Chapter 1 – Grief

???'s POV

 "I can't go to school today," I said to myself as I sat on my bed while being depressed. The reason why is that my best friend, Hashi Nakamura, had died and went to the afterlife, without me. He didn't even reach second-year in high school. The reason why is that he disappeared while visiting Tokyo, which is 2 hours away from my home village called Okutama. He was like a brother to me. We had so many good memories together. I loved him like a brother. I cried so much that my bedsheets are wet with tears of sadness. Hashi was abducted and experimented by an unknown organization, which is said to promise 'better lives' for the people involved. But in reality, they did gruesome and unethical experiments on them. In Hashi's case, he was found dead at a river southeast of Tokyo. 

In the funeral, I cried so hard that my family and friends came and comforted me for the entire service, before he was cremated. 

His ashes were buried at a cemetery in Kawasaki. 

His parents wanted justice for their son, who was aspiring to be a detective, but currently, there is no evidence or update to the case. 

And now, 3 months since the funeral, I rarely went to school, about 3 times a week, and couldn't do PE class at all. 

Today, I was in my room crying my grief away, and my parents allowed me to skip school for most days so I could recuperate and recover emotionally.

 My name is Akira Cruz, a 17-year-old biracial high school boy living in Okutama. I am a half-Filipino, half-Japanese, and a Filipino by citizenship. I had brown hair and dark blue eyes and average in height. My full Filipino passport name is Akira Baybay Satoshi-Cruz. My father is a Filipino while my mother is a Japanese. I had two siblings, a younger sister named Miki, and an older brother named Taka. My father, Ian Cruz, is a factory worker while my mother is a teacher. I am currently in second-year in high school, and Miki is in her last year in middle school, while Taka is in his freshman year in college. I loved Western thriller and action movies and songs, as well as Filipino songs. I am also a bookworm, reading a lot of books, both physical and digital. But despite all of that, I had no idea what I want to be in life. There are so many choices, but I can't choose any of them at all. I even debated whether I should go to university after high school or not. I was in a loss.