Shuuji's life after he escaped the Port Mafia was not eventful at all.
It was cold, rough and lonely.
Shuuji knew the boss would search for him without rest so he wasted no time. He left Yokohama the same night he escaped. He hid his face, walked through dark alleys and avoided any roads with security cameras. At the edge of the city, he waited for a chance and jumped onto the back of a delivery truck. Then he hid behind the huge boxes until they reached another city far from Yokohama.
That was how his running life began.
He could not use his own money. He could not stay in the same place. He could not talk to anyone for long.
Shuuji had to disappear.
His parents had left all their money and assets to him and Mariko. The boss himself had shown Shuuji their bank accounts, properties, documents and its passwords. The boss said he must live as his rich heir as well as a weapon for the Port Mafia.
But Shuuji never touched it. Not even a single penny. He knew the boss would monitor those accounts. If he used it even once, they would find him and dragged him back into that hell.
So Shuuji survived the only way he could. He stole, picked pockets, found food left by others and took scraps from trash cans.
Even though Shuuji hated it, he still made himself do it. He could no longer afford to feel proud. He must live. He must find Mariko before he could die.
At first, life on the streets felt scary.
Everything was noisy, dirty and unpredictable. But Shuuji was not a normal child anymore. The Port Mafia had forced him to learn how to survive pain, fear and hunger.
It was ironic how his brutal training ended up keeping him alive.
Shuuji quickly learned and adapted on how to hide his presence. He discovered how to sleep with one eye open. He find warm places in cold nights. He also knew when to fight back when needed.
Even though he looked thin and small for his age, Shuuji was surprisingly strong and healthy. He did not catch colds or fevers like other street kids. He did not get sick even when he slept under the rain. Maybe it was because of his odd body or maybe his special ability protected him without him knowing.
But still, life was not easy.
Shuuji stayed in abandoned buildings sometimes. There were other nights where he slept inside empty storage rooms behind stores. He also stayed in a dumpsite and used cardboard boxes to cover himself. He never stayed longer than a day or two in one place. He kept moving because staying meant danger.
During the day, he stayed invisible. He spent hours watching people from afar and studying their routines while making sure no one suspicious was lingering in the area where he stayed. At night, he walked through alleys or climbed on rooftops to avoid crowds.
And every time he closed his eyes, the past chased him.
He saw the boss laughing. He saw experimental labs that he had never been to but had clear visions of it. He saw his dead parents after that explosion. He sometimes saw his sister crying for him.
But what hurt him the most was the emptiness in his chest whenever he thought of Mariko.
Where was she? Was she alive? Did she think he abandoned her? Was she scared? Did she cry herself to sleep?
Shuuji hated the boss more every time those thoughts came.
He hated himself too.
He had believed the boss. He had trusted those words. He had forced himself to endure torture while thinking it would keep Mariko safe and happy.
But it was all lies.
The boss had already sent her away. He sold her, abandoned her and threw her into a lab like an object four years ago.
Four whole years!
Shuuji had been fighting, bleeding and surviving all this time only to learned it was all for nothing. He had been naive. He had been fooled. He had wasted a lot of years thinking his sister was somewhere safe.
And now he had no clue where she was.
The last memory he had of Mariko burned inside him like fire in the dark.
It was the day they left for Subarachi before everything exploded. He remembered how warm her hand was. How bright her smile looked. How soft her voice sounded when she said her goodbyes.
That was the last time he saw her.
And now, he did not even know if she was alive. He did not know where to start. He did not know who to trust. But he knew one thing very clearly.
He would find his sister.
-//-//-
Shuuji was fourteen now.
Four years had passed since he ran away from the Port Mafia building. Four years since he twisted the boss's arm, cut him open with a pen and escaped with nothing but fear and fury pushing his legs forward. Four years since he learned what true emptiness and loneliness felt like.
Shuuji lived quietly and keeping his head down. He changed cities again and again while moving like a ghost. He sometimes rode on the back of trucks without permission. He sometimes hid inside cargo trains at night. He sometimes simply walked for hours until his legs felt numb.
Life was not good.
But Shuuji still survived.
People avoided him because he looked rough for his age. He looked skinny, silent and always watchful. His body was still covered in bandages to hide the scars from those brutal trainings. But he did not care. He only cared about one thing.
His sister.
She was the reason Shuuji did not collapse after everything he had endured. She was the reason he trained, obeyed, listened and acted like the 'weapon' the boss wanted. She was the reason why he ran.
So during the four quiet years of hiding, Shuuji did not waste any time. He never trusted anyone but he learned something new that would help him find her.
He learned how to hack.
It started small.
Shuuji followed and observed the information brokers around. He watched them work in dirty internet cafes and small rented rooms. He saw how they moved their fingers, what codes they typed and how they slipped into systems they were not supposed to touch.
He had a genius mind so when he tried it himself, everything made sense instantly.
Within weeks, he knew how to enter private servers.
Within months, he could break into foreign systems.
Within a year, he built his own small information network with little threads of data he collected from all over the world.
And he used everything he learned to search for Mariko.
He hacked laboratories abroad, medical databases, underground research facilities and private files owned by organizations bigger and darker than Port Mafia. Every night, he sat in front of an old laptop he stole from a pawnshop and kept typing until his fingers ached.
And in the middle of all that searching, he discovered something important.
The boss's health was getting worse.
Some claimed the boss was ill. Some claimed he was unstable. Others claimed he was losing his mind. Shuuji used his own growing information network to confirm the rumors. It didn't take him long to discover the truth.
The boss's illness was indeed eating him alive.
It made his choices dangerous and irrational. He initiated conflict between organizations for no reason. He is also slowly destabilizing Yokohama's underworld balance.
But Shuuji did not care.
Then one day, he finally found something.
He located the lab where the boss had taken his sister years ago. Breaking into the system was not easy. The files were messy, corrupted and locked under multiple security layers. It took Shuuji three whole days with no sleep to force his way in.
Most files were unreadable and broken beyond saving. But he managed to pull out one page.
Just one.
When he opened the file, his heart stopped.
The page said Mariko did have a special ability after all. It was raw, unstable and unknown. The scientists wrote that they needed to "force" her ability out. And their method?
Severe psychological and physical experiments.
She was severely tortured for several months. Despite the fact that she couldn't feel any physical pain, Mariko's body still reacted to those methods.
Shuuji's hands shook as he read the report. Even though the words were clipped and some letters were missing because of data corruption, the meaning was still clear to him.
They hurt her. They broke her. They treated her like an animal just to trigger her ability.
He scrolled down.
In the middle of the page, there was a grainy photo included in the report. It was probably taken from a corner CCTV camera inside her room. But he knew that face. He could recognize it even in a thousand lifetimes.
Mariko.
But she was not the little girl he remembered. Not the smiling girl who hugged him every morning. Not the warm sister who held his hand whenever she felt scared.
This Mariko looked like a ghost.
Her eyes were empty. Her face was expressionless. Her hair was messy. Her wrists, neck and ankles were covered in bruises and painful-looking scars caused by chains or restraints that had been wrapped around her too many times.
Shuuji's chest tightened. His vision blurred. He touched the screen with shaky fingers as if the cold glass could somehow connect him to her.
He kept reading.
The file ended with one last word at the bottom of the page.
A simple but cruel word.
'Deceased.'
That was all.
No explanation. No cause of death. No list of injuries. No details about what happened after the experiments.
The next file was corrupted beyond repair. No matter how much Shuuji tried to restore it, it wouldn't open. It was gone forever.
Shuuji stared at the word for a long time.
Then his breath slowed. His heartbeat became heavy and painful.
If the report was true... If that single page was real... Then Mariko...
No.
Shuuji banged his forehead against the table.
He refused to believe it.
They lied before. They hid information before. They manipulated him before.
So he would not believe this single data without any proof. Not without a body. Not without confirmation with his own eyes.
Even if the whole world said she was dead or the reports claimed she was gone.
Shuuji wiped his bloodied forehead with the back of his hand and closed the laptop.
His heart hurt. His chest felt like it was squeezing painfully.
But his eyes were cold.