Akiro woke to the low hum of fluorescent lights.
For a moment, he wasn't sure if he was still alive or just remembering how it felt to be. His thoughts drifted without urgency, unclaimed by pain or fear, as if his mind had been set gently on a moving conveyor and left there to ride. It reminded him of being half-awake after a long shift, when exhaustion dulled everything into something tolerable and distant.
He blinked once, then again. The room sharpened, reluctantly. Sounds found their proper places. The hum above. The faint hiss of air. Somewhere far away, a cart rolled across tile and stopped. Nothing rushed him. Nothing demanded his attention.
That absence bothered him more than pain would have.
For a few seconds, he didn't move. He let the sound exist on its own, steady and dull, anchoring him in place. The ceiling above was white and unremarkable, broken only by a slowly turning fan that clicked faintly with each rotation. The smell came next, sharp and sterile, layered with something metallic underneath.
A hospital.
That realization settled slowly, like his mind was choosing not to rush anything. His body felt heavy, not weak exactly, but resistant. As if each movement had to pass through an extra step before being allowed to happen. When he flexed his fingers, they obeyed, but the sensation came a fraction of a second late.
He frowned slightly.
Only then did he notice the bandages.
His right side was wrapped tightly from shoulder to ribs, thick layers pressed firm against his torso. He tried to lift his head and immediately stopped as a dull ache bloomed behind his eyes. A steady beeping came from somewhere to his left, calm and unhurried.
"You're awake."
The voice came from nearby.
Akiro turned his head and saw a man seated beside the bed. He wasn't wearing a lab coat or scrubs. Dark jacket, plain clothes, posture relaxed but attentive. Not medical staff.
"How long?" Akiro asked, his throat dry.
"About fourteen hours. You've been stable."
Stable wasn't the word Akiro would have chosen. The last thing he remembered clearly was the knife, cold and sudden, sliding into him while he was still trying to step back. He remembered falling, the ceiling spinning, blood spreading too fast across the floor.
He swallowed and shifted slightly. Pain responded, muted but real. Still, it wasn't what he expected.
"What's your name?"
"Takeda."
No last name offered. No explanation.
Akiro let his head rest back against the pillow. "You here to tell me I got lucky?"
Takeda stood and stepped closer, pulling a tablet from inside his jacket. After a few taps, he turned the screen so Akiro could see it.
The image made his stomach twist.
It was his torso, sliced open by layered scans. The wound near his ribs was obvious even to an untrained eye. Deep. Jagged. Far too close to the heart. Tissue damage radiated outward like cracks from broken glass.
"That doesn't match how I feel," Akiro murmured.
"No," Takeda agreed. "It doesn't."
Akiro closed his eyes, the scan burned into his thoughts anyway. He remembered the weight of the attacker's body surging forward, remembered the knife not as pain but as pressure, sudden and invasive. There had been a moment, impossibly long, where his mind acknowledged the blade before his body did.
Like the message had been sent, but no one was there yet to receive it.
He remembered standing there, stunned, heart still beating normally while blood soaked through his shirt. Remembered thinking, in a detached, almost irritated way, that this was taking too long. That it should have hurt more by now.
When the pain finally came, it had arrived all at once, furious and late.
The tablet was put away just as smoothly.
Akiro stared at the ceiling again. "I should be dead."
"Yes."
The word was calm. Factual.
"Then why am I not?"
Takeda leaned back against the wall, arms loosely crossed. "Because something happened. Something that doesn't normally happen."
Akiro exhaled slowly. "I didn't do anything."
"That may be true," Takeda replied. "But it doesn't make you uninvolved."
The unease deepened. Akiro didn't like the way this conversation framed him, like an incident rather than a person.
A nurse entered before he could say anything else. She checked his vitals, adjusted the IV, asked routine questions. Her movements were efficient, her expression neutral. She didn't question Takeda's presence, didn't even acknowledge it, as if he belonged there by default.
When she left, the room felt quieter than before.
"Do you remember the moment you were stabbed?" Takeda asked.
Akiro hesitated. Images surfaced in pieces. The knife. The shock. The way the pain had felt… wrong.
"I remember waiting," he said finally. "After it happened. Like my body hadn't figured it out yet."
Takeda's eyes sharpened slightly.
"Waiting for what?"
"For everything to collapse," Akiro said. "For the pain to get worse. For my heart to stop."
"It didn't," Takeda replied. "Not immediately."
A pause.
"There was an observable delay," Takeda continued. "Between the injury and your body's response. No shock. No rapid blood pressure drop. Your system behaved as if the damage hadn't been confirmed yet."
"That's not how injuries work."
"No," Takeda agreed. "It isn't."
Time blurred after that. Doctors came and went. More scans. More tests. Each one ended with the same quiet confusion. The damage was real. The outcome didn't match.
Eventually, the room emptied again.
Takeda stood near the window now, rain streaking the glass behind him.
"There are others," he said.
The words landed heavily.
The idea unsettled him more than isolation ever could have. If this had been unique, an accident written off by doctors and forgotten by everyone else, maybe he could have lived with it. The existence of others meant comparison. Measurement. Expectation.
It meant precedent.
Akiro wondered how many of them had survived their first incident. How many hadn't. The question lingered, unspoken, because he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
Takeda's silence didn't reassure him.
"Others like me?"
"A small number. Rare. Inconsistent."
Akiro turned his head toward the window, watching the city lights distort in the rain.
"So this wasn't just bad luck."
Takeda didn't answer. He didn't need to.
"What am I, then?"
For the first time, Takeda hesitated.
"We don't have a classification," he admitted. "Only patterns. Instances where cause and effect fail to align. Where reality hesitates before finishing what it starts."
The phrase stuck uncomfortably in Akiro's mind.
"What happens now?"
"You recover. We observe. Quietly."
"And if I don't want to be observed?"
Takeda met his gaze, expression steady. "Then you go home and hope it never happens again."
A thin laugh escaped Akiro. "That's not much of a choice."
"No," Takeda said. "It isn't."
Later that night, long after the hospital settled into its after-midnight quiet, Akiro lay awake staring at the ceiling. The fan clicked softly overhead.
He lifted his hand, slowly, deliberately, watching as his fingers curled into a fist.
For an instant, he felt it.
Not pain. Not delay.
Resistance.
Like time itself was thicker around his movement, barely noticeable but undeniably there.
He relaxed his hand. The sensation faded.
His breathing slowed as he focused on it, searching for the edge of that strange resistance again. It didn't return. Whatever it was, it wasn't something that responded to will alone. It waited, dormant, like a mechanism that refused to engage unless circumstances demanded it.
That realization was almost worse.
If it couldn't be summoned, then it would only appear when something went wrong.
Akiro exhaled and let his arm fall back onto the bed.
He closed his eyes, heart beating steadily in his chest.
Something wasn't broken.
Something was unfinished.
And for the first time, he understood that whatever had happened in that convenience store hadn't ended when the knife was pulled away.
It had only been paused.