POV: Ikehara Mirai.
Timeline: *Past*
Kenta kept dragging me out by my hand till we got out of the building, I pulled my hand away from his grip and asked him annoyed by how sudden he made us leave the room, "why can't Yasahiro come with us? Having three people instead of one will be helpful!"
Kenta responded without turning around to face me, "don't involve him in this any further."
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POV: Isozaki Izumi.
Timeline: *Present*
"Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense, why was I close with Kenta!? When I met him, he didn't recognize me at all, but he recognized you and even recognized Junzo, doesn't that mean he didn't get his memories of the past erased like us? Then how come he didn't remember me at all?" Yasahiro asked Mirai as he glared at me, his glare felt weirdly creepy despite me knowing that he was probably glaring at Kenta who was inside of me, not me.
Mirai got up from her seat and started pouring a glass of water from a bottle she got out of the small fridge in her office then started drinking it.
The clock on the wall started ticking with only the ticking sound echoing through the room, silence covered the atmosphere till Mirai finished her glass of water, then she moved her lips and warned Yasahiro, "what I'm about to tell you, the events and the things that occurred will be hard to take, especially for you, Yasahiro."
"What's going to happen?" Yasahiro asked unshaken by her warning, she avoided eye contact with him and continued talking, "you left us and sided with one researcher then you ran away with him."
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POV: Ikehara Mirai.
Timeline: *Past*
Kenta turned around and while facing me, he continued, "that guy, already risked a lot by lying to help me retain my memories, if the truth gets found out, he will suffer the same fate as Shinobo."
I didn't want anyone to be forgotten like Shinobo, and Kenta does have a point in protecting Yasahiro as he will be our trump card against them, "so, we better hide our trump card for when we will need it the most?" I asked him as I grinned at him.
He smiled back and agreed, "yeah, plus in a spying mission like this, the smaller the group the better."
I was a bit taken back by his sudden mention of 'mission' but without much time to react to his childish remark we already reached the workshop where I read the documents in.
"What's the plan for getting in without much attention?" I asked Kenta as I stared at the electronic door that only opens with a card that the researchers have.
"Piece of cake," Kenta grumbled as he pulled a card from his pocket and swiped it opening the door, I yelled at him asking, "how the hell do you have that!?"
"How many times do you think I snuck inside with Izumi?" Kenta asked while laughing as he led the way inside.
I don't want to imagine how Izumi, who barely can kick a ball, was forced into accompanying this guy.
Kenta extended his hand in front of me, making me stop as he pushed me behind a cabinet, I whispered scared by the sudden hiding, "was there someone?" but instead of answering me, Kenta shushed me.
"Why should we feed him, he can't even remember how to eat anymore, if not for that Miscul guy we wouldn't have to do such a useless thing," an adult voice came from the other side of the cabinet.
"His useless emotions are getting in the way and making him feel guilt toward the kids, when all of them are only test subjects, that idiot," another adult voice responded.
"When will we have lunch today?" the voice asked as it grew further away, and few minutes passed with both of us staring at each other waiting to make sure that the voices went away.
Kenta mumbled while clinching his fist, "these jerks only think of us as test subjects, I'll freaking…"
I whispered asking, "do you think it's alright to get out now?" Kenta glanced at me and nodded then we both got out from behind the cabinet and started heading toward the test room, as we got inside, I quickly ran up to the table I saw the documents on before.
As I got near the table, I exclaimed, "they're not here," I turned toward Kenta to see him frowning, he ordered, "let's search this room, it might be here," and he started heading toward the drawers and pulled one of them open.
As he opened it, a smile appeared on his face and he called me over, "Chizuru, come here," as I headed toward him, inside the drawer were a bunch of files ordered by numbers that ranged from one to two hundred.
"They look exactly the same as the ones I saw before," I confirmed, but hesitantly objected, "but, the ones I saw were 326, 369 and 786, they don't seem to be in here."
Kenta got one of the files out from the drawer and opened it while saying, "if you remember the numbers like that, then considering your ability that must be true, if so, then what are these?"
As he flipped through it, he had a confused look on his face, "what is it? whose profile is that?" I asked him, he shook his head and said while showing me the file, "I don't know who this is, but … his room."
As I move my sight toward the place Kenta's finger is pointing at, a chill run down my spine, I confusedly asked, "why is my room written off as this person's?"
Kenta returned the file inside the drawer and closed it, he then told me with sweat dropping from his forehead in a tone that was filled with disbelief, "it seems they might have messed with our memories more than we thought," my body started trembling as I heard the words come out of Kenta's mouth.
Kenta moved and opened another drawer, and inside were files ranged from six hundred to eight hundred, he hesitantly said with his shaky voice, "if every kid had a file, then won't that mean the number of kids here, should be close to the number of files? H-How come there is this many files, yet we are barely one hundred?"
As I lost the strength in my feet, I dropped on the floor, I covered my mouth with both of my hands as they trembled with fear, I mumbled, "t-this m-many people were erased by them? Not only Shinobo, all of the people here were …"
Kenta quickly started opening the drawers in front of us and throwing every file on the table, he frightenedly yelled at me, "quickly! make sure to read all of them!"
I got up and yelled at him, "what are you doing!? Calm down!" Kenta slammed one of the drawers he opened shut and ran toward me and held my shoulders then told me, "don't you get it already!? We all will die if we stay here, our only hope is to know about ourselves more than they know! Then we will only have the option to fight them."
"f-fight!? What are you talking about, this isn't some sort of game!" I scolded him, I then quickly noticed Kenta's hands as they trembled while grabbing my shoulders, Kenta said with a shaky voice, "living in fear of who will get erased next, what if it was you? What if it was me!? Can you eat, live and sleep knowing that one day, you might lose someone? Or worse, it might be you who will be forgotten! Sitting around, being scared, and not doing anything, I had enough of that! We should start fighting for ourselves!"
I pushed Kenta's hands from my shoulders and responded, "I understand where you are coming from, but we are only kids! They are adults! How could we ever win against them!?"
Kenta grabbed the papers on the table and waved them, "we have something they don't have! We have these abilities! If we used them, then we will have a chance!"
It's crazy, thinking we can change all of this, it's crazy, "it's crazy… it's crazy but…" I said as I picked one of the files up, "it's crazy but do you think we can do it?" Kenta put the papers in his hand in front of me and corrected, "it's not about whether we can or not, it's something we have to do regardless."
I quickly moved my eyes glancing at every paper on the table and raised my voice, "then quickly bring the rest, I'm done with these," Kenta nodded and then we started inspecting every single file, every single ability, and we went through all the 963 files.
"There are only two files left," Kenta exclaimed, as he handed me files 964 and 965, I took them and peeked at them, "eh? This ability…" I mumbled, Kenta took them back and stared at them to see what was strange about them, "immortality? Did we have someone with that ability?" Kenta asked.
"Not that one, the final file, read the ability," I corrected him, he moved his head and looked at the other file, and mumbled while reading, "the unlimited veiner, wish-making ability?"
I picked file 923 and showed it to Kenta as I explained, "this ability is the closest to mine, it's called Innerself ability, the side-effects is the strong memory of the user, considering how I recognized 94 abilities and how similar they were to the abilities of the people I know, moreover, the more we went up in the number of files, the abilities on them became abilities of people we know, as there is exactly 96 kid here these two files that you hold, most likely belong to the only two people whom their ability is yet to surface."
"My ability is yet to surface, does that mean that my ability is one of these two?!" Kenta asked as a smile surfaced on his face, I nodded confirming, "but isn't it weird for them to know about abilities that are yet to surface?" I asked.
Kenta started rubbing his chin and mumbled, "you're right, it's as if they already know who will get which ability."
"Not only that," I interrupted, I opened one of the closed drawers and pulled file 389 and handed it to Kenta, as I explained, "this is Shinobo's file, if you look at the ninth line, in the third section of that file, you'll see that they already knew of how whenever he uses his ability a part of his brain cells dies which causes a gap in the user's memories, and if overused, it leads to death of all brain cells, meaning, the death of the user."
Kenta hesitated before asking, "then do you think that, they kept making him use it till… you know…?"
I started returning the files inside the drawers while frowning, I said, "but I don't understand how they could know all of this detailed information about our abilities, when some of these effects didn't even surface yet."
Kenta came and closed the last drawer and looked at me with a serious face, "it's not that hard to figure out the reason…" he told me.
"What do you mean?" I asked after gulping from his sudden serious expression, "what if, the source of all of our abilities were them?" Kenta asked, and then continued, "won't that explain everything?"
I laughed at his ridiculous conclusion, and mocked, "didn't we already study this in class? Only people under the age of 20 have abilities since after that age, their ability vanish, that is why, father and other researchers don't have any, and only us who are kids are able of using abilities. This is one of the basics that father taught us, how could you forget?"
"Do you think trusting what that man taught us to figure out what is happening is the right thing to do?" Kenta mocked me back, I got angry and scolded, "it's father! He won't teach us lies!" Kenta slammed his hand on the table and yelled at me, "it's also father that knew about all of this yet kept us in the dark! Did you already forget!? He's also one of those who led Shinobo to his death! Stop acting like an idiot to avoid the truth!"
I paused as I began to think of the possibility of what Kenta is talking about, but what triggered me the most about that theory was, "even if what you're assuming is true, what will they gain from giving abilities to us?" I asked him.
Kenta moved his hand on the table that have the files on and knocked on it three times, then answered me, "test subjects. They will gain test subjects."
As much as I didn't want to become someone controlled by them, I was afraid of what will become of us after this, even if we manage to run away, where will we run to? Can we really live without depending on the adults anymore?
"Is this really the only solution?" I mumbled, but as I did that, sudden footsteps started coming from outside the door to the room we were in, we quickly moved under that table and hid.
The door creaked open and I could see four feet moving inside the room, "Subject 389 will have a week at most if it stays in that state," one of the two said, the other then quickly responded, "this is so troublesome, if only failed test subjects die right away instead of rotting away slowly like this."
As I heard them talk, I quickly recognized the number of the subject they were talking about, I pulled Kenta's shirt and whispered in his ear, "they're talking about Shinobo, he… he's still alive?"
"Did you hear something?" one of the men asked the other one, as he heard that, Kenta moved his hand on my mouth and stopped me from talking.
"It seems some subjects kept a mouse despite the boss telling them to get rid of it, so they're running laps outside, maybe it came from them?" the other responded which made Kenta sigh out of relief.
The other sighed and complained, "but why are all the files messy, how much time do you think it takes to manually put all of these back in order again!?"
"That's weird, I'm sure they were in order when I came before this morning," he remarked, after pausing, he ordered the other one loudly, "quickly check the name of the last one that entered this room!"
"Shit!" Kenta cursed as he pulled my hand and started running toward the window, luckily both of the men were busy with the electronic machine to notice us, Kenta opened the window and both of us jumped out of it, the room was on the ground floor which made jumping out easy.
"What are you doing!? Why did you open the window!?" A man yelled from inside at both of us, Kenta squeezed my hand and nervously responded, "we're being punished since we kept a mouse… I was thinking of running inside instead…"
I didn't fully understand what Kenta meant at first, but then it came to me as I realized he's trying to make this man think we were going inside through the window, instead of him thinking that we used it to get out of the room.
The man glared at both of us with his suspicious eyes, he then smiled and told us, "you can't come inside without permission, okay?" we both nodded and watched as he closed the window and locked it from inside.
"Why did you suddenly pull us out of there!?" I yelled at Kenta as I pulled my hand away from him, he sat on the ground and with a relieved voice he answered, "the one that I stole the card from was one of these two, if they saw our entry, they will find it suspicious, so I had to get us out of there."
I paused and stared at Kenta in astonishment as I came to realize the meaning of all his actions, I praised, "you're amazing, how did you think so fast? And you chose a timing where their backs would be turned on us, moreover, you quickly took a measure and used the information you just got from them to trick them into believing we're the ones who were keeping the mouse! And also thought of on-spot plan when he discovered us to make it seem like we were trying to get inside, you might actually have a talent in plans!"
Kenta slightly blushed and responded, "you're overreacting, I just learned all of this from trial and error when I used to sneak in with Izumi."
I restated, "it's still amazing for you to use your past knowledge into handling the situation!" he grinned and avoided eye contact.
I got up and told him with a smile that surfaced on my face, "also, we got to know that Shinobo didn't die! We still can save him!"
"Yeah!" Kenta agreed then said, "let's tell Yasahiro about this, and try to figure out where they are keeping him, with Yasahiro's ability it shouldn't take long!"
And we both started running toward the building again, away from the workshop, at that time, the thrill of having accomplished something by gaining a lot of information on our first day together, made me happy.
As I watched Kenta's back run in front of me, I thought, maybe I'll be able to fit completely in this circle, not feeling left out and having a place to belong to, I never thought it could make me this happy before.
But little did I know, that the actions we made will end up being the biggest burden of our lives.