It had been a week since I stepped through the doors of the police academy.

A week that felt both like a lifetime and the blink of an eye.

I didn’t know what I expected when I first made the decision to come here.

Maybe I thought the academy would be some kind of escape from the nightmare I was living in.

Maybe I thought I could distract myself from the weight of Kento’s absence.

But in truth, it was anything but a distraction.

The entrance tests were grueling.

Physical exams, mental aptitude tests, psychological evaluations—each day was a new challenge, designed to push us to our limits and test what we were made of.

There were moments I wasn’t sure if I could keep going, moments when I felt my body would give out or my mind would break.

But every time I thought about giving up, Kento’s voice echoed in the back of my mind, urging me forward.

He wouldn’t have wanted me to quit.

I remembered the first day, standing outside the academy gates.

My whole body had been trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what I was about to do.

My apartment was locked up now, the place where I’d been consumed by grief for so many days.

I wasn’t going back there, at least not for a long time.

Moving into the academy dorms felt like the only way I could truly start over.

I needed to sever that tie to my old life—the life that had shattered when Kento died.

That first night in the dorms, I barely slept.

The room was sparse but clean, with just a bed, a desk, and a small closet.

The walls were painted a neutral gray, and the window overlooked the training grounds.

It was strange to be somewhere new, somewhere I had no history, no memories haunting the corners.

I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant sounds of the other recruits moving around the dorm, each of them in their own world, their own stories unfolding around them.

Sasaki was the first person I called after I made the decision to come here.

His reaction was exactly what I expected—calm, measured, but with a hint of something deeper, something that told me he understood.

“You’re doing the right thing, Keisuke”

He’d said, his voice steady.

“Kento would be proud of you.”

I hadn’t known how to respond to that.

I wasn’t sure I believed it, not yet.

But hearing it from Sasaki gave me a small sense of reassurance, like maybe this was the right path after all.

Hana, on the other hand, had been less composed.

When I told her, over a strained phone call, that I was joining the academy, there had been a long silence on the other end of the line.

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When she finally spoke, her voice was tight, barely holding back the emotion.

“Keisuke, are you sure about this? Is this really what you want?”

I could hear the fear in her voice—fear that I was running headfirst into something dangerous, something that might consume me just like it had consumed Kento.

But I couldn’t explain it to her in a way that made sense.

It wasn’t just about what I wanted.

It was about what I had to do.

“I have to, Hana”

I’d said, my voice thick with the weight of the decision.

“I can’t sit back and do nothing. Kento believed in me. I can’t let that go.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time after that.

When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, resigned.

“Just… be careful, Keisuke. Please.”

Aiko’s reaction had been different altogether.

Telling her had been one of the hardest conversations of my life.

You didn’t know how she would take the news.

I explained what happened with Kento and Nagasuki.

I couldn’t hide what happened to me.

We were supposed to meet a week ago but I had to cancel because of that psychopath.

I called her one evening, after a particularly exhausting day of training.

The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the training grounds, and the air was cool against my skin as I stood outside the dorms, my phone pressed to my ear.

“Aiko, it’s me”

I’d said, my voice tentative.

I wasn’t sure how to begin.

“Keisuke…”

There was a softness in her voice, a kind of hesitance, like she knew something was coming.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m… I’m okay”

I’d lied.

“I wanted to tell you something. I, uh, I’ve joined the police academy.”

Silence.

I could hear her breathing on the other end, slow and steady.

When she finally spoke, her voice was calm, but there was a tremor beneath it.

“Is my brother who is talking to me? Keisuke himself joined the police?”

I sighed in relief.

I thought she would have been sad or something but she took it well.

"Yeah, it was Kento's last wish."

She didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice was barely above a whisper.

“I get it. Just be careful, ok?”

The words hit me hard, a lump forming in my throat.

I hadn’t expected that.

Yeah we have reconnected and talked more often but this was the part of her I missed, really.

“Thank you Aiko.”

There had been another long pause, and then finally, she’d sighed.

"When you'll not be tired, call me. Let's talk every now and then.”

“Sure.”

And so, that’s how it had gone.

I’d said my goodbyes, packed up my apartment, and moved into the dorms.

It wasn’t easy—leaving behind the life I’d known, the places that held so many memories of Kento.

But the academy had its own way of occupying every inch of my mind, leaving little room for anything else.

The first few days were a whirlwind of activity.

From the moment we arrived, the instructors wasted no time in testing us.

We were thrown into physical endurance exercises, running drills, obstacle courses.

My body ached in ways I hadn’t thought possible, my muscles screaming with every movement.

But I pushed through it, driven by something deeper than just the desire to succeed.

The mental tests were just as brutal.

We were given complex scenarios to solve, puzzles designed to test our logic and reasoning under pressure.

There were times when I felt my brain was going to short-circuit, the pressure becoming almost unbearable.

But I kept going, kept reminding myself why I was here.

There was a psychological evaluation too—interviews with therapists who were there to make sure we could handle the emotional toll that came with the job.

I sat in that small, sterile room, the therapist’s eyes studying me as I answered questions about Kento, about why I wanted to join the force.

I kept my answers measured, careful.

I wasn’t here to unravel in front of them.

I was here to prove that I could handle it.

By the end of the week, I was exhausted.

My muscles were sore, my mind was drained, but for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was doing something that mattered.

I wasn’t just floating through life, consumed by grief. I was moving forward, step by step.

Sasaki called me a few days into the week to check in.

His voice was as calm as ever, but there was something warmer in his tone this time.

“How’s it going over there, Keisuke? You surviving?”

“Barely”

I’d joked, though there was truth to it.

“It’s tough, but I’m making it.”

He chuckled softly on the other end of the line.

“Good. Keep at it. You’ve got this.”

There was a pause, and then he added, more seriously.

“Just remember—you’re not alone in this. We’re all here for you. If you ever need to talk…”

“I know”

I’d said, my throat tightening a little.

“Thanks, Taichi-san.”

I hung up, feeling a little lighter than I had in days.

Maybe this was the right path after all.

A week had passed, and I was still here.

I wasn’t sure what the future held—what challenges lay ahead, what dangers awaited me once I graduated.

But I knew one thing for certain.

I wasn’t doing this for revenge.

I wasn’t doing this to chase ghosts or to drown in grief.

I was doing this because Kento had seen something in me, something I hadn’t seen in myself.

And now, I had to prove him right.

As I sat on my bed that night, staring out the window at the darkening sky, I allowed myself a small, fleeting moment of peace.