12:37 p.m.
The smell of antiseptic always lingered in Yakanuke's memories. Hospitals, labs, clean rooms—everywhere he went since the day Yaka found him in the rain, the same sterile air followed. Only this time, it was worse. It was not the purity of healing; it was the cold scent of experiments.
The Yaka Laboratory stretched beneath Tokyo like a forgotten cathedral of machines. White corridors curved endlessly, polished to mirror brightness, while the low hum of fluorescent tubes vibrated in the bones. Yakanuke followed a figure in a long gray coat—Dr. Yaka, Yaka himself—down a hallway lined with reinforced glass. Behind each panel, shadows moved—people, or perhaps the remnants of them.
"Your background in medical journalism is promising," Yaka said without turning. His voice was calm, too calm, like a surgeon explaining a dissection to a child. "We need someone who understands the vocabulary of conscience yet chooses observation over interference. You, Yakanuke, are perfect."
Perfect. The word stung him. He still remembered the rain on his face that night, the puddles of neon reflected from the street, and the moment Yaka's hand had reached out from the darkness offering him a job, salvation, and a cage all at once.
He didn't speak. He just nodded, clutching the folder pressed against his heart—the contract he had already signed. The ink still smelled new.
Week One: The Lab of Ghosts
Yakanuke's quarters were small: a single bed, a desk with an old terminal, and a security camera blinking from the corner. On the first night, he dreamed of the operating room—the immigrant worker, his cousin's starving face, the mayor's scream—all blurred into a spiral that pulled him into darkness.
He woke to the sound of a siren and the distant cry of a child.
At breakfast, he met the other recruits: researchers, technicians, and security officers. They all avoided eye contact. Only one worker, a pale technician named Hisame, whispered, "Don't ask questions. Just write what you see."
He learned that the division he was assigned to was called "Project Chronostasis." The goal: to study the biological possibility of age regression and controlled time displacement through cellular resonance—a fancy way of saying reversing time for living beings.
At first, he thought it was theoretical. But on his second day, they led him to the observation chamber.
The Children
Through the glass, he saw them—five children, each around seven to twelve, seated in separate transparent pods. Wires ran into their arms. Machines pulsed blue light through tubes of shimmering liquid. The children didn't cry; they stared blankly ahead, as if their emotions had been replaced with silence.
"These are the subjects," Dr. Yaka said, watching with arms behind his back. "They were born sick, forgotten by society. We are giving them new lives. Observe them, record their progress, and write every detail. Emotionally neutral, if possible."
Yakanuke tried to ask, "What kind of progress?"
But Yaka just smiled. "You'll see."
And he did. Over the weeks, he saw time bend—not in clocks or physics, but in flesh. Some days the children looked dead, their faces drawn, their eyes dull; other days, their blood soaked bodies softened as if time flowed backward. He couldn't tell if it was healing or unraveling.
He wrote daily reports—cold, detached, professional.
"Subject 04: rapid cellular restoration observed. Estimated biological regression: 2.4 years. Psychological impact uncertain."
But inside, his hands trembled as he typed. The faces of the children began to blend with his cousin's—her bright tears, her pleading eyes.
The Journalist's Doubt
Late one night, after everyone had left, Yakanuke stayed behind in the observation room. He stared through the glass at Subject 02—a kid with dark hair who always smiled at him when their eyes met.
"Why are you smiling?" Yakanuke whispered.
The child pressed his small hand against the glass. Yakanuke found himself raising his own. For a brief moment, their palms aligned, separated by only a thin layer of reinforced transparency.
"I'll be better tomorrow," the child mouthed silently, his lips trembling.
The next morning, Subject 02 was gone. The pod was empty, the tubes dry. Hisame didn't answer his questions. Yaka simply said, "Progress requires loss."
Something broke in him that day. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. But he kept writing.
Week Two: The Assignment
Yaka summoned him to his office—a massive room filled with data screens showing human silhouettes dissolving into equations. The light from the monitors painted Yaka's glasses in ghostly blue.
"I'm assigning you a new mission," Yaka declared, voice sharp but controlled. "You'll be monitoring a new subject—someone exhibiting an extraordinary resistance to regression. He could become the key to stabilizing Chronostasis itself."
Yaka paused, his expression wavering between pride and something colder.
"He is our enemy. But he may also become our greatest achievement. He's someone I'm related to by blood, after all. We haven't given up on that fool—not yet. Even if he's our sworn adversary."
His gaze hardened again, gaze narrowing.
"However, it will take time before you're in a position to observe him directly. Until then, continue monitoring the other orphans. Stay vigilant."
Yakanuke hesitated. "A new subject? Another person?"
"Not yet," Yaka replied. "But soon. Consider this preparation."
He handed Yakanuke a photograph—a teenager with calm eyes, blue hair falling just above his neck. The name under it: Akio Hukitaske.
Something about the kids gaze unsettled him. It wasn't fear or innocence; it was conviction. Yakanuke felt a strange pull, a faint echo of something he hadn't felt in years—hope.
"Who is he?" he asked.
"Potential," Yaka said simply.
The Journalist Becomes the Shadow
Yakanuke's role expanded. He was granted access to the surveillance systems, tasked with compiling "behavioral reports" on potential candidates for the next wave of experiments. Most of them were young—students, orphans, the desperate.
He told himself he was just writing. Just observing.
But each report felt like a confession.
At night, he wandered the lower halls of the lab, where the rejected subjects were kept. They called it The Basement, though no one was supposed to go there.
Down there, the lights flickered, and the air smelled of rust. He found old journals from previous researchers—pages torn, words scribbled like prayers.
"We reversed time, but we lost the soul." "They wake up younger, but they remember dying."
He closed the book and fled, his heart heavy with dread.
Week Three: The Confrontation
One evening, during a progress briefing, Yakanuke couldn't stay silent anymore.
"Doctor," he said, his voice barely steady, "these children—these subjects—do they know what's being done to them?"
Yaka looked up slowly from his notes, as if the question itself was beneath comprehension. "Knowing would change the outcome. Observation is pure only when ignorance is preserved."
"That's not medicine," Yakanuke said quietly. "That's cruelty."
Yaka's smile thinned. "You're a journalist, Mr. Yakanuke. Record the truth — don't rewrite it. Keep your mouth shut, or I'll kill the remaining people who still care about you. Even if you don't think you love them anymore, given your condition, I know you do. It's in that foolish heart of yours."
He dismissed the meeting, leaving Yakanuke trembling. Later that night, Hisame found him sitting outside the lab's service exit, chain-smoking despite the cold air.
"You shouldn't talk back to him," she warned. "People who question Yaka disappear."
"Maybe they should," he muttered. "Maybe I should."
Her expression softened. "You're not like the others. You still feel. Don't lose that… even if it kills you."
He didn't answer. The word kill echoed in his mind like a bell tolling for someone already gone.
Week Four: Fractures
Yakanuke began noticing inconsistencies. Security footage that looped. Names on reports that vanished the next day. Memory gaps—hours missing from his recollection.
He confronted Hisame again, but she only shook her head. "They're testing memory scrubbing—beta versions of the regression serum. Sometimes they test on staff."
"Test on staff?" he repeated, horrified.
"Yaka wants to prove time travel isn't about machines," she said softly. "It's about rewriting people."
That night, Yakanuke woke to find a syringe on his desk. A note beside it read:
'For understanding.'
He stared at it for hours. In the reflection of the needle, he saw the person he used to be—the doctor, the dreamer, the cousin's guardian, the failure. He thought of the kid, Subject 02, smiling through the glass.
Out of rage and pity for himself and thinking of what Yaka would do to the orphans even more if he didn't comply. he pressed the syringe against his arm.
Week Five: The Regression
The pain came first—a burning that spread through every vein, then the sense of time melting. He fell to the floor, gasping, watching the world ripple like liquid glass. His memories twisted—faces reversed, voices echoed backward, and his reflection in the mirror blurred younger and younger until he barely recognized himself.
When he awoke, his ID badge read: Age 6.
Panic clawed at him, but Yaka seemed pleased.
"Remarkable," the scientist murmured. "You've crossed the threshold voluntarily. Few possess that courage."
"Why… why did you make me do this?" Yakanuke demanded.
"To understand what you observe," Yaka said, stepping closer. "To become the perfect observer, one must first lose the timeline they came from."
Yakanuke felt the ground shift beneath him. Everything—his guilt, his anger, his regret—was dissolving into a fog of youth. Yet, beneath the confusion, one thought anchored him:
Akio Hukitaske.
He didn't know why, but he knew this name would matter.
The Journalist's Reflection
Days bled into nights. Yakanuke's reports grew stranger—half memory, half dream. He could no longer tell if what he wrote was truth or a reconstruction fed to him by Yaka's machines.
He wrote in his logbook:
"They say time heals, but time here devours. The children vanish, but I am becoming one of them. Perhaps to observe innocence, one must first destroy it."
He began to wander the rooftop above the dormitories, staring down at the city lights through reinforced glass. Somewhere out there, people lived ordinary lives—students went to school, doctors healed, families laughed. And beneath their feet, he was documenting the erasure of humanity in the name of progress.
The thought both enraged and terrified him.
Final Scene: The Rooftop Promise
One night, rain poured again—the same kind that had baptized his downfall weeks ago. He stood on the rooftop, the storm washing over his younger face. Below, the city shimmered like a living circuit board.
Behind him, Yaka appeared, umbrella in hand.
"You've adapted well," Yaka said softly. "Emotion will fade. That's good. It means you're learning."
Yakanuke turned to face him. "And what if I don't want to fade?"
Yaka tilted his head. "Then you'll break. And broken tools are replaced."
The words hit harder than any blade. But Yakanuke only nodded, forcing a smile.
"If I keep writing… maybe I can still tell the story."
Yaka's eyes gleamed. "That's all I ask. Observe, record, and remember what they must not."
As Yaka walked away into the rain, Yakanuke whispered to himself:
"If time can be rewritten… maybe so can I."
He looked down at his reflection in a puddle—the face of a kid barely older, but eyes haunted by thirty years of loss.
And though Yakanuke didn't know it yet, the persons whose life he would soon observe again, would become the last light in his collapsing world.
TO BE CONTINUED...