"...Well," Shiro said, voice climbing the scaffolding of a breath. "Fair's fair. You always said practice makes perfect. Guess it's my turn to practice."
He tightened the last strap and looked at his own hands. They were steady. That felt like a betrayal and a miracle. He leaned down until he could see his father's resting face-the lines, the neat eyebrows, and the mouth that had spoken diagnoses to strangers and doom to family.
"Don't worry, Father," he murmured, dark humor settling over him like a lab coat. "I'll make sure to leave no scars."
He smiled then-an expression with teeth-and turned his attention to the table's familiar orchestra of instruments, to the gleaming lights, to the glass box on the counter, and to the awful and simple question in front of him: what now?
He didn't answer it yet. He simply stood there in the hush after a storm, the birthday boy at last in charge of the candles.
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Chapter 16: Kitsuna/Shiro past 2
The sound of pages turning was the only thing keeping me company as I sat hunched in the corner, the dim yellow glow of the overhead lamp cutting through the heavy smell of disinfectant and blood. The book was heavy in my hands, its margins filled with careful notes, diagrams, and neat handwriting that could almost pass as art if you forgot what they were about. I traced the illustrations with a finger-nerves, pressure points, arteries. My father's "life's work." His bible of cruelty.
Two hours passed before I heard it-the faintest rattle of metal chains and a groggy groan.
I snapped the book shut with a clap. "Well, well. Sleeping Beauty finally awakens."
My father blinked against the light, his head swinging side to side. His eyes darted from the cold steel walls to the instruments laid neatly on the tray beside me, then finally locked on me. His face drained of color.
"It... it took you two hours to wake up," I said flatly, rising to my feet. I knew my smile didn't reach my eyes. "Pathetic."
"You-" his voice cracked. He coughed and tried again. "You think this stuff is funny? Let me go, murderer!" He forced his voice to be loud, but it broke like brittle glass.
"Funny?" I tilted my head. "Oh no. This story is hilarious." I held up the book so he could see the title embossed on its spine-Advanced Practices in Neural Response Manipulation. His handwriting filled the margins. "Your notes are so well written. Two hours of reading and I already knew how to make you scream without killing you. It's like you signed your torture manual."
"That-that's my life's work! You can't just-"
"So what?" I snapped the book shut again, tossing it onto the table. The scalpel tray gleamed. "You don't have much time left anyway, dumbass."
His eyes went wide, brimming with tears. I could smell his fear already-sharp, sour, like sweat left too long on cloth.
"I... I'm your father. You can't do this to me." His lips quivered. Snot bubbled at his nose.
I leaned close enough that he could see my grin stretch wider. "You're a coward. For ten years you made me bleed, and I haven't touched you yet, and you're already pissing yourself. I expected... more."
I pressed a button on the control panel. Metal clanked as the straps on his table retracted, replaced by heavy chains that rose from the floor and ceiling. His arms and legs were jerked upward, pulling him into the air like some grotesque puppet. His body dangled, spread out, rotating slowly as the chains locked in place.
Now I could walk around him. Study him from every angle. A canvas of meat.
"No! Please!" His voice hitched. "I promise-I promise I'll never hurt you again!"
I ignored him. My fingers hovered over the scalpel before picking it up, twirling it casually like a conductor's baton.
"You know," I said, my voice calm and conversational, "your notes say the nervous system is tricky. If you cut too deep, the pain stops. But if you scratch just right-" I dragged the scalpel across his knee, shallow and deliberate. Not enough to sever. Just enough to scrape.
He shrieked.
"-Ah, see? Perfect. That's worse than losing the leg entirely. Amazing, really."
I circled him, whispering like a tutor at a lecture. Slice across the other knee. Another scream.
"Funny thing, Father. You wrote these notes so carefully. Angles. Pressure. Which cuts make a man vomit, and which ones make him black out? All neat little lessons. Did you imagine you'd one day be the classroom demonstration?"
He babbled incoherently, drool and tears mixing with snot. His cries blended into one wet, choking sob.
I didn't care. My hands moved with steady precision, opening him with scratches and slices. Each time I cut, I called out the technique like a student reciting flashcards. Median nerve. Tibial nerve. Sciatic root. He screamed with each answer.
Thirty minutes later his body was a map of shallow cuts. His skin was streaked in drying blood, his breaths rattling wetly. His voice was nearly gone, raw from screaming.
I stepped back, tilting my head to admire the pattern. A crude art piece. "You taught me well, Father. You really did."
My gaze shifted to the side table, stacked with the instruments he'd used on me over the years. Pipes. Drills. And-oh. My fingers closed around the hilt of a short sword. The memory hit me like a hammer: me as a boy, strapped to the same table, the sword's edge pressed against my ribs while he watched me writhe.
I walked back, holding it up in front of his bloodied face. "Do you remember this one?"
His head jerked side to side. His words were barely coherent. "No... please... Stop... it hurts..."
"It hurts?" I barked a laugh, sharp and hollow. "Then why did you do it to others if you couldn't take it yourself? Rule number one, Father: if you stab, be ready to be stabbed. If you torture, be ready to be tortured. If you kill-" I drove the sword into his ribs, hard. His chest heaved with a scream. "-then be ready to die."
I dragged the blade down to his stomach, carving a line that opened him deeper. The smell of iron and bile filled the air as organs glistened beneath.
He convulsed violently, blood spraying from his mouth.
"Don't you dare!" I snarled, grabbing his jaw. His teeth were clenched, crimson bubbling from his lips. His tongue was gone. He had bitten it off. His last escape.
"No!" I roared. I shook his limp head and slapped his face. His eyes had already rolled back. His body lay limp in the chains. Dead.
"You don't get to leave yet!" My voice cracked. Rage took over. I hacked at his body with the sword, carving limbs and scattering flesh. Feet. Hands. Strips of meat that slapped against the floor. His head dangled by threads before I severed it completely, holding it up to his glassy eyes.
"You took the easy way out, you coward. If I ever meet your soul again, I'll tear it into a million pieces. "I swear it on my mother's name, Ava Adachi."
I dropped my head. Blood pooled thick across the tiles, dark and sticky, clinging to my boots. The room reeked of copper and rot.
But even then, I didn't feel satisfied. He had escaped the long years of pain I'd prepared for him. My hands trembled, not from weakness, but from fury.
My gaze drifted to the sealed steel door across the lab. The forbidden one. My curiosity was a spark in the storm. I walked toward it, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
The control room.
Banks of monitors lit the space, showing every hall, every room, and every corridor. CCTV feeds stretched across the wall, providing grainy black-and-white views of the building. In the corner, panels marked with valves and release symbols glowed faintly.
"So this... this is how you always caught me." My voice came out hollow, half laughter, half whisper. "All those times I tried to run, and you gassed me like a rat. Always watching. Always pulling strings."
Rows of switches confirmed it: options to release gases-dizzying agents, paralytics, and sedatives. My fists clenched around the edge of the console until my knuckles whitened.
The people who worked here. They knew. They knew what he did to me, and they stood by. They helped.
Something cracked inside me.
A smile-far too wide, far too calm-spread across my face. I slipped into a hazmat suit, humming tunelessly as I began pressing controls. Doors across the building slammed shut. Locks sealed. Valves hissed open. Invisible gas flooded the halls.
"Let's see how long they last."
The next thing I remembered was standing knee-deep in corpses. My family's katana dripped with flesh. My hazmat suit was torn, my hands sticky with gore. The floor was painted in streaks of red. Limbs. Torsos. Faces I didn't recognize anymore, reduced to pulp.
I didn't remember swinging. I didn't remember killing. Only fragments: a scream cut short, the gurgle of blood, my laughter echoing down the halls.
Blink. Corpses everywhere.
I dropped the katana with a clatter, my chest heaving.
I had to leave. Before anyone came.
The hidden exit in the garage was my only chance. On the way, I grabbed what I could-my duffel bag, stuffed with money from his office, scraps of clothes, and essentials. The rest of me was drenched in blood anyway.
The garage stank of oil and rust. Fuel cans lined the walls. Perfect. I doused the support pillars, splashing gasoline in wide arcs, the fumes choking my throat. I left a trail leading to the exit, then flicked a lighter.
The fire roared to life.
As I ran into the night, the building behind me bloomed in orange. Heat pressed against my back. Smoke curled skyward. Windows burst outward, belching fire. The Adachi estate, my prison, my hell, became an inferno.
I didn't look back until I reached the ridge outside the city. From there, I watched it collapse. Metal and concrete crumbled inward, swallowed by flames. The screams had stopped long ago.
My lips curled into a grin that hurt my face.
The Adachi name would burn with it.
Only I remained.
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Chapter 17: Kitsuna/Shiro past 3
(1 year later in Kyoto)
It has been a year since the massacre. It has been one year since blood slicked the floor beneath my feet and since walls crumbled and fire painted the night sky. One year since I stopped being my father's son and became... something else.
People called it terrorism on the news. They blamed some nameless organization, spun their neat little story for the public, and fed it to the masses with smiling anchors. I sat in a cheap inn room watching the broadcast, a half-eaten convenience store bento on my lap, and I actually cried with relief. Tears streamed down my face not because I mourned, but because the world had chosen to look the other way. They gave me the one thing I didn't deserve-an alibi.
For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like a hunted animal. For the first time, I didn't need to constantly check my shadow or wait for sirens. The blame was gone, and so were the eyes that might have searched for me.
That night, after seeing the report, I laughed. I laughed so hard that the old man in the room next to mine banged on the wall and told me to shut up. And when my laughter finally died down, I made a choice. If fate was stupid enough to give me this second chance, I'd use it. I'd find a place to settle, not to rot in luxury, but to start again.
The money I stole from my father's safe was enough to live twenty years in quiet comfort. But I couldn't bring myself to be that kind of ghost-one who hid behind curtains, sipping expensive whiskey while pretending his hands weren't stained red. I killed eighty-seven people. I didn't know all their faces. Didn't even want to. I should have nightmares, right? But I didn't. Not a single one. The silence in my dreams was worse than the screaming.
That emptiness pushed me to keep moving. If I couldn't feel guilt, then maybe I could at least act like I deserved to breathe.
So I traveled.
The last year became a blur of train stations, nameless hostels, neon-soaked nights, and back-alley fights. When I was under my father's shadow, Japan opened up to me in ways I'd never seen. I ate ramen at midnight under paper lanterns that swayed in the wind. I visited shrines older than the country itself, their bells heavy with history. I got drunk once in Osaka and woke up wearing someone else's jacket.
And then there was the scar.
Two months after the massacre, a small gang of punks thought I was easy prey and jumped me. They weren't my father's killers. They weren't even professionals. Just street trash; looking for a wallet. I killed one. I didn't mean to kill him; however, the knife slipped too deep. Another slashed me across the face before I broke his jaw. The blade cut from the right side of my forehead, past my eyebrow, down to my cheekbone. A mark carved into me, a reminder that no matter how far I ran, blood always followed.
Funny thing? I didn't hate the scar. People stared, of course. Kids pointed, adults whispered. But me? I liked it. It made me look honest. No more pretending to be some harmless boy. The scar said exactly what I was: dangerous and not afraid to be.
After that, I trained. I wasn't as skilled at closing wounds as my father had been, so I learned to prevent them instead. Fistfights in alleys, self-defense lessons bought with cash, endless practice until my knuckles bled. I became good enough to drop most men twice my size. It felt right.
I picked up other skills too-fake paperwork, basic hacking, and little tricks to bend society around me. If my father had taught me how to kill, the streets taught me how to survive without needing a gun pressed to my ribs.
And finally, after circling the country, I returned to Kyoto. The city I'd always liked the most. Kyoto was a contradiction-quiet temples older than memory sitting side by side with loud pachinko parlors and glowing signs that never slept. It felt right. A place where ghosts could blend in.
I dyed my hair white. Not bleached blonde-pure white, like snow. My eyes, once as black as my father's, were now ocean blue, courtesy of contacts. Combined with the scar, I barely recognized myself in the mirror. The boy from a year ago was gone. All that remained was Shiro Adachi, a fabricated name with enough forged documents to back him up.
And for once, I felt like I was alive.
(1 Week Later)
The morning sun spilled over Kyoto like molten gold, catching on tiled rooftops and cherry blossoms that had bloomed too early. I woke up earlier than I had to, not out of nerves but out of habit. Sleep had become optional for me over the last year. My body didn't crave rest-it craved control.
Today was supposed to be my return to school. A strange thought, really. After everything I'd done and everything I'd learned, sitting in a classroom felt like playing dress-up in a dead man's clothes. But I had promised myself I'd try. Blend in. Live. Or at least pretend.
