# Nine Lives in Neon Lights
## Chapter 5: Fractures and Frequencies
The next morning came too soon, dragged into existence by the metallic screech of a garbage truck just outside her window. The sound cut through her like a buzzsaw, and she sat up abruptly, heart racing. Her blanket was tangled around her legs, her pajamas damp with sweat.
The hum was still there.
That low, persistent vibration nestled at the base of her spine. Not painful—just there. Like a forgotten thought trying to crawl back into memory. She rubbed the spot absently as she got dressed, fingers brushing over skin that felt a little too warm, a little too sensitive. Probably stress. The doctor had mentioned post-trauma effects, right?
Her school uniform clung to her skin again like it had been woven from sandpaper. Even the socks felt like they were too tight, the elastic biting into her ankles. She gritted her teeth and endured. She was not going to be the girl who nearly died in a convenience store robbery and then lost her mind.
"Akira, don't forget your lunch!" her mother called from the kitchen.
"Got it!" she replied automatically, shoving the bento box into her schoolbag with shaking hands. She hadn't told her mother anything—nothing about the phantom scent, the constant sensory overload, or the flashes of impossible memory that came and went like lightning behind her eyes. How could she? She barely believed it herself.
The city greeted her with its usual symphony of chaos. But today, it was worse.
Every step on the pavement echoed through her bones. The footsteps of other commuters felt amplified, like drumbeats behind her eyes. She crossed the street just as a scooter passed too close, and the sharp whine of its engine stabbed her eardrums. She stumbled, heart skipping.
"Akira-chan!"
Hiroshi again.
She turned with effort, trying to mask the strain in her face. "Hey."
He jogged up beside her, clutching a half-eaten melon pan. "You look awful."
"Gee, thanks."
"No, seriously. You're pale. You didn't sleep, huh?"
She sighed. "Nightmares. And this city doesn't exactly whisper, y'know?"
"True," he said, offering her the rest of the bread. "Want some? Might help."
Akira shook her head. Even the scent—normally delicious—was too strong, too sweet. It turned her stomach. "I'm good. Just… not hungry lately."
He frowned but didn't push. Instead, he switched topics, rambling about his little brother's obsession with capsule toys. Akira let the noise wash over her, focusing on the cadence of Hiroshi's voice. It was grounding—comforting in a strange way, like a radio signal that came in clearly amid the static.
---
At school, things didn't improve.
Her classmates' chatter grated on her nerves. The chalk on the board sounded like it was gouging into her skull. The lunch bell nearly made her cry. When she touched her tray in the cafeteria, she swore she could feel the temperature of every individual grain of rice.
She tried to eat, tried to act normal. But her hands were shaking again.
"Yo, Yamamoto," a voice said—Kana, the blunt-tongued girl from her homeroom. "You spacing out or just tuning into the alien channel?"
Akira blinked. "Huh?"
"You've been twitchy all day. It's freaking people out."
"Sorry," Akira muttered. "Just tired."
"You sure you're okay?" Kana leaned in, uncharacteristically serious. "You weren't hit, right? I mean—at FamilyMart?"
"No. I wasn't," Akira said, too fast.
Kana raised an eyebrow. "Okay. Just… you've been weird since Saturday."
Weird. That was an understatement.
---
Later that afternoon, in the music room—her usual refuge when she couldn't take the chaos—Akira sat alone at the piano. The room was soundproofed, mostly. The faint hum of the city was still present, but it was tolerable here. Bearable.
She pressed a key, the soft note echoing. Another. Then another. The music flowed, unplanned, unpracticed. Her fingers moved faster than they should have, chasing patterns she didn't remember learning. The chords were strange, too—unusual scales, shifts in tempo, rhythms that felt natural but unfamiliar.
Halfway through, she stopped, hands trembling above the keys.
Where had that come from?
She wasn't that good at piano. She never had been. The piece she'd just played—if it was a piece—was nothing she'd ever heard before. It was like something had reached through her and played through her. She stood up too fast, nearly knocking the bench over.
Something was wrong.
Something was changing.
---
Walking home, Akira caught a glimpse of herself in a darkened window. Just a flash—but enough to make her stop. Her eyes.
For a moment, they looked… different.
Not the usual deep brown, but something golden—something too sharp, too reflective in the late sunlight. She stepped closer, blinking, but the illusion was gone. Just her regular tired reflection staring back.
She shook her head and kept walking, ignoring the goosebumps crawling across her arms.
She didn't know what was happening to her.
But it was getting harder to pretend everything was fine.
That night, sleep came reluctantly, like a guest she had to drag through the door. Akira lay on her side, eyes fixed on the faint moonlight spilling across the floorboards. The city outside murmured and breathed, never silent. But it wasn't the noise that kept her awake—it was the frequency.
There was something beneath the hum. A vibration she could feel in her teeth, in the lining of her ribs. Not sound, exactly. Not a real one, anyway. Like a tuning fork vibrating against her spine, invisible and persistent.
She turned over, curled tighter under the blanket.
Something was coming. Or maybe something had already arrived.
---
Her dreams were restless.
She stood in a vast, mist-shrouded forest. The air smelled of earth and electricity, like a thunderstorm waiting to happen. Branches stretched overhead like skeletal arms. A flicker of movement ahead—too fast to catch. She called out, but her voice came back wrong. Warped. Echoing.
Something answered. Not in words, but in sound.
A soft rustle. A crackle of static. And then a howl—low, otherworldly. Not quite animal. Not quite human. Her legs moved before she could stop them, carrying her deeper into the woods, the ground shifting beneath her feet like liquid shadow.
She stumbled into a clearing, and there—just for a heartbeat—she saw it.
A shape. Tall. Watching.
Eyes like molten gold.
Then the world fractured like glass, and she fell—
---
Akira shot upright in bed, gasping. The sheets were twisted around her legs, her hair damp with sweat. Her phone buzzed weakly on her nightstand—it was nearly 3 a.m.
Her breathing slowed gradually. Just a dream. Just her subconscious processing everything. The doctor had said hallucinations and nightmares weren't uncommon after trauma.
But she'd never dreamed like that before.
Her feet touched the cold floor, grounding her. She stood, walked to the bathroom, and splashed water on her face. The mirror above the sink was fogged from earlier, the small bathroom too warm in the summer night.
She wiped it clear.
Her reflection looked pale. Her eyes were wide, irises darker than usual. She leaned closer. Wait—was that something—
No. Nothing. Just her mind playing tricks.
She reached for the hand towel and stopped.
That smell again.
Faint, earthy. Moss, woodsmoke. A touch of something floral. Wild and sweet. It clung to her skin like perfume. But she wasn't wearing any. She hadn't since Saturday. And it wasn't coming from the towel, or the soap.
Her stomach turned.
This wasn't normal.
---
She returned to her room, crawled back into bed, and pulled the blanket over her head like a child hiding from monsters. But even there, in the darkness, the sensation remained. The phantom ache at her lower back flared again—not pain, but pressure. A bloom of warmth. Like something under her skin was trying to grow.
She curled tighter.
It's just stress. Just trauma. Just your brain breaking a little. You'll wake up and it'll be gone.
But even as she thought it, a part of her—buried deep beneath the surface—whispered something else.
This was only the beginning.