knew him.
He moved like a shadow, barely alive, distributing medicine as prescribed by Marina his assistant, who did all the checkups. She did all the talking. All the explaining. Akio only handed over the vials but still helpful in a lot ways himself.
Each time he touched the medicine, his fingers trembled.
He blamed himself.
Every broken syringe. Every child lost to the experiment. Every friend. Every scream.
It haunted him. And Marina, as gentle as she was determined, could not reach him.
She tried every day. Tea. Notes. Stories. Music. Nothing healed the crack in his soul. And his depression was only getting worser...
Scene 4: What Remains
Raka still wrestled, though not for the pharmacy. She used her strength to protect runaways and fight off syringe traffickers in underground clinics. She visited once a year. Hikata came more often—now a father of twins who Akio could barely face.
"I named them after Rumane," Hikata once said.
Akio nodded. Then walked away.
He couldn't bear to look at joy anymore. It was like sunlight on burnt skin.
The experiment was still alive. And worse—it had evolved.
Rumors of new variations leaked into the clinic: The scientists responsible were still out there.
Akio could have fought. But instead, he watched. Blamed himself. Rotting from the inside.
Scene 5: Marina's Hope
Marina remained by his side—loyal, professional, and quietly devastated. Her heart carried the weight of something unspoken. Then, without warning, she disappeared.
What no one realized was that she had been sent across timelines—from a version of Akio lost to despair. That Akio, broken and isolated, never told anyone what he had done. But deep down, he knew Marina was the only one strong enough to carry his final hope: to find the Akio who still had a chance and remind him to hold on—to fight for his dreams and never give up.
She followed through. After Akio's dreams had collapsed in his new life, it was Marina who secretly reached out to his old friends. She revealed his whereabouts just in time and gave them a letter meant for him, then disappeared once more.
Akio never understood how his friends suddenly knew where to find him. And the letter? Rumane and the others felt something was off about it. It felt too mysterious, too unnatural, and so, they never gave it to him.
Because of that choice, Akio never learned the truth: about the alternate timeline, the death of his wife in a possible future, or the desperate message that his other self had tried to send—a message that, in a tragic irony, proved that it had worked, just not in the way anyone hoped.
In time, Akio would go on to marry Marina Higamari, never knowing the truth of her origins or the sacrifice she carried in silence because of the pain she never told him because of that his friends hid the letter from him as she eventually learned of that to but didn't care as he still had a good fate but she was still mad that the pain she carried never warned of the death of his wife and she never stopped blaming herself in general all because she never told him about the letter when they met and got married. She became a member of the Hukitaske, burying her past and the painful truths with it. The letter, the timelines, the alternate futures—all of it was sealed away forever.
And so, the Akio we know would never uncover the secrets of world travel, never hear the echoes of the other life he was meant to forget. Those events faded into history, erased not by time, but by choice and grief.
The Letter He Never Read:
To Me—Dr. Akio Hukitaske,
If you're reading this... then it means one of us didn't make it.
I don't know which version of us you are, or what point in the timeline this letter has reached. I only know that it found you. And that means something.
I am you.
I am the version of you who discovered the truth—the layers of reality, the branching worlds, the fragile seams between dimensions. I saw what was never meant to be seen. I crossed the lines we were warned never to cross. And in doing so, I lost everything.
Maybe you already know pain. Maybe you've felt the weight of grief without knowing why. Or maybe you're just beginning to feel your world fall apart. Either way, I'm here to tell you: don't give up.
You couldn't save them. I know. I couldn't either. Not her. Not them. Not the ones who mattered most. I tried everything—rewriting equations, bending time, negotiating with things that shouldn't exist. And in the end, I failed.
But you haven't. Not yet.
There's still something left. Maybe not the same people. Maybe not the same world. But something worth protecting. Worth holding onto. Even if it's just the hope that we weren't broken in vain.
She loved you. They all did. Marina. Rumane. Even the ones who walked away—they never stopped believing in you. And I know, deep down, neither have you.
Blame the world. Blame fate. Blame the experiment that fractured reality. Blame the syringe, the code, the silence that followed.
But stop blaming yourself.
You did what you had to do. And so did I. And if this message made it to you, then maybe—just maybe—it means our efforts weren't wasted. Maybe you can carry forward what I couldn't.
If not for you... then for me.
We may never meet. But I hope you'll become the me I never got to be.
Still here,
—Akio
Scene 7: The Cemetery Again
Now back to the grave.
The mother with the child—Akio's child—stood in silence as the kid placed a lily and two paper cranes at the headstone.
Marina stood behind them, now older, holding the mirror shard like a relic.
"I wonder if he ever forgave himself," she whispered.
"I think he did," the child said softly.
They didn't ask how he knew but it was like he was Akio's dead daughter and wife reborn as Akio's son but he didn't know why himself.
The wind moved the trees like breath through lungs. The sun hit the words.
He Healed. He Lived. He Remembered.
Beneath it, now etched with glowing filigree:
The Rewrite Begins Pharmaceutical Rewrite — Soon...
The child turned to his mother.
"Can I be like him?"
She knelt down.
"You already are my son."
[END OF SERIES]