The lights of the laboratory pulsed red, flickering across blood-smeared walls and broken containment tubes. Ren didn't look back. He ran. Down the corridor where Sora once laughed. Past the doors where the first Argwan had screamed awake. Past the place where he'd become something else. He ran.
Behind him, the compound collapsed under chaos. Military units screamed orders. Argwan test subjects tore through metal walls like paper. The serum had worked — too well. And now it was unmaking the world.
Ren clutched the black case to his chest, lungs burning. Inside it: samples of the serum, notes, backup drives — and a photograph of her. Sora. He knew it was madness to take it, but he couldn't leave without her face. Not again.
A blast shook the hall. Lights died. Smoke poured through the vents. His hand slapped the emergency panel. The exit door opened one last time.
The forest outside was thick, wet with rain and silence. No sirens. No screams. Just the sound of his own ragged breath.
He stumbled through the underbrush until his legs gave out. He collapsed against a tree and vomited into the roots. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.."
A low voice broke the dark. "You shouldn't be here."
Ren raised his head, barely conscious. A figure stepped from the trees. Old, small-framed, draped in simple robes soaked by the rain. Eyes like dull iron — not threatening, but ancient.
"I have medicine," the old man said. "But only if you come willingly."
Ren opened his mouth, but only blood came out. Then, darkness.
—
He woke up in a house that smelled of woodsmoke and rice. The room was small, too quiet. His wounds were bandaged. His coat gone. The black case beside him, untouched.
The man from the forest sat beside a fire, humming a song Ren almost recognized. When Ren stirred, the man spoke without looking up.
"You fell out of the mouth of a dying god."
Ren said nothing.
"You were being hunted. Not just by them. But by something worse. Guilt, perhaps." The man looked at him then, eyes steady. "What did you do?"
Ren didn't answer.
"Good," the man said. "Keep it that way."
Ren stayed. Days passed. Then weeks. The village was old, hidden high in the mountain mist, surrounded by trees that whispered like voices from another world. The villagers didn't ask questions. They gave him a name. They gave him a field to tend. And slowly, his hands remembered the feel of life. Soil. Seeds. Wind.
The black case stayed buried under the floorboards of his new home. Alongside it, the photograph of Sora. He still dreamed of the lab. Still woke with his hands clenched in fists. But the screams faded.
And then — he met Aiko.
And for a while, the world was quiet.
Until Yui opened her eyes. And gold flickered where it shouldn't.
Yui? Aiko? Who are they?
* * * * *
Under a sky torn by thunder and the smell of lightning-split wood, Ren stumbled toward the barn, following the faint sound of something not quite weeping—more like the ragged breathing of someone trying not to exist. Rain blurred his vision, soaked him to the marrow, but even the storm couldn't drown out the shivering figure huddled in straw and shadows. Aiko. Knees to her chest. Eyes hollow.
Rain dripped from the rafters, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone like a second mouth about to speak the truth. Her sweater—too thin for the season—clung to the subtle swell of her stomach. Not fat. Not bloated. Pregnant. A secret shaped like guilt.
"I tried to kill her," she said, voice hoarse. "Twice."
She didn't cry. Aiko never cried. Ren had seen her take a knife to her own thigh to keep from screaming when her shoulder was dislocated. He had seen her walk barefoot across shattered glass just to prove a point. But now her fingers trembled over her stomach, clutching it like a loaded gun she couldn't bring herself to fire.
He didn't speak. The scars on her wrists were old; the new ones, angry and raw, mapped out her regret like a confession carved in flesh. Bruises bloomed where she'd struck herself, trying to punish the life she couldn't unmake. Aiko was war-wreckage in a woman's skin—never made for gentleness, always sharp-edged and smoke-scarred. Motherhood sat on her like rusted armor.
"They wanted to cut her out," she muttered, a bitter laugh escaping her. "Sell her to a backroom butcher in Osaka. Black clinic, no questions. No painkillers either." Her eyes flicked to him. "Guess I'm sentimental."
Ren knelt in the damp straw beside her. The smell of wet hay and iron bled into his throat, choking him. He didn't reach for her, not yet, just sat close enough that their warmth could mix in the air between them. When his fingers finally brushed hers, she flinched—but didn't pull away.
"Why?" she asked, not looking at him. "Why are you here, Ren Kuroda?"
For a breath, he almost told her. About the horrors he'd authored under the title "Project Eclipse." About Mei's screams as her body cracked open into something not quite human. About Sora, his sister, whom he'd buried with shaking hands, soil packed over golden eyes that had stared up at him long after breath stopped.
But he said instead, "The rain's getting louder."
Aiko leaned into him with the slow, bruised grace of someone learning to trust their wounds to another. Her breath brushed his neck. Neither of them said anything else. They didn't need to. Their silences fed each other, bitter sustenance for two creatures shaped by regret
. And they did. The villagers, always suspicious, quieted after that. But not completely. They still whispered about the strange man who never spoke of his past, and the woman with wolf-eyes who never let anyone touch her child. Together, they weren't a couple. They were camouflage.
That night, Aiko pressed a knife to Ren's throat as he lay beside her on the cold floor of their home.
"If you touch her," she said, "I'll carve out your lungs and make you watch yourself drown."
Ren didn't flinch. "If I wanted to hurt you, you'd be dead already."
"Arrogant bastard."
"Honest one."
She left the knife on the floor between them. They slept back-to-back, motionless. Like animals caught in the same snare.
Yui was born screaming, a sound too raw to belong to a creature so small. Aiko bit through her lip, blood pouring from her mouth like a ritual offering, refusing to cry out. Ren caught the child in his hands. For a moment, just one breathless instant, he thought she was Argwan—her skin too pale, her veins too bright—but when her eyes opened, they were dark. Human. Aiko's.
They told themselves they were safe.
Three months later, Ren woke to moonlight slicing across the crib. Yui was glowing—just faintly. Gold shimmered beneath her eyelids like a curse trying to wake.
He stumbled toward her, bile scorching his throat. "No. No, no—please—"
Aiko's hand clamped over his mouth. "Quiet," she hissed. Her voice was a blade. But her eyes… they were broken glass, reflecting every lie he'd told her.
"You knew," she said. "You fucking knew."
He dropped to his knees. The truth bled from him in chunks—Mei's mutation, the serum crafted in desperation, the curse stitched into his daughter's very blood. A legacy of monsters, passed from hand to hand like plague.
Aiko hit him. Hard. His lip split open. Blood filled his mouth.
"Monster."
"Yes."
"If she changes—"
"I'll kill myself before I let them take her."
She stared at him, then handed him a knife. Its weight was absolute.
"Swear it."
"I swear."
They buried the remaining serum that night, clawing at the earth with bare hands. Rain pelted their backs. The soil steamed from their heat. When they covered it again, Ren felt like he was burying Sora a second time.
"If you're lying," Aiko whispered, her mouth close to his ear, "I'll make you watch her die slow."
And he believed her. He always did
After few years ren and aiko's relationship had improved due to yui ,they said they will protect her , they always did. .
One day , The cicadas sang their shrill summer song, a chorus so constant it blurred into the background like breath. The rice fields shimmered under the noonday sun, swaying like an emerald sea, each stalk whispering secrets in the warm breeze. Ren Kuroda wiped the sweat from his brow and adjusted the straw hat that cast a thin shade over his eyes. His hands, once precise and sterile, capable of programming medical nanobots and dissecting genomes, were now calloused from months of manual labor—hoeing, planting, harvesting. It was a rhythm he had forced himself to learn. Pretend you belong here. Pretend you're just a farmer.
But the soil never let him forget.
It clung to his boots with a weight that was too familiar, whispering of the graves he'd failed to fill, of the children he'd turned into weapons, of the serum that had rewired human biology into something monstrous. No matter how many weeds he pulled or how many crops he coaxed from the dirt, the earth remembered. And so did he.
"Papa!"
The voice sliced through the haze of guilt like sunlight through storm clouds.
He turned, heart skipping.
Little footsteps padded over the wooden footpath between rows of rice. His daughter, Yui, was bounding toward him, her tiny legs kicking up droplets of muddy water. In her fists, she clutched a dandelion, half wilted from the sun. Her hair was the same color as his—dark, almost black—but when the light hit it just right, it shimmered with strands of gold.
Behind her came Aiko, her long sleeves tucked under a woven basket filled with vegetables. She moved with a practiced grace, the kind born from someone constantly alert, constantly calculating. Her smile was soft, but her eyes—those sharp, hawkish eyes—were always watching. Always reading him. Always knowing.
"Lunch is ready," Aiko said, her voice low but warm as she bent down to dust the soil off Yui's sunhat. Her fingers lingered on the child's curls, brushing away a loose petal. Yui giggled and looked up at her father expectantly.
Ren forced a grin, tightening his grip on the hoe. "Just one more row."
Aiko's smile didn't fade, but it didn't soften either. "The rice won't die if you stop early. She might."
Ren froze.
The words were a whisper, too calm for the weight they carried—but he heard them. Felt them settle into his spine like ice.
Yui tugged at his pant leg. "Papa, up!"
He crouched and lifted her into his arms, pressing her small form against his chest. For a moment, the world narrowed to the rhythm of her heartbeat. It was fast. Too fast. Her golden eyes looked into his—eyes that didn't belong to any normal child. They belonged to someone like Sora. Like Mei.
Like an Argwan.
That night, dinner was quiet.
Their farmhouse creaked with age. Wooden beams sagged with the weight of memory, and paper walls were patched with old newsprint to keep the wind from slipping in. The scent of miso and steamed rice filled the air, but Ren barely touched his food. Aiko, seated across from him, slid a small photo onto the table between them.
Yui's tiny handprint. Imprinted into the steel plate of the irrigation pump.
"She held her breath for three minutes today," Aiko said, her tone casual. "In the irrigation ditch."
Ren's grip on his chopsticks tightened until they snapped.
"She's just playing games," he muttered, his voice low.
"Games don't bend steel," Aiko replied, her gaze steady.
The television buzzed in the background, a cheerful anchor poking fun at "Amazon cult" rumors. Purple-skinned giants. Vanishing children. Glowing eyes. The world hadn't forgotten, even if it wanted to.
Even if Ren needed it to.
He excused himself early, stepping outside into the moonlit fields.
The night was heavy and wet, the soil damp from yesterday's rain. Crickets chirped in harmony with the lull of wind brushing over the rice. The stars blinked overhead, distant and uncaring. He stood motionless for a long time, his bare feet sinking into the mud, trying to let the cool earth bleed his memories out of him.
When he finally returned, Yui was asleep in her crib, the soft white sheet pulled up to her chin. Her breathing was too quiet. Too steady. Like she didn't need to breathe at all. Like something inside her was waiting to awaken.
Aiko stood behind him in the hallway, arms folded.
"She's still ours," she said softly, not quite a question, not quite an assurance.
Ren didn't answer. His eyes stayed locked on his daughter. "For how long?"
A crash outside.
Both their heads snapped to the window.
Ren moved first, his body already acting before his mind caught up. He slipped through the front door and scanned the darkness, barefoot on the wooden veranda. The wind had stopped. The night had fallen still.
Then—
A shadow moved near the field's edge.
Huge.
Unnatural.
He squinted. Violet skin. A body hunched, shoulders rising and falling with slow, monstrous breaths. It stood for a heartbeat—long enough for Ren to recognize the impossible shape of it—then vanished into the trees.
He ran.
But by the time he reached the spot, it was gone. All that remained was a crushed dandelion, pressed into the mud.
The next morning, the sun rose blood-orange.
Ren knelt in the field, not to farm—but to listen.
His fingers dug into the earth, trembling. It was warm. Too warm.
And beneath the topsoil, where roots tangled and worms writhed…
A tremor.
Rhythmic.
A heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Something alive. Something waiting.
The past wasn't buried.
It was growing
. Morning came slow in Hinokuma.
Not like the city, where alarms shrieked you awake like war horns and air tasted of exhaust. Here, the world woke with a yawn—sunlight stretching through bamboo blinds, the rooster giving his best half-hearted crow, and the kettle whistling on the clay stove like a lazy serpent.
Ren Kuroda was already awake, naturally.
Not because he needed to be—rice waited for no man, but it did have the decency to wait until breakfast—but because his daughter had declared war on sleep at precisely 5:47 AM.
"DAAAAAAAD!"
The cry echoed through their rickety farmhouse like an earthquake wrapped in honey.
Ren bolted upright, nearly knocking over the old lamp. Beside him, Aiko groaned, burying her face in the pillow.
"Your daughter's awake," she muttered.
"She has your lungs," Ren replied, voice still thick with sleep.
"She has your stubbornness."
"And your appetite."
"She ate chalk last week."
They paused.
"…okay, maybe that one's mine."
Ren rose, tugging on his threadbare yukata and padding barefoot across the creaky tatami to the adjacent room.
There she was, standing triumphantly in her crib—Yui Kuroda, three years old, tiny fists raised like a conquering general. Her cheeks were puffed, her bedhead was a tornado of dark curls, and her pajama shirt read "I'M THE BOSS" in glittering letters. One sock was missing. The other was on her hand.
"Papa!" she beamed, pointing dramatically to the window. "The sun's up! Why aren't you?!"
"Because the sun doesn't talk back," Ren said, lifting her up with a grunt. "And it never demands pancakes before six."
"But I'm not the sun," she said with faux sweetness. "I'm better."
Ren snorted, carrying her to the kitchen as she began a loud and enthusiastic chant of "PAN! CAKES! PAN! CAKES!"
Aiko followed ten minutes later, hair tied in a messy bun, an eyebrow already twitching as she stepped over Yui's trail of destruction—coloring books, a half-sucked rice cracker stuck to the door, and a suspiciously empty bottle of soy sauce.
Yui was perched on the table like a goblin, watching Ren flip pancakes like it was Olympic sport.
"Your cooking has improved," Aiko said, stealing one off the plate.
"I'm learning from the master." He gestured toward Yui, who was now attempting to butter a raw egg.
"She's going to grow up thinking eggs are supposed to be shiny."
"They're not?"
Yui dropped the egg on the floor. It exploded with a triumphant splurt. "Oops," she said with zero remorse.
Ren sighed, passing Aiko a towel. "She's definitely yours."
Later, as the sun climbed high over the green hills, Ren made his way into the fields.
He carried Yui on his back in a little harness she'd long since outgrown but still demanded to sit in. Her stuffed tanuki, "Captain Beans," hung upside-down from the side pocket.
"You're crooked," she announced, tugging his ear.
"You're heavy," he replied.
"I'm three!"
"Yeah, and dense."
She gasped. "Mama said you shouldn't insult people with farmer brains."
Ren turned slightly. "Excuse me?"
"Farmer brains are slow, but strong," Yui said with great authority. "You got both."
Aiko waved at them from the well, suppressing a laugh behind her hand.
"Don't encourage her," Ren groaned.
"I'm not. You're just losing an argument with a toddler."
The village had embraced the Kurodas slowly, like testing the water with a toe. Farmers were suspicious by nature—especially of strangers who didn't flinch when handling a sick goat or fixing an irrigation valve like they'd designed it in a lab.
But Ren helped when asked, bowed when appropriate, and brought sake to every seasonal gathering without fail.
Over time, the elders softened. Children began calling him "Uncle Ren." The priest even nodded at him once during a festival, which in local custom was the equivalent of a standing ovation.
But nothing erased his anxiety like seeing Yui play in the fields, hair streaming in the wind, laughter echoing over the paddies. She was sunshine bottled in a body too small to contain it.
And yet—sometimes, she stood still.
Too still.
Like the earth was whispering again.
That evening, they sat outside under the stars, Yui nestled between them, clutching Captain Beans like a life raft.
"Papa?" she said quietly. "What's a 'monster'?"
Ren stiffened. Aiko looked at him, eyes flickering.
"Where did you hear that?" he asked gently.
"Old Man Daichi said one came through the woods once. A big one. Purple. With gold eyes."
Ren forced a smile. "Sounds like a fairy tale."
"Am I a monster?"
The silence fell hard.
"No," Aiko said, pulling her close. "You're our daughter."
"Even if I bend the water pump again?"
"Especially then," Ren murmured, planting a kiss on her head.
That night, after Yui was asleep, Ren stood alone in the kitchen.
He opened the floorboards with trembling hands and took out the metal box.
Inside: documents. Photos. Samples.
And at the very bottom, a single vial. It shimmered faintly in the moonlight, a twilight color—just like the original serum. Just like what had changed Mei. What had changed everything.
Aiko appeared behind him, silent as breath.
"You're thinking about running again."
He nodded. "If they come for her…"
"They won't."
"You don't know that."
"I do." She touched his arm. "Because this time, you're not alone."
Ren looked at her, then at the ceiling where Yui slept above them.
No, he wasn't alone.
And maybe—just maybe—this time, the monster wasn't the one in the shadows.
It was the fear he had to bury.
And the family he had to protect