I pulled the apron over my head and tossed it onto the hook behind the counter. The clatter of dishes, the chatter of customers, the hiss of the grill—it all faded into the background.
"You heading out already?" Daichi-san looked up from the stove, brow slick with sweat and eyes still sharp despite the dinner rush.
I nodded, loosening the knot in my hairnet. "Yeah. This is my last shift."
He paused, spatula mid-flip. "You sure about that?"
"I appreciate everything, really. But some family stuff came up. I need to leave the city for a while." It was a stupid lie, he already knew I didn't have a family.
Daichi-san put his spatula down and gave me one last look. His expression softening for just a moment, then gave a slow nod. "Didn't think I could hold you down anyway. You're destined for something more, my instincts are never wrong."
"Thanks?" I said, half-laughing.
He snorted and pointed the spatula at me. "You burn rice one more time and I'd have fired you anyway. But you're a good kid, Shinji. Just know that my doors will always be open for you."
I gave him a short bow before pushing through the back door, into the humid Tokyo night.
The city was always alive, even at the edge of it. Neon bled onto the pavement like spilled paint. High-rises loomed like glass titans, their windows flickering with digital ads and the glow of lives I'd never live. Drones buzzed past overhead.
I unlocked my bike from the rack behind the shop and started pedaling north, out of the glowing core and toward the shadows of the city's bones.
The ride home was long, but it gave me time to think. Tokyo—the polished heart of Kantō Haven—was a machine. Smooth. Controlled. But the deeper you moved out, the more you saw the scaffolding holding it all together.
I passed Shinjuku's towering spires and glassy monorail veins, the elevated roads crawling with armored transports and traffic drones. The air in Saitama was heavy, thick with the scent of oil and metal. The streets were narrower, the less polished everything became, the buildings older, reinforced but worn. Fewer lights, more silence.
This was the spine of the Haven—military zones, emergency bunkers, and quiet, sturdy neighborhoods built to last when everything else fell. No glamor. No noise. Just people who knew how to survive. The Toho Wall in the distance shimmered under floodlights—a constant reminder of what we were defending, and what we were afraid of.
I turned onto a quieter street, the familiar hum of tires on cracked pavement steadying my thoughts. My legs working automatically but my mind kept circling back to earlier- the smoke, Anderson's voice, that damned arcpad weighing down in my pocket like a stone.
I reached my apartment, wedged between a laundromat that barely operated and a bar that never seemed to close.I rolled my bike into the side alley and took the stairs two at a time. The door clicked behind me, and silence filled the space like water rushing into a sealed room.
I headed straight to the bathroom.
Steam soon fogged the mirror as I leaned over the sink, tugging at the corners of my eyes. The contacts came out with a practiced pinch. Next, I lathered shampoo into my hair, scrubbing hard. Rivulets of dark dye bled into the water, spiraling down the drain.
By the time I stepped out and wiped the mirror clean, I was looking at myself for the first time in months.
Black hair clung to my forehead in damp strands.
Golden eyes stared back.
The real me. The one I spent all this effort trying to hide, the one I couldn't hide from anymore. "No more running," I tried to sound mocking, but it just came out as sour.
It was strange how easy it had become to pretend. How quickly survival turned into routine. Wake up, work, blend in, disappear. But under it all—beneath the fake name and fake life—I'd never stopped counting the days.
Two years.
I'd been on the run for two years, trying to vanish into the cracks of a city too massive to care. But someone had found me anyway.
Tobi Anderson.
He'd found me. Even after all the running, hiding, disguises, everything. He still found me. And the moment he did, I had already lost. I thought escaping that facility, removing that damn collar would mean freedom. I was naive, for some people, freedom is just a pipe dream.
I sat down on the edge of my bed, hair still dripping, the towel cold against my skin. The arcpad he gave me sat on the nightstand, quiet and waiting like it knew this was coming.
I stared at it for a long moment. Then picked it up.
One tap.
The line rang once before it clicked.
"Changed your mind?" Anderson's voice was low, like he'd been expecting the call.
"Where do we meet?"