Chiaki's footsteps echoed softly along the stone path, the silence behind her deeper than before. She didn't know where she was going. Only that she had to keep moving—away from him, from the weight of his words, from the splintered truth unraveling inside her.
But then—
"Chiaki."
Desmond's voice called out, calm but firm, unwavering as ever.
She stopped.
He didn't raise his tone. He didn't follow. He didn't need to.
"If none of it was real…" he began, "then tell me this—why have you been seeing what no one else remembers?"
Her body went still.
"Those visions," he continued, hands still calmly behind his back, "the screaming, the white corridors, the machines humming behind glass. The girl you can never quite see. The fear that comes before the sound does. No one gave you those images. They weren't planted. They weren't part of the memory fracture. Those came from you."
The wind stirred gently around them, brushing fallen petals from the nearby vine-covered wall. Chiaki didn't move.
Desmond's voice lowered, laced with a quiet intensity now.
"Ask yourself why. Ask why you, of all people, hear echoes of what the world was forced to forget. Why you feel things that never happened in the life they gave you. If your memories were fake, then where are the real ones hiding?"
She slowly turned her head, not all the way, just enough that the edge of her face caught the light.
"You think I haven't asked that already?" she said hoarsely. "Every night. Every silence. Every time I woke up sweating without knowing why. I thought I was broken. I thought I was cursed."
Desmond's voice softened, but his words struck just as hard.
"You're not cursed. You're remembering."
She finally turned to face him again—eyes wet, jaw clenched, her hand still pressed over her chest as if trying to hold herself together.
"Then why now?" she asked. "Why do the memories only return when everything else starts to fall apart?"
Desmond's answer came without hesitation.
"Because whoever tried to bury your truth never expected you to come back here. Lyvoria Crest isn't just a vault for the dead, Chiaki. It's a mirror. And you've been standing in front of it for far longer than you realize."
Her breath caught.
He took one step forward—not close, just enough to be heard with the gravity it demanded.
"This city is made of bones, but yours are the only ones that remember what happened when the silence began. The others were erased. You remained. So ask yourself this—what exactly did you survive… and what did they leave inside you?"
Chiaki's hand dropped to her side, her nails digging into the skin of her palm. But this time, she didn't cry.
She just stood there. Quiet. Terrified. Awake.
The silence stretched again, but this time, it wasn't the same as before.
Chiaki's gaze had fallen to the stone path between them, yet her voice broke through the stillness—low, trembling, but deliberate.
"If I was a test subject…" she began, her words slow, each one heavy with the weight of truths she had never asked for. "If I wasn't even born like the rest of them… if everything about me is artificial—altered—controlled..."
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with something more fragile than confusion. Something human. Raw.
"…Then can someone like me even have a real future?"
Desmond said nothing, only tilting his head faintly—like he was studying a slow-burning fuse.
"Can I have a family?" she asked. "Could I… ever have children? Would they even be real? Or would they be broken like me? Like something patched together out of fear and fragments?"
Her hand returned to her chest again—not to shield herself, but to feel if her heartbeat was even hers.
"Tell me, Desmond. Do people like me get to be mothers? Or daughters? Or sisters?" Her voice cracked. "Or are we just experiments that wandered too far from the lab?"
The wind whispered faintly across the stone street. Desmond watched her closely, his posture relaxed, the shadows beneath his eyes unmoving.
And then he spoke—with a voice composed, measured… and merciless.
"You're not asking me that question," he said. "You're asking yourself if any of it was ever real. The mother you remember. The life they gave you. The grief you carry."
His words were still soft—but sharpened now, like needles hidden in silk.
"You've spent your whole life clinging to things someone else gave you. A name. A purpose. Even your pain. But here you are—cracked open—and for the first time… exposed."
Chiaki's breath trembled. She looked at him with quiet dread.
"I don't have the answer to your question," Desmond went on. "Because it was never meant to be answered. That's the cruelty of your kind, Chiaki—you were made to ask, not to know. And those of us who watched from above… we learned early that uncertainty breaks faster than truth ever will."
Her eyes widened, but he continued.
"You want comfort? You want hope?" he asked, stepping slightly closer. "Then rebuild it. Stitch it together from what they didn't burn. But remember—you are a result. A successful anomaly. And no matter what dreams you chase, no matter what future you invent... deep down, you'll always wonder which parts of you were theirs."
A faint smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not warm. Not human.
"Even your capacity for love… could be just another outcome they failed to document."
Chiaki flinched. A tear slipped down her cheek, and still, she didn't look away.
"And yet," Desmond said with a low, calculated tone, "despite all that… you still stand. Not because you're brave—but because no one gave you permission to fall."
He leaned slightly forward, voice like poisoned honey.
"That's what makes you dangerous, Chiaki. Not your power. Not your past. But the fact that you still believe you're more than the sum of what they did to you."
Chiaki didn't move. She stood frozen, the weight of everything pressing into her chest—grief, rage, shame, and something colder: fear. Not of him. But of what he might be right about.
Then came her whisper—fragile, hopeless.
"But what if the answer is no?"
Desmond's eyes sharpened, and for the first time, a shadow of something darker crossed his face.
"Then you become the reason the world regrets asking the question."
Chiaki's silence lingered, the heavy truths twisting tighter in her chest with every breath. The wind stirred again, but the chill no longer came from the air.
It came from within.
Her voice rose at last—quiet, distant, and hollow.
"If everything I was told… the memories… the home I believed in… was fabricated or rewritten…"
Her fingers curled tighter at her side.
"Then am I even… a Yasuda?"
Desmond didn't move. He only watched.
Her throat tightened as the words caught, but she forced them out.
"My name… Chiaki Yasuda… that name gave me meaning. It gave me family. Belonging. But if I was nothing more than a result—an anomaly stored behind glass and stitched together with lies—then…"
Her gaze lifted to him again, her voice suddenly trembling, "Then who was I before that name?"
Desmond's eyes glinted, and for a moment, the faintest smile crept across his face—more like a cut than comfort.
"Now that," he said, "is a question they never wanted you to ask."
He took one step forward, careful, deliberate.
"You weren't born as Chiaki Yasuda. That identity was chosen—assigned—stitched over the ashes of something they feared the world would never understand. You were given that name not to honor a legacy… but to bury one."
Her breath hitched.
"Your true name," he said slowly, "was one they erased from every document, every registry, every breath of history they could touch."
Then he spoke it aloud.
"Chiaki Suyomi."
The name struck something deep within her—like a bell she hadn't known existed, rung far off in the recesses of memory.
"Suyomi," she repeated under her breath, as if trying to taste it. "What does it mean…?"
Desmond's voice lowered, his tone sharpening again.
"It means they feared what you were. That you came from twilight—neither entirely light nor shadow. A name chosen by someone who believed you would one day outgrow the chains they placed on you."
Her hands trembled now.
"You were never meant to live as you. You were supposed to disappear beneath the Yasuda crest and become a controlled flame. But the fire never stayed in its lantern, did it?"
Chiaki swallowed hard. "Then why let me live?"
"To watch," he answered. "To observe what would happen if a ghost slipped through their system. You weren't forgotten by accident. You were released by design… like a needle in a haystack made of graves."
The name echoed again in her mind.
Chiaki Suyomi.
Not a lie. Not a title. Something older. Something real.
The name struck her like the cracking of stone under pressure—
Suyomi.
It wasn't just a word. It was a fracture.
Chiaki froze, the world around her muffled as if sound itself recoiled from what she had just heard. The echo of it pulsed in her ears—not from Desmond's lips, but from somewhere older. Somewhere locked beneath her ribs.
Her breath caught. Her balance wavered.
And then it came.
Not in flashes, not in dreamlike fragments—
But clear, like a curtain being torn open to reveal what had always been there.
She saw a girl standing barefoot on cold metal, surrounded by towering lights.
She saw gloved hands adjusting dials. A chamber flooding with a pale blue glow.
The girl had no name on her wristband—only a string of symbols and numbers.
But someone had whispered her name once, in a voice full of sorrow, as they slipped a blanket over her trembling shoulders:
Suyomi.
Chiaki stumbled back, hand flying to her chest, as if trying to catch something falling inward. The weight of memory settled in her spine—not imagined, not constructed, but remembered.
Desmond took a slow step forward, still composed.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said, eyes narrowing slightly. "The walls breaking down."
She shook her head, but it was weak. Defensive. Not rooted in anything solid.
"I… I don't remember that," she muttered, almost pleading. "I remember my mother's touch. Her voice. The garden. The—"
"Images designed to soothe you," Desmond replied coldly. "To contain you. The name Yasuda was never yours. It was given, after the fact. After your resonance stabilized—after the Soul Severance succeeded."
Her breath hitched.
"I was never in a facility—"
"But your resonance says otherwise," he cut in. "Your visions? The screaming? The scent of sterile metal? That was never imagination. You weren't remembering someone else's pain. You were remembering your own."
Chiaki turned away from him, trembling. The world tilted. The graves. The name. Her name.
Suyomi.
It didn't feel foreign. It felt buried.
"I don't want this," she whispered.
Desmond's expression was unreadable—neither cruel nor kind. Just still.
"Wanting has nothing to do with it," he said. "You are who you are. What they did can't be undone. But now you have a choice: deny the truth and stay fractured… or become whole, no matter how much it hurts."
She clenched her jaw, tears rising again—not out of weakness, but the crushing, terrifying weight of clarity.
"I thought I was a daughter. A person. A life that mattered."
"You still are," Desmond said quietly. "Just not in the way they told you."
Chiaki turned back to face him—her voice almost silent, but clear.
"…Then who is Chiaki Suyomi?"
Desmond tilted his head.
"Someone the world tried to erase."
The wind quieted. Even the sound of distant footsteps seemed to fade as Chiaki stood still, her eyes lowered to the ground.
For a long moment, she didn't speak. Her fingers slowly uncurled from the fabric at her chest. Her breath began to settle—not because the pain had passed, but because something deeper had begun to ignite beneath it.
Then, slowly, she stood.
One foot. Then the other. Her body no longer trembling, though her hands remained tight at her sides.
Her eyes lifted to meet Desmond's, not with fear, but with something sharper—measured. Grounded. Her voice, when it came, was calm.
"No."
Desmond blinked, just once.
Chiaki took a small step forward, her spine straightened, her shoulders no longer slumped beneath the weight of doubt.
"I don't care what you call me. I don't care what names you try to dig up or what visions you say I've forgotten. I'm not your experiment. I'm not your project. And I'm not some shadow wearing someone else's name."
Her voice was steady now, each word deliberate.
"I am Chiaki Yasuda. That's the name my mother gave me. The name the people I care about call me. That's who I've chosen to be—no matter what lies beneath it."
Desmond's gaze narrowed, faintly. His composure didn't falter, but a coldness began to creep into the corners of his smile.
"You're clinging to a mask," he said. "One made for you."
Chiaki took another step, unflinching.
"Then let it be my mask. My choice. Not yours. Not theirs. If I've been broken, then I'll decide what to build from the pieces."
The wind returned again, brushing her hair across her face, but she didn't move to fix it. Her stance was firm.
Desmond studied her for a moment, the silence between them taut as a blade's edge. But something in his expression shifted. Just slightly.
Not disappointment. Not anger.
Amusement.
"You're stronger than I expected," he said finally. "That's good. You'll need to be."
Chiaki didn't respond. She just stared him down, heart pounding—not with fear, but defiance.
Because in that moment, no matter what she had been…
She was herself.
To be continued...