Volume #3 - EPISODE 6 - The Cousin's Confession (Part 2)

VOLUME #3 - EPISODE 6

[NARRATOR: Some truths arrive like earthquakes—sudden, devastating, reshaping everything in seconds. Others arrive like erosion—slow, patient, wearing away foundations until collapse becomes inevitable. Today brings both kinds. Today, Riyura's father is arrested. Today, his mother faces consequences. And today, Jimiko Hanazawa reveals the final piece of his tragedy—the memories stolen from him weren't just friendship, but his parents' last words. The words that might've helped him survive grief. The words Letace erased because she could. Because she wanted to practice. Because broken people sometimes break others just to prove they have power over something.]

The Afternoon When Police Came

The rest of Thursday passed in a blur of unreality.

Riyura sat in Principal Jeremy's office, answering questions from school counselors, social workers, and eventually police detectives who needed his testimony about witnessing the original accident ten years ago.

"I was seven," Riyura said for the third time, his voice mechanical from repetition. "We were in the parking lot. My mother was loading groceries. I saw the child playing near the cars. Then I saw my father's car—he was looking at his phone, not the road. The impact. The sound. The child's mother screaming."

The detective nodded, making notes. "And your father's immediate response?"

"He got out of the car. Made phone calls. Lots of phone calls. To lawyers, I think. He looked—" Riyura struggled with the memory. "—he looked annoyed. Not guilty. Not scared. Just annoyed that this inconvenience had happened to him."

"Thank you, Riyura. This corroborates the evidence we've received from other sources." The detective's expression softened. "I know this is difficult. But your testimony is crucial to building a comprehensive case against the corruption network."

After the police left, Riyura sat alone with Principal Jeremy, who'd dismissed his caffeine thermos entirely—a sign of how serious the situation was.

"Your mother has been contacted," Principal Jeremy said gently. "She's been asked to come to the station for questioning. Not as a suspect necessarily, but as a potential witness to your father's activities."

"She'll lose everything," Riyura whispered. "The house. Her job. Her reputation."

"Possibly," Principal Jeremy admitted. "But she'll also be free. Free from carrying this secret. Free from being complicit in silence. Sometimes freedom costs everything we have. But it's still freedom."

Riyura's phone buzzed. A text from his mother:

"The police are here. They're taking your father into custody. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry I didn't protect you from this. I'm so sorry I chose safety over truth for so long. I love you. Whatever happens next—I love you."

Riyura stared at the message, tears blurring the words.

His father was being arrested. Right now. While Riyura sat in a school office, the fool who'd killed a human being and bought innocence was finally facing consequences.

It should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like grief for everything they'd lost along the way.

The Evening Meeting In Shadows

6 PM found Riyura, Yakamira, Sotsuko, and Jimiko gathered in the empty music room—the same room where alliances had formed days ago, now serving as their unofficial headquarters.

Sotsuko had his laptop open, monitoring news coverage: "CORRUPTION NETWORK EXPOSED - DOZENS OF WEALTHY CRIMINALS PROTECTED FROM CONSEQUENCES" "LOCAL BUSINESS WORKER ARRESTED FOR DECADE-OLD VEHICULAR SLAUGHTER CRIME" "JUSTICE DELAYED: VICTIMS' FAMILIES FINALLY GET ANSWERS"

"It's working," Sotsuko said, scanning articles. "The evidence is being taken seriously. Multiple arrests happening simultaneously. The network is collapsing."

"At what cost?" Riyura asked quietly, staring at his phone where his mother's texts continued arriving—each one more desperate than the last as she was questioned, as their assets were frozen, as her life unraveled in real-time.

"At the cost it always takes," Sotsuko replied. "Truth destroys comfortable lies. That's what makes it powerful. That's also what makes it painful." Yakamira's pale gray eyes were fixed on his brother with concern. "How are you holding up?"

"I don't know," Riyura admitted. "I feel—empty. Not sad exactly. Not relieved. Just—hollow. Like I've been carrying this weight for so long that without it, I don't know how to stand properly."

Jimiko, who'd been sitting quietly near the window, finally spoke: "It gets easier. The hollowness. Eventually you learn to fill it with other things. Better things. Things you chose instead of things that were forced on you."

"How do you know?" Riyura asked. Jimiko was quiet for a long moment, his plain features shadowed by the evening darkness gathering outside.

"Because I've been hollow too," he said finally. "Except mine wasn't from carrying guilt. Mine was from having crucial memories stolen. Memories that might've helped me survive grief. Memories of my parents' final words to me."

The room went completely silent. Even Sotsuko looked up from his laptop, his expression shifting to something pained. "Jimiko—" Sotsuko started. "Let me tell this," Jimiko interrupted gently. "I need to tell this. All of it. The parts I haven't told anyone because saying them aloud makes them real."

He stood, walked to the piano, ran his fingers across the keys without pressing them down—just touching the cool ivory like it could ground him.

"My parents died on a Tuesday," Jimiko began, his voice carefully controlled. "Car accident caused by a drunk driver. I was thirteen. I'd stayed home sick that day, so I wasn't in the car with them. The police came to tell me. Said they'd died on impact. Said they didn't suffer."

His hands trembled slightly on the keys.

"But before they left that morning—before the accident—we'd had a conversation. My last conversation with them. I don't remember what it was about exactly. Something normal. Probably about homework or dinner plans or whether I was feeling better."

He pressed a single key. The note rang out pure and lonely in the quiet room.

"What I do remember—what I'll never forget—is that they said something to me as they were leaving. Something important. I could feel it was important even though I was thirteen and stupid and didn't really listen. My mother turned back at the door and said—"

His voice broke. "—I don't know. I don't know what she said. Because Letace erased it." The silence that followed was absolute.

"Three months after my parents died," Jimiko continued, his voice shaking now, "Letace was testing her memory manipulation device. She wanted a 'controlled subject' to experiment on. Someone who trusted her. Someone who wouldn't report her."

He let out a bitter laugh.

"I was the perfect case, wasn't I? Orphaned. Grieving. Living in their house like a charity project no one asked for. No one really cared—no one except my new siblings. Except Lettace. And for a while, Sotsuko too.

But you know how grief changes people. Whatever broke him back then took that care with it. And just like that, I was alone again.

Even now, standing side by side, I know you still refuse to call me your cousin. You've changed too much Sotsuko. Lettace never called me that in the first place. I just wanted that said out loud.

What comes next is something we somehow forgave Lettace for, despite the pain. Because she was family. And that's how the household we were raised in worked—even for me, the adopted one. Because the household held that much strangeness in it.

So we kept going. What choice did I have? Who would believe me if I complained? Who would care?" Another key press. Another lonely note.

"She told me she was going to help me. Help me forget the painful memories of the accident. Make the grief more manageable. And I—Wow, I was so desperate for anything that would make the pain stop—I agreed."

"Jimiko, you don't have to—" Riyura started.

"Yes I do," Jimiko interrupted. "Because you need to understand what Letace is capable of. What this family is capable of. What corruption does to people when nobody stops them."

He turned from the piano, faced them all directly.

"Letace didn't just erase the accident memories. She erased three years. Three entire years of my life, including the final six months with my parents. Including their last words to me. Including every conversation, every hug, every normal moment that might've helped me remember them as people instead of just absences."

Tears streamed down his face now.

"When the memories started returning, they came back wrong—fragmented, incomplete, and painful. I could feel the gaps where something precious used to be. I knew my parents had said something important that last morning, something meant to stay with me. But I'll never know what it was. Letace destroyed those neural pathways permanently. She overwrote them with her technology, erasing my parents from my mind more thoroughly than death ever could.

And yet—despite that—we forgave her.

I know how that sounds. I can see it on your faces. None of this surprises you, and honestly, I don't blame you. You don't want to voice opinions about Letace, and I can tell. I've always been observant—expressions, posture, hesitation. Even Sotsuko—though some of you already knew I had that skill—anyways moving forward—despite recently trying to untangle her history and her connection to Riyura, isn't saying much. That curiosity flared briefly, then faded. It's all in the past now.

The truth is, she eventually began working with us. Quietly. Through stolen smartphones hacked from inside prison—returned afterward, no trace left behind for any detail. I can tell that doesn't shock any of you. It didn't shock me either. Not because she was forgiven, and not because what she did stopped mattering, but because the situation forced it. She was Riyura Shiko's worst enemy, yet somehow became someone we had to rely on.

She asked for help. And for the first time, it felt real.

I saw it in the way she spoke about her siblings, in the concern she tried—and failed—to hide—in her messages being typed. Something in her had shifted. Not a full transformation. She's still mostly the same. But enough changed for it to matter. Enough for her to choose to help.

By the way... it still feels like no one here really cares about what happened to Letace's mind. Maybe Sotsuko does. Maybe not. Either way, you're not saying anything, Sotsuko—no reaction at all. And that's fine. I just needed to say this out loud! to explain why she stood beside us after everything she did. After the arrests. After the damage she caused to Riyura and his friends.

She was our enemy. More than once. And somehow, in the end, she became our ally too. Anyway. Moving on."

Sotsuko stood abruptly, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. It was as if the careful calculations he'd lived by finally fractured in that instant—his mind rebelling, demanding to care, demanding to be heard. For the first time, he fully understood how long he'd been wrong, and the realization hit with the weight of guilt he could no longer suppress. He wanted to change it, if only through a sincere apology.

Jimiko noticed it immediately. The shift. The crack. The moment when indifference gave way to something far more dangerous—and far more human supressed from years of change. Despite his calculated side still there as it was apart of him now days.

"I didn't know," he said quickly. "Jimiko, I swear—I didn't know she erased that. I knew she experimented on you. I knew she took memories. But I didn't know it would change me when I uncovered it, or that it would hurt you this badly. I didn't know it would push you into hurting yourself, into setting all of this in motion."

His voice broke as the words tumbled out.

"Please—just understand. I'm not saying this to excuse anything. I just… I needed you to know sooner. I needed you to hear it from me." He swallowed, desperate. "Please, just—"

"I know," Jimiko said quietly. "You found out later. After she was already deep in her obsession. After she'd convinced herself that memory manipulation was mercy instead of cruelty."

He walked toward Sotsuko, and despite everything, despite the pain and the betrayal and the years of damage, he hugged his cousin.

"I don't blame you for what she did," Jimiko whispered. "But I need you to understand why I'm helping Riyura. Why I'm trying to stop this cycle of powerful people destroying others without consequence. Because I know what it's like to have something stolen that can never be returned. And I won't watch it happen to anyone else."

Sotsuko held his cousin tightly, his usual cold composure completely demolished. Leaving a new calculated version in It's wake. One who truly understood emotion just a little bit better.

"I'm sorry," Sotsuko said, his voice rough. "I'm so sorry. For everything. For not protecting you. For becoming cold instead of kind. For choosing revenge over—"

"Over healing," Jimiko finished. "I know. But you're here now. Helping instead of just destroying. That matters."

They separated, and Riyura saw something he'd never expected to see: Sotsuko crying. Actually crying. The calculating, manipulative, silver-haired minipulator reduced to a devastated cousin holding onto the person he'd failed to protect.

The Truth About Why

"There's more," Jimiko said, wiping his own face and returning to the piano bench. "About why Letace did it. Why she erased my memories specifically."

He pulled out his worn notebook—the one he'd been writing in for weeks—and opened to a page near the middle. A page covered in fragmented sentences, half-memories, desperate attempts to reconstruct what had been stolen.

"I've been trying to remember for four years. Hypnosis. Therapy. Anything that might recover even fragments. I didn't get much—but I got enough to understand why Letace chose those memories to erase.

Because she usually targets things that don't matter. Disposable details. That's her pattern. Which is why it stood out when she acted on my request so deliberately. That choice wasn't random. It told me the memories mattered far more than she ever admitted."

He showed them the page. In careful handwriting:

"Mom said something about choices. About being brave. About—family? About protecting someone? Dad said something about pride. About being proud of—me? Of someone. Important words. Loving words. Final words. Gone."

"My parents knew something," Jimiko said quietly. "About the corruption network. My father worked in finance—he'd discovered irregularities, payments being made to lawyers and judges. He was planning to report it. To expose it."

The implication hit everyone simultaneously. "The drunk driver who killed them—" Riyura started.

"Wasn't random," Jimiko finished. "I think—I can't prove it, but I think—my parents were targeted. Killed deliberately to silence them. Made to look like an accident. And the network protected the driver just like they protected your father, Riyura."

He closed the notebook.

"Letace knew this. She'd uncovered my family's connection to the network—her parents were part of it, funding the protection schemes. When she realized I might still carry memories of my parents' final words—words that could've contained evidence—she panicked. So she erased everything. Not out of cruelty, but out of fear. To protect are family.

I could tell what she was thinking. Her face gave it away. I didn't have proof then—not certainty—but working with you helped me put the pieces together. That's how the whole mystery finally made sense."

He put his right hand on his lap while his left stayed on the hilt of the chair. "So… thank you, Riyura Shiko."

"That's why you're helping me," Riyura said, understanding clicking into place. "Not just because you're kind. Because exposing my father's crime means exposing the whole network. Including the people who killed your parents."

"Yes," Jimiko admitted. "I want justice. Real justice. For my parents. For the human being your father killed. For everyone the network has destroyed. But I want it done right. With evidence. With legal process. Not with revenge that only creates more victims.

And I knew you would figure that out eventually. So I put things in place to help it click—to guide you there without forcing it. This is just one more thing meant to show you that we're more trustworthy than you think.

I saw it in your eyes. You didn't trust me. Not fully. Even after everything. And I don't blame you—not after what Sotsuko did, or because of how I'm connected to him. I knew the moment I wrote it in my notes that it would change how you saw me."

He exhaled slowly. Seeing Riyura not reacting in the least.

"You're choosing not to say anything. That doesn't surprise me. And that's okay. Because even if the doubt isn't gone, I can tell you trust me now, than from when you didn't before."

He looked at Sotsuko significantly.

"That's why I've been trying to stop you from just burning everything down. Because revenge feels satisfying but ultimately changes nothing. Justice—real, systemic justice—that changes everything."

Sotsuko sat back down slowly, his analytical mind clearly processing these new connections, these new implications.

"If your parents were deliberately killed," Sotsuko said, "then there's evidence. Financial records. Communications. Something that links the drunk driver to the network more directly than just legal representation."

"Yes," Jimiko said. "I've been searching for four years. Haven't found it yet. But with your resources—with Riyura's testimony—with everything we're uncovering about the network—maybe we finally can."

"Then that's what we do next," Riyura said, his voice steady despite exhaustion. "We find proof. We expose not just my father's crime, but the whole network. Including whoever ordered your parents killed."

"It'll be dangerous," Yakamira warned. "These people have killed before. If they feel cornered—"

"Then we corner them carefully," Sotsuko said, his strategic mind engaging. "Build the case properly. Protect ourselves. Work with law enforcement instead of trying to be vigilantes."

He looked at each of them—Riyura, Yakamira, Jimiko—and something like respect showed in his pale eyes.

"We do this together. As actual allies instead of uneasy conspirators. We share information, share burdens, share the risk. And we make sure that when this network falls, it stays down."

They sat in the darkening music room, four traumatized teenagers united by shared victimization, planning to bring down a corruption network that had operated with impunity for decades.

It was ambitious. It was probably impossible. But they were going to try anyway. Because some truths were worth fighting for. Some justice was worth the cost.

And some memories—even stolen ones—deserved to be honored by making sure nobody else lost theirs.

[NARRATOR: And so the full tragedy is revealed. Jimiko's parents weren't just victims of a drunk driver—they were likely murdered by the same network that protected Riyura's father. Letace didn't just erase memories randomly—she destroyed evidence that might've exposed her family's corruption. And now four broken people are planning to expose it all. The danger is escalating. The stakes are rising. And Volume 3's real battle—not just for justice, but for the right to remember, to grieve, to exist without being erased—is only beginning.]

TO BE CONTINUED...

[NEXT EPISODE: "The Investigation Begins" - Riyura, Jimiko, and Yakamira start digging into financial records while Sotsuko coordinates with law enforcement. They discover the network is larger than expected—and closer to home. Including connections to Jeremy High itself. The paranoia intensifies. And someone starts watching them who isn't friendly.]