The hatch was cold to the touch.
Akira knelt beside it, his breath fogging in the dim light. The air smelled of rust and dust — untouched for years. He hesitated, then turned the key.
The lock clicked softly.
A draft of stale air seeped through, carrying a faint scent of burnt wood and something older… something forgotten.
He pulled the hatch open.
A narrow staircase led down into blackness.
For a moment, Akira just stared, torn between fear and the strange, irresistible pull of the truth.
Then he whispered to himself,
> "Welcome back, huh…"
and started down.
---
The deeper he went, the quieter it became. His footsteps echoed faintly off concrete walls, and with every step, the world above felt further away — school, students, the noise of life.
Here, everything was still.
When he reached the bottom, his phone's flashlight flickered over a small underground room.
Old desks were stacked in one corner, dust thick on every surface. Cobwebs draped from pipes overhead. But in the middle of the room stood something that didn't belong there — a single chair, placed under a bare hanging lightbulb.
And on the wall behind it, drawn in red ink — or maybe something darker — were words:
> "This is where it started."
Akira's stomach turned.
He'd never been here before… had he?
Then he saw the photographs.
Pasted along the walls, dozens of them. All of him.
As a child. As a student. Even during his time in juvenile detention. Some were old police mugshots — others looked recent, like they were taken just yesterday.
Someone had been watching him for years.
---
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice came from behind him.
Akira spun around.
The double stood at the base of the stairs, half-lit by the weak glow of the flashlight.
His face calm. His eyes glinting with something cruelly familiar.
"I told you," he said softly. "You'd remember."
Akira's voice came out as a whisper.
"What are you?"
The double smiled faintly.
"I'm what you left behind."
He stepped closer, and the air seemed to tighten.
"You think you can bury guilt? Pretend to start over? No. You just feed it… until it grows teeth."
Akira shook his head. "You're not real. You're—"
"Then why can I bleed?" the double interrupted, holding up his hand.
A thin cut ran across his palm — red, vivid, alive.
Akira froze.
This wasn't a hallucination. Not completely.
---
The double began pacing slowly, fingers trailing across the wall of photos.
"You were supposed to die that night too, you know," he murmured. "But you didn't. You ran. You let him burn while you escaped."
Akira's chest tightened. "I didn't run—"
"Didn't you?"
His voice was calm, almost sympathetic. "You think the fire stopped him? You think he didn't leave something behind?"
He stopped pacing and turned. "That's what I am. What he made of you."
The words sank in like ice.
"What are you saying?"
The double pointed to the wall — at one of the older photos.
In it, a young Akira stood beside his father, both smiling. But now, with the dust brushed away, Akira could see something carved faintly across the photo's surface:
> "Project Yūgen."
---
The air shifted.
A distant creak echoed above them — maybe the old ceiling, maybe footsteps.
Akira's pulse raced. "What the hell is this place?"
The double stepped closer, eyes burning with something like pity.
"This was your father's second life. The lab they erased. The place where he learned how to split what makes a person human — guilt, memory, fear — and give it a body."
He leaned in, voice barely above a whisper.
"And you, Akira… were his test."
Akira stumbled back, shaking his head violently. "No. No, he was—he was just a drunk, not some scientist!"
"Is that what your mother told you?"
The double's smile widened — not cruel, but broken. "Then why do you think you don't remember the first few years of your life?"
Akira froze.
Because it was true. His earliest memories were fragments — noise, fire, a mirror shattering. Nothing before that.
The double's expression softened. "You aren't one person, Akira. You're two halves of the same failure. One born to forget. One born to remember."
---
The light flickered violently.
Akira stepped back, voice trembling.
"If that's true, then what are you now?"
"Exactly what you made me," the double said, eyes sharp. "The part you threw away to survive. The part that still hears him screaming."
He took another step forward. "But don't worry. I'm not here to hurt you."
He smiled faintly — almost kindly.
"I'm here to finish what he started."
And then, before Akira could move, the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
He heard a whisper — close, almost inside his ear:
> "Find the girl before I do."
---
The bulb exploded with a pop.
Akira stumbled backward, shielding his face. When the dust settled and he turned on his phone light again, the double was gone.
Only one thing remained in the chair.
A small envelope.
Inside was a photograph — his sister, again. But this time, she wasn't smiling.
She was tied to a chair.
Eyes open. Terrified.
And in the corner of the photo, faint and blurred, a hand with the same scar across the wrist.
His own.
Akira's breath caught, his knees almost giving out.
The phone fell from his hand, clattering against the floor.
No. It couldn't be. It wasn't him.
But somewhere in that underground room, something was laughing — soft and distant, echoing through the pipes.
---
Akira looked at the photo one last time. His reflection in the glossy surface stared back, the scar across his forehead seeming darker than ever.
He didn't know who the real monster was anymore — the one haunting him…
Or the one living inside him.
He turned toward the stairs, gripping the photo so tightly his knuckles went white.
> "You can run," the double's voice echoed faintly behind him, "but you can't hide from what you are."
Akira climbed out of the darkness, into the night — a boy chasing the shadow that wore his own face.
---
End of Chapter 6