The clinic doors slid open with a soft pneumatic sigh, releasing a pocket of warm, sterile air into the neon-drenched night of Neo-Yokohama. Fine rain misted down like silver static, transforming the cracked pavement into shifting mirrors that shattered every holographic glow into liquid prisms. Skyscrapers rose like indifferent gods of gss and steel, their surfaces crawling with animated kanji and coiling dragon ads that throbbed in rhythm with the city's restless pulse. Hover traffic droned through the elevated nes overhead; delivery drones zipped between towers like schools of chrome fish. The air carried the mingled scents of rain-soaked asphalt, simmering soy broth from street vendors, and the sharp ozone bite of straining circuitry.

  Rori stepped out and stretched immediately, rolling her shoulders until her spine cracked with a satisfying pop. "Okay," she announced, voice cutting bright against the downpour. "I'm starving."

  Kainen halted so suddenly that Rori nearly walked into his back.

  She blinked. "...What?"

  He turned slowly. Neon light slid across the hard pnes of his face, and the humor evaporated from Rori's expression the second she met his eyes—those eerily calm eyes that had borne the weight of their survival since he was ten.

  Lira noticed too. Her silver hair, damp and luminous, caught the shifting colors as she tilted her head. "Kainen?"

  His voice emerged low and deliberate, each word edged in frost. "You two nearly got yourselves killed."

  Rori rolled her eyes on reflex, grasping for deflection. "Oh, come on—"

  "I told you to stand down."

  The sentence struck harder than any physical blow. Her smirk crumbled.

  "They shot me first," she protested, though the fire had already guttered in her tone.

  "They warned you first."

  "They were threatening us!"

  "And you escated." Kainen's jaw clenched; a muscle jumped beneath the skin. Rain traced deliberate paths down his temples. "You think provoking the Hunter's Guild is funny?"

  Rori folded her arms, defiance warring with the guilt twisting in her gut. "They started it."

  He stared at her for a long, unblinking moment. Then something in his face gave—not rage, but a deeper fracture, the kind that comes from pressing on an old wound.

  "Do you know why I hate them?" he asked, voice quiet enough that the rain almost drowned it.

  Rori shrugged, the motion brittle. "Because they're assholes?"

  "No." Neon kanji flickered across his dark irises like silent indictments. "They killed our mother."

  The statement hung there, razor-sharp, slicing through the night. Rori's breath snagged in her throat. Lira froze mid-step; her thick, metallic-silver draconic tail—ridged with delicate spines—curled tight against her leg as though trying to shield her core.

  Rori blinked once, twice. "...What?"

  "You were a baby," Kainen said, his tone ft and rehearsed, the cadence of someone who had forced this memory into a box years ago and never quite sealed it. "You don't remember. I was ten."

  Rain hammered the street, filling the silence he refused to bridge.

  "They came in the middle of the night. Three of them. Hunter's Guild patches on their coats." He swallowed once. "She fought. Punched one so hard he crashed straight through a concrete wall. She was that strong."

  Lira's green chest core fred brighter for a single heartbeat—the only visible crack in her composure.

  "And it still didn't matter," Kainen continued. "They kept coming. They always come."

  The distant cmor of the city receded, as though Neo-Yokohama itself had paused to listen.

  Rori's stomach knotted painfully. "...What happened?"

  Kainen exhaled slowly through his nose. "She told me to run. So I grabbed you." His shoulders tensed under the sodden jacket. "You were crying. You didn't understand what was happening. Neither did I. I just knew we had to get out."

  Rori stared at the rain-gzed pavement, watching neon fragments break and re-form with every falling drop. All these years, she had pictured their mother as a mythic figure—distant, heroic, untouchable. Never this raw. Never this close enough to wound.

  "You never told me," she whispered.

  "No." His voice gentled, just barely. "You were a kid. And talking about it doesn't change anything."

  The silence stretched, sodden and heavy. Then Kainen sighed, the sound nearly lost in the rain.

  "We're getting ramen."

  Rori sniffed—once, suspiciously. "...Yeah."

  They walked without speaking for blocks, boots spshing through puddles that held a thousand broken reflections of the future. Neo-Yokohama pulsed around them: holographic dragons spiraling up corporate spires, virtual idols beaming down with vacant smiles, kanji rivers streaming across mirrored facades like living script. Normally, Rori would have been scaling mp posts, mocking absurd ads, filling the quiet with noise. Tonight she simply walked, pink hair pstered to her face, thoughts roiling like gutter water in a storm.

  They killed our mother.

  Not legend. Not a cautionary tale. Three Hunters. One concrete wall. A ten-year-old boy hauling a wailing infant through darkness while bck-coated death pursued.

  She stole a sideways gnce at Kainen. He moved with his usual quiet precision—hands pocketed, posture deceptively rexed, gaze sweeping reflections in windows and passing vehicles. Always scanning. Always pnning. The gait of someone who had never truly stopped fleeing.

  Her chest ached with sudden, fierce tenderness.

  He had been ten.

  Ten years old.

  Carrying her.

  "Hey," she muttered.

  Kainen kept his eyes forward. "Yeah."

  She hesitated, then let the question escape anyway. "...Did you really carry me out of there?"

  He blinked, caught off guard. "That's a weird question."

  "Well...you said you grabbed me."

  "Yeah."

  "So like—"

  "Rori." The word wasn't sharp, only weary. "It was a long time ago."

  She scuffed her boot against wet concrete. "...Right."

  He looked ahead again. "A more important question is whether you'll listen next time I say don't poke the Hunter's Guild."

  Rori rolled her eyes—the gesture automatic, comforting. "Yes, Dad."

  Lira's quiet giggle pierced the tension like sunlight through clouds.

  Then the aroma hit: rich soy, garlic oil, sizzling pork. Rori's stomach growled loud enough to bounce off the buildings.

  "Okay," she said, a spark of her usual energy returning. "Now I'm actually starving."

  Kainen exhaled—almost a ugh. "Good."