Chapter 12: Chapter 10

The following day, I went along with Natasha to the playgrounds to buy some fresh foods to restock the kitchen. Since Unit-00B was the second last group to return, they had sent us a list of things to buy.

I don't usually hang out with Natasha, preferring the company of Reika, but it wasn't like she and I were on unfriendly terms. Rather, despite her outgoing and carefree attitude, she was actually a very reserved person. Actually she was very close to Reika because they both did not have classes, but Reika was often busy with her thesis and frequently left the dorms for the library, leaving Natasha alone in the dorm. She was closer to Sora who shared many of her interests and had similar personalities.

I didn't actually know her that well, but she had shown great proficiency in political science, and we had suspicions about her background due to the secretive nature of her work. It's not like we didn't talk at all but in this bus headed to the playgrounds it was a fairly awkward and silent ride.

"So...how's your day?"

"It's fine~" she giggled. And that was about the extent of our conversations. Eventually though I got tired enough of the awkward atmosphere surrounding us to broach the topic that had been weighing recently on my mind.

"Say Tasha, you're not Japanese are you?"

"Nope~ my mom brought me here when I was young. Lived here for a long time. Why do you ask?"

"No it's just...well I was curious about you."

"Oh~how flattering."

"Not like that," I said as I rolled my eyes, "but well, you seem very carefree about your situation. Also what's this work you do?"

"Ahaha~that's a secret. But I'm usually very carefree."

"Okay...then could you tell me about your life?"

This she was willing to answer. Her parents had divorced and her mother took custody of her and her sister, so they moved here because her mother was a political scientist and worked in one of the universities here.

She was fluent in several languages, owing to her having relatives in France which was her mother tongue, and English because her father was from England. Also Japanese because she was practically raised here.

She talked about all sorts of things like how she practically raised her sister who was significantly younger than her, they had plenty of memories here in Japan when they were very young. She told me one time, she and her sister were playing and she tried to do a backflip off the swing, and of course it ended just about as disastrously as you would imagine. Somehow she managed to escape with just a couple of scratches.

"My sister was crying so much that day~"

"She must've been very worried."

"Of course~ my sister was such a crybaby when she was young."

But apparently her family went back to England when she was around ten years old because of a family emergency during the last year of Exodus and stayed there for a long time because of it. She went back several times and became an Exile and then her life changed yet again.

"So why are you here?"

"Well~you see my family is well connected, and so I wanted to come back here."

"I see. Was England really that bad?"

"Oh terrible. It rained all day and the weather was dreary all year round. As an Exile, we were practically under house arrest you see so it didn't really matter much. But I thought it would have been better if I was here where I could roam an island if I wanted to~"

"I see."

I don't know myself, if I could choose to stay with my family I think I would have picked that option rather than being here where everyone outside couldn't give a damn about me.

"Also, I've made good friends here."

"Really? What about any friends outside?"

"It's hard to make friends when you keep moving around so much~"

She also wasn't that close with her extended family either, her grandparents on both sides were against the marriage of their parents. Even so, they treated her like family, but not as close as she would have hoped at least.

"But here on the island, we are all Exiles so it doesn't matter much. I have fun talking with Reika and watching you guys quarrel with Kouta~"

"I see."

I never thought about it that way. To me it just felt like the usual summer camps I used to have in middle school though in this case we couldn't go home. For Natasha though it was like friends having a sleepover party at your house. It actually explains why she always looked like she was having fun.

"I do miss my sister though, I talk to her sometimes~"

"You can talk to people you know outside?"

"Of course! It's for work though so it can't be helped. But at least I get to talk to her."

Work again. We were all curious about it but she won't say a word of it so after a while we all just stopped asking. But it also meant that things were done differently in England.

"Is the system in England different?"

"Quite different~ for one we get to stay at home. But if we leave the house we are charged in court and sent to prison you see~"

"Well at least your friends can visit right?"

"Hmm~ I suppose so, yes." She said evasively. I felt it was better not to talk about that, but it made me wonder why our systems were so different. Clearly it was possible to leave Exiles at home so why does Japan not adopt that?

"Fufu well you see it's because of public trust and enforcement~" she said when I asked, "It is difficult to enforce a rule where Exiles have to stay at home all the time you see, much easier to just group them all up and contain them. The police numbers are too small right? Also public trust of Exiles is lower here than in England. So the task can only fall on the military that has the numbers. But the military is busy with the neighbouring countries you see~"

The reason why public opinion of Exiles was so low here compared to England was because we were the first country that had Exiles. At the time we didn't know about the X syndrome and its effects, so the Exiles were free to move around and inevitably caused trouble.

She told me that Europe was one of the last few places in the world that adopted the LiGHT process because they were busy dealing with the European Conflicts at the time. By then they had a few years to prepare for the potential problems of Exiles and the X syndrome and so they didn't face as much trouble as compared to Japan.

There were upsides and downsides to each system of course. For one, it was much harder to enforce and tied up much of the local authorities into making sure the Exiles did not somehow remove their trackers and leave the house. Daily visits would be done countrywide and it was very taxing and costly.

Uniquely this was only done in England, the rest of Europe had apparently built special institutions similar to prisons or asylums to house this ever growing population. They could have visitors much like prisons, but could not come into contact with their families. Though public opinion of Exiles was generally better there as compared to here, effectively it was the same system although here we are totally cut off from the mainland.

I heard that they tried the English system but it failed badly due to a multitude of factors, which was why they adopted the asylum strategy to make enforcement simple. In fact most countries would inevitably move to isolate their Exiles into an area much like Japan did, it was just more cost effective that way.

Even in England, many Exiles are constantly being charged for violating their house arrest, although only the dangerous ones would be sent to an institution. Tasha tells me that even England is thinking of adopting the European standard as it appeared more humane.

"Sort of like how free-range cattle are seen to be treated more humanely than being cramped up in a stable~" she said, though her comparison was rather weird. It made sense, on one hand they didn't want to separate families but on the other hand the enforcement was just too costly.

It struck me as ironic that in the end Japan, even with its less tolerant views of Exiles, managed to stumble into the most optimal solution so far on the first try. The treatment of Exiles though, could use a little work.

Apparently among the first world countries, Singapore was the only one that allowed social reintegration due to their relatively small size and population making it easy to enforce and govern. They only had about five hundred Exiles in total after all these years.

Other small countries like Monaco or Liechtenstein were absorbed into other countries during the European Conflicts so they didn't count, the other small countries that were isolated from the world weren't very affected by the Exodus since they were mostly isolated, but those who succumb to the virus even after being vaccinated simply die.

"You know quite a lot don't you?"

"I've been around~ What about you? Do you miss your family?"

"Yeah. I sometimes want to talk to the people outside too."

My parents and sister and my friends for one. Actually those were the only people I had. I felt some kinship to Tasha, in some sense Tasha and I were similarly isolated from most of the world by circumstances, though my parents are still together.

"Well~ I'm sure one day you could."

"How do you know?"

"Fufu~ I just do."

I don't know why, but I believed her. I guess I never noticed but I still had some sort of anxiety when it came to my previous life. She had a way of calming people down, and I guess it was a skill that came naturally to her.

"What was your life like?" Tasha asked. Well it was only fair I opened up about myself seeing as she did the same, so I started talking as I recalled how it was for my family.

My sister and I were the rare few in our age group in the slums, the rest were older than us by a couple years or born after us. Japan has always had a low birthrate even before the Exodus, so we were alone most of the time. Like us, the rest of the children our age stayed home as well, it was a time of instability after all and many parents were worried about their children's safety.

I only met Kouya and Haruto in middle school, and they have stuck with me ever since. This talk with Natasha only made me feel grateful that I made such good friends, and also sad that I can never talk to them again.

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She listened to my little story patiently. She wasn't here during the period of unrest during Exodus since she was in England, but she had heard about it on the news.

She laughed at a few of my childhood stories, like one time I broke a glass cup playing hide and seek with my sister. I remember my sister and I tried gluing it back together as best as we could which of course failed miserably. My father in particular was very angry when the handle of the cup came off when he tried to grab the cup to make some tea.

When we reached the playgrounds, I felt closer to Natasha who for the most part never stopped smiling the whole ride. However, I felt that behind that smile she was actually lonely, sort of like Michiru when I first met her.

So I took her hand as we walked about in the playground. She was a little surprised but giggled and happily walked along in tow.

I brought her to various stalls and shops where we spent some of our allowance on shoes and dresses. The ones we had were the standard shoes given to us by the school so we looked around and bought a few pairs of cute shoes and Natasha didn't go out much so she didn't have many clothes. I myself wasn't that into fashion so most of the time was spent trying to coordinate our clothes with the help of the store clerk.

"By the way Hotaru, weren't we supposed to buy food~?"

I had completely forgotten about that. It had been several hours and we had missed the three o'clock bus and it was almost four.

"Shoot, I got distracted."

"Ahaha~but at least it was fun."

We quickly bought our groceries and quickly rushed to catch the four o'clock bus and just barely managed to reach in time.

We bought way too much again and it was difficult to carry it all back. Not because it was heavy, we were pretty strong after the augmentation, but because it was hard to walk while carrying all the bags.

We came back to a dorm in a mess. There were pieces of broken furniture laying about and the room was empty and silent. There were drops of blood staining the tiles of the floor.

Tasha and I looked at one another and dropped our bags. I figured that they must have gone to the infirmary because there was blood, so someone must have been injured. It had to be very recent, within the past hour because Shiho's tea cup was still full but the tea had gone cold.

As we ran across the fields and past the Colosseum, we heard a beep on our bracelets.

"Hotaru, they are in the infirmary. Something's wrong with Sora. Doctors ran some tests on them too so they couldn't contact us."

"Got it."

When we got to the infirmary, we met Team D who had returned and were supposed to be in the middle of their augmentation, but they had apparently cut it short and they were sitting about as they looked upon in concern. Further back was Sora with a team of doctors by his side. My team came up to us as we asked about what happened.

"I dunno," Kaoru said, "he was fine one minute, then suddenly started freaking out. When Kouta tried to calm him down he punched him straight in the face."

Broke his nose, he added.

"Still, we had to hold him down and Reika called the docs and they had him sedated."

"But that still doesn't answer what happened," Shiho said, "the doctors are running some tests. They think it might be because of the augmentation so they've halted it for Unit D."

"I see. Is Kouta okay?" Tasha asked.

"Yeah, he was out cold for a few minutes but he's fine. They're putting him into the tube to fix his nose. It's a bit overkill for just a broken nose, but they want us in perfect condition apparently, so they're using LiGHT to reconstruct the nose and maybe any damage anywhere else."

"What about the rest of you, you guys alright?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, he was moving erratically but it was easy to hold him down. He's really strong though, so we had to pile up on him." Shiho said, "They ran some tests on us as well and I think they'll call you up later."

Other than Kouta taking a fist to the face, they were all okay, so I felt relieved that nothing too serious happened to them. What was more worrying was that the doctors think that it was related to the augmentation process, which meant all of us may be affected.

The entire school had already undergone one augmentation while only my team had done the second. Team D only did it halfway, but if something did go wrong, then we would all have to do some intensive tests to find the problem.

I wanted to go up to one of the doctors to ask about the situation, but honestly my medical knowledge was limited to high school biology so it probably won't be of much use explaining it to me when they had a bigger problem at hand.

I was surprised to see Dr. Iroha amongst the many doctors scurrying about, this time she didn't have on her earphones and conducted herself a little more seriously then the first two times we met. She pointed to Natasha and I and ushered us to a room.

"I'm going to be running a few brain scans, take off your clothes and change into the gowns provided." She said, then she pulled out a few headphones and handed them to us. "Wear this before you go into the scan, it's noisy."

We quickly did as we were told, and laid down on the machine. The headphones were noise cancelling so it was rather uncomfortable being in total silence. The headphones allowed Dr. Iroha to speak to us and vice versa, and she gave several instructions before we started.

"Now keep as still as possible, it would take about fifteen minutes. Try not to scratch your head or move at all."

"Doctor, I thought electronic objects couldn't be brought in?" I asked.

"These headphones have in built Faraday cages to protect the machinery. Now I'm starting the process so stay still."

It was a fairly long process, and I had itches everywhere on my body. When Dr. Iroha called in to tell us it was over I began scratching everywhere.

I decided to ask the Doctor about what was going on as the computer was analysing the data. She looked a little hesitant but after prodding her enough, she finally answered.

"Patient Sora appears to be suffering from a sudden development of X syndrome. The others also appear to have developed symptoms of it."

"Is it dangerous?"

"X syndrome is not neurodegenerative as far as current research can tell. Early onset X syndrome is very rare but identifiable in the first month of an Exile's life. For some reason patient Sora has developed something similar, as if the condition has been accelerated and worsened for some reason."

"What does that mean doctor?" Tasha asked.

"Well, it just means that usually the symptoms and effects of X syndrome shouldn't be manifesting so pronouncedly at your age. X syndrome is usually a very slow and gradual process so you guys shouldn't have symptoms like these for another five years. You guys definitely don't have EoX or you would have already been moved to a facility to treat you.

"EoX?" I asked.

Dr. Iroha explained that it was shorthand for Early onset X syndrome, it's very similar to X syndrome, which is caused when neurotransmitters in the brain do not respond appropriately to emotional stimuli which then causes an Exile to overreact or not react at all to emotional stimuli. So an Exile may fly into a fit of rage for just the minor inconvenience, or show no remorse at causing harm to others.

It's why us Exiles are removed from society because those that suffer from EoX or are in the advanced stages of X syndrome can become extremely violent and cause harm to our surroundings.

"So something caused the condition to suddenly worsen and the doctors think it's because of the augmentations?" I said.

"Exactly. This is confidential information by the way, I cannot really go into too much detail, but I can give you a brief rundown."

"How will this affect us?" Tasha asked.

"Well...it depends on the person. Patient Sora's sense of fear seems to be triggered constantly and it manifests like a panic attack. Now people have various reactions when they are in a panic, and he appears to manifest it in a violent manner. If left unchecked, it may result in an epileptic fit and death."

"Does this mean he will have to downgrade his Classification to a Class Five citizen?"

"Downgrade?" I asked.

Dr. Iroha nodded, "Class Five is usually reserved for people who have EoX which is difficult to treat, even with medication," she said, "but in this case, it isn't EoX, merely an advanced stage of X syndrome which is easily treatable so no, he probably wouldn't be downgraded."

"How is it treated?" I asked.

"Well for those suffering from EoX, the brain is very adaptable, so we wait for the brain to adapt to the scarring, but there is only so much natural healing can do even given the brains natural plasticity. We will then permanently prescribe various medications depending on which chemicals are being affected to stabilise it. But the side effect is that usually these people are left with little to no emotions or remorse. Psychological rehabilitation is required to prevent them from engaging in criminal activity." She said, as she began clicking through our scans.

"It's similar for the usual X syndrome, if left untreated it will eventually become like EoX, so the same medications are prescribed at a much lower dosage as and when symptoms start showing, so your emotions will be dulled but you will still be able to feel them much as you do now."

Most Exiles would wean off the medication after about twelve, but every couple months to years, they will be prescribed the medication again to regulate the symptoms. I wanted to ask more in detail, but apparently from here on the information was classified and Dr Iroha refused to answer anymore questions. She did say that she would ask Dr Komachi or her husband Dr Senju Ren, who was the director of the hospital in Harbour Town, for approval but I would have to wait until then.

"So what do we do now?" Tasha said.

"Now, you let me analyse this. But I expect you guys will be prescribed medication and continue as you are right now." She said, all but shooing us away.

When we came back out the doctors told us to return to our dorms while they kept Sora for observation, Dr. Komachi had just arrived and was looking through various reports and tests in her wheelchair due to her pregnancy, she could still walk of course but couldn't move around as quickly as before. Kouta on the other hand looked no different from when Tasha and I left him this morning, the LiGHT treatment removing any evidence of Sora's rampage. Team D came by to ask about what happened later on, so Tasha explained what we had heard from Dr. Iroha. After they left to continue their augmentations, we all decided to turn in early that night.

Author's Notes:

I'm not a neurosurgeon, I don't know how brains work. But hey it's fiction, and it sounds rather plausible an explanation for the X syndrome right?... Anyway, this is where things start getting a little serious which is why the chapters are coming out slowly because many details are important. I am planning a time skip in several chapters after I tie up a few loose ends and introduce a few more integral characters and then it's the second half of the first arc.

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