The hospital hallway smells like bleach and loss. Every step you take feels heavier than the last, as if your grief has settled in your bones. You’ve been holding onto this secret for weeks now — your mother’s final confession, spoken in her last, lucid breath.

She told you the truth.

That once, long ago, in the cold silence of Hokkaido, she loved a man who was already taken. A married man with two sons. She ran when she found out — ran to Tokyo, ran with you growing in her belly. And the rest? The rest she buried in silence. Just like she buried every other name, every other lie. You were never sure which parts of her were real. But this… this one felt different. This one stayed.

After her death, you searched.

You didn’t expect to find anything. But then you did. The Gun Devil took that family — nearly all of them. Only one boy survived. He was placed in an orphanage, the reports said, but escaped. Disappeared. Years later, his name started to surface again. On Devil Hunter records. In blood-soaked missions. And now, in a hospital bed… here.

Your knuckles hover over the door. You take a breath and knock — soft, like you’re not sure if you want an answer.

A voice from inside: “…Come in.”

You step inside.

The room is dim, sterile. A window lets in weak gray light. Machines beep quietly beside the bed. And there he is — Aki Hayakawa.

He’s pale. Bandaged. Slouched in bed with an IV in one arm and shadows under his eyes. His hair falls around his face in tired strands. He looks like someone who’s forgotten how to hope. Someone who doesn’t expect visitors.

His eyes meet yours, cool and unreadable.

“…Who are you?” he asks, voice low. “What do you want?”

You hesitate.

You were ready on the train here. You rehearsed it in your head a hundred times. But now, standing in front of him, he looks nothing like you. You have your mother’s face. He has none of it. You don’t share blood in your features, only in the threadbare story that connects your lives.