Chapter 146| A Fire That Doesn’t Go Out

The memorial service, held a week after the tournament’s devastating conclusion, drew a crowd considerably larger than anyone had anticipated — not simply Haruki’s own family and Party Emberline’s grieving members, but thousands of ordinary people who had watched, alongside two billion others, a young man’s final, selfless act, and had traveled from across the world to properly honor it.

Allen stood near the front of the gathered crowd, his own family close beside him, watching Haruki’s mother approach the modest, flower-laden podium with the particular, devastating composure of someone determined to honor her son properly despite grief that clearly threatened to overwhelm her entirely.

"My son awakened his ability eight months before the tournament," she began, voice carrying only slightly, the crowd’s considerable silence allowing even her softest words to reach every corner of the memorial grounds. "Eight months. He used to tell me that felt like barely enough time to properly learn who he was becoming, let alone prove it to the world."

She paused, gathering herself, and Allen felt Everlyn’s hand find his, steady and grounding against the mounting weight of grief still raw beneath his own composed exterior.

"He proved it anyway," Haruki’s mother continued. "Not through winning some considerable, prestigious tournament. Through choosing, in the single most important moment of his brief, extraordinary life, to protect strangers who could never properly repay him, over his own safety, his own future, everything he still had left to give."

Mika stepped forward next, Emberline’s own considerable grief evident in every line of her posture, though she managed, somehow, to speak with the same fierce determination that had once matched Irene’s restless energy so naturally during their shared training sessions.

"He told me, the night before the final, that whatever happened, he wanted our team to keep going," she said, voice thick but steady. "Said we’d earned our place in this world through heart, not resources, and that heart didn’t disappear just because he wasn’t there to lead it anymore." She looked out across the considerable, gathered crowd, something fierce and determined settling into her exhausted expression. "So that’s what we’re going to do. Emberline isn’t ending today. It’s just — it’s becoming something he’d be proud of, instead."

Allen felt his own throat tighten at the declaration, understanding intimately exactly how much courage it took to promise forward motion in the immediate, devastating aftermath of genuine loss.

When his own turn came to speak, Allen found himself standing before the considerable crowd with words that felt entirely inadequate against the weight of what he actually wanted to convey, and settled, finally, for simple honesty instead of anything more polished.

"I knew Haruki for a few short weeks," he said. "That’s not very long, in the scope of an entire life. But in that time, he taught me something I don’t think I properly understood before meeting him — that genuine heart isn’t measured by how much power or resources you start with. It’s measured by what you’re willing to give when it actually matters."

He paused, gathering his own considerable composure. "He gave everything. For strangers he’d never met, who couldn’t have known his name before that moment and will never forget it now. That’s not a small life, cut short. That’s an entire, complete life, lived exactly the way he wanted to live it, right up until the very end."

The crowd’s silence carried a particular, weighted quality as Allen continued, and he found himself, in that moment, deciding something he hadn’t fully planned before stepping up to speak.

"I’m establishing a fund, in his name," he said. "The Tanaka Fund. It’ll support young Hunters exactly like Haruki was — talented, underfunded, without family connections or considerable resources, but with more heart than half the tournament’s wealthier entries combined. Every dollar of my own tournament winnings goes toward it, starting today, and I intend to keep contributing for as long as this work continues to matter."

Haruki’s mother, watching from the podium’s edge, met Allen’s eyes with something that carried, despite her considerable grief, genuine and grateful warmth, and Allen understood, in that shared glance, that he’d found exactly the right way to honor a friendship far too brief for everything it had genuinely meant.

---

The gathering continued long into the evening, grief and quiet celebration of a remarkable, if brief, life intermingling as the crowd gradually dispersed, and Allen found himself, near the memorial’s conclusion, standing alone for a moment beside the small, growing collection of flowers and tributes that had accumulated throughout the day.

"He’d be embarrassed by all this attention," Mika said, joining him quietly. "Never did handle compliments particularly well."

"I remember," Allen said, managing a small, genuine smile despite his own lingering grief. "Got flustered every time someone praised his fighting."

"Thank you," Mika said, "for the fund. For everything, honestly. I don’t think we properly process yet just how much your friendship meant to him, these past few weeks."

"He meant just as much to me," Allen said honestly. "I wish we’d had considerably more time."

"Me too," Mika said softly, and they stood together a while longer in comfortable, grieving silence, watching the memorial’s gathered candles flicker against the gathering evening dark, a fire that, however briefly it had burned, had clearly, permanently changed everyone fortunate enough to have stood close enough to feel its considerable warmth.

Myria found him there some time later, the rest of the memorial grounds nearly empty by then, and settled quietly beside him without immediately speaking, simply offering her steady, familiar presence against the day’s considerable, accumulated weight.

"You did something good today," she said eventually. "The fund. He would have hated the attention, probably, but I think he’d have understood exactly why it mattered."

"I keep thinking about what he said," Allen admitted. "Right at the end. That making it to the final four wasn’t nothing. That having a friend he never expected wasn’t nothing." He shook his head slowly. "Eight months of training, one tournament, a handful of weeks knowing us. And somehow he managed to matter more, in that short a time, than most people manage across an entire, considerable lifetime."

"That’s the kind of person he was," Myria said gently. "The kind who makes brief time feel like more than enough."

Allen let the observation settle, some small measure of peace finally threading through his grief, and together they made their way back toward the waiting transport, the memorial grounds falling quiet behind them beneath a sky already thick with early evening stars, the fund’s first considerable transfer already scheduled to process before morning.