Evening and Winter (夕方と冬)

Truth

They moved to the living room and shut the door, they sat together and a piece of paper on the table. It was clear that Chifuyu is about to tell a long story.

"To be clear, I'm not interested in retelling a second time; I'm going to tell this story once." Chifuyu told the two sitting in the room with him.

"Understood," Taylor responded, and Hannah added with a nod before Chifuyu took a deep breath.

"I remember that event like it was yesterday..." Chifuyu started to tell the story.

It was a similar dark night, the rain pouring on Chifuyu's head made him shiver more, he was alone, cold, and vulnerable. He was caught off guard when two masked men approached him and placed a sack over his head, then hitting his stomach and taking him away while he was unconscious. When awake, he realized he was in a white room containing a desk and a small bed on two sides of the room. He took a moment to analyse himself, his own clothing was gone and he is now dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and long pants in the same colour, as if a patient in a hospital. On the left-chest area of the shirt was a serial number, 004.

"Where am I?" He was only 12 at the time, confused, he began walking around the small room.

"Greetings, Subject 004." A middle-aged man in a lab coat appeared in Chifuyu's sight when the door of the room slid open, and Chifuyu took a few steps back.

"Who are you?!" Chifuyu was in a defensive stance.

"I see you come from a martial arts background, young one." The man had a suspiciously friendly smile on his face, "Allow me to introduce myself, I am Professor Claude Morgan, a scientist and you are currently in my research facility." The man introduced himself.

"A research facility?" Chifuyu wasn't expecting.

"Yes, I am currently creating a drug that could safe people from illnesses and I needed test subjects. I needed test subjects from a variety of countries to study results that may be produced by genetics from each country," the professor explained, "Don't worry, Subject 004, your sacrifice will save millions of people." He convinced Chifuyu to relax from his defensive stance.

Even so, Chifuyu was no fool, he soon discovered the professor was behind his parents' murder. The professor was originally planning to take him and his sister, but Chiyaki died before he could get a hold of them. Despite knowing that fact, Chifuyu remained silent and cooperated in the experiments. In the facility, it was not one of those experimental places where the guineapigs were treated horribly like in the books Chifuyu had read, the test subjects in Professor Morgan's facility were given proper meals and a comfortable environment. There is a daily schedule containing exercise, testing hours, suitable meal periods, and a very well night rest. The experiments and assesses contains a session of examinations, continued by vaccinations, and finally an aftermath examination and filling out data.

Chifuyu was the most cooperative test subject amongst the other 23 people in the facility. All others were young adults and middle-aged people from different countries, with the only language they could have a conversation with is English. Chifuyu stood out from his striking appearance and being the smallest in the group, he distanced himself from the other test subjects because of his trust issues. He spends most of his time expanding his knowledge by reading books he borrows frequently from the big library in the facility, quickly famous to be the geek in the group for always carrying a book and reading wherever he goes outside of experiment sessions. It was clear that he was an exceptionally intelligent kid, he stepped foot to Paris in lack of education and has become full of wisdom from independently studying in the method of reading.

"Hello, there." Yet, there was a Korean woman who approached him. "What's your name?" she asked him during lunch period.

"Tsuguha," Chifuyu couldn't care less to get along with the other test subjects, yet this one woman approached him unlike the others who decided to avoid him for being cold and boorish. This woman was 4 months pregnant with her first child when she was kidnapped to be a test subject in the facility, Chifuyu slowly became friendly with the woman, yet it was not long until the woman passed from overdose. From that moment on, Chifuyu is also known to be cursed, whoever befriended him will die. He felt remorse for her passing, but his lack of melancholy just made his cold image expand into a cold-hearted image.