Nine Lives in Neon Lights
Chapter 16: The Growing Shadow
The nights became a blurred landscape for Akira. The mist-shrouded forest of her dreams no longer felt like an escape, but a training ground. Her dream-self, sleek and agile, moved with a terrifying grace, the howls around her growing louder, more urgent, and now, undeniably, echoing with a primal kinship that sent shivers down her waking spine. She often awoke to the faint, yet distinct, scent of damp earth and wild fur clinging to her, a residue of the dream-world seeping into her reality. The persistent vibration in her lower back had intensified, a constant thrumming presence, no longer painful but deeply unsettling, a sensation that demanded acknowledgment.
Her days at school were an exercise in controlled chaos. The fluorescent lights of the classrooms now seemed to throb with an unbearable intensity, casting harsh, almost painful glows on textbooks. The murmur of voices in the hallway, once background noise, splintered into individual words, fragments of conversations, each one a sharp jab to her overstimulated ears. She found herself retreating, seeking the quiet corners of the library or the rarely used stairwells, just to escape the overwhelming sensory deluge. The only place where her senses found a semblance of equilibrium was Ryouta's estate.
Ryouta, a silent anchor in her storm, continued his enigmatic tutelage. He rarely offered explanations, instead focusing on practical exercises to hone her control. He'd place an ordinary object before her – a chipped ceramic teacup, a smooth river stone – and instruct her to "feel its essence," to perceive beyond its physical form. At first, she felt nothing but the cold, hard surface. But as she focused, breathing deeply, quieting the frantic hum of her nerves, faint pulses would emerge. The teacup held a faint, residual warmth, a memory of countless hands. The stone resonated with a deep, slow vibration, an echo of its ancient, geological past. It was like learning a new language, one spoken not with words, but with subtle energies.
Her control over her own burgeoning strength also grew. When Ryouta instructed her to calm the thrumming in her lower spine, it would still, becoming a manageable hum. Sometimes, when he pushed her, urging her to reach deeper, to extend her perception, a strange heat would bloom in her lower back, accompanied by a fleeting sensation of length, a phantom appendage she instinctively knew was not human. She'd always flinch, pulling back, her denial a desperate shield. Ryouta would simply watch, his expression unreadable, and guide her to breathe, to recenter.
The true tests, however, came unexpectedly. One afternoon, while walking through the city's bustling market with her mother, Akira's senses were overwhelmed. The myriad smells of street food, the loud vendor calls, the crushing press of bodies – it was too much. Her vision blurred, the vibrant neon signs of the shops bleeding into each other. Then, through the chaos, she saw it: a shimmering distortion in the air near a busy intersection, like heat rising from asphalt on a summer day, but far more intense. Within the distortion, she glimpsed multiple pairs of eyes, glowing with an unnatural, predatory amber. They were everywhere, yet nowhere, flitting through the crowd, vanishing as soon as her gaze directly landed on them. They were not just one, but many, silent observers hidden in plain sight. She stumbled, clutching her mother's arm, her face pale.
"Akira-chan, what's wrong?" her mother asked, alarmed.
"Just… too many people," Akira mumbled, pulling away, her heart hammering. She knew it wasn't just "too many people." She was seeing them more frequently now, these unseen watchers, their presence a chilling certainty.
Back at the estate, the phenomena grew even more personal. While walking alone through the sprawling, overgrown sections of the garden, a sudden, piercing chittering sound echoed directly inside her mind, not through her ears. It was accompanied by a wave of raw, untamed hunger, a sensation so primal it made her stomach clench. Her eyes darted wildly, scanning the shadows beneath ancient, gnarled trees. There, half-hidden by a weeping willow, she saw it clearly: a low-slung, sleek shape, moving with an unnatural fluidity, too fast, too silent for any animal she knew. It had glowing golden eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on her. Then it vanished, melting into the deeper shadows. Akira froze, a cold dread washing over her. This was no stress-induced hallucination. This was real. And it was watching her.
The growing connection with Ryouta deepened with each passing day. He was her only confidant, the only one who seemed to understand, even without words, the terrifying reality of her changing existence. Their shared secret, the silent acknowledgment of her accelerating transformation, forged an undeniable bond between them. She found herself unconsciously seeking his gaze, relying on his steady presence to ground her. The subtle romantic current that had always hummed between them intensified, a magnetic pull in a world that felt increasingly alien. She trusted him, a trust born not of conventional understanding, but of shared, terrifying truths.
Hiroshi's Mounting Frustration
Hiroshi's world felt increasingly cold, tinged with a gnawing anxiety that ate at his sleep. Akira was slipping away, not just physically into Ryouta's reclusive estate, but emotionally, mentally. The cinema trip had been a disaster, a stark illustration of the chasm growing between them. She was always distant, flinching at loud noises, speaking in vague, apologetic terms. He kept trying to reach her, sending her old photos of them together, sharing memories of their childhood, anything to remind her of the Akira he knew, the one he so desperately wanted back. Each effort felt like throwing pebbles into a vast, silent ocean.
His investigation into Ryouta Kuroda had become an obsession, fueled by a terrifying cocktail of worry for Akira and a growing suspicion of what Ryouta truly was. He'd exhausted the usual routes: school records, which remained stubbornly blank beyond the bare minimum; municipal archives, where the Kuroda name appeared linked to the estate for centuries, yet individual records were sparse, almost non-existent for long periods. It was as if entire generations simply didn't exist in official documents.
"There's something deeply wrong here," Hiroshi muttered to himself one night, hunched over his desk, surrounded by piles of copied documents and printed web pages. He'd gone beyond just official channels. He'd started digging into obscure historical societies, local folklore collections, and even old gossip columns from forgotten newspapers.
His research led him to a series of chilling anecdotes, not in any official record, but in hushed whispers and faded local histories. He found tales of the Kuroda family's unusual longevity, rumors of individuals who lived for far longer than humanly possible, appearing in records spanning decades, sometimes even centuries, yet always looking the same. There were vague mentions of peculiar "family traits," a "certain look" that defied the passage of time. He even found a cryptic reference in a very old, self-published local history book about a Kuroda patriarch, noted for his striking appearance, who was rumored to have been seen in town gatherings almost fifty years apart, without seeming to age a day. The book dismissed it as "countryside exaggeration," but the pattern was undeniable.
"This is insane," Hiroshi whispered, running a hand through his hair. "It's like he's... immortal." He didn't believe in magic or ancient curses. His mind, conditioned by logic and reason, struggled to reconcile these facts. He tried to rationalize it: extreme plastic surgery, a family secret involving identity swapping, or perhaps a series of individuals incredibly adept at maintaining an identical facade across generations. But the sheer consistency of the descriptions, the same dark eyes, the same quiet demeanor, across such vast spans of time, gnawed at his logical mind. It felt like something beyond human capability, yet he refused to entertain anything supernatural.
His search for "secret societies" or "cults" connected to the Kuroda family had also yielded disturbing, but still human, results. He found mentions of reclusive, influential families who operated outside conventional societal norms, maintaining immense power through secrecy and manipulation. Some were tied to whispers of radical philosophical or pseudo-scientific groups experimenting with extreme longevity or mind-altering techniques. He even found dark accounts of cults that practiced unusual rituals, some involving animalistic symbolism, but always framed within a human, if twisted, context. These were dangerous people, he concluded, masters of deception and control.
Hiroshi clutched a printout of an old town registry. A name, strikingly similar to Ryouta's, appeared on a census from 1952, listed at the Kuroda estate. Next to it, a handwritten note from a long-dead registrar read, "Remarkably unchanged since '02." '02? That would mean 1902. If it was the same person, that meant Ryouta Kuroda, or someone who looked exactly like him, had been actively living in that estate for over fifty years at that point. It defied all logic.
The more he dug, the deeper the rabbit hole went, each "discovery" only raising more terrifying questions that his rational mind struggled to answer. He saw the threads of a meticulously crafted illusion, a life lived in the shadows, defying all normal human parameters. He was convinced Ryouta was dangerous, not with physical violence, but with a insidious power to corrupt, to transform. He was stealing Akira, piece by piece, replacing her with something cold and distant.
He had to act. He couldn't stand by and watch Akira disappear. He decided he needed to confront Ryouta directly, to expose his lies, to pull Akira away from his influence. He knew it would be risky, but he was her last, best hope. He just needed the right moment, the undeniable evidence that would force Akira to see the truth.
The Pull of Two Worlds
Akira, meanwhile, continued her uneasy dance between her two lives. She still attended school, though her concentration was fractured, her mind often drifting to the hum of the garden, the echoes of unseen figures. She tried to make time for Hiroshi, managing a few awkward lunch breaks or a rushed study session. Each time, she saw the worry in his eyes, the subtle desperation as he tried to bridge the growing gap between them. She knew he cared, deeply, and a part of her yearned for the simplicity of their friendship. But she also knew he couldn't understand, couldn't even begin to grasp the terrifying reality that was becoming her world.
Her dreams were now her true reality, the mist-shrouded forest her battleground. She moved through it with increasing ease, her senses sharpened, her instincts honed. The howls no longer terrified her; they called to her, a chorus of wild kinship. She felt a growing strength, a raw, untamed power thrumming just beneath her skin, mirroring the phantom pulse in her lower back. She was no longer just dreaming of being a creature of the wild; she was becoming one.
One evening, after another intense session at Ryouta's, where he pushed her to "feel the currents in the very air," she was walking home, the neon lights of the city a shimmering, overwhelming blur. The familiar scent of iron and damp earth was almost suffocating now, mingled with a pervasive, musky animal odor she couldn't place. The glowing amber eyes were everywhere, not just in her periphery, but almost openly, flitting through the deeper shadows of alleys, sometimes pausing, unblinking, fixed on her. She saw figures, too, faint outlines that flickered at the edge of her vision, moving with an unnatural speed, too quickly to be human. They seemed to follow her, a silent, unseen entourage.
Then, as she approached a narrow, unlit alley, the air grew thick, heavy with an almost palpable anticipation. The myriad sounds of the city seemed to dim, replaced by a low, guttural murmur that vibrated directly within her skull, a language she instinctively understood as a warning. From the depths of the alley, two sets of glowing golden eyes materialized, larger and more intense than any she had seen before. They didn't vanish. They moved, slowly, deliberately, emerging from the shadows. Behind them, two sleek, low-slung forms began to coalesce, their outlines shifting, almost liquid in the dim light. They were too large for domestic animals, too quiet for stray dogs. They moved with an unsettling grace, a predatory stillness.
Akira froze, her heart hammering against her ribs. The phantom appendage at her back pulsed violently, a surge of adrenaline flooding her system. Her body tensed, preparing for something she didn't understand, but knew was imminent. This was not a dream. This was not a hallucination. This was real. And it was here.