The room was small, the air thick with the humidity of Okinawa and the scent of salt, but for Akira Furuhaya, the world had narrowed down to the dimensions of a cardboard box. It sat on the edge of the bed, a mundane object holding a psychic grenade.
Makoto Tsukauchi stood by the door, her hand resting on the frame. She looked at him with a mixture of hope and profound apprehension. She knew the weight of what she had carried for three years, even if she didn't know the specifics of the blood on the pages.
"I'll be in the other room, Akira," she said softly. "I'll make some tea. Take as much time as you need. Just… be careful. You aren't the same man you... instructed me on what to do with that."
Akira didn't look up. He didn't even acknowledge her departure. He waited until the click of the door signalled his solitude before he reached out. His hands, usually steady with a detective's discipline, were trembling, a fine, vibrating tremor that spoke of a deep, biological fear.
He pulled the lid off.
Inside was a bundle wrapped tightly in tinfoil.
The moment he lifted it, a scent wafted through the room, not the smell of rot or old paper, but the deep, cloying sweetness of honey. It was an innocent smell, almost jarringly out of place in a detective's evidence box. He unwrapped the foil with surgical care, revealing a sphere of translucent, golden jelly.
It looked like a preserved organ, but as he held it up to the dim light, he saw more. Suspended within the honey-like mass were dark, red threads that spiralled toward the center like veins. And in the very heart of the sphere sat something hard and metallic, a jagged, silver stain that he couldn't quite identify through the thick suspension.
His breath came in short, shallow hitches. His heart hammered against his ribs. He didn't know what the red was. He didn't know what the silver was. But he knew that if he wanted the truth, he had to take it. He had to stop being a witness and start being the victim.
Akira raised the mass to his lips. He bit down.
The honey was the first thing to hit, sweet, smooth, and protective. But as his teeth sank deeper, the ball of jelly burst.
The taste of iron exploded across his tongue. It was a sharp, metallic tang that he recognized with a jolt of primal horror, Blood. His own blood, preserved for years. And then, his teeth ground against the center, the silver object. It was a charred, half-melted amulet, still holding the residual heat of a decade-old fire.
The "CHEW" quirk detonated.
Akira's head snapped back, a guttural sound escaping his throat as the cinematic, third-person lies in his brain were shredded by a tidal wave of first-person reality. The "movie" vanished. The clinical edits were burned away by the raw, sensory truth of his own biological records.
He wasn't standing in the room anymore.
He was in the Kanagawa wilderness. He tasted the chemical sharpness of quirk-enhancement drugs. He heard the rhythmic, terrified sobbing of forty children kept in pressurized cells. He felt the sickening hiss of the gas filling the room, and then the heat, a blinding, white-hot roar that vaporized the children, the doctors, and the secrets in a single, catastrophic instant.
Project 46.
The name hit him like a physical blow. He saw himself, ten years younger, slamming a file down on a mahogany desk. He saw the face of the man across from him, the President of the Hero Commission, Sōgen Kageyama. He remembered the fury in his own voice as he demanded justice for the forty orphans.
And then he remembered the betrayal. He saw the President's cold, thin smile. He felt the butt of a pistol hitting the back of his head. He remembered the last thing he had done before they dragged him away, bleeding into a vial, wrapping the amulet in his own genetic code, and sealing it in honey because he knew honey never rotted. He had left himself a way back.
Akira collapsed onto the floor, sweating profusely, his skin gray and clammy. He spat the silver amulet onto the rug, his chest heaving as the weight of the massacre and the conspiracy flooded into his heart.
The paranoia hit him like a physical shockwave. He scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide and darting toward the window. They know. If they know I remember, they'll finish it.
He rushed to the window, slamming it shut and pulling the heavy blinds until the room was plunged into artificial twilight. He checked the door, sliding the bolt home with a frantic, metallic clack. He backed away from the entrance, his mind racing through every shadow, every floorboard, looking for the eyes of the Commission.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clutched in his hair, his breath finally beginning to slow. He reached up and licked his lips, the lingering taste of honey and iron a reminder of the price he had paid to be himself again.
A light, tired-sounding laugh escaped his throat, a sound of pure, jagged irony.
"I'm back," he whispered to the dark room. "In one piece. In one big whole piece."
The memory of the children's screams was a cold fire in his gut, but beneath it was something harder. Something the Commission hadn't accounted for. He wasn't just a victim anymore, he was a detective who finally had the smoking gun.
"They will regret," Akira said, his voice dropping into that low, rhythmic, dangerous crawl. "They will regret not silencing me for good."
He looked at the charred silver amulet on the floor and began to plan. The truth was out of the box, and Akira Furuhaya was hungry for more.
___
Akira was pacing, a tight, rhythmic back-and-forth that stayed well away from the windows. His movements were jerky, his eyes constantly darting toward the door as if he expected the wood to splinter at any moment.
"We aren't leaving, Makoto," Akira said, his voice a low, rough crawl. "Not until I've processed the variables. I have ten years of blacked-out history rattling around in my skull and a target on my back that's probably glowing by now."
Makoto stood by the door, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She looked exhausted, the humidity of Naha making her hair stick to her forehead. "Akira, you've been staring at the walls for an hour. You haven't told me what you saw in that memory, and you haven't told me why you're acting like there's a firing squad outside the hotel."
"Because there might be," Akira snapped, stopping mid-turn. "Kageyama is dead, he died while I was rotting in that cell, but the people who helped him? The ones who handled the 'cleanup'? They didn't go anywhere. The current head of the Commission didn't hesitate to uphold my arrest. The institution doesn't die just because the man at the top does."
"Then tell me the truth!" Makoto's voice rose, sharp with frustration. "I deserve to know what's so dangerous that you've turned this room into a bunker."
"Not yet," Akira muttered, his eyes fixated on the charred silver amulet lying on the rug. "I need to know who I can trust. And right now, that list is one name long, and you're lucky to be on it."
"Well, that list is about to get longer," Makoto said, her tone shifting into something more defensive. "Because I've invited someone over. He's already on his way."
Akira froze. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking even more gaunt and skeletal. "You did what? You brought someone here? Without a sweep? Without checking the perimeter?"
"I did what I had to do, Akira! We barely know each other outside of that one prison glass session. I'm a researcher and a journalist. I want to write about what happened to you, but I also want to stay alive to see it published. I called a contact, someone I handle PR for in the Japanese and American market."
"A hero?" Akira's hand went to his hip, a phantom reflex for a weapon that was no longer there. "You brought a government-licensed enforcer to a witness hideout?"
"He's a good man," Makoto insisted. "He's an international asset now, but he started in Naruhata. He knows how to work in the grey areas. He's mobile, and he's discreet."
"Call it off," Akira growled, taking a menacing step toward her. "Call it off now or..."
A sharp, firm knock echoed through the room.
Akira didn't finish the sentence. He backed into the corner, his body coiled, his breath hitching. Makoto looked at him with a mixture of pity and resolve before she turned and pulled the door open.
Koichi Haimawari stepped in first, his teal hoodie damp from the island humidity. He looked around the room with a practiced, alert gaze, his eyes immediately landing on the dishevelled man in the corner. Behind him, moving with a silent, unsettling efficiency, was the white-haired teenager from the street, Yoshi.
The air in the room instantly became cold.
Akira's eyes widened as he recognized Yoshi. The visceral fear he had felt during their encounter on the sidewalk returned in a flood. The rude kid, he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Yoshi didn't look at Makoto or the room. His obsidian eyes locked onto Akira, scanning the gaunt face and the hollowed-out posture.
"Akira Furuhaya," Yoshi said, his voice flat and clinical. "You were in the high-security wing. One of the ones who walked out when the League tore the Vault open."
Koichi's head whipped around, his eyes wide as he looked at Yoshi and then back at Akira. "Wait, what? Makoto, you didn't say anything about him being a prisoner from the Akagura break! You said this was a whistleblower case!"
"I was a detective!" Akira shouted, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and terror. "I was framed by the very people you work for! And you..." he pointed a trembling finger at Yoshi, "...I saw you. You're the kid from the street. The rude little shit!"
Yoshi didn't react to the accusation.
"Everyone, sit down!" Makoto's voice cut through the burgeoning panic like a whip. She stepped into the center of the small room, her authority as a handler taking over. "Akira, get out of the corner. Koichi, shut the door and stay calm. And you..." She pointed to the teen who even she was surprised to see. "Don't antagonize him."
Koichi looked at the gaunt man, then at the teenager, and finally at Makoto. He let out a long, weary sigh and closed the door, sliding the bolt home. Yoshi shrugged and took a seat on the edge of a small wooden table, looking entirely unbothered.
Akira slowly lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, his hands clutched in his lap, his eyes darting between the international hero and the boy who seemed to see right through him. The awkwardness in the room was a physical weight, a stifling silence that made the hum of the air conditioner sound like a roar.
"Sit," Makoto commanded, looking at Koichi. "We are going to talk. Akira is going to tell us exactly what he remembered, and we are going to figure out how to keep the Commission from burying us all in the same grave."
___
The small hotel room felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in as the weight of Akira's recovered memories settled over the group. The air was thick with a new kind of silence, the kind that followed a confession of a massacre.
Yoshi leaned back against the peeling floral wallpaper, his arms crossed over his chest. For a long moment, he said nothing, his obsidian eyes drifting from the charred silver amulet on the rug to the gaunt, trembling detective.
Internally, a wave of cold disgust washed over him. He had spent months inside Izuku Midoriya's head, witnessing the desperate, bright-eyed idealism of a boy who believed the "Hero" system was a sacred calling. To hear of the literal bones of that system, Project 46, wasn't just revolting, it was strategically moronic.
It's just... dumb, Yoshi thought, his lip curling in a slight sneer.
The Commission had held the leashes of nearly every hero academy in the nation for decades. They had the curriculum, the funding, and the legal right to shape the next generation into whatever weapons they desired.
If they wanted "optimized" soldiers, they could have simply tipped the scales, introduced harsher regimes, and pushed the biological ceiling within the light of day under the guise of "a new curriculum". To build a black-site for orphans was a desperate, messy move. It suggested that the former President, Sōgen Kageyama, hadn't been a visionary at all. He had just been a villain who lacked the spine to fully take on the mantle, a man who wanted the results of malice while hiding behind a desk.
"Now is a terrible time to take this to the press," Yoshi said, his voice cutting through the heavy atmosphere like a dull blade.
Yoichi turned to him, looking surprised. "What? Yoshi, this is evidence of human experimentation. Why wait when so many powerful people... like me, are still working for them?"
"He's right," Makoto interjected, her journalist's mind already calculating the fallout. She looked at Yoichi with a weary, knowing expression. "Look at the streets, Hero. The public faith is a dying ember. We have a 'Harvest' leaderboard, UA is under a military-style lockdown, and All Might..."
Yoshi awkwardly scratched the back of his head at the mention of the Symbol of Peace. He remembered the feeling of All Might's power, the way he had buckled under the weight of the number one and his quirk. He was the reason the man was in a coma, even if no one in this room knew it.
"...All Might is out," Makoto finished, her voice flat. "If you drop a story about forty murdered children and government experimentation into this climate, the public won't just demand reform. They'll launch a full-on tirade against anyone with a license being forced to protect that system. They'll burn the academies down with the kids still inside. It won't be a revolution, it'll be a riot."
"And the parents," Akira added, his voice a low, rhythmic crawl. He stared at the amulet. "Forty kids. Some of them were orphans, but some orphanages and individuals were told it was a gas leak. There are people out there who have been searching for ten years. If they find out their children were 'optimized' into ash by the people they pay with their taxes to protect them..."
The room fell into a grim consensus. The truth was a nuclear weapon, and they were currently standing in the blast zone. The Commission was the enemy, but the "Hero" world needed to be on an even playing field before they could strike. Akira Furuhaya, the man who held the smoking gun, was now the most valuable, and most endangered, witness in Japan.
"He has to stay alive," Yoichi said firmly, looking at Akira. "Until the timing is right."
"No," Yoshi muttered, his tone dripping with a cynical boredom that irritated everyone in the room. "Only the story has to stay alive. The man is a liability."
Makoto's eyes snapped to the teenager. Her patience, already frayed by the humidity and the secrecy, finally snapped. "Why is he even here, Yoichi? He's just a kid. This is a whistleblower hideout, not a daycare for sociopaths."
Yoichi shifted uncomfortably, his hand instinctively going to the back of his neck. "He's... he's with me. On a work study. He's an assistant."
Makoto stepped forward, her hand brushing against Yoichi's arm as she looked him dead in the eye. A few seconds of awkward silence stretched between them before she let out a sharp, dry laugh. "You're lying."
Yoichi slumped, the teal hood of his sweatshirt looking heavy. "Fine. We didn't come here for the whistleblower case. We ran into something... interesting. A clinic. A 'special' doctor. We were trying to figure him out before we moved back to the mainland."
Makoto frowned, her gaze shifting back to Yoshi. "And what does that have to do with this boy? You're dragging a minor into an underground medical investigation?"
"Yoshi was actually the one who figured it out," Yoichi admitted, his voice a mix of pride and frustration. "He noticed the woman in the street. He's the one who planted the bug. The kid breaks the law every five minutes and doesn't listen to a word of reason, but..."
"That is a very bad trait," Makoto interrupted, her voice stern as she looked at Yoshi. "You're going to get yourself killed, or worse, you'll get Yoichi's license revoked."
"He's capable," Yoichi insisted, looking at the floor. "More capable than anyone I've seen in a long time."
"That doesn't change the principle!" Makoto countered. "He shouldn't be here!"
"Move on from the topic," Yoshi snapped, his obsidian eyes flashing with a sudden, cold intensity. "The situation isn't changing. I'm here because I choose to be, and unless you're planning on calling the police to report a 'rude kid' in the middle of a fugitive's hotel room, your opinion is irrelevant."
Makoto opened her mouth to retort, her face flushing with anger, but Akira's voice cut through the tension.
The detective had been silent, his gaze fixed on the two "heroes" who had arrived at his door. He wasn't looking at their licenses or their hoodies. He was looking at the way Yoshi moved, the strange weight the boy carried.
"The doctor," Akira whispered, leaning forward, his eyes locked on Yoichi. "You said you found a 'special' doctor in Naha. What makes him so special that an international hero and a... kid like that... are willing to risk a Commission operation to find him?"
Akira licked his lips, the faint, phantom taste of blood and honey still lingering on his tongue.
"What did you hear on that recorder?"