Episode:4

By thirteen, Hikari had stopped thinking about the locket.

It lay forgotten in a drawer beneath her old toys and notebooks, no longer humming, no longer glowing. Just a strange piece of metal from a past that never spoke again.

She was older now. Calmer. Quiet still, but no longer the girl who shoved bullies into the mud or stared at the stars waiting for dreams.

Daichi had become more like a father than a guardian—gentle, distant, supportive. Their home was quiet, filled with books, radio static, and the smell of tea leaves.

Hikari was still bright—brilliant, even—but something strange happened in her second year of junior high:

She failed science.

Her classmates were shocked. Her teachers were confused. Even Daichi raised an eyebrow. “You solved algebra faster than I did at your age,” he said. “But this...?”

Hikari didn’t have an answer. The formulas didn’t stick. The laws of motion felt wrong. Electricity, magnetism—it all sounded dull and lifeless. Like someone had cut out the important part and left her with empty rules.

It frustrated her. It bothered her in a way nothing else had before.

---

And Then, Something Clicked

One night, while flipping through her science textbook with a heavy sigh, she noticed a small side note in the chapter on electromagnetic fields. A diagram showed waves—curved, moving, invisible forces flowing through space.

For a moment, something stirred.

She didn’t know why, but she remembered the hum the locket made the night she touched it again at age ten.

That tiny vibration.

That unseen force.

Just like the diagrams.

She sat up straighter. Her fingers flipped pages faster now, from magnetism to light, to radiation, to quantum behavior.

Somewhere deep inside, something whispered:

> “It’s not just science. It’s memory.”

---

Her Obsession Begins

She started staying after school. Borrowed textbooks from the upper classes. Learned about particle behavior, electromagnetic anomalies, resonance frequencies—words that made her heart beat a little faster.

And then she found it.

A term she’d never seen before in her schoolbooks:

Resonant imprint.

The idea that certain materials could "remember" energy—vibrations, signals, pulses from the past.

She thought of the locket.

She hadn’t touched it in years.

She didn’t even know if it still worked. Or if it ever had.

But now, science gave her a new reason to open that drawer.

---

The Drawer, Reopened

She pulled out the old locket, now dusty and cool. It looked the same.

But as she held it, her hand shook—not from fear, but from something else. A kind of recognition. Like meeting an old friend in a new world.

Her desk lamp flickered.

The air seemed to grow heavier.

And when she touched the tiny latch—

click.

The locket opened.

Inside was no photo. No inscription.

Just a small, smooth surface with a faint etching—like a circuit. Like something meant to react.

She ran her fingers over it.

It vibrated. Once.

Then went still.

---

Something had begun again.

Not in dreams.

Not in fantasy.

In science.

Seoul, South Korea.

The office was high above the city—glass walls overlooking the night skyline, but the air inside was ice-cold. A man stood behind his desk, his hands folded, a dark look on his face.

The agents in front of him didn’t dare raise their heads.

“We’ve scanned every registry,” one said quietly. “No one with her name. No trace in the system. It’s like she vanished after the storm in Japan thirteen years ago.”

“Vanished?” the man repeated, his voice low and sharp. “You expect me to believe my daughter just disappeared?”

“No, sir. But—”

“Enough.”

He raised a hand, silencing them instantly.

“Get out,” he said. “All of you.”

The agents bowed and left without another word, the door sliding shut behind them.

He stood alone now. Silent.

His name was Seo Jin-wook—a name whispered with fear in corporate boardrooms and shadowed government halls. But behind the power and money, he was still a man who had lost too much.

He walked slowly to the shelf by the window. A framed photo sat there—aged, slightly cracked.

A woman with warm eyes. A small baby in her arms. The same locket around the child’s neck.

His hand trembled as he picked it up.

“I failed you,” he whispered. “You died… protecting her.”

He turned to the rain-streaked window, eyes burning with grief and fire.

“But I will not fail her.”

He picked up his phone.

“Bring in the Kage Team,” he said. “Send them to Japan. I want every child around that age, every foster record, every police case file reexamined.”

“Understood,” came the answer.

“She’s out there,” Seo Jin-wook muttered to himself. “My daughter. And I will find her.”

---

Meanwhile, in Japan…