Rain fell over the city all day. It hit the windows of the university like static, steady and cold. Tokyo had felt strange lately, quiet in the wrong places, loud in the ones that used to be calm. It’s never rained as heavy as it did these last few days. Raizō noticed it more than most. Not because he was paranoid, but because he paid attention. The hum of transformers outside the university flickered irregularly now, the air smelled faintly metallic, and even his laptop screen and the monitors occasionally stuttered without reason.

  Still, life went on.

  He sat in the engineering lab, half-focused on a circuit diagram, half-listening to the group of students at the next table. Their laughter was casual, confident, the kind of laughter that came easily to people who’d never lost anything. The same six faces. Their paths only crossed during collaborative projects. Unfortunately, this was one of them.

  “Raizō,” Arin said suddenly, looking up from the whiteboard, his tone all authority and feigned politeness. “You’re double-checking the calculations, right?”

  Raizō nodded without looking up. “Yes.”

  “Good. Because last time your section was a little… inefficient.”

  The room went quiet for half a second. Reina’s lips curled faintly, and Ayane tilted her head, pretending not to smile.

  Raizō glanced up from his notes, expression neutral. “I wasn’t aware the project’s power output depended on my handwriting.”

  A few muffled laughs escaped from other tables. Arin’s composure faltered for a fraction of a second before his smile returned. “I just want to make sure we all understand our roles,” he said lightly.

  “You mean yours as the speaker?” Raizō asked.

  Reina interrupted, tone dripping with intellect. “He means leadership. Which is something not everyone’s comfortable with.”

  Hiro leaned back, smirking. “Some people just prefer to watch from the sidelines, right, Raizō?”

  Raizō looked at them calmly. “If the sidelines are where things actually get done, I don’t mind.”

  Daisuke chuckled under his breath. “Man, you always talk like you’re above everyone.”

  “I just listen,” Raizō said, packing his notebook. “That’s enough to sound different, I guess.”

  Arin’s jaw tightened. He didn’t reply. But the glare that followed said enough.

  That night, Raizō stayed late in the lab. The others had gone home, or so he thought. The room was quiet except for the soft hum of equipment and the faint buzz of fluorescent lights. He was running one final test on the project’s circuitry when the display suddenly dimmed. Seconds later, the hum cut out.

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  “Power surge?” he muttered. He checked the connections, nothing wrong. When he turned around, faint laughter echoed from the back of the lab. Daisuke and Hiro were standing by the breakers.

  “Relax,” Daisuke said, flipping a switch. “We just wanted to see if your little project could handle real pressure.”

  The machines whined back to life. Several meters of wire sparked in protest.

  Raizō sighed, shaking his head. “You’re going to fry the board.”

  Hiro smirked. “Then fix it. You’re the engineer, right?”

  Raizō unplugged the system before anything burned out. “You two done?”

  “Just making sure you can keep up,” Daisuke said. “You always act like you’re untouchable.”

  “I’m not untouchable,” Raizō said quietly. “I just don’t care enough to fight.”

  The look he gave them wasn’t defiance, it was disappointment. And somehow, that stung more. When they left, Kaito lingered near the doorway, half in shadow. His expression flickered with something close to guilt.

  “You shouldn’t stay so late,” he said finally. “You’ll make enemies.”

  Raizō didn’t look up. “I already have.”

  Kaito hesitated, then left without another word. The following days blurred together in a rhythm of lectures, work, and quiet exhaustion. Emi noticed the fatigue in her brother’s voice, though he tried to hide it.

  “Are you okay?” she asked one morning as she tied her shoes for school.

  “Fine,” Raizō said, reaching for his jacket.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  He paused at the door, then smiled faintly. “You sound like Mom.”

  Emi smiled too, but her eyes were uncertain. “Just don’t forget to eat, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  The door shut softly behind him.

  By the end of the week, tension among the group had grown thick enough to touch. The lab’s atmosphere changed, less collaboration, more performance. Every session felt like a competition Arin had to win. Reina’s tone sharpened, Hiro’s jokes became crueler, and Ayane’s sweetness turned into pity. Kaito stopped meeting Raizō’s eyes. And through it all, Raizō worked. Not for recognition, but because the system had to function. It was his name on the schematics, his logic that held the design together. On the final night before the project’s presentation, the thunderstorm rolled over the city more intensely than usual. The others gathered in the lab, jackets still drenched from the rain, arguing about final adjustments.

  “This is it,” Arin said, voice commanding. “If we finish tonight, we’ll have time to run the simulation tomorrow.”

  Raizō watched the rain streak down the glass. “You’re rushing the calibration.”

  “It’ll hold,” Reina said.

  “It won’t,” he replied. “If you overload the core—”

  Daisuke cut him off with a grin. “Then we’ll make history.”

  Raizō sighed. “You’ll make a mess.”

  Lightning flashed outside, filling the room with white light. For a second, everyone froze. Then the machines pulsed. Raizō noticed it, the faint vibration under the floor, the hum climbing through the walls.

  “Did you feel that?” he asked.

  Arin frowned. “Feel what?”

  Raizō stopped moving. “Something’s off.”

  The others ignored him. Reina typed another command. Daisuke opened his mouth to say something, but the lights went out. For a few seconds, there was nothing. No sound. No motion. Just the dark. Then lightning hit the glass. The windows cracked from the impact. The equipment flared once, twice, then burst into a shower of sparks. Someone shouted.

  “Stay back from the coil!” Raizō yelled, moving toward the breaker by instinct.

  Another flash lit the room. He saw them all frozen mid-motion. Arin shielding his face, Reina flinching from the console, Ayane standing perfectly still, lips moving in a half-prayer, Kaito turning toward the door. The thunder hit. The shock wave rattled the lab. Papers lifted, monitors shattered, sparks crawled along the floor.

  Raizō dropped down, shielding his head. “Down!”

  The coil glowed blue from within. Light spread through the wires, up the walls, into the ceiling. It was everywhere, too bright to focus on. He felt the charge run through the air, sharp and cold. Static crawled along his skin. Someone screamed. The sound cut out before he could tell who. Raizō looked up. The containment unit pulsed once more, light folding in on itself.

  He thought of Emi, how she looked that morning, half-asleep but smiling.

  Then the light took everything.