A still night laid empty hands over the courtyard. It gave a soft oppressive atmosphere burdened by emotions. Emotions that wouldn’t escape or disappear no matter how many attempts to be forgotten. They were haunting ghosts, specters lingering in all corners in silence. Silent, but staring, they watched endlessly.

Yumi almost wished that they did say something. Hearing their hateful words would be better perhaps than the accusing eyes. She could only imagine what they would say and nothing was worse than imagination.

Dark shadows hung over her face, shaving away weight from her face. She shifted her eyes away. Even a glance was too long for her. She couldn’t manage it for more than a few seconds. The faceless mass followed her eyes no matter where.

Every step through the Palace was like wading through the busy streets of Tokyo. She could never be alone. The best she managed was to look at the floor and only see the legs of everyone. A peaceful place like the courtyard could bring no comfort. Yumi could only stare trying to focus her mind. And hope that just maybe for one instance maybe she could be alone for once.

She closed her eyes and placed her head to the stone railing. Closed or not, her mental image kept the ghosts hovering around her. Escape wasn’t possible. But she didn’t make such an escape. ‘This is just what I deserve for everything that I’ve done…’ Her lips thinned out in a grimace with her thoughts.

Chapter 282 - Secret Origins

Yuki needed to take a step back from things. Things only got more complicated the longer he listened. It was supposed to be more straightforward with the more answers he got, yet the opposite happened. He had so many different pieces handed to him. It was hard to see the truth from the lies. Eudokia fed so many lies to him and yet some of them actually had some truth to them.

He stood up and paced around the path that circled around a tree. Demosthenes still had more to tell him. Yuki could tell that much. But he moved too quickly. Things had stopped being simple a long time ago. He thought he had gotten used to it. Worse, he still didn’t have answers to something so simple as who his mother was, which wasn’t what he thought.

Allowing his brain to process things a little, Yuki came back around to Demosthenes. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself. My father had a plan, but what is this all about? How is it supposed to relate to me or even Eudokia? I thought she had gone rogue.”

“Eudokia discovered a little bit of what his plan was and accepted things wholly. She never actually knew what his true motive was. The only part she really listened to was that he had something he needed her to do. It was his last request to her.”

Demosthenes turned his head a little to look towards a place in the Palace. “To Eudokia, the King was everything. He was her world, his loss hit her worse than anyone. I tried to motivate her and get her to do something, but she was insistent on hanging onto the past. It seemed like she planned to just die. She lost any sort of will to live. Then I told her about the King’s last wish he left for her. I hoped it would give her purpose again. Unfortunately, I never imagined how she would corrupt his wish. This was never what he would have wanted.”

“What did he want her to do?”

“He wanted you to become King. He left it to her, since she had more freedom to move around than me, to bring you back to Atlantis. He expected her to explain the situation to you and get your agreement. More than anything, he didn’t want the Council to be in charge, but it was all because he couldn’t finish his plan to free Atlantis. His wish left behind for you was to save Atlantis.”

It was a little clearer cut, but it was still a lot of jumping around. Yuki waved his hands, still needing some important answers to what was going on. “What a minute, he wants me to save Atlantis? I don’t even know what’s going on here. I’ve got this history lesson from you, but it’s still not telling me anything about this plan he has. I don’t even know who I am. How am I supposed to save a country?”

The old man nodded in agreement. There was still much to explain. “After his wife died rather than losing faith in the world it actually strengthened his resolve to fix the world. I actually grew concerned from how fanatical he had become about seeing it out. However, he told me he wanted to free us from needing to sacrifice Kings. I believed that was a worthwhile goal, even if he drove himself to madness in search of its answer.”

“What do you mean?” Yuki didn’t really understand how it could be so hard. There was a lot about how the Throne of Atlantis worked, but it didn’t seem like something that should be impossible to create. Their power could do anything they wanted. They just needed to imagine it. Why would it be difficult to do things differently? “Can’t you just create a new solution with our power?”

“If it had been that simple the second King would have done it. Atlantis requires our power to remain as it is, that is a fact. A fact that can’t be avoided. However, the one thing we’ve never been able to achieve through our power is artificially creating our power. It can only occur naturally in humans. There is no substitute for the power we use. So back then, it was decided that using someone else’s power could keep it alive.

“Your father decided that it shouldn’t be impossible. While through our power, we could achieve significant technological advancements it was never enough. However, the world was finally making significant strides. So he went outside to search for the answer.”

“Outside, you mean out of Atlantis? How’s that possible, I thought you said he couldn’t leave.”

“As I said, your father was unique in many ways. So powerful was he, he could travel across all of Atlantis. But that’s just what the public knows. The reality is that he actually made many trips around the world in search of his dream. It was due to these long absences that the Council made their move, never questioning his motives.”

“Damn, this guy sounds like he has almost god-like powers.”

“However, as I said before, he would have lived longer, but special circumstances lead to him dying earlier than normal. The distance away from the Throne strained him greatly, but he didn’t care. Eventually, he was no longer able to move as freely. His life significantly shortened due to his insistence on his dream.”

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Yuki dropped back down into his seat next to Demosthenes. Atlantis could have still had their King if he didn’t focus so strongly on achieving his goals. Eudokia could still have a father. None of what happened needed to be if he had just stayed. But then Yuki thought about what it meant. “So are you saying that he made a trip to Japan and met my mother. Sounds pretty cliché to me.”

“Nothing so simple or normal as that.”

Sighing, Yuki dropped his head back to rest against the back of the bench. Through the leaves of the tree, he could see the sun. Realizing it was all just artificial, he wondered about the sun too. “Of course, nothing can ever be simple. What’s my story?”

“Sadly, he’s never told me the whole story and what he left behind for me didn’t provide any more answers. What I do know will probably give you more questions than answers.”

“Figures. Well it can’t be any worse than not knowing.”

“We’ve refrained from telling you because it could be worse knowing the truth. There is another layer to the world that you aren’t aware of that you’re involved in.”

“Just how many secret civilizations are hiding out on this planet?”

Demosthenes shook his head. He recalled many of the errands the King sent him on in his declining years. The darkness of humanity that he witnessed made him wish he had been ignorant still. “It might be easier if it was something like that. What I tell you now I give with a warning.”

‘Ominous much?’ Even if Yuki acted glib about his warning, he still felt uneasy about learning yet another new truth. He didn’t know how much more of it he could handle. The world turned inside out wasn’t something to wish for necessarily.

“Listen closely, because it’s a name that no one knows, but everyone is touched by. Their reach is that far and their threat that grave. The Komatsuzaki have their hands in everything across the world. There is nothing that they aren’t involved in. And the Komatsuzaki’s singular purpose is the research of our power through any means necessary to understand it.”

“Komatsuzaki…” Naturally, Yuki never even heard of them. It was just something that he had to trust Demosthenes. He knew it was possible that he could be totally bullshitting him, but it made no sense at this point.

While Yuki thought about what it meant and how it affected him, something popped into his mind. He recalled Eudokia's story about her time at the South Gate. “Do you remember a time when you went to the South Gate and Eudokia had captured a significant number of intruders that looked linked to some military?”

Demosthenes’ eyes grew wide in surprise to hear Yuki bring it up. “I didn’t think she’d talk about her past to you. Yes, I remember it. It is as you’re thinking. She never knew, but the reason I went there was because those men worked for the Komatsuzaki. We never had any direct links to them. They’ve always been good about covering up their tracks, even the soldiers weren’t fully briefed, just instructed on exactly what they needed to know. So interrogations got us nowhere, they know what our powers can do. So they are very careful.”

“I’m guessing you’re going to tell me my father has ties to them. If they were researching our power then it would be perfect for him if he wanted to create it artificially as a substitute power source for the Throne. But you’ve isolated yourself here, how do they even know about your existence?”

“That’s correct. The King actually discovered them when he was searching. He never told me how he found them. I still don’t know how they know about us or how they did their research. I just know of their methods.” Demosthenes fell silent for a moment. Something suddenly seemed to weigh on him even more than usual through the whole conversation. “Human experimentation. As I understand it, many of their tests have been to try to recreate our power forcibly in normal humans. But they were all failures.”

The further silence from the old man told Yuki enough to know of their fate. It really started to sound like one of his stories. A classic case of an evil organization with no regard for human life in search of the answer to life or becoming god. Something silly and selfish as always. The results were always the same, innocents had to die. “You’re not going to tell me I’m one of their experiments that happened to go right and they are actually in search of me even today because I’m the key to the puzzle.” That would just be too cliché, but given his options he was not sure which cliché was worse.

Narrowing his eyes, he knew Yuki joked about it, but it still surprised him how quick to pick up on things he actually was. “You are not completely correct, but not completely wrong either.”

“What?! You can’t be serious!” Yuki jumped up out of the bench and started poking around at the air. “Now I really know I’m dreaming or my life really is a manga, because this stuff just is impossible.”

“You wanted to know the truth.”

He turned around to see how serious the Atlantean looked. The thought of it all made him sigh heavily. Yuki slumped over to the bench and laid back. “Alright, shoot out this horrible doujinshi storyline already.”

“The truth as I understand it, your father knew his time was running out. All of his traveling quickly shortened his life. So he needed to ensure his dream didn’t die with him. He needed someone to carry on his dream, but that would also be powerful enough to keep Atlantis alive until the solution was found. You are his answer.

“The research done by the Komatsuzaki had hit a wall and so the King worked with them planning to exploit their work. They created many experiments based on what he provided, but they also ended in failure. As a last measure, he had them create you through artificial means using his DNA and one of the Japanese researchers, a woman that worked closely with him.

“Komatsuzaki saw the advantage of someone that could be as powerful as the King as a test subject, so they tried to sabotage the experiment to make it look like the child they created died. However, the King actually fooled them and made it look like the child really died and left the child in the care of someone he trusted, the Hayashis.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it still made him turn his head. “My parents knew my real father. They knew everything as well.”

“They made a promise not to reveal any of this to you until you were old enough, unfortunately they both died before that could happen. And then the King died before he could tell you everything as well. After you were born, he tried to hold on long enough, while putting his plans into place, such as finding Eudokia.”

“So the Komatsuzaki think I’m dead, but if I’m just genetically engineered I’m not that useful to them.”

“Officially, they accept that you died in the experiment. Unofficially, they’ve been trying to get you for years unsuccessfully, but I dealt with their schemes. But like you said, you are a valuable subject to them, but not the solution to their research. So they seem to have given up trying to get you back in the last few years. But I wouldn’t trust them. You still represent something that they lost and feel that they own. So I believe they will eventually come for you.”

“Great, as if I need more people after me. At least they don’t want me dead.” Yuki stood up and stretched. Everything piled up on him making it hard to take in. He really did end up wishing that he didn’t know. Ignorant bliss was right. “So you got any more bombshells to drop while you’re on a roll?”

“After everything is resolved in Atlantis I have one final thing to give to you. As it is now it would only be an unnecessary burden. You have your friends to think about and you should focus on them rather than your father’s plans or Atlantis’ future.”

It actually surprised him a bit to hear Demosthenes not try to force an agenda on him. Yuki walked towards the tree and leaned against it. “For being one of his biggest supporters, should you really be telling me to ignore everything and just save my friends?”

“It’s what he would say I believe. To him, family was always important. When those you care about are in danger you risk everything for them.”

“Consequences be damned huh? More unbecoming advice from one of the most important people in Atlantis.” It actually made Yuki grin a little. He worried so much about tiptoeing around the problem that it was a little encouraging to hear the straight laced one tell him to go wild. “I don’t need to be told to save them. I planned on doing just that! Those bastards won’t have their way anymore!”