No one asks what it hides."
— Yuki Sakamura
Before she met Ren, before the rumors, before the stares, Yuki Sakamura had always known one thing:
She could see death.
Not ghosts. Not spirits. Moments. Flickers.
Breaths hanging in midair—right before they vanished forever.
Her earliest memory was of her grandmother’s death. She saw it in her eyes. A gentle fade, like the world turned grayscale. Everyone cried after. Yuki didn’t.
She already knew.
By the time she turned ten, Yuki had learned to ignore it.
Until that day at the riverbank.
A boy had fallen in.
Others screamed. No one moved.
But Yuki… saw something strange.
The moment he sank, the world didn’t gray out.
It sparked. The color sharpened. Time warped.
Then, the boy climbed out himself, unharmed.
She never forgot the name she overheard: Ren Hoshino.
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Years passed. Middle school. Then high school. Same uniforms. Same routine.
But when she saw Ren again in Class 3-A, she felt that pull. That static in the air. The color bending around him, like the world didn’t know how to react to his presence.
Like he didn’t belong.
So, she smiled at him every chance she got.
She watched how he flinched at attention. How he counted his steps in the hallway. How he never breathed deep—like he was afraid to feel too much of the world.
He was hiding something.
But then… so was she.
Yuki’s father was once a researcher for a private syndicate.
Codename: NOX.
She only overheard fragments—cold experiments, breathing weaponization, silent soldiers.
She never understood it fully.
Until her father vanished.
She was told it was an accident. But her mother stopped speaking. Her house was filled with silence and fear. That’s when she started seeing those flashes more often. That gray flicker in the eyes of strangers. She feared she was going insane.
Until Ren.
When she saw him collapse behind the gym, bruised but invincible, she saw the truth she had always known but never named:
He was like her. Touched by something not human. Cursed with something the world was never meant to know.
She didn't scream because she was scared of him.
She screamed because suddenly, everything made sense.
Back in her room, Yuki opened a locked box her father left behind.
Inside:
- A red flash drive.
- A photo of her father… with Ren’s mother.
- And a file: Subject Zero – Breathless Prototype.
Her hands trembled.
Ren Hoshino wasn’t just a miracle. He was the experiment her father died protecting.
And now… the people who killed him were watching again.