Nine Lives in Neon Lights
Chapter 11: The Echoes of What Was
The morning sunlight, usually a welcome beacon through her apartment window, felt like a harsh spotlight. Akira woke with a profound sense of exhaustion, as if her entire nervous system had run a marathon during the night. The lingering feeling of the estate's peculiar stillness had vanished, replaced by an unsettling agitation. Her senses, which Ryouta had begun to help her manage, now felt frayed at the edges, less a finely tuned instrument and more a hyper-sensitive wound.
At school, the usual ambient sounds of hallways—distant shouts, locker doors clanging, the rhythmic squeak of sneakers—hammered against her skull. She squinted, the fluorescent lights burning with an abnormal intensity. Movement in her peripheral vision became more frequent, more vivid than before. A fleeting blur of motion near a drinking fountain, a swift, dark shape disappearing behind a classroom door. She'd whip her head around, eyes searching, but always, inevitably, found nothing but empty space. Fatigue, she told herself, clamping down on the rising panic. Just over-stimulated nerves. I didn't sleep enough.
During chemistry class, Professor Yamazaki's lecture on enzyme kinetics became a distorted murmur. Akira's attention drifted, pulled inexorably inward. The classroom seemed to dissolve, replaced by a sudden, jarring vision.
A moonlit forest. Leaves, dark and slick with recent rain, glistened under a skeletal canopy. The air was cool, carrying the scent of damp earth and something wild, primal. She heard a voice, a soft, ancient whisper, calling her name—but it wasn't "Akira." It was a sound like wind through tall grass, reverent and profound: "Tsuki-no-ko." Child of the moon. The words resonated deep within her, a forgotten echo. She looked down at her hands. They were not her own. Instead, dark, slender digits, tipped with sharp, non-human claws, splayed against the forest floor. The image was so crisp, so terribly real, she could almost feel the rough bark under her abnormal fingertips.
She gasped, wrenching back to the present with a jolt so violent her chair scraped loudly against the floor. Professor Yamazaki paused mid-sentence, looking over his spectacles with mild irritation. Akira stared at her hand, her knuckles white. Her pen, gripped too tightly during the vision, had snapped cleanly in half, its jagged edge piercing her palm. A thin line of bright crimson welled up, trickling down her skin.
"Miss Yamamoto? Is there an issue?" Professor Yamazaki inquired, his voice laced with concern, noticing the blood.
"No, Sensei," Akira managed, forcing a weak smile as she quickly hid her bleeding hand under the desk. "Just... a silly accident. Lost my grip." Her heart hammered, not from the cut, but from the horrifying clarity of the hallucination. This is getting worse, she thought, a cold dread seeping into her bones. The trauma is manifesting in new ways.
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That afternoon, the atmosphere at Ryouta's estate felt subtly altered. The usual serene tranquility seemed to hold a sharper edge, a tension Akira couldn't quite place. Ryouta himself seemed… different. Less of the calm, almost nurturing presence she'd grown accustomed to, and more acutely analytical, a distant observer.
He merely glanced at her bandaged palm when she arrived in the laboratory. "You are merging faster than anticipated," he stated, his voice devoid of concern, almost an objective scientific observation. He didn't ask what happened, as if he already knew. The detached observation sent a shiver through her.
Akira, frustrated and unnerved by his coldness, demanded, "Merging? What does that even mean, Kuroda? What is happening to me? What did you do to me? And what was that... that vision I had this morning?" She pointed frantically to her head. "It's getting more vivid. I saw... I saw claws."
He turned from the apparatus he was setting up, his dark eyes meeting hers. There was no softness, only a profound, unsettling stillness. "You will recall when the time is appropriate, Yamamoto. For now, you must simply endure the instability. Resist the urge to define it by your former understanding." He offered no further elaboration, his expression a polite but firm wall. He still wasn't giving her the answers she desperately craved, only more enigmatic pronouncements.
They moved to the garden to continue her sensory training, focusing on isolating scents. But Akira found herself more sensitive than ever. The distinct aroma of the aged trees, the subtle dampness of the moss, the delicate fragrance of unseen flowers – it all hit her with amplified force. Then, it emerged: a phantom odor, chillingly familiar, yet far more potent than before. It was the pungent scent of damp fur and raw earth, but now imbued with something else, a deep, unsettling musk, hinting at untamed power, almost predatory. Her stomach clenched. It was a scent of dominance, of threat.
As she struggled to control the new influx of sensory information, her gaze drifted to Ryouta. He stood perfectly still, his back to her, observing a distant bird. For a single heartbeat, his shadow, cast long by the setting sun, seemed to detach from his form, undulating independently for a fraction of a second before snapping back into place, a seamless part of him. Akira blinked, rubbing her eyes. No, that's just my eyes, the exhaustion. My brain is misfiring. But the image lingered, chillingly clear. She stared at him, her breath held. He slowly turned, catching her gaze. He said nothing, his expression unreadable, but a faint, almost imperceptible shift in his posture suggested awareness. The air thickened with unspoken questions and terrifying possibilities.
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Meanwhile, across the city, driven by a potent cocktail of worry and unspoken rejection, Hiroshi took matters into his own hands. Under the cloak of early evening, long after the last club activities had ended, he slipped back into the deserted school. The student records office, usually under lock and key, yielded to a simple, forgotten maintenance key he'd 'borrowed' from the janitor's cart. He felt a surge of illicit adrenaline as he navigated the dim corridors, the silence of the empty building unnerving him.
He located Ryouta Kuroda's transfer documents easily enough. But as he scanned the file, a knot tightened in his stomach. The papers were heavily redacted, swaths of black ink obscuring vital information. Contact details, previous school records – all blacked out. His worry deepened into alarm. This wasn't standard procedure for a transfer student. He scoured the pages, searching for anything. Then he found it. Ryouta's birthdate was conspicuously absent, replaced by an empty space. And the only emergency contact number listed was a now-disconnected line. Who is this guy?
Just as he was about to give up, his fingers brushed against a loose paper tucked into a sub-folder. It was a photograph, a black-and-white portrait of Ryouta. But it looked... wrong. The paper felt thick, aged, and Ryouta's expression, while familiar, seemed subtly different, the eyes holding a maturity that felt ancient. It looked like a picture taken decades ago, not of a contemporary high school student. He quickly snapped a photo of it with his phone before carefully replacing everything. He exited the office, the quiet clicks of the locks sounding ominously loud in the deserted building. His heart pounded with a new, terrifying certainty: something was profoundly wrong with Ryouta Kuroda, and Akira was caught in its orbit.
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That night, the neon pulse of the city seemed amplified, its vibrant glow feeling less inviting and more predatory as Akira walked home alone. Her senses were on a knife's edge, every distant siren, every distant conversation, every passing vehicle a jarring intrusion. The air, usually just smog and exhaust, now carried a chilling tapestry of unfamiliar scents: the metallic tang of iron, the damp, earthy smell of moss, and that undeniable, deeply unsettling musky, animalistic odor she'd encountered at the estate. It was everywhere now, subtly woven into the urban fabric.
She began seeing them—pairs of glowing eyes in the shadowy recesses of alleyways, low to the ground, like feral creatures lurking just beyond the reach of the city lights. Amber, gold, sometimes a startling, luminous green. She'd turn her head, look directly at them, and they'd vanish, absorbed back into the darkness. Hallucinations. Absolute exhaustion. I'm cracking up. The denial was a desperate mantra, repeated endlessly in her mind.
Just as she reached her apartment building's heavy entrance, a whisper, distinct and chilling, reached her ears. It wasn't in her head; it was behind her, a dry, raspy sound, like old leaves skittering across pavement. "Not ready yet… but soon."
She spun around, hair whipping around her face, heart hammering against her ribs. No one. The street was empty, save for the distant glow of a convenience store and the faint hum of traffic. Her building's entrance stood silent, unmoving. She fumbled with her keys, her fingers clumsy, and practically threw herself inside.
She locked the door, leaning against it, trembling. The apartment was dark, quiet, a familiar sanctuary that now felt less secure. She made her way to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face, trying to shake off the lingering dread. She glanced into the mirror, catching her reflection.
For a terrifying, drawn-out second, her image in the polished glass lagged subtly behind her movements. Her arm, raised to wipe her face, moved, but her reflection's arm followed a heartbeat later, a ghostly echo. Akira froze, her breath hitching, staring into her own wide, terrified eyes.
"What am I becoming…?" she whispered, the question a raw, desperate plea to the glass.
Behind her reflection, for just a heartbeat, a second set of glowing amber eyes blinked open, deep within the mirror's shadowy depths—then vanished, leaving only her own horrified face staring back.