Chapter 7: In My Eyes
The metallic scent of oil and old paper greeted Saku before the door swung fully inward. Instructor Daiku was not at his desk. He stood by a small, grime-streaked window that offered a view of the academy's perimeter wall and the perpetual, sickly yellow haze beyond. In his hands was a simple wooden picture frame, his thumb rubbing slowly, absently, over the edge.He didn’t turn. “Shut the door, son.” The voice was the same gravel, but the texture was different—worn smooth in places.Saku obeyed.The office was a capsule of another era. Neat stacks of physical manuals competed for space with holographic projectors. On one wall hung a meticulously maintained anti-material rifle, its barrel spotless. On another, a faded map of Tokyo-1, with Deadzone perimeters marked in red grease pencil, each one subtly different, a history of slow encroachment. The quiet was oppressive, filled only by the distant, droning hum of the atmospheric processors.Daiku finally turned. He didn’t look like the instructor from the lecture hall.The stern mask was set aside. His eyes, usually chips of flint, were fixed on a point past Saku, full of a distance no map could chart. He held the framed photo out.“This was my unit. Class 14-B.” His tone was conversational, terrifyingly soft.Saku took the frame. The photo was a flat, non-holographic print, its colors leaching to sepia. Five young people in old-style cadet uniforms smiled stiffly, arms around each other’s shoulders.They looked impossibly young. One of them was unmistakably a younger Daiku, his hair still dark, his smirk brimming with an invincible arrogance Saku recognized in his own reflection.“Which one is you, sir?” Saku asked, though he knew.
Daiku pointed a callused finger at the young man with the smirk. Then his finger moved to the woman next to him, her face open, her smile genuine.“Akari. Top of the class.Could calculate evac routes in her head while under simulated Shade assault. Made it look easy.” His finger drifted to the tall, lanky boy on the end. “Kaito.Faster than any of us.Impulsive.Brilliant.” He paused. The weight of the pause filled the room. “You remind me of him.”
He took the frame back, his gaze falling on it.“He finished the final simulation exam in record time.Just like you did today. They gave him a commendation. We all cheered.” Daiku’s thumb stroked the glass over Kaito’s face. “A month later, we were deployed to our first live Deadzone.A containment breach in Sector 7.It was nothing like the sims. The smell… it’s like rust and spoiled milk and something else… something sweet. You never forget it.”
Saku stood perfectly still.The hum of the processors seemed to grow louder.
“Kaito saw a fluctuation in the perimeter data on his scanner.A predicted weak point. He didn’t wait for the squad to form up.He just went. He was so fast.” Daiku’s voice didn’t crack.It simply hollowed out, becoming a dry channel for memory. “He was right about the weak point. He was also right about the secondary anomaly the scanners didn’t catch.It bloomed right behind him. Cut him off from us.”
He set the frame down on his desk, carefully, as if it were made of glass. “We heard him on the comms.He wasn’t panicking.He was… calculating. Listing aerosol canister pressures, counting his remaining rounds, estimating Shade convergence rates. Right up until the channel just… filled with static.”
Daiku finally looked at Saku. A single, clean track of moisture gleamed on the weathered terrain of his cheek, catching the low light.He didn’t wipe it away. “He burned so bright, son.And he burned out.A flash. And then nothing.”
He took a step closer. The emotional distance in his eyes was gone, replaced by a frightening, painful intensity.“I see that same fire in you.That need to be the fastest. The best.To prove something—to your father, to the ghosts, to yourself. I know it.I carried it.”
Saku’s mouth was dry. He wanted to deflect, to mention his high score, to rationalize.No words came.
“Slow down,” Daiku said, the words not a command, but a plea forged from loss.“The battlefield doesn’t reward speed. It rewards presence.It rewards the ones who are still there when the flash is over. Live your life at a pace where you can see it.Taste the synth-food. Listen to your friend’s stupid jokes about coolant leaks. Let the moments matter beyond just being steps on a ladder to somewhere higher.”
He leaned forward, his hands gripping the back of his chair. “And for the love of whatever’s left out there that’s decent, let people help you. Don’t do what I did. After we lost Kaito, after we lost Akari two years later to a creeping spatial warp she couldn’t calculate her way out of… I closed the hatch. I carried it all myself.Thought that’s what strength was. The weight doesn’t make you stronger, son. It just bends your spine until you can’t look up anymore.”
He let go of the chair, his shoulders slumping a fraction, the confession leaving him visibly older.“Your friend. The tall one.Wataru.He’s got your back. Your uncle, your aunt… they raised you.Let them in.Let them carry a piece of it. A burden shared is a life lived. A burden hoarded is just a longer, lonelier walk to the same end.”
Silence pooled between them, deep and clear. The advice hung in the air, not as instructor to cadet, but as one wounded man to another who was still whole enough to be saved. Saku felt the shell of his certainty, the polished carapace of his prodigy status, develop a hairline crack. He could feel the cold, alien air of genuine fear seeping in—not fear of Shades or Deadzones, but fear of becoming the ghost in the picture frame, a cautionary tale in another veteran’s office.
“I…” Saku began, but had nothing to follow it with.
Daiku nodded, as if that unfinished sentence was the most honest answer he could have hoped for. He straightened, the mantle of the instructor settling back over his shoulders, though it fit differently now.“Dismissed, Cadet Shimizu.”
Saku turned and left. The sound of the metal door closing behind him was final, like the sealing of a tomb.
The walkways of the academy felt insubstantial, the holographic tactical displays meaningless scribbles of light. He found Wataru waiting at their usual spot by the eastern airlock exit, kicking a loose piece of flooring.“So? Did he make you scrub the latrines with a toothbrush? Recite the entire supply codex?” Wataru asked, falling into step beside him as they headed out into the twilight of the contained city. The sky above the dome was a bruised purple, streaked with the unnatural green of the barrier fields.
Saku walked for a full minute before answering.“No.”
“Well, what then? You look like you’ve seen a Shade in the shower.”
“He showed me a picture,” Saku said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.“Of his friends.”
Wataru’s chatter stalled. He glanced at Saku’s profile, at the uncharacteristic tightness around his eyes. “Oh,” he said, and for once, it was enough.He didn’t press.
They walked in silence through the echoing pedestrian tunnel that led to the residential blocks. The air smelled of ozone and the faint, ever-present tang of recycled water. Wataru fumbled with his datapad, talking about a new torque wrench design he’d seen, about the coolant leak in Bay Four, about anything that wasn’t pictures or lost friends or the terrifying weight of expectation.
Saku heard the words as if from a distance.Inside the crack, Daiku’s voice echoed. Live your life at a pace where you can see it. He looked at Wataru, at his earnest, gesturing hands explaining a mechanical nuance, and saw not a sidekick or a liability, but a person offering a piece of shared weight.The offer was terrifying.He didn’t know how to accept it. He only knew, with a cold, new clarity, that the private race he’d been running—against his father, against Kai, against the phantom of his own potential—was on a track that ended in a wall of static. And for the first time in his driven, exceptional life, he wasn’t sure how to slow down.