Felzein fell into silence, his gaze growing distant as a sheen of tears gathered in his eyes, sorrow long entombed beneath the weight of unspoken years.
“Ryu… But now he’s…” he murmured, the words faltering, left adrift in the still air, too laden with grief to be spoken.
A single tear escaped, tracing a silent path down his cheek.
“He was the only true companion I had,” Felzein said at last, his voice low and raw. “Someone who understood me, who shared my thoughts, my dreams, my very convictions. And now, all of that remains only as a ghost in memory.”
Cherlyn exhaled slowly, the sigh heavy with empathy. She did not speak, did not disturb the stillness of his sorrow.
“And you intend to avenge him, don’t you, Doctor?” she asked quietly, a question, but one wrapped in quiet certainty.
Felzein did not speak. He merely gave a slow, deliberate nod. Yet in that single motion, a storm of resolve was conveyed.
“I will avenge his death,” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet with a fury sharpened by grief.
“You may not yet be aware of recent revelations,” Cherlyn said, her tone composed but marked by significance.
Felzein frowned, eyes narrowing, “What are you saying?”
Cherlyn offered a faint, enigmatic smile, “Of all who were thought to have perished in that explosion. Only two bodies were never recovered. Yours... and Ryu’s.”
“What?!” Felzein’s voice rang out, disbelief etched across his features.
Cherlyn inclined her head slowly, “It’s true.”
“No! That can’t be!,” he said, shaking his head as if to expel the notion. “I saw the reports! They listed Kaito Ryu among the dead. Without him, I’d never have made it out alive.”
“We staged his death,” Cherlyn replied plainly. “The body they found wasn’t his. It was a janitor, an innocent soul caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Her voice lowered, each word weighed with gravity.
Cherlyn held Felzein’s gaze, her voice scarcely more than a breath, “Ryu is with us… alive. But the explosion left him broken. His body is wholly paralysed, ravaged by burns. Only his lips retain the power to move.”
“For as long as he’s drawn breath,” she went on, each word imbued with quiet weight, “he’s spoken your name, Doctor. Time and time again.”
Felzein reeled as though struck, “What…?” he gasped.
His eyes widened in disbelief, the colour draining from his face. The world seemed to tilt beneath him, his footing faltering.
“Ryu… is still alive?” he whispered, his voice barely audible, trembling as though the truth itself were too immense to grasp.
A moment later, the strength left his legs.
He sank to his knees, the cold floor catching him as tears poured down his cheeks in an unrelenting torrent.
“What kind of friend have I been…” he choked, a bitter self-reproach laced through his every word.
And then, as if the guilt within demanded penance, Felzein struck himself.
once, twice. His open palms slapping his cheeks in anguished rhythm, as though to punish the heart that had dared to forget.
Yet Rosa and Melati darted to his side, their steps quickened by alarm and compassion.
They seized Felzein’s hands firmly, halting his frantic movements before he could inflict further harm upon himself.
“Felzein, please! Stop this!” Melati cried, her voice thick with sobs as tears spilled freely down her cheeks.
“Don’t do this to yourself!” Rosa pleaded, her words trembling with emotion.
“Ocha, Melati! I deserve to be punished!” Felzein choked out, struggling against their grasp, his voice a raw blend of shame and despair.
“No! That’s enough!” Melati snapped, her tone fierce, her eyes rimmed with red. “You don’t get to decide your worth by pain!”
“This isn’t the way,” Rosa added, her voice gentler, striving to steady the storm within him.
“Tell us everything! Tell us your story first!,” Rosa continued, resolute. “There’s always a way, Felzein. Always.”
He stilled. The fight drained from his limbs, leaving only the weight of remorse clinging to him like a shroud.
All this time, his survival had come at the cost of another’s sacrifice, Ryu’s.
He had believed, with aching certainty, that Ryu had died in that terrible explosion at the Vuska Laboratory, and the memory had festered within him like an open wound, scarring him with guilt and sorrow.
But now...
Now he was told that Ryu lived. Crippled, burned, barely clinging to the remnants of life, but alive.
And the revelation struck like a thunderclap across his conscience, tearing through the veil of anguish and leaving him stranded between the fragile shores of relief and unbearable guilt.
Felzein rose to his feet, each movement heavy with a purpose forged in pain.
His eyes, sharp and storm-filled, fixed upon the ceiling as if the weight of the heavens might answer his unspoken rage.
His jaw tightened, a tremor flaring in his breath, barely restrained fury simmering just beneath the surface.
“Fabian Zeller…” he breathed, the name escaping his lips like a curse. “Your treachery, shall not go unanswered.”
His voice, though quiet, carried the cold edge of vengeance.
It was not the fury of a storm, but the chill that follows. Silent, inevitable, and lethal.
“Then it was Mr Zeller behind all of this?” Cherlyn asked, disbelief shadowing her features.
Felzein gave a slow, resolute nod, “Indeed. It was Fabian who claimed Ryu’s groundbreaking thesis on regenerative cancer cells as his own creation,” he said, and in that moment, bitterness rose like smoke from smouldering ruins.
“Tell me everything,” Cherlyn said softly, her voice stripped of pretence, her gaze locked upon him with unflinching seriousness.
Felzein drew in a long breath, as though the air itself might lend him clarity.
For a moment, he stood still, letting silence settle between them like the hush before confession.
Then he began to speak, each word carefully drawn from the well of memory.
“In truth, Ryu and I shared a closeness that drew envy like a moth to flame. Fabian and his ilk, they couldn’t bear it.”
“In those days, Ryu and I would talk long into the night outside lecture halls, beneath trees, beside forgotten corridors. Ours wasn’t idle chatter, but the kind of restless dialogue that dances along the edge of the impossible.”
“We dreamt not of praise or publication, but of truth. Unvarnished, unclaimed.”
He moved toward the narrow window at the back of the apothecary, the worn wooden frame barely holding in the pale light that bled through.
His eyes searched the world beyond it, though they saw nothing but fragments of yesterday.
“Ryu… he was brilliance incarnate. Even the most esteemed professors sought his thoughts in private, drawn by the radiance of his intellect."
"Fabian, meanwhile, was left in the shadows. No invitations. No recognition. Only the bitter realisation that he could not keep pace.”
“And so...” Felzein said, voice tightening, “...jealousy took root. And from that rot, came betrayal.”
Felzein’s hands curled into trembling fists, the veins along his knuckles standing in stark relief as a storm gathered behind his eyes.
“In the beginning, their disdain was cloaked in civility, smirks behind smiles, glances laced with mockery. But when Ryu completed his thesis on regenerative oncology, and I lent my hand in the data modelling, Fabian changed. Entirely.”
His voice was low, simmering with the slow heat of long-contained fury.
“He tampered with our experiments. Pilfered confidential notes. Then whispered poison into the ears of the faculty, accusing us of plagiarising a Swiss professor’s unpublished research.”
Cherlyn’s posture stiffened, her breath catching ever so slightly. Her eyes did not leave him.
“But the most vile betrayal,” Felzein continued, his voice thick with emotion, “came when we were on the cusp of presenting before the International Medical Council. Fabian... He appeared ahead of us, parading a paper nearly identical to ours.”
He paused, jaw tight. Then, with deliberate bitterness, “He claimed it as his own. Every word. Every hypothesis. Every conclusion. And worst of all, he listed Ryu, the true architect as a mere assistant.”
He turned fully towards Cherlyn now, the anguish in his expression no longer hidden.
“The entire project was Ryu’s brainchild. Ours, through sleepless nights and relentless toil."
"Fabian only ever loomed in the shadows, waiting to pounce. He manipulated the narrative. Twisted the truth. Sold it to those who craved convenience over integrity.”
There was a silence. Taut, suffocating.
“And the explosion?” Cherlyn asked, her voice laced with quiet dread.
Felzein’s reply was a breathless whisper of rage, “It was no accident. It was the final stroke of their cruelty. An obliteration of all trace, of data, of evidence, of us.”
Cherlyn’s eyes narrowed slightly, her tone soft, yet brimming with gravity, “And now? Knowing all that you do, what path will you take?”
Her question lingered in the air, like a blade suspended above a heartbeat.
Felzein did not respond at once. He inhaled deeply, gaze drifting downward as though staring into the abyss of his past.
Then slowly, deliberately, he raised his head.
“There is but a single word that has sustained me through the silence, the lies, the mourning,” he said, his voice low and resolute, as though spoken from the very marrow of his soul.
“Vengeance.”
All present were struck speechless by the tone that had just pierced the room.
It did not seem to come from Felzein, the man they had long known as composed, thoughtful, and brimming with quiet compassion.
No, this voice belonged to someone else entirely.
Before them stood not the healer, but the wounded, one who had borne his grief in silence for far too long, and now allowed the fire of vengeance to rise, untamed and unflinching.
“Have you truly reckoned with the cost?” Cherlyn asked again, her voice hushed, yet laden with unease.
“I have,” Felzein answered, his jaw set with steel. “Fabian is no mere adversary.”
“But regardless of what he is,” he continued, his gaze hardening into glass, “it matters not. What I seek is not glory, nor mercy but justice. Justice for Ryu.”
His eyes stared into the distance, as if Fabian Zeller already stood there. silent, waiting, etched like a shadow across the future he had vowed to confront.