The room was never meant to be found. No hinges welcomed the door, no light dared shine through its cracks. It wasn't hidden behind some elaborate mechanism or guarded by a code, just… buried. Like a wound sealed over by time but never healed. Forgotten not by accident, but because even the shadows refused to linger too long near it. The air itself grew heavier there, thick with a stale rot that didn't smell like death—but memory. Memory fermented. Memory clawing.
Yui hadn't meant to find it. Her fingers had wandered in search of nothing, dragging across the cold spine of the shelter's eastern wall, where the silence screamed the loudest. The others were asleep. The war outside had grown distant. But inside her, something had cracked since the day her eyes caught the golden glint in the mirror—the same flicker that haunted her father's nightmares.
The boards groaned under her weight. One tug, and the wall crumbled inward, revealing the metal sliver of a door that seemed to recoil at her presence. She pressed her palm to it anyway. It didn't open so much as surrender.
She stepped inside.
The smell hit first. Chemicals long dried, ash soaked into concrete, the faint sting of ammonia and something else—something like blood that had forgotten its name. Her breath caught in her throat. The walls were lined with drawers, busted shelves, slumped filing cabinets overflowing with yellowed paper and shattered glass. Tablets half-melted sat beside sealed vials covered in black fungal dust. A table stood at the room's center, bolted down like a sacrificial altar.
And on that table sat a single folder.
Black. Untouched by decay. Sealed in leather that gleamed faintly like wet skin. PROJECT ARCHIVE - CLASSIFIED was seared across its front in silver etching, faded just enough to feel older than time itself. Below it, the sigil of a broken helix. A genome split clean down the middle.
Yui didn't breathe as she opened it.
The first page didn't scream. It whispered.
PROJECT OMEGA - Status: Failed. Containment Breach. 94% Mortality. Notes: "Subjects unable to maintain cognitive integrity. Results—unusable. Recommend sterilization of all carriers."
She turned the page.
PROJECT ALPHA - "Embryonic augmentation through viral gene coding. Utero exposure: 4. Survivors: 1. Mental degradation: extreme. Transfer to long-term lockdown required. Emotional detachment advised."
Her vision blurred.
PROJECT RED MOON – Civilian Trial Zones. Location: Oita Prefecture. Kumamoto. Unconfirmed extension into Korea. Population exposure: 3,000+. Outcome: Expunged. Memory Reconstruction teams deployed. No survivors necessary.
Yui's hands were shaking.
She turned more pages. More horrors.
X-rays of twisted vertebrae, skulls ruptured from within, children's faces melted into their own ribcages. Names scrawled and crossed out. A single phrase repeated again and again:
REJECTED. TERMINATED. EXPERIMENTAL STAGE FAILED.
She read on.
PROJECT GAMMA. PROJECT ECLIPSE. PROJECT ARGWAN.
Every title came with pain. Eclipse was mind fragmentation for compliance—"to strip the soul before reconditioning." Gamma trialed womb optimization. "Compatible females implanted. Survivability secondary to yield. Sentimentality: hindrance."
Then she saw it.
Aiko Himura. Her mother. Patient tag: G-05. Notes: "Womb integrity—exceptional. Resistance to trauma—high. Termination request denied (relationship with Head). Transfer to protected housing."
Her heart stopped.
The paper crackled under her fingers, too loud in the silence.
And then—worse. One name. A name burned onto her bones.
REN KURODA.
Title: Lead Researcher. Director. Head of Neural Alteration for Project Eclipse. Authorization Level: Omega Black. Status: "Resigned. Missing. Subject deemed 'emotionally compromised.' Retired via unauthorized civilian relocation."
It was him.
Her father.
Yui stepped back from the table, bile rising in her throat. Her lips moved, but no sound came. The folder slid from her hands, pages fluttering like broken wings. Her chest felt too tight. Her hands, soaked in sweat. Her legs, hollow.
The world spun.
He had lied. For her whole life. Lied with his silence, with his gentleness, with the way he kissed her forehead goodnight and told her there were no monsters anymore.
She turned.
He was there.
Standing in the doorframe, eyes cast low, like he had known this moment would come and had prayed it never would. The light flickered behind him, turning his silhouette into something skeletal.
"Dad," she breathed, not in love—in disbelief. "How long?"
He didn't speak.
"How long did you lie to me?" The words came out broken, but loud. Her voice cracked, choked by tears she hadn't yet earned the right to cry. "Did she know? Did Mom know?"
Ren's eyes darkened. "She knew… enough."
Yui stepped back like the words slapped her.
He walked inside. Slowly. Like each step was dragging chains. "I didn't want you to find that," he murmured. "I burned everything I could. I thought I buried that part of me."
"But not well enough," she spat. "You called yourself a farmer. You said you left that world."
"I did."
"You ran," she snapped. "You ran from graves you dug with your own hands."
Ren's shoulders slumped, a man unraveling. He looked older now. Not just tired—ancient. The kind of old that no time could measure. "We thought we were saving the world," he said, voice barely more than wind. "We thought if we pushed far enough into the dark, we'd find light on the other side."
She stared at him, voice low. "And all you found were bodies."
He nodded once. "Yes."
She looked at the folder. "Was I one of them? A project? A test?"
"No," he said, instantly, sharply, but then softer. "No. You were never that. You were born… after. When I finally stopped. When your mother made me stop."
"But you let her live," Yui said bitterly, pointing at the notes. "She was a womb. An asset. You let her live because you loved her. Not because she wasn't part of it."
"I let her live because I couldn't live without her," Ren whispered. "And even that was selfish. She was supposed to hate me. But she forgave me. She gave me a second chance."
She looked into his eyes then. She had his eyes. And now, she wished she didn't.
"You made monsters," she said. "You made Argwans. You turned people into weapons. That woman—the one chasing us now. Shinobu. She was your friend."
Ren's voice cracked. "I told her it would work. I told her the pain would stop. I—" He dropped to his knees. "She screamed for six days. And when the change finally took, she forgot her name. But she never forgot me."
Yui was crying now, but she didn't notice. Her body just did it on its own.
Ren lifted his hands. Not to touch her. Not to beg.
Just to surrender.
"I'll never ask you to forgive me," he said. "But I'll die protecting you. If you never call me 'Dad' again… I'll still call you my daughter."
Silence.
The folder lay open between them, a grave that never closed. The overhead light buzzed and buzzed, like a heart that had forgotten how to beat.
And Yui didn't run. She didn't scream. She didn't fall into his arms.
She just sat down beside him.
Not as family. Not yet.
But as two people caught in the echo of something too human to name.
And in that haunted silence, even the ghosts stayed quiet
The silence between them throbbed like a wound that refused to close