Four days.
It had been four days since the fireworks lit up the sky, since laughter turned to silence and Celia's smile faded into something he hadn't seen before—hurt.
Ren hadn't responded to the crew's messages. He just… didn't have it in him.
Ren walked the quiet back streets of the city now, where the neon signs were dim and the vending machines hummed in place of conversation. The breeze carried the faint scent of burnt oil and old rain. His hoodie was pulled low over his head, and his steps echoed slightly on the damp concrete.
He turned a corner—and stopped.
There, leaning against a rusted metal railing that overlooked the drainage canal, stood a man in a crumpled brown trench coat. His collar was up. His hair was a mess of salt-and-pepper strands. One hand held a cigarette. The other held a flask.
His badge still hung from his belt. Barely visible. But still there.
Ren recognized him instantly.
Detective Nakamura.
The same man who had stormed into his hospital room the night his world collapsed. Who had thrown cold questions at him while the IV was still in his arm and the blood hadn't dried on his bandages. Who didn't believe a word about monsters, just kept asking if Ren was high, or if someone had really broken in, or if he'd killed his parents himself in some fugue state.
Back then, Ren had been too shocked to cry. Too broken to fight back.
Now?
Now he just froze.
Nakamura glanced at him. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw unshaven. There was a tiredness in his face that no sleep would fix.
"Took a shot in the dark," the man said, voice low and rough. "Didn't expect you to actually come this way. Lucky me."
Ren didn't reply.
The detective exhaled smoke, slow. "You remember me."
Ren's fingers curled at his sides. "Yeah."
"Good." Nakamura took a pull from the flask, winced, then looked up at the overcast sky. "Would've felt worse if you forgot. I was… a bit of an asshole that night."
Ren's jaw clenched. "You think?"
Nakamura gave a bitter chuckle. "Yeah. I do."
He paused. Something heavy shifted in his shoulders, like a man trying to put his own weight down for just a second.
"My wife's dead," he said, eyes fixed somewhere past the skyline, where the sun was bleeding into the clouds. "So's my eldest."
He took a swig from his flask and grimaced.
"I came home to find the house leveled. Like it had imploded inward. Walls crushed. Roof caved in. Like something huge passed through, but left no trace. No footprints. No witnesses. Just rubble… and them, underneath it."
His voice dropped, hoarse and hollow.
"Two months ago. Right after the school year started. No press. No headlines. I was told to process it quietly. That the higher-ups were already handling it. I got a condolence letter and a gag order on the same damn day. Quiet funeral. I buried them myself."
Ren felt something twist deep inside him. A cold, leaden knot in his stomach.
"I've got one son left," Nakamura continued, his voice quieter now. "Kaito. He disappeared the day before that. Just one day before. No note. No messages. No goodbye. Just… gone."
His lips curled bitterly.
"And I used to think maybe he ran off. That maybe he was ashamed of something. But now?"
He looked at Ren fully, his eyes hollow and aching.
"I think whatever took my family... got him first."
Ren stayed still. The air between them felt paper-thin.
"I started digging after the funerals," Nakamura muttered. "Pulling strings. Following rumors. Started seeing holes in places I shouldn't be looking. My old division—Special Crimes—they've logged stuff. Weird bodies. Missing kids. Impossible signs. I know it's monsters. Same as you said that night."
He paused.
"And I know I didn't believe you then. You were bloodied, half-conscious, and rambling about seeing stuff that shouldn't exist. I thought you were in shock. But I know better now."
Nakamura stepped closer, breath sharp with whiskey and grief.
"Your sensei pulled you out of further questioning. Yujiro. That man's got more enemies than the Tokyo mob and more reach than any of them. I got stonewalled. But now?"
His voice cracked. The words almost broke apart.
"Now I'm just a father. Who buried half his family. Who let his son walk out that door. And I need you to tell me what happened to Kaito."
Ren looked down. His fists were clenched. His whole body was shaking.
"I—" He swallowed. "I don't know how to say it."
"Then don't say it right," Nakamura said, stepping even closer. "Just say it. Please."
His voice faltered. The cigarette dropped from his fingers and hissed on the wet pavement.
"I need to know."
Ren felt it all crash into him at once.
The weight. The memories. The screaming. The blood.
He looked at the broken man in front of him, and for once, saw not the badge. Not the interrogator. But a father. A grieving father who hadn't been there when it mattered most.
Ren's voice came low and hoarse.
"Kaito turned."
Nakamura stiffened.
"I don't know how," Ren said. "But he wasn't human anymore. Not when I saw him."
He looked the man in the eyes.
"He killed two of his bullies. Yuto and Daichi. Beat them until there was nothing left. He even killed his own homeroom teacher. Then…" His throat went tight. "Then your wife. And your son."
Nakamura staggered like he'd been struck.
"I didn't know until it was too late," Ren continued, his voice cracking. "He had transparent skin, wet hair, hollow eyes. He said it was because... because they all ignored him, he was bullied to the place he was."
Silence. Then Ren added, brokenly:
"He said you never listened. That nobody did."
Nakamura crumpled back against the railing, staring at the canal with wide, hollow eyes.
"I thought he was just being dramatic," he whispered. "Thought it was teen angst. He was always sensitive, but I figured he'd grow out of it. God. I never even asked what was wrong when he came home with bruises. I just told him to toughen up."
His fingers trembled, reaching to his eyes like he could stop the tears before they fell. But they came anyway—raw, sudden, unstoppable.
"I failed him," Nakamura breathed. "I failed all of them."
Ren stepped back, chest tight. "I didn't listen to him either and then I killed him," he said. "When I saw him... knowing that he killed my parents—I lost it. I wasn't thinking. I just wanted it to stop."
He looked down at his hands.
"I didn't even know how I did it. Some... energy. Some power. It came out of me like it wasn't mine."
The detective didn't move for a long moment.
Then he looked at Ren. Really looked at him.
"I believe you."
Ren blinked.
"I believe every word," Nakamura said quietly. "Because I saw what was left. And you don't fake that kind of carnage."
He straightened up, slow and tired.
"I won't report this," he said.
Ren stared, stunned.
"You're still a kid," Nakamura said. "Still figuring yourself out. Don't let this rot you."
Ren swallowed hard.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "About your family."
Nakamura gave a dry, humorless smile.
"So am I."
Nakamura's voice faded with his steps, the sound of his shoes swallowed by the city's dusk and shadows. His trench coat caught the wind one last time before he vanished into the alley's depths—less a detective now, more a ghost chasing the memory of what he'd lost.
Ren stood frozen on the street, a sick churn in his stomach and fire behind his eyes. The air tasted like rust and regret. And no matter how much he inhaled, he couldn't shake the feeling that everything still hung in limbo.
He had told the truth. Finally.
And still, it wasn't enough.
Later That Night
The city gave way to the dark edges of the forest path where the ship was.
Ren crept up the familiar gangplank, boots quiet against the metal floor. Lights were dim inside. A low hum of sleeping machinery pulsed beneath his feet.
He moved carefully, past the sleeping quarters, past the lounge where empty tea mugs still sat beside half-folded blankets. He avoided the mess. Avoided the soft snoring coming from Andre's bunk.
And finally, he reached the lab.
It smelled like metal, faint ozone, and jasmine oil—the familiar signature of Jingli's late-night work. And coffee. Always coffee. A porcelain mug, pale lavender with a small golden handle, sat beside her keyboard, half-steaming as usual. She sipped from it slowly, the room lit by the ghostly blue glow of monitors and floating data projections.
She didn't look up at first.
Seated at her usual corner, sleeves rolled to the elbow, she faced three translucent holo-screens suspended mid-air. Each flickered with movement—pulsing graphs, rotating essence diagrams, encrypted neural overlays. One showed a district map of Tokyo, its borders outlined in red with a pulsing heat signature tracked in real time.
"You're lucky I don't lock the door at night," she said quietly.
Ren hesitated, hand on the doorway frame. "…I needed to check something."
Jingli gave a sigh that was all sharp edge and zero breath.
"I assume you're not here for a warm cup of tea and an apology bouquet."
Ren offered the faintest half-smile. "Wasn't sure you'd let me in if I brought flowers."
She didn't return it. Instead, she waved one hand and spun the middle screen toward him. Data lines streamed across it—coded readouts of essence signatures, deep-scan visuals of twisted genetic patterns, the eerie fingerprint of what had once been Kaito.
"You asked about the foreign signature embedded in his transformation," Jingli said, finally glancing his way. Her violet eyes were cool, unreadable. "We traced it. Took some triangulating with Bonk's surveillance feed. But it's pinpointed now."
Ren stepped closer.
The screen zoomed in.
A blinking red dot. Over a real-world map.
"Shibuya?" he muttered.
"Shibuya Scramble Square," Jingli clarified. She took another sip of coffee, like it was just another equation she was solving. "The essence signature is still live."
Ren's jaw clenched.
A silence passed between them, the hum of data panels the only sound.
Then Ren looked up.
"Could I ask you not to tell the others?" His voice was soft but steady. "I want to do this myself."
Jingli didn't respond right away.
She just looked at him She saw the fire behind his calm—the unshakable weight in his voice, the kind that she had seen before.
She just exhaled, almost to herself, and turned silently in her chair.
Metal clinked as she rifled through one of the drawers behind her.
After a few seconds, she pulled out a thin, sleek wristband with a central node—a glimmering device shaped like a curved fragment of glass.
She tossed it to him without ceremony.
"Essence Tracker," she said. "It'll sync to your signature once you activate it. Non-bearers use it for field tracking. You'll need it, since you still don't know how to use your own."
Ren caught it cleanly, his fingers closing around the cool metal.
"Thanks, Miss Yue," he said quietly.
He slipped the band onto his wrist. It hummed once, glowing faintly blue, and clicked into place like it belonged there.
Jingli leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. She took another long sip from her mug.
"Come back in one piece," she said with a smirk, setting the cup down. "I'm not in the mood to mourn anyone right now."
Ren gave a respectful nod.
Then he turned and walked out without another word, coat flaring slightly behind him. The door hissed shut.
And just like that, he was gone again—into the Tokyo night, toward the glittering skyline and the dark corners it refused to illuminate.
But this time, he wasn't running.
He was chasing it back.