The rain hadn't stopped for two days.It fell endlessly, as if the heavens themselves were trying to wash away the blood and fire left behind by Hozuku Ranei.
The apartment was gone.The smoke still lingered in the air around what used to be Nagisa's home. The city's emergency response had already swept the site, cordoned off the area, and left without realizing that two of the supposed casualties were still alive — hiding in the quiet outer areas of an abandoned school building near the edge of Tokyo.
Inside the dark classroom, the only sound was the rain against the cracked glass and the faint hum of an old generator Hakumura had scavenged from the back of a maintenance shed. A single bulb flickered above them, struggling to stay lit.
Nagisa sat on a dusty desk, his coat half burned, one sleeve torn. He stared silently at the small object in his hand — a scorched, half-melted USB drive.
The tag on it had been melted too, but one marking was still visible: "Division 7 – Restricted Data / L02 Clearance"
He turned it over again, his reflection barely visible in its metal casing. It had been in Ranei's pocket when the fire consumed her — a final relic of a human who burned for her own belief.
Hakumura sat on the floor near the generator, adjusting the small laptop Nagisa had asked him to buy weeks before, just in case. "You really think this thing's gonna still work after being in the fire?" he muttered.
Nagisa didn't look up. "If she had it on her, it meant it was worth something. Ranei seemed like she wasn't the type to keep junk."
"Or it's a trap," Hakumura countered, connecting the wires and powering the laptop on. The screen flickered weakly to life, revealing a battered OS and a flickering cursor.
"Everything's a trap," Nagisa said softly. "The trick is deciding which ones are worth stepping into."
Hakumura shot him a tired look. "You're getting philosophical again, sensei."
Nagisa smiled faintly. "Occupational habit."
He inserted the USB. For a moment, nothing happened. The fan of the laptop whirred louder. Then — click. A single folder appeared.
/PROJECTS/8907_LIMINAL_BODY
The name sent a chill through both of them.
Nagisa double-clicked it. Inside were multiple encrypted subfolders, each labeled in
code: HB_PROTOTYPE_ANANOTRACE_FLAMESEQUENCE_GHOSTLINEand one simply named REVELATION.
Nagisa hovered the cursor over the last one.
Hakumura noticed. "Why that one?"
"Because," Nagisa said quietly, "it's the only one that isn't hiding behind jargon."
He clicked.
A loading bar appeared. Then — static. The screen flashed several times, before the sound of distorted voices filled the room.
"Division Seven human interface experiment log — subject Ranei Hozuku. Entry 2456." "Emotional volatility: stabilized. Regeneration rate exceeds previous trials. Neural pain inhibitors reduced to 0.3% — purposefully increased agony retention for motivational conditioning."
Nagisa's hand tightened on the desk. The voice was calm, clinical, as though reading weather data.
Another voice — Ranei's, before she became the flame-covered monster they fought — echoed faintly in the background:
"It hurts. Every second. But it keeps me awake. It keeps me… loyal."
Hakumura's jaw clenched. "They turned her into a weapon by making her feel the pain."
Nagisa's voice was low. "No. By convincing her that pain was proof of purpose."
He clicked forward again. A series of images appeared — diagrams of humans intertwined with circuitry, glowing veins of synthetic material branching from the heart. There were dozens of faces beside the test logs — strangers. Many were marked "TERMINATED."
One, however, was not.
Subject 01 – Hanei, Dr. Riku.Status: Active. Location: Undisclosed.
Hakumura frowned. "Hanei… the same doctor from Division Thirteen."
Nagisa nodded slowly. "He's alive."
The realization hit both of them like a cold blade. The being they thought they'd buried in the rubble — the one whose blood stained the hatch — had survived. And he was still operating.
Nagisa scrolled down further. A new sub-entry loaded, labeled "Liminal Convergence: Phase 3."
"Objective: Integrate emotional consciousness into synthetic hosts. Previous failures resulted from cognitive dissonance — human emotion rejecting artificial permanence. Proposal: utilize trauma imprinting as stabilizer."
"Trauma imprinting…" Hakumura repeated. "They're using emotional pain to anchor the human mind inside synthetic matter."
Nagisa's expression darkened. "They're making sure the human mind doesn't escape the machine."
He leaned closer, reading the final paragraph:
"Subjects capable of holding memory between life and synthetic reconstruction display higher stability. Recommended test subjects: Shiota Nagisa, ID-Former E-Class Instructor. Psychological profile indicates high resilience through trauma exposure. Candidate viability: 98.9%."
The world fell silent.
Hakumura froze, eyes darting to him. "Nagisa…"
Nagisa didn't move. He just stared at the words — his name, his history, his worth reduced to a number in an experiment file.
He felt a knot in his chest, the air draining from the room. He wasn't supposed to be shocked anymore. He'd seen horrors, fought monsters enslaved of science and ambition. But this — this was different.
This was personal.
He swallowed hard. "They planned this from the start."
Hakumura stood. "You're saying—"
"They didn't just want Koro-sensei's death to inspire us," Nagisa said quietly, almost trembling. "They wanted to see what kind of human survives after losing something irreplaceable. They've been studying emotional endurance, generation after generation."
Hakumura frowned, confused. "But that's—"
"—why they let me live," Nagisa finished for him. "Why I was never targeted directly until now."
He looked up, eyes burning with realization. "I'm their control subject."
The generator buzzed faintly. Outside, thunder rolled.
Hakumura slammed his fist against the wall, cracking the plaster. "So all this time—Ranei, the experiments, the facility—it all connects back to you?"
"No," Nagisa said softly. "To what I represent. A human who survived despair without becoming a monster. They wanted to prove that hope was just another variable — something that could be replicated, modified, erased."
He stared down at the USB again. "And they almost succeeded."
Hours passed. The storm deepened. The laptop screen dimmed as its battery drained, but they couldn't look away. Every file they opened showed more of the same: diagrams of consciousness mapping, reconstructed memory sequences, digital renderings of human thought turned data.
One video file caught their attention — timestamped only a few days before their battle with Ranei.
They played it.
[The camera shook slightly, focused on a dark lab. Dr. Hanei stood at the center, face half-lit, his expression unreadable. His lab coat was stained with blood.]
"If you're watching this, then she's failed," he said coldly. "Agent 2907's sacrifice was expected. Her neural imprint will return to us through the flame residue. You will not find us. But understand this — every piece of destruction you cause strengthens our foundation. Every tear you shed is data. Every human emotion you preserve… becomes ours."
He leaned closer, his voice low, venomous."You taught your students to embrace pain, Shiota Nagisa. We simply perfected the method."
The video ended in static.
Hakumura shut the laptop with a slam. "He's mocking you."
Nagisa exhaled slowly. "No. He's warning us. Because he knows what comes next."
Hakumura frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Look at the pattern," Nagisa said, rubbing his temples. "Each agent we've faced has been thematic — the Ghostline, the Flame, the Liminal Body. Each represents a different way of defying mortality. They're testing philosophies, not weapons."
Hakumura blinked. "Philosophies?"
"Think about it," Nagisa said. "They're trying to answer one question: what does it mean to be human when death no longer defines you?"
The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
Hakumura looked away. "And what's your answer?"
Nagisa's voice broke softly. "That we stop being human the moment we forget how to grieve."
Silence. Only rain.
Later that night, Nagisa stepped outside into the school courtyard. The rain soaked his hair, his clothes. The city lights shimmered in the puddles at his feet.
He closed his eyes, feeling the cold. He thought of Ranei's laughter, of her agony, of the way she smiled even as she burned herself alive — not out of madness, but devotion. A devotion born of manipulation.
Even monsters want meaning, he thought. Even they just want to be seen.
Behind him, Hakumura's voice broke the quiet. "So what now? What's our move?"
Nagisa turned slightly, rain dripping from his chin. "We go after him."
"Hanei?"
He nodded. "He's the root of it all. The one person who still believes he can make gods out of corpses."
Hakumura stepped closer. "And what if he's right? What if all this fighting — all this surviving — just proves his point?"
Nagisa smiled faintly, the kind of smile that carried both pain and peace. "Then I'll prove him wrong one last time."
He looked back toward the horizon, where the neon lights of Tokyo faded into the dark.
"Because even if everything burns," he whispered, "we'll make sure the ashes still remember who we were."
The camera panned upward — the rain falling harder, lightning illuminating the broken skyline.
And then, faintly, in the reflection of a puddle near their feet — the faint flicker of another red symbol appeared, glowing through the water:
"Division 7-B / Project: EREBUS — Infiltration Phase Initiated."
To Be Continued...