Flashback Chapter (4) - The Spark of Vengeance

It's been two weeks since the death of my family members. I still remained at home, but I somehow could eat more or less, than previously. It was a progress, for me and Aoki.

But I still felt as apathetic as before. However, in front of Aoki, I'm able to express more emotions. As for anyone else, they need to come down with the fact that I'm going to talk to them stoically.

After all, I can't trust them. At the end of the day, they're just going to be like these policemen.

Some people controlled by the person or persons who are most likely responsible for my family's death.

I'm certain that this is the case. But I just don't know who. There's a list of people whom I could narrow down, but it would be more than a few thousand.

It's too much. I need something where I can narrow the list of suspects to a few individuals. That's what I'm thinking these days all about.

Or am I just overthinking everything?

I didn't go to a therapist until now because I felt threatened if I'm talking with them and at the end of the day everything I said would be hearable to the culprit or culprits.

I might be overthinking everything. That's why these couple of days I tried to somewhat distract my attention from everything.

Studying and learning helped.

I don't know why, but we have a study room at home and it helped. I could distract myself, for a few hours each day efficiently from all that emotional pain.

But now I'm reaching a new problem.

I already finished more than sixty percent of the middle school content and if it continues like this for a week-long further, I might finish them already.

Having an almost perfect memory is quite bothersome. The moment I'm reading something one time, I'm bound to remember it.

Just like how I'm never going to forget this pain or the memories of mine.

I'm missing them…

One day later

Today, I think it's time to enter the working room of my father…

I remember the time when I sat on his lap three years ago when I was four and he said he wanted to start writing down diary entries.

I never really paid attention to it then, since well…I was quite annoying and disturbed my father simply out of fun. I was quite annoying until the age of five, wasn't I? Yeah…I was…

Nevermind….

It wouldn't hurt reading the diary, would it?

But…

There's one problem…

The diary is in a safe…

A five digital code number safe, which only offers three attempts per day. Since I never paid attention, well…due to my amusement to annoy my father, I don't know what the code conceivably could be.

Aoki also doesn't know that unfortunately…

So I'm required of guessing…

Or it could be written down somewhere here…

I tried three codes, as they were the birthdays of me, Kaori, and Kyō, in a shortened form, as the safe doesn't have eight codes where I can simply type them in.

Well, it weren't those three…

A few days later

In the last few days, I had typed more than twelve codes in the safe, which were either numbers that hold great importance to my father, or that of me and my family.

I also thought about the possibility that the code might be each of our favorite numbers from my father as the starting number begins with him since he is the oldest and continues until Kyō who is the youngest.

That also didn't work…

My father is somehow special…

Aside from Mother, nobody knows what's truly on his mind…

I also have three tries today…

It's now the fifth day since I'm trying to unlock the safe…

But there are still more than 99.987 combinations remaining which still need to be typed in for me to unlock this safe.

In one day I can type three times on the safe before the security measure goes on and sets everything on fire in the safe.

I asked Aoki if the safe was breakable, but he denied that and said the security measure would go on automatically, doing the same result.

Since that didn't work, I asked him the only other method to unlock the safe.

And that is to contact the company which created the safe and ask how to unlock it.

Was there any security device that could open the safe?

Aoki asked a lot of questions and only got disappointed with the answers of the company.

There wasn't any way to open the safe…

Neither could it be opened via violence or other methods of destruction, nor through a security device unlocking the safe in cases.

The safe only opens when it's on fire, causing some functions of the safe to open. Stimulating the fire from outside isn't possible, since the safe has specific sensors for messing the temperature within.

There was truly no loophole in there…

Damn…

Father is truly a special person…

It will be never possible to open this safe…

In one year I have 1.095 attempts, in ten years 10.950 attempts, and at the moment where I finally tried every combination out, around 91 years and three months have passed…

If I don't have any concrete information about whether my father has deliberately made a combination associated with my family, or did it in a spontaneous mood, I'll never find the combination out.

Today, I'm going to do a different approach…

Something which has been bothering me since yesterday evening.

I noticed it when I stayed more than an hour long in the office room of my father.

It's most likely a coincidence, but each book on the bookshelf is a literature one, except one.

And there were more than thousand books in the bookshelf.

It´s a book of Pythagorean numerology, which doesn't suit in the bookshelf. It's strange.

Each book has something associated with another one, until that one. Not even any ounce of the topic is relevant to the other ones.

For someone as strange as my father, he wouldn't do that without a proper reason. Perhaps I'm overthinking everything, but I should try it out.

It doesn't hurt, does it?

Yeah, I should try it out.

The Pythagorean numerology has a set of numbers from one to nine which corresponds to the letters of the alphabet, while each number from one to nine also has a unique and specific meaning, giving insight into the personality traits and various other aspects.

This is how they're sorted:

1: A, J, S

2: B, K, T

3: C, L, U

4: D, M, V

5: E, N, W

6: F, O, X

7: G, P, Y

8: H, Q, Z

9: I, R

From us five, only Mother, Kaori, and I are the ones with five letters in our names. Father has four and Kyō three.

So I'm going to count them out. The name of my Mother is Miyuu, which in equivalence would be after the Pythagorean numerology like this; 49733.

Kaori's would be like this; 21699 and mine would be 21693 after the Pythagorean numerology.

However, as 0 has not have any meaning, it might be that the first and second numbers are being typed first with 0 and then those of their names in Pythagorean numerology.

It would make sense and I can't comprehend why I didn't deduct this instantly. I guess, my mental abilities are still severely affected.

I should try for now our three names out before I type their names tomorrow in.

I began to type 49733 in but was quickly disappointed and surprised that the safe didn't open.

It's not Mother's? Unbelievable…

What about Kaori's?

I proceeded to type 21699 in the electronic safe and got surprised once again.

It's also not hers? Am I just overthinking everything and there is truly no association with Pythagorean numerology to the safe?

I don't know…

Father…

I'm sorry…

I guess that's as far as I go…

Depressingly and full of sadness I typed now 21693, the name of my name in the Pythagorean numerology in, as I wanted to conclude this combination out for future reference.

But suddenly, I saw the safe opening…

It's my…name?

Frustratingly and full of desperation I bit my lips as hard as possible until they began to bleed…

I looked at the open safe, only to see two objects in…

One is the diary I remember him writing three years ago and the other one is a…

…picture frame from all of us together…

My legs began to tremble and stopped functioning, causing me to fall on the ground, with an expression I was all too familiar within the last two weeks…

One of sadness wanting to release every ounce of the emotional pain that I'm holding currently…

I cried, again and again, full of sadness, grief, and agony…

That continued for more than one hour until I felt able to stand up again.

I took the diary out of the safe and placed it on the working table where my father usually began to sit at this hour, late in the night.

Slowly breathing in and out I walked to the seat and sat down, preparing to open the diary.

I'll open it…

Now or never…

Breathe in and out…

I can do this…

Fully determined, I opened the first diary page, with a bit of tears in my eyes, from what I'm reading here.

He's describing the situation where I was annoying and disturbing him as the cutest thing he ever saw…

No, I shouldn't get an emotional outbreak after the first page, if I'm planning to read the whole diary…

Calm down, Kaoru…

You can do it…

After breathing in and out again, I proceeded to read one after another page, trying to hold myself down from another emotional outbreak.

I read the diary for seven hours, until I reached the final page…

My father wrote down...that my Mother is…

…pregnant

I bit my lips even harder than previously and clenched my hand as hard as possible, causing blood to drip from my hands and lips.

I felt myself becoming teary once again and feeling completely furious.

In these seven hours, I learned everything I required to know and wanted to know.

Although even if eighty percent of the diary was about our family, the rest of twenty percent gave me enough insight into what happened behind the backs.

My father repeatedly states something about Project WR, and how the politicians and people who support that Project are scumbags.

There is also a line one time mentioned, which father doesn't pick up in his later diary entries again.

Something about children being tortured, but he doesn't go on further about that aspect. Neither does he states how they're tortured, nor anything else.

Simply nothing, making me leave in awe and wonder.

Previously, before I read that line, I made a fast conclusion about the meaning of Project WR, as I read the whole disgust my father expressed on that Project.

There is this famous torture method, called 'White torture', also referred as 'White Room' or 'blank room', but that was completely forbidden in Japan.

No, forbidden is a hard word, it's precisely to say that Japan signed the international human rights treaties and conventions that prohibit torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

And naturally, the torture method 'White torture' is also included. But I didn't let my nativity take me over this time.

The government might do this on the premise of keeping their image, but as neither the international law holds any particular influence over Japan, it could be happening.

However, this one sentence made me feel like concluding too fast.

And that is the fact that my father states that children are being tortured through that Project.

I sighed, unable to think that the government would put children under that torture, and remained completely open, as I thought about other possibilities that might stand for Project WR.

But I wasn't able to conclude anything else and couldn't reach any reasonable possibility for the name Project WR.

So instead of having my attention on that part, I focused on another aspect instead.

And that is about the people my father mentioned, who are associated with Project WR and hold fault for not doing anything.

From one perspective it seemed like my father knew about this Project very shortly, since the dates where he discussed that Project started one month ago, two weeks before my family's sudden death.

Those two weeks were twenty percent of the diary contents, which weren't even diary entries at that point anymore.

It contained so much criticism about the Project, but never did he state anything about the Project.

And without further ado, I concluded that this Project is the reason for the sole death of my family members…

Because it seemed like my father wanted to announce this Project, but didn't thought about the possible consensus of death…

No, no, in normal cases only the person in knowledge would be…murdered, which most likely was in the realm of possibilities my father concluded, but he didn't think it would be also Kaori, Kyō, and Mother…

Perchance that's the reason why there isn't any concrete information about the Project because my father didn't want us four to search further about that Project…

Father…

If that was your true intention…

I'm sorry to say this…

But I won't be able to follow that path…

I can't let those bastards live their life happily after they took everything from me…

I'll let them feel my pain…

Naoe…

Sakayanagi…

Kanzaki…

Amasawa…

And whoever the person you referred to as him…

I'll let them feel every ounce of my pain…

And crush them completely…

From now on…

That kind-hearted boy will cease to exist…

And anew person is born…

A vengeful one…

For this new singular goal of mine…

I'll be ready to do anything…

.

.

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A/N: To start Volume 2, what else could be better if not a Flashback Chapter. Honestly, I hope that you like these Flashback Chapter´s as much as I do. After all, Kurushima´s motives about revenge are thoroughly explained here, and make gradually more sense.

Just curious, did anyone expect Amasawa to be included in Kurushima's targets?

Unlike Kanzaki, where I tried to foreshadow in Chapter 13, I did not do so for Amasawa.

Also, since it´s been a while I asked this question, I want to ask again. What is your impression of Kurushima?

And...

How would you rate his abilities based on what he has displayed so far, such as his intellect, deception, planning, manipulation, and social skills?

Aside from that, how did you find this Chapter?

I tried to show here some of his observational and deduction abilities at the age of seven, and created solely for that the mystery with the unbreakable safe.

Comments would be highly appreciated. And I would also appreciate a review, so that I can hear the opinions of my readers about this fic.