The Kawasaki screamed through the neon-slicked streets of Tokyo, a black projectile carving a path through the indifferent flow of late-night traffic. Samantha clung to the handlebars, her knuckles white, her body a strange, humming conduit for the motorcycle's raw power. Behind her, Ren was a dead weight, his head lolling against her shoulder with every sharp turn, every desperate acceleration. His breathing was a ragged, shallow whisper against her back, a terrifying counterpoint to the roar of the engine.
Each red light was an eternity of impotent fury. Each near-miss with a oblivious taxi or a lumbering truck sent a jolt of adrenaline through her already frayed nerves. The city lights blurred into streaks of color, a meaningless, chaotic backdrop to the singular, screaming focus of her will: get him there, get him there, get him there.
The sterile scent of the hospital, when they finally skidded to a halt in front of the emergency entrance, was a physical assault. It was too clean, too bright, too orderly for the bloody, brutal chaos she had just clawed her way out of.
"Help! I need help!" Her voice was a raw shriek, cracking with desperation. "My brother… he's… he can't breathe!"
The world dissolved into a flurry of motion. White coats, blue scrubs, the glint of steel, urgent, clipped voices. They swarmed the motorcycle, their hands surprisingly gentle as they lifted Ren from her grasp, his body terrifyingly limp. A nurse with kind eyes and a grim mouth was already barking into a comm unit.
"ER, Code Blue! Teen male, multiple blunt force trauma, possible internal bleeding, severe respiratory distress, history of asthma…!"
Samantha stumbled back, her legs suddenly weak. She watched them load Ren onto a gurney, a mask already being strapped to his pale, bruised face. His eyes, half-lidded and unfocused, found hers for a fleeting second.
"Sami…" he whispered, his voice a dry, rattling leaf.
"Onii-chan!" She lurched forward, grabbing his hand, her fingers slick with his blood. "Don't you dare close your eyes! Stay with me! Please!"
His lips barely moved. A ghost of a smile. Then his eyes fluttered shut, and they were rushing him away, the gurney rattling over the pristine linoleum, disappearing through a set of swinging double doors that seemed to swallow him whole.
She was left standing there, alone in the sudden, echoing silence of the reception area. The adrenaline was draining away, leaving her hollow, trembling, and covered in the cooling, sticky evidence of the night's horrors.
The world tilted. She swayed.
Not now. Not yet.
A hand, surprisingly strong, gripped her arm, steadying her. She looked up into the tired, kind eyes of the nurse who had taken Ren.
"Miss? Are you Kisaragi-san's sister?"
Samantha nodded, mute.
"We need some information. And you need to be looked at. You're covered in…"
"It's his blood," Samantha managed, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Mostly."
The nurse's eyes sharpened with concern. "Come with me. We'll get you cleaned up, and you can tell me what happened."
Meanwhile, a battered white taxi, its check engine light a baleful, pulsing orange eye, pulled up to the same emergency entrance Akemi had specified. She'd chosen this hospital not for its proximity, but for its discretion and its well-funded, no-questions-asked private wing.
She paid the driver, adding a significant tip. The man, who had spent the entire ride white-knuckling the steering wheel and pointedly not looking at the bloodstains on his new passenger's clothes, practically snatched the bills from her hand, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and greed. He didn't offer her a receipt.
Akemi stepped out of the taxi, the automatic doors of the hospital hissing open before her like the gates of a sterile, brightly lit hell. Her boots, still damp with the blood of Kenji's crew, left faint, crimson footprints on the polished white tile.
The triage nurse at the reception desk, a young woman with a name tag that read 'Aiko,' looked up. Her polite, professional smile froze on her face. Her eyes widened, first at the blood, then at Akemi's face—a mask of cold, beautiful, terrifying calm.
"M-Ma'am…?" Aiko stammered. "Are you… are you injured? Do you need assistance?"
"Not my blood," Akemi stated, her voice a low, perfectly modulated purr that nonetheless carried the chilling authority of a queen addressing a particularly stupid peasant. She didn't stop, didn't slow down. She was a shark gliding through shallow water, her eyes already scanning the layout of the ER.
"Ma'am, wait! You can't just—"
Akemi paused. She didn't turn. She simply tilted her head, a small, almost imperceptible movement. "Kisaragi Ren," she said, her voice dropping half an octave, becoming a silken threat. "Admitted within the last ten minutes. Severe trauma. Respiratory distress. Where. Is. He."
Aiko swallowed, her Adam's apple bobbing. She fumbled with her computer mouse, her fingers slipping on the keys. "He's… he's in ER Trauma Bay 3, ma'am. His sister is with a counselor in the family waiting room down the hall…"
Akemi was already moving before Aiko finished speaking. Her strides were long, fluid, purposeful. She ignored the startled glances of doctors and nurses, the hushed whispers, the faint, terrified gasps. She was a force of nature, and the mundane rules of hospital decorum did not apply to her.
She found the family waiting room. It was a small, sterile box, painted in offensively cheerful pastels, furnished with uncomfortable plastic chairs. Samantha sat huddled in one of them, looking small and lost and utterly broken. A kind-faced woman in a sensible pantsuit – a hospital grief counselor, Akemi guessed – was offering her a cup of water.
Samantha looked up as Akemi entered. Her eyes, red-rimmed and hollow, widened. Then, with a choked sob, she launched herself from the chair and into Akemi's arms, clinging to her with the desperate strength of a drowning child.
Akemi stiffened for a fraction of a second, unused to such unrestrained displays of emotion. Then, awkwardly, she patted the girl's trembling back. The counselor, seeing Akemi's bloodstained clothes and the raw, unprocessed trauma radiating from both girls, wisely decided to make herself scarce.
"Akemi-nee…" Samantha sobbed into her shoulder, her small body wracked with tremors. "Onii-chan… is he… is he going to…?"
Akemi gently disentangled herself. She looked towards the closed double doors of the ER, her expression unreadable. And for the first time that night, a flicker of something other than icy rage or predatory calm touched her features. It was a raw, naked fear, so potent it was almost a physical blow.
"He has to be," Akemi said, her voice low, almost a whisper. But it was a whisper backed by the unyielding certainty of a diamond. "He has to be."
She led Samantha back to a chair, then sat beside her, a silent, imposing guardian. The fluorescent lights hummed. The air smelled of antiseptic and despair. Minutes crawled by, each one an eternity.
Then, Akemi spoke, her voice deliberately casual, almost conversational. A stark, jarring contrast to the suffocating tension in the room.
"Hey, Sam-chan?"
Samantha lifted her head, her eyes puffy and bloodshot. "Y-Yeah?"
Akemi tilted her head, a small, curious frown playing on her lips. "When I… finished up at the warehouse… I did a quick headcount. Just to be thorough." Her eyes, dark and knowing, met Samantha's. "There were seventeen. But when I arrived, I only counted fifteen still… ambulatory. The other two… one was unconscious, face a mess. The other was curled up around a bent pipe, sobbing. Both looked like they'd tangled with something… enthusiastic."
Samantha froze. Her heart, which had just begun to slow, kicked back into a frantic rhythm. Oh, no. No, no, no.
Akemi's eyebrow arched. "Did you, by any chance, Sam-chan… have a little pre-game warm-up before I arrived?"
Samantha's mind raced. Lie. She had to lie. But her brain felt like scrambled eggs. "Wh-What? Pre-game? N-No! Of course not! I… I mean… yes? Sort of? It was… self-defense!"
Akemi's expression didn't change, but there was a new, dangerous glint in her eyes. "Self-defense. Right. Because the Kisaragi Samantha I remember could barely lift her own schoolbag without looking like she was about to keel over."
Samantha winced. "I… I've been training. In secret." The lie felt flimsy, pathetic, even to her own ears.
"Training," Akemi repeated, her voice flat, devoid of inflection. "In secret." She nodded slowly, as if considering this revelation. "And let me guess. You 'trained' two grown thugs into unconsciousness using… what? Strongly worded arguments? The power of interpretive dance?"
Samantha flushed. "I… I had a metal pipe." It was the truth. Sort of.
"Ah. A metal pipe." Akemi nodded again. "Of course."
A heavy silence descended. Samantha fidgeted, picking at a loose thread on the armrest of the chair. She could feel Akemi's gaze on her, sharp and analytical, dissecting her, peeling back the layers of her pathetic, desperate lies.
Then, she cleared her throat, desperate to change the subject. "Um… Akemi-nee? Earlier… at the warehouse… when you were… um… handling things…" She hesitated, then forced the words out. "Did you… did you kill any of them?"
Akemi didn't answer immediately. She leaned back, her head resting against the cool, sterile wall, her eyes distant, focused on something Samantha couldn't see. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, almost melancholic.
"No."
Samantha let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"I wanted to," Akemi added, a faint, chilling smile touching her lips. A smile that promised a universe of pain. "God, how I wanted to. But no. Dead men learn no lessons." Her eyes refocused, locking onto Samantha's. "Besides. I've done things to them that are far, far worse than a quick death."
Samantha swallowed, a cold knot of dread tightening in her stomach. She didn't ask for details. She didn't want to know. "Right. Cool. Totally… normal."
Akemi's expression shifted again, becoming thoughtful, almost… amused. "Oh. Speaking of which," she said, her tone so casual it was jarring. "Did you remember to call your parents?"
Samantha blinked. The world, which had been a kaleidoscope of blood, fear, and System notifications, suddenly snapped back into a much more mundane, yet equally terrifying, focus.
"...Call them?" she repeated, her voice a faint squeak. "Call them… about what?"
Akemi's eyebrow rose again, a silent, eloquent question. "Oh, you know. The usual Tuesday night. Your brother gets beaten half to death by a gang of psychopathic delinquents. You get him to the hospital just in the nick of time after a high-speed motorcycle chase. You yourself were nearly kidnapped and gang-raped. That old chestnut."
The color drained from Samantha's face. Her eyes went wide. Her breath hitched.
"Oh…" she whispered. Then, louder, her voice cracking with dawning, abject horror: "Oh, fuck."
She scrambled from the chair, nearly tripping over her own feet. The sudden movement sent a wave of dizziness through her. She ignored it, fumbling for her phone, her hands shaking so badly she could barely unlock the screen.
"Akemi-nee! What time is it?!"
Akemi glanced at her watch, a sleek, expensive-looking diver's model that was, Samantha noticed with a fresh wave of nausea, spattered with tiny, dark flecks of dried blood.
"Just past one a.m."
"ONE A.M.?!" Samantha shrieked, her voice echoing in the quiet waiting room. A passing doctor shot them a disapproving glare. "I was supposed to be home by ten! Mom's going to kill me! She's going to kill me, then resurrect me, then kill me again, slowly, with a rusty spoon!"
Akemi looked entirely unconcerned. "You have a fairly legitimate excuse, I'd say."
"I didn't even text them! They're going to think I'm dead in a ditch somewhere! They're going to think Ren is dead! Oh my god, oh my god, what if they've already called the police? What if they've called the military?!"
She finally managed to dial her mother's number, her thumb slipping on the screen. The phone felt alien in her hand.
Akemi watched her frantic pacing, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing on her lips. "You know, Sam-chan, if you have a panic attack and pass out right now, the irony would be… exquisite."
"Not. Helping!" Samantha hissed, pressing the phone to her ear.
It rang once. Twice.
Then, a click.
"SAMANTHA ANNE KISARAGI?!"
Her mother's voice exploded from the speaker, a veritable sonic boom of distilled maternal fury and terror. Samantha physically recoiled, holding the phone an inch from her ear.
"WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?! AND WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER?! HE'S NOT ANSWERING HIS PHONE! ARE YOU TWO ALRIGHT?! DID SOMETHING HAPPEN?! I SWEAR TO GOD, SAMANTHA, IF YOU TELL ME YOU'RE AT ANOTHER LATE-NIGHT MANGA CAFE—"
"Mom! Mom, calm down! I'm okay! We're both… mostly okay!" Samantha babbled, her words tumbling over each other. "Ren's… Ren's at the hospital! But he's stable! I think he's stable!"
"HOSPITAL?!"
Akemi sighed, leaned back, and closed her eyes, clearly already regretting her life choices.
Samantha rushed to explain, the words a torrent of half-truths and frantic omissions. "It's… it's really complicated, Mom! Some… some bad guys… they jumped us after cram school! Ren… Ren got hurt! He fought them off, but his asthma… it got really bad… he couldn't breathe! So I… I drove him to the hospital!"
"You drove?!" Her mother's voice somehow managed to climb another octave. "Samantha, you don't even have a learner's permit! What were you driving?! A stolen shopping cart?!"
"Akemi-nee's motorcycle!" Samantha blurted out, then immediately regretted it. "Akemi-nee was there! She helped! She's here now!" She shot Akemi a desperate, pleading look.
Akemi opened one eye, gave a lazy, two-fingered wave to the phone. "Yo, Kisaragi-obaasan."
Samantha plunged on, desperate to control the narrative. "I swear, Mom, we're okay! The doctors are with Ren right now! And I'm not hurt! Not really! Just… just a little shaken up! And maybe a tiny bit covered in… um… miscellaneous fluids!"
There was a strained silence on the other end of the line. Samantha could hear the faint, muffled sound of her father's voice in the background, low and urgent. Then, the jingle of car keys.
Her mother's voice, when it returned, was tight, controlled, terrifyingly calm.
"We are on our way. Right now. Text me the name of the hospital. You will stay exactly where you are. You will not move. You will not talk to anyone. You will not so much as breathe in a direction I do not approve of. Do you understand me, Samantha Anne?"
"Yes, Mom. Crystal clear. Absolutely."
Her mother's voice cracked, just for a second, the terror and relief warring within her. "Akemi-san… thank you. Thank you for… for looking after them. Especially Samantha."
Samantha's lips parted. A fresh wave of guilt, so potent it was nauseating, washed over her. She hadn't been looked after. She had been… something else.
"I… I wasn't the one who…" she began, her voice small, trailing off.
"You're so fragile, Samantha," her mother continued, her voice trembling now. "You get sick so easily. I don't know how you managed… but thank God. Thank God you're both alive. We thought… when you didn't answer… we thought you'd collapsed somewhere… that your heart…"
Samantha closed her eyes. The weight of her mother's fear, her mother's relief, her mother's complete misunderstanding of the situation, was crushing.
"I'm sorry, Mom," she whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."
"Just… just hold on, sweetie. We're coming."
The call ended.
Samantha let the phone clatter from her numb fingers into her lap. She sagged back into the uncomfortable plastic chair, her body feeling like it was made of lead. Every muscle ached. Every nerve ending screamed.
Akemi, arms crossed, leaned against the opposite wall, watching her with an unreadable expression.
"Well," Akemi said, after a long, pregnant pause. "That went… surprisingly well. Considering."
Samantha shot her a glare that could have curdled milk. "You say that like you don't regularly have to explain to concerned parents why their offspring are covered in the entrails of their enemies."
Akemi actually smirked. A genuine, fleeting smirk that transformed her face from terrifyingly beautiful to just… beautiful. "I prefer the term 'aggressive conflict resolution with extreme prejudice.'"
Samantha groaned and dropped her head into her hands. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights seemed to drill into her skull. The antiseptic smell of the hospital was making her nauseous. Beyond the ER doors, she could hear the faint, rhythmic beeping of machines. Machines that were keeping her brother alive.
"Do you think…" Samantha whispered, her voice muffled by her hands. "Do you think they'll be okay? Mom and Dad, I mean. When they see him… when they find out…"
Akemi was silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than Samantha had ever heard it, devoid of its usual icy edge.
"They're your parents, Sam-chan," Akemi said quietly. "They'll panic. They'll probably ground you until you're thirty. They might even cry. But… they'll be grateful." She pushed herself off the wall, came to stand in front of Samantha. She looked down at her, her dark eyes surprisingly gentle. "You didn't just save Ren's life tonight."
A beat of silence.
"You saved your own."
Samantha didn't answer. She looked down at her hands. They were still trembling, but it was a different kind of tremor now. Not the weakness of illness, but the aftershock of exertion. Of violence. They were stained with her brother's blood, yes, but also with the blood of others. They didn't feel like her hands anymore. They felt… capable. Strong. Dangerous.
The hands of someone who could fight back. The hands of someone who could win.
"…I don't feel like I'm made of glass anymore," she murmured, the words a quiet revelation, spoken more to herself than to Akemi.
Akemi's lips curved into that faint, knowing smile again. "What was that?"
Samantha looked up, a ghost of her own smile touching her lips. It didn't quite reach her eyes, but it was a start. "They've called me fragile my whole life, Akemi-nee. Like a single wrong step could shatter me. And maybe… maybe that used to be true." She flexed her fingers, watching the dried blood crack under her nails. "But tonight… tonight I broke two grown men with a length of pipe. Tonight I drove a stolen motorcycle through downtown Tokyo with my dying brother on my back. Tonight… I wasn't fragile."
Akemi let out a soft, almost inaudible huff of amusement. "Not bad, Sam-chan. Not bad at all. For someone who used to get winded walking to the vending machine."
Samantha met her gaze, a new, unfamiliar strength hardening her own. "Promise me something, Akemi-nee."
Akemi raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Hn?"
"If I ever… if I ever start acting like the old me again… the weak me… the scared me… promise me you'll slap me. Hard."
Akemi's smile widened, a flash of white teeth in the gloom. "It would be my distinct pleasure, Sam-chan." Then, her expression softened, just a fraction. "But honestly? I have a feeling that girl isn't coming back."
A beat of shared silence passed between them, a silent acknowledgment of the abyss they had both stared into, and the monsters they had both become.
Then Samantha whispered, her voice raw but steady, "Me neither."
Just then, her phone, still clutched in her lap, vibrated. A soft, insistent buzz.
She picked it up. A new notification glowed on the screen, stark and ominous against the cheerful wallpaper of a fluffy kitten.
[System Alert: New Main Mission Unlocked.]
Her blood, which had just begun to thaw, turned to ice in her veins.
Akemi glanced at her, her brow furrowing at the sudden change in Samantha's expression. "What is it, Sam-chan? Bad news about Ren?"
Samantha stared at the glowing text, her newly forged resolve crumbling like ash.
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
Instead, she whispered, so softly that not even Akemi could hear, the words a cold, dead weight in her soul:
"…This isn't over. It's only just beginning."