What Remains of Farewell
The world felt emptier without Marina.
Akio Hukitaske's boots crunched softly in the snow as he stepped away from the old pharmacy. Behind him, Raka Grundane and the Uki brothers had just sealed the basement. They had buried their history inside — glass vials, ruined notes, fractured blueprints, and the last photographs of Marina Higikata. The hatch closed with a heavy finality, wood striking wood like a coffin lid.
None of them spoke as the dust settled. Their breaths plumed in the cold, each exhale a ghost that drifted upward and vanished. The pharmacy — once a shelter, once a battlefield, once a home — stood silent in ruin, its broken windows like blind eyes staring into the storm.
Akio lingered at the doorway. His fingers brushed against the cracked frame where Marina once leaned, teasing him about his stubbornness, about how he brewed medicine as though the world depended on it. She had been his tether, his reminder of why survival mattered.
And now she was gone.
Not gone like the Lab's victims. Not gone like the others they buried in shallow graves when snow swallowed entire towns. But gone into somewhere unreachable — another timeline, another life. She had left with a purpose, but to Akio, the echo was the same: absence.
He turned away, pulling his coat tighter against the cold. His heart felt hollow, carved out. He could not yet tell if grief was freezing him from the inside or keeping him walking forward.
Shadows Following
The streets were nearly deserted, lit by flickering lamps that threw long shadows onto the snow. Tokyo's outskirts felt abandoned, as though the city itself knew better than to linger here, near the ruins of a pharmacist's graveyard.
The Uki brothers trailed behind Akio, arguing softly about strategy, about what came next. Raka walked like a silent titan beside them, arms crossed, eyes narrowed at every corner.
Akio fell behind the group deliberately. He needed space. Needed the silence that only winter storms could give. Yet the silence betrayed him, because in it, he felt eyes.
Not the Lab's. Those were predictable, clinical, filled with malice sharpened into calculation. These eyes were different — heavier. Watching, not hunting.
He glanced back once. Nothing but rooftops dressed in snow. The wind hissed across corrugated tin, whispering like old voices trying to be heard.
Still, his heart quickened.
Memories of Marina
He pressed forward, but every step scraped his soul raw. Marina's face refused to leave his mind. Her goodbye had not been loud — no declarations, no dramatic vows. Just the tearful strength of someone who had already decided to walk into eternity and let him live behind.
Akio had wanted to beg her to stay. To scream at her for sacrificing herself again. To hold her hand like when they were children again, when he found her curled in that smoke-stained corner, when he first promised to protect her.
But he hadn't. Because she had smiled — faint, tired, but real. And for the first time, he understood that sometimes love meant letting go.
He hated it. He hated himself for accepting it.
Snow blurred the streets, soft and merciless. Akio's legs trembled. He wanted to collapse. But the feeling of being watched grew sharper, cutting through his grief like a blade.
The Ambush
It struck fast.
A whisper of movement from the roof. Then a blur. Then pain.
Akio staggered sideways as something slammed into his ribs, knocking the breath from him. He hit the snow hard, knees sinking into the slush. His vision spun, white flakes burning into his eyes.
A figure stood over him. Cloaked, hood drawn tight. A fox mask gleamed pale beneath the moonlight, painted white and red, its grin frozen in eternal mockery.
The figure didn't speak. Didn't strike again. Only watched.
Akio wheezed, clutching his side, but his mind sharpened through the haze. This wasn't Lab technique. Too silent. Too precise. The stance was different, not manufactured by science but shaped by discipline.
"You..." Akio rasped, voice rough with the storm. "You've been following me since Marina left."
No answer.
The figure raised a hand. Something small flickered in the light — a folded note. With deliberate care, he tossed it onto the snow at Akio's feet.
Then he stepped back.
Raka Awakens the Storm
The night cracked open.
"MOVE."
Raka's voice tore through the alley like thunder.
From the shadows, she exploded forward, a force of nature packed into an old granny's towering, muscle-bound frame. Her massive arm hooked the cloaked figure by the collar, yanking him into the air like a doll. With a grunt, she hurled him across the street. He struck the side of a building, snow cascading from the rooftop.
"You don't touch him," Raka growled, stepping between Akio and the masked stranger. Her stance was solid, knees bent, fists clenched — the stance of a granny who had wrestled brutes in her youth and still carried the weight of mountains in her body.
The figure landed gracefully despite the throw, crouching low on the roof's edge. Snow swirled around him, fox mask gleaming. Still silent. Still watching.
Akio forced himself upright, clutching the note in his palm. His depression weighed heavier than his wounds, but his instincts screamed — this figure was not Lab.
"Raka," he said weakly, "don't underestimate him. I felt him long before he struck."
Raka spat into the snow. "Good. Then I can finally stretch these old arms."
The Note
Akio unfolded the paper. His hands trembled.
Two words, written in calm, deliberate strokes:
"Hello, brother."
The world stopped.
His stomach clenched. His vision blurred. He didn't understand why tears suddenly welled, spilling hot down his cheeks. But the word burned into his mind like fire.
Brother.
A fractured memory snapped at the edges of his amnesia. A child. A hand gripping his tightly. Laughter near a hearth. His grandfather's voice teaching them how to grind herbs, how to recognize scents, how to heal.
Two children, not one.
Then darkness.
The image splintered, leaving Akio clutching his head as pain stabbed behind his eyes.
When he looked up, the figure was gone. But not entirely. Raka had already leapt after him, roaring as her massive frame thundered onto the rooftops.
Clash on the Rooftops
The rooftops of Tokyo trembled.
Snow burst upward as Raka slammed her fists into the tiles, forcing the figure to dodge sideways. He moved like water, flowing past her strikes, every motion controlled and deliberate. Raka swung like a collapsing building — wide arcs that would flatten any other man.
"Who ARE you?!" she bellowed, each strike punctuating the question.
The figure dodged, silent, slipping past her like a fox in the snow. His movements were eerily familiar, a shadow of Akio's own form when he had once trained — not with medicine, but with survival against the lab.
He struck at Raka's shoulder, sharp and precise. For the first time in decades, she staggered.
Her lips curled into a grin. "Heh. Good. Don't run."
The fight raged above, snow scattering like sparks. Akio could only watch from below, clutching the note, heart pounding not from fear — but from the strange, suffocating ache of recognition.
Akio's Collapse
The battle echoed across rooftops, but Akio barely heard it. He sank into the snow, gripping the note against his stomach.
Brother.
How much had the Lab stolen from him? How many memories had they torn apart, leaving him incomplete? How could he have forgotten a face so important?
And why... why did that masked figure's silence feel less like hostility, and more like grief?
Raka's roar shook him back to reality. She was still holding the rooftop, but the figure wasn't retreating. He wasn't advancing either. He was testing.
And Akio knew then — this was only the beginning.
To Be Continued...