The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
From the rooftop of Yaka Lab's eastern wing, Yakanuke stood under a half-broken umbrella, watching the world dissolve into gray. The city below breathed in restless pulses of neon and smog, but his gaze never lingered on the skyline. Instead, it found the courtyard below—the fenced section no visitor was ever supposed to see.
Subject 9764 was there again.
A person, hair the color of damp chestnuts, eyes like pale storm glass. The ID tag hanging from his wrist clinked faintly as he moved, the way a bird's bell might sound in a cage. He wasn't supposed to be outside, yet Yakanuke had seen him slip through the maintenance gate every day at this same hour, just to stand beneath the weak drizzle and look at the horizon as if trying to remember what the sun felt like.
Yakanuke didn't know his name. At least, not yet.
He only knew the number: 9764. And somehow, that number scratched against something buried deep inside him—like a half-erased word that wanted to be remembered.
Inside the lab, the air always smelled like antiseptic and coffee left too long on the burner. The corridors hummed with the rhythm of machines, servers, and the whispering of white coats that pretended not to hear the cries behind locked doors. Yaka called it progress.
Yakanuke called it noise.
His desk was stacked with old audio reels and photos, part of his "documentation assignment." Officially, he was tasked with recording "test subject adaptation responses" for the Temporal Regeneration Program. In reality, he was their archivist of suffering—capturing the moments everyone else wanted to forget.
He'd told himself it was for research. For truth. For journalism.But the line between observer and accomplice blurred faster each day.
Yaka had visited him earlier that morning—unannounced, as always.
"You're not eating," Yaka said simply, leaning against the office doorframe, his white coat unbuttoned. His eyes, sharp and unnervingly calm, held the same detached precision as the microscopes two floors down.
"I'm working," Yakanuke replied without looking up.
"Work requires energy."
"So does regret," he muttered, more to himself than to the being behind him.
Yaka smiled faintly. "Still haunted by conscience? You'll adjust. Everyone does, given time."
Yakanuke's pen stopped mid-sentence. "And if time is the thing you're trying to erase?"
"That's exactly why we must master it." Yaka's tone didn't shift. "The orphans, the trials—they are necessary. Without sacrifice, there is no progress. Without progress, there is only stagnation. You understand that better than anyone, don't you, Yakanuke?"
The journalist didn't respond. His throat felt dry.
When Yaka finally left, the office felt colder than before.
Night fell over the lab like a veil of ash.
Yakanuke sat by the rooftop again, the faint hum of generators below blending with the steady rhythm of rain. He raised his recorder to his mouth, pressing record.
"Day 47. Observation note. Subject 9764 continues unresponsive to verbal stimulus. Displays awareness of external environment but no recollection of personal identity. Researchers continue to categorize memory loss as induced dissociative regression."
His voice broke, and he shut the recorder off. The sound of static lingered for a second longer than it should have.
He lowered the recorder and exhaled. "You're just a moron," he whispered toward the courtyard below. "Why are you even here Yakanuke?" He whispered to himself in grief.
9764 stood again, drenched, barefoot on the wet concrete. The person lifted his head—just slightly—and for one impossible heartbeat, Yakanuke felt their eyes meet. It wasn't real, couldn't be real, but something in his heart stuttered. The umbrella slipped from his hand.
He felt the strangest flicker of familiarity, like déjà vu drawn from a dream he didn't remember dreaming.Why does he feel like I've known him before?
That night, Yakanuke dreamt of laughter.
Not the cruel kind that echoed through the hallways when experiments failed, but something softer. The laughter of a person beside him, sunlight glinting off a riverbank, the smell of sakura petals and antiseptic strangely mixed.
He woke up gasping, the sheets clinging to his skin. The ceiling above him flickered under the fluorescent lights.
"Akio," he whispered before he even realized the name had slipped from his tongue. His own voice startled him.Akio? Who are you?
The memories came like static flashes—faces, fragments, a promise in the rain.A person smiling, holding a notebook identical to his.A night they both swore they'd change the world together.A goodbye that ended with silence.
And then—darkness.
Something about Yaka. Something about an experiment being terminated.Something about him choosing to erase.
The next day, Yakanuke avoided Yaka. He buried himself in data, combing through records of memory-erasure trials. The files blurred together until one caught his attention:
Experiment Log 47-A: Subject 9764 (codename: "Akio") – Prior cognitive associations with age regression.
His blood ran cold.The text continued:
Researcher Yakanuke volunteered to undergo memory erasure of both him and Akio, from each others lives. Yaka will proceed to attack Akio, while Yakanuke will continue to work for Yaka as he is a valuable asset to the organization. Despite his betrayal.
He stared at the screen for what felt like hours.Volunteered. He had chosen this.He had erased himself—and the subject—so they would forget each other. And Yaka knew the whole time. And yet they kept him because he was a so called "Valuable Asset".
His hand trembled on the keyboard. Every heartbeat screamed why.
By evening, Yakanuke found himself on the rooftop again, staring down at Akio—Subject 9764—sitting quietly beneath the lab's security lights. The pharmacist looked smaller now from a distance in the pharmacy, shoulders drawn in, sorting bottles with Rumane. a friend of his.
The camera clicked, documenting. Yakanuke continued to observe from miles with his binoculars and his high tech initiated camera from Yaka. He didn't know why.
His thoughts spiraled. Each memory he recovered felt like glass digging into his mind—sharp, merciless, too bright. He remembered the first interview he ever did with Yaka, the idealism that had brought him here, the articles about ethical boundaries and the arrogance of science.
He'd come to expose Yaka.And instead, he'd joined him.
He pressed a hand to his temple. The edges of reality felt unstable, like film frames shaking out of order. Memories overlapped—Akio laughing beside him, Akio screaming in pain, Akio's voice calling his name through the glass.
He saw himself walking out of the haze of Akio's life, the memories flashing like fireworks in the night sky, Yaka's voice echoing through the haze:
"Terminate Akio, Yakanuke. It's the only way forward."
Yakanuke staggered backward, the rooftop spinning. The rain blurred the edges of the world.
He sank to his knees."I did this…" he whispered. "I erased us, Akio Hukitaske."
When the alarms started, he didn't notice at first. Only when security lights turned crimson did he realize he'd triggered an alert by accessing classified data. Footsteps thundered down the corridors below. Yakanuke barely registered the noise—his mind was still unraveling.
Yaka would know.Yaka always knows.
The journalist stumbled toward the exit door, clutching his head. The world bent sideways, memory bleeding into present—Akio's laughter dissolving into sirens from memory, rain merging with tears. He reached the stairwell, gripping the railing as if it could hold his sanity together.
He thought of the pharmacist—how every step of the experiment had stolen another piece of him.How Yakanuke's silence had been the sharpest knife of all.He'd told himself it was for the story. For truth. For science.
But the truth had always been Akio.And he'd erased it. And he fainted in the streets.
He woke to fluorescent light again—but this time, in a different room. The ceiling tiles were cracked, unfamiliar. The smell of antiseptic was stronger here, mixed with the sterile hush of a hospital.
Some stranger had brought him in. A nurse, maybe. He wasn't sure.His vision swam, the IV line pricking his arm like a leash. Machines beeped faintly at his bedside. And he was also older again to his own shock, Yakanuke didn't bother to wander why. as the serum seemed way to unpredictable.
Fragments of memory kept colliding—the laughter, the experiment, Yaka's voice. Akio's eyes.
He sat up, dizzy. The nurse tried to stop him, but he was already pulling the needle free, blood dripping down his wrist. He muttered something—an apology, maybe—and stumbled into the hall. He wandered aimlessly as his mind raced on Akio with his confused mind and the memories of Yaka mingling with his cousins and Akio's memories with distortion. And his own memories from the current present.
The clock on the wall read 12:07 AM.
The world outside the glass doors was a mirror of his mind: drenched in rain, distorted by city light. His hospital gown clung to him as he stepped into the downpour, barefoot, trembling but calm in a way that felt unnatural.
The streets were quiet.Neon signs blinked in the distance, their colors bleeding through puddles like dying stars.
He walked without knowing where he was going. Every corner of the city reminded him of something—of interviews long past, of streets he'd once walked with Akio, of the promise they'd made as friends to be friends forever and ever.
The memories flooded now, too many to hold back.
He remembered the first time Akio had called him "Nuke"—a teasing nickname that Yakanuke had pretended to hate.He remembered the way Akio had cried after his first application for his own pharmacy building and how it was almost a near fail, how they'd stayed up all night talking about changing the world together as friends with Hikata and more.
And he remembered realizing, too late, that truth was only currency in Yaka's hands.
He'd chosen the lab over loyalty.Science over humanity.Obedience over conscience.
Now, with every step through the rain, Yakanuke felt those choices crushing him—each memory a stone added to his heart.
He reached the intersection.
The signal light turned red. Rain slid down his face like tears he refused to name. Across the street, a café sign flickered faintly, half the letters burnt out. He thought of Akio again, of the times they'd sat in cafés debating philosophy and purpose, of how young they'd been, how foolishly idealistic.
"I wanted to save the world," he whispered. "But I forgot who I was saving."
He closed his eyes, the world tilting between memory and reality.Yaka's words echoed in his skull: Without sacrifice, there is no progress.
He almost laughed. "Then take me," he murmured. "Take me instead. AND LEAVE AKIO OUT OF THIS GARBAGE!"
Headlights flared at the end of the street—white, sharp, blinding.For an instant, he saw Akio's face reflected in the light, smiling, forgiving.
Yakanuke stepped forward, not out of despair but something quieter—a surrender to the truth he could no longer unsee.
The world slowed.The rain roared. And a car came speeding forward.
Headlights flare, the world slows, and everything fades to black before we hear the sound of rain again. And blood spilling from a body.
TO BE CONTINUED...