SakuraMay 4, 4:33 pm, Tokyo, j.a.pan
They smiled sadly at Sakura.
"Of course," they said. "It doesnt matter to me at all."
That was all Sakura ever wanted to hear. It was all she ever needed. Fame, recognition, career...none of that really mattered. Not when That Person accepted Sakura for who she was.
...
But she didn"t, did she?
So this was all a dream, wasn"t it?
Sakura watched as the woman"s face faded slowly, the background of their house falling away into whiteness. She tried to hold onto that face, onto those words as she woke up.
She opened her eyes, vision blurry from the tears. Quickly, she wiped them away. Sakura hated crying. And this wasn"t the time for tears. She took a deep breath to calm her turbulent emotions. Then another. And another.
Calm. Relaxed. Focused.
Ready to deal with anything.
Where was she?
She opened her eyes, and immediately surveyed her surroundings. Not that there was much to see. She was in a small room, about the size of a small office. She was seated in a strangely comfortable, blue, IKEA sofa chair, across the table from another IKEA sofa chair. There was a gla.s.s of water on the table, and nothing else. The white walls were strangely comforting, and the door was on the other side of the room. Sakura was pretty sure it was locked.
She looked behind her, and was surprised to see a wall of books. The entire back wall of this room was a dedicated shelf. She got up to have a closer look, and realized that all of these were books on biology.
Great. Very helpful. Now if only that information could help her get out of this room.
But that begged the question: why was she locked in this room? It was clearly some sort of repurposed office, but why this room? If they just wanted to keep her locked somewhere, why not just throw her in a supply room?
Not to mention, why hadn"t they tied her up? Or restricted her movement in any way?
If they had repurposed this room to hold her, why did it have such comfortable chairs?
Where was she?
Where was Michi?
How had they known that it was her and Michi, when she had disguised both their faces with illusions?
Urgh, Sakura rubbed her temples. Okay, calm down. First, she needed to get out of her. All the other questions could come later.
She hadn"t tried the door yet. She went over to it and tried to open it, only to find that it was locked. She sighed. This would"ve been a lot easier if she had learned how to pick locks. Then she realized that the handle didn"t even have a keyhole.
Okay, Sakura. Maybe she should focus more on the problem at hand, and the materials she did have, instead of worrying about everything else.
For a brief moment, Sakura wondered if she should take all the books off the shelf to try for a secret pa.s.sageway or something. She immediately dismissed the idea. There was no way they would lock her in a room with a secret pa.s.sageway. This group locked the door, they clearly had at least one brain cell.
She looked around the room for a little, trying to see if there was anything she could use to get out. Her handbag was missing, so she couldn"t use her phone or anything. Thankfully, her new phone was just a burner, so they shouldn"t be able to track down Bunta with it or anything.
After a few minutes of searching the room, Sakura had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then again, expecting her captors to leave her with something potentially useful was pretty dumb. In order to get out, she would need to do something they didn"t expect.
Duh.
But what could she do?
All she really had was her mind, and her illusion powers. Technically the same thing, but now was not the time for semantics.
How to get out of here, using just her illusion powers?
Her illusions were useless if there were no other people around to use it on. She couldn"t even use it for basic scouting; it wasn"t like she could make the wall invisible.
Or couldn"t she?
She remembered that time she hid from her pursuers on her way to Michi and Bunta"s apartment. At that time, she had made herself invisible, hadn"t she?
Why couldn"t she do the same to a wall, or at least a door?
Sakura stood in front of the door, and closed her eyes. Alright, she just needed to make the door invisible. Make it seem like the door isn"t there. What it would look like without a door, just an empty doorframe…
But for some reason, the door would not turn invisible.
She kept at it for another few minutes, before giving up. She had a feeling that she could make the door invisible; there was just some trick to it that she could not figure out. How had she done it in the garbage bin?
No, she didn"t have time to worry about this. The longer she stayed in this room, the more anxious she became. Where was Michi? Was he taken somewhere to be tortured for information? Where exactly was this place.
Deep breath Sakura. Calm. Down.
She wouldn"t be able to do anything if she wasn"t calm.
She took in another deep breath. Remembering her therapy sessions, she held it for seven seconds, then let it out. And repeated.
So just...relax.
Right now, she needed information.
How could she get more information?
She eyed the shelf once more, then dismissed it. There wouldn"t be anything there to help her escape. She needed to know more about where she was. And for that…
Sakura looked at the table, and the gla.s.s of water. She walked over, picked up the gla.s.s, and downed the water all in one go, spilling and gagging a little. Not that she cared.
Once she got her breath back, she placed the gla.s.s on the wall, and her ear near that.
At first, nothing. Then, she started hearing footsteps, as well as what seemed to be people talking. She couldn"t exactly make out what they were saying, but it was definitely human voices on the other side of the door.
She listened for a while, trying to make out words, but nothing. However, she did note that the other side of the door seemed to be pretty busy. She counted the time between the sounds of people pa.s.sing; it seemed like someone would pa.s.s by the door once about every fifteen seconds.
A plan slowly began to form in her mind. She knew that she couldn"t make the wall or door invisible. And she knew that there were people on the other side. With that in mind…
...could Sakura make an illusion that others could see, but she could not?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
Sakura leaned back against the door, looking into the room. She saw where the table was, how the bookshelf was stacked, how soft the blue sofa chairs seemed under the harsh LEDs.
This was what she wanted to show the people on the other side of the door. This room.
Empty.
With the door open.
She focused on the image, burning it into her mind. She focused hard on projecting the image into the hallway. It was at this moment that she realized that her power worked in a sort of...bubble. Whoever stepped into the bubble, would see what she showed them.
And what she wanted to show them now, was the door to her cell open, with the prisoner gone.
Sakura felt something wet run down her nose. She touched her wet lip, and found her finger stained with red.
Huh. That seemed like a problem she could deal with later.
She turned and placed the gla.s.s on the door to listen.
Sure enough, someone was walking past. They stopped as they reached the door. Sakura couldn"t see this person, but she imagined that they were confused. She then changed the illusion to show the door close, as if on its own.
The plan was for the person to open the door once she made the illusion door close. After all, if the people tried to walk through the illusion, they would simply run headfirst into the door. Sakura didn"t want to give people a concussion. She wanted to get out of this room.
She listened for a while longer, but all she heard was the person walk away. She sighed. That was to be expected. If the person pa.s.sing by was just an ordinary worker, they might not know what this room was for. Or even if they did, they might not want to report it for fear of their boss shooting the messenger.
That was fine. Sakura could just try again.
She waited another fifteen seconds for the next person to come by, and did it again. This time, as she closed the illusory door, a sudden, sharp pain pulsed through her head.
"Ah!" Sakura shrieked involuntarily, gripping her head. Blood dripped from both nostrils as she fell into a fetal position, clutching her head. Her head felt like it was going to explode. It was similar to the feeling of reading an entire textbook in one sitting, except pulsing and vibrating. Her head throbbed with pain, snapping back into it"s original shape after being expanded so much.
She didn"t know how long she stayed like that. All she knew was once the pain became manageable, she saw the door handle turning.
S***.
Quickly, she crawled over to the corner, just as the door swung open. She stayed in the corner, behind the door, as guards walked in.
"Eh? She really is gone!"
"Ah, so I didn"t imagine it."
"But how? The cameras showed that she was still inside?"
"What about the other one?"
"There"s no way he escaped. He"s in the bas.e.m.e.nt."
As the men talked, Sakura quietly slipped out from behind the door, and out of the room.
Outside the room was a very familiar hallway. Sakura struggled to remember where she had seen this hallway before as she staggered as far from the room as she could. Her legs were still quite weak, and she was bleeding a lot more than she thought.
But none of that mattered. She needed to get to the bas.e.m.e.nt. That"s where Michi was.
Thankfully, with each step, she seemed to recover a little. By the time she managed to find a stairwell, she was able to walk pretty normally.
That was also where she realized where she was.
This was the Neurix lab.
Sakura supposed that it made some sense; in her research, she hadn"t been able to find another building a.s.sociated with Jason or this lab. Of course, she had a.s.sumed that they had something off the books, or maybe another building under Congo that they were secretly using.
But it seems that wasn"t the case.
Sakura mulled over this thought as she descended the stairs. Something about this seemed...off to her.
Would a multi-billion dollar enterprise like Congo really not give them more than one building? They were paying off police officers, doing possibly illegal and morally reprehensible experiments...would they really not put in a couple more million into another building?
She was so lost in her thoughts she almost forgot to check before getting out of the stairwell. Luckily, she heard a loud laugh from the other side of the door before she pushed out.
Cold sweat broke out on her back. If she had just gone out like that...whew. Careful Sakura. She was in enemy territory. The price for being sloppy here would be too high.
Slowly she cracked open the door. Not enough to see from, but enough to hear what was being said on the other side.
"-and so with Ai being such a success, we"ve finally broken through when it comes to the human element."
Sakura frowned. She could tell it was a man speaking, but it was in English.
For just a moment, Sakura felt the first regret of her life. Regret that she did not study English as hard as she had been told to by her teachers.
She heard a female voice respond in English, and then the male voice respond again. From the way their voices traveled, Sakura could tell that they were slowly coming close to the door. Hopefully, they weren"t planning on coming up the stairwell.
"And what of the loose ends?" said the female voice, suddenly in j.a.panese. It sounded like they had just reached the door.
Oh? Although it was slight, Sakura could detect an accent. Weirdly, it wasn"t American. It seemed more...Korean.
"They are being handled with sufficient care," said a voice that Sakura recognized with a jolt. Jason. Jason was with them.
Why was he here? Who was he speaking with?
Who was this lady?
"I trust then, that you have not broken any laws to take care of them?" continued the woman. She sounded a little further away now. Sakura bit her lip as she contemplated opening the door a little more, just to see who this lady was. She was definitely someone important, if Jason was answering to her.
Plus, they should all be looking away from the door now…
No risk, no reward.
Sakura opened the door a little more, just enough to see who had pa.s.sed by.
A gaggle of white coated lab a.s.sistants, along with Jason, the foreigner scientist that Sakura had seen the last time she came into the lab, and…
...a young woman. She could only see the back of her head, her hair straight and black, all the way down to her waist. Sakura could tell she was wearing slight heels from the way they tapped against the floor, and her attire was all black and professional.
"There is nothing you will have to worry about," said Jason to the woman. "Everything is going according to plan, Miss Kang."