Remembered

"H-Hiroshi! Hiroshi!"

Adelina’s faint cry reached the living room, fragile and strained, yet sharp enough to send a jolt through Hiroshi and Victor. Hiroshi tried to push himself up too quickly, a groan escaping his lips as the pain from his recent injury flared. He sank back onto the couch momentarily, clutching his side.

Victor shot him a glance before sprinting to the kitchen, his heart pounding. The sight that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.

He reached the doorway first, and his breath caught in his throat as his eyes landed on Azumi lying motionless on the floor.

Time seemed to warp around him, slowing as he rushed to her side, his pulse roaring in his ears. "LOVE!" he gasped, his voice cracking with desperation. Without hesitation, he knelt beside her, cradling her in his arms as though she were the most fragile thing in the world.

His eyes never left her face, and in the whirlwind of panic, he barely registered the figure standing behind him. "What the hell happened here?!" he demanded, his gaze snapping to Adelina, though his attention was clearly still on Azumi.

His tone was sharp with anxiety, but there was something deeper—a sense of betrayal lingering in his words, though he couldn't quite place it.

Hiroshi arrived a heartbeat later, his face mirroring Victor’s shock and confusion. His instincts were sharp, honed by years of living on the edge, and his first reaction was to check on Adelina—his concern for her outweighing everything else, at least for a brief moment.

But the sight of her left him stunned. Adelina wasn’t panicking, wasn’t showing any sign of distress at all. She's only lying on the table, a chilling grin stretching across her face. Her eyes were fixed on Victor and Azumi, intense and unblinking.

"L-Love, what’s going on? What’s wrong?" Hiroshi moved closer, his voice trembling with uncertainty, but before he could even reach her, the unsettling smile on Adelina’s face vanished as if it had never existed.

She gasped, her body jolting slightly as if waking from a deep slumber. She blinked rapidly, as though trying to clear her vision or return to a reality she didn’t fully understand. Her gaze turned to Hiroshi, and her eyes were wide with an unfamiliar intensity, like a person reemerging from a dream they couldn’t remember.

"Hiroshi?" Her voice was barely a whisper, but it was laced with confusion and a tremor of fear. "H-Hiroshi, it happened again."

Victor's voice cut through the tension like a whip, sharp and demanding. "It happened again?" he repeated, his gaze shifting between Hiroshi and Adelina with an intensity that could have burned through stone.

His posture was rigid, every muscle in his body coiled with the silent promise of force should the answers not come. "What happened?!" he pressed, his words carrying the weight of both frustration and fear.

Hiroshi swallowed, the movement barely perceptible, but to him, it felt like an eternity. The knot in his throat made it almost impossible to speak.

He knew something had gone terribly wrong—he could feel it deep in his gut—but even he couldn’t comprehend the full scope of it. Adelina’s strange behavior, her cryptic grin, the unnatural stillness of Azumi—it all seemed too much to grasp in the moment. Even Hiroshi, who had spent years navigating chaos, felt lost.

Victor, however, wasn’t waiting for answers to come easily. His jaw tightened, and his hands shook with a barely-contained anger. "You better start talking, or so help me—" he began, his voice low, but it was enough of a threat to make Hiroshi’s pulse race.

His words hung in the air, electric and full of unsaid things, the kind of promise that would follow through if necessary.

Despite the fury in his voice, Victor’s hands were anything but reckless. He gently checked Azumi's vitals, his touch deliberate, careful—measuring the depth of her breath, the rhythm of her pulse. Once he was sure she was stable, he lifted her with a tenderness that belied the storm brewing inside him.

She was light in his arms, as if she were made of something far more fragile than bone and flesh. Carefully, he stood, never taking his eyes off Hiroshi and Adelina.

Hiroshi’s gaze flickered toward Adelina, who met his eyes with a strange, passive acceptance, as if granting him silent permission to reveal whatever was left unsaid.

The air between them was thick with unspoken histories, the gravity of secrets that had yet to be fully uncovered. Her silence was unsettling, almost calculating, but Hiroshi had learned to decipher it—a subtle understanding passed between them in their shared silence.

His attention finally shifted back to Victor, the tension in the room palpable. "W-When the apocalypse started, something strange also started h-happening to Adelina," he said, his voice trembling slightly, as though admitting this truth were a sharp blade cutting through a protective barrier he had spent years building.

Victor’s sharp eyes never left him, his posture stiff, the muscles in his body taut. Hiroshi’s words hung in the air, vibrating with a sense of foreboding. Though their physical builds were similar—almost identical—Victor’s presence carried an intensity that Hiroshi knew would be overwhelming if it came down to a confrontation.

And yet, now that Azumi was unconscious in his arms, Hiroshi realized that the gravity of his words would carry more than enough force to shift the tide. The time for hesitation had passed.

"S-She had lost all of her memories," Hiroshi continued, his voice faltering as the confession poured from him.

The revelation struck Victor like an electric shock, a sudden jolt that rattled his heart and shot adrenaline through his veins. It rang a bell.

The room seemed to tilt for a moment, as if the walls themselves were listening, waiting for the next truth to fall.

Victor’s mind raced—this was bigger than he had anticipated, more complex than he could have ever imagined. He didn’t speak, but the intensity of his gaze was enough to push Hiroshi onward.

"S-Sometimes she became lost in her own thoughts and suddenly became—a different person..." Hiroshi added, his voice quivering, and as he spoke, his eyes flickered briefly to Adelina, who had closed her eyes as if to shut out the world.

The sedatives had begun to take effect again, pulling her into a deep, unnatural slumber, leaving only Hiroshi and Victor awake, caught in the confusing moment.

"My girlfriend, Adelina... she used to be a respectable psychiatrist," Hiroshi continued, his voice steadying with each word. "But her career fell into nothing when she got involved in an underground group to study human..." He paused, searching his next words on the cold floor. "H-Human behavior as that's her field of work. T-That's all it should be, but things started changing..."

The air in the room shifted. The mention of an underground group sent a ripple of alarm through Victor, the complexity of Hiroshi’s words sinking in. Hiroshi’s eyes met Victor’s, flicking between him and Adelina. The story was unfolding, but it was far from finished.

"What underground group?" Victor asked, his tone blunt, yet laden with a quiet urgency. The direction of the conversation had shifted, but it was a shift that Victor knew would bring more pieces to the puzzle.

"It’s… a group that used their knowledge of psychology to manipulate and control people. They preyed on the vulnerable, using their skills to push individuals to the brink of madness. I—I don’t know much, but I do know that they changed her. She wasn’t the same after she got involved."

Victor’s mind raced. Azumi, too, had undergone a transformation that didn’t make sense—a transformation that seemed to echo what Hiroshi described.

Although Azumi lost her memories entirely, the resemblance was undeniable. Had Azumi been exposed to something similar? Was this the source of her current state—this mysterious underground group?

Victor felt the familiar suspicion pressing down on him, his thoughts growing darker with every passing second. Could Adelina be the key for him to solve the mystery behind the reality of his girlfriend's job?

As the pieces began to align in his mind, his gaze fell on Adelina, who was now deep in slumber, her face expressionless, her secrets hidden behind the veil of unconsciousness.

Victor finally broke the oppressive silence, his voice measured and commanding as he rose to his feet, prepared to carry Azumi to their quarters. "Watch over her," he instructed wit

h deliberate calm. "When she wakes, I want answers—nothing more, nothing less."