Knock knock.
There was a pause, followed by the soft creak of the floorboards outside.
"Ren," Yujiro's voice came through the door, calm and low. "Brought dinner. I'm just gonna leave it here."
Another pause.
"It's still warm, so eat before it gets cold, alright?"
Footsteps retreated down the hallway.
Silence again.
Ren sat hunched at the edge of his futon, eyes dull and sunken, staring at the same cracked spot on the wall he'd been staring at for hours.
The room around him was a quiet disaster. Unwashed clothes in the corner. Empty water bottles, snack wrappers. His phone face-down on the floor, long dead. The curtains were still drawn shut, the air thick and stale from days without light.
His stomach let out a soft growl. He ignored it.
He dropped onto his back, arm flopping across his eyes. He'd barely moved in the past three days—aside from dragging himself to the toilet and back. Yujiro hadn't pried. He just checked in, left food, gave space.
The futon was warm, but Ren felt cold.
Not physically. Something deeper than that.
"Why don't I feel anything?"
His voice cracked as he whispered it into the dark.
"They're gone… and I don't feel a fucking thing."
He stared at the ceiling through blurry eyes.
"I should be crying, right? I should be screaming. Breaking shit. Anything. But I can't even care enough to throw my phone."
He let out a soft, bitter laugh.
"I haven't even touched my gacha games. I don't care if I missed a drop. I don't care if I lose my account."
His hand covered his face, trembling slightly.
"I watched them die. Right in front of me. And I just… I don't feel anything."
The images were still there—his dad's severed head, his mother's voice, that thing. But it all felt distant now, like he was watching it on a screen, detached from his own body.
"I'm so tired…"
He curled onto his side, pulling the blanket up over himself even though he wasn't cold.
"I'm tired of pretending I'm okay when I'm just… not even human anymore."
The air sat heavy around him. Still. Unmoving. As if time itself had stopped in this one, silent room.
Then—
A faint pressure in his gut.
He sighed.
With sluggish limbs, Ren pulled himself out from the cocoon of his blanket. His legs ached, joints stiff from being still for too long. He shuffled toward the door, sliding it open with a soft creak.
The tray of food sat just outside. Still warm. Yujiro always timed it just right.
Ren didn't look at it.
He just turned and trudged down the hall toward the bathroom.
The floorboards creaked under his feet. The house was quiet.
Rain tapped lightly at the windows.
After some time, Ren stepped out of the washroom, towel still draped loosely over his shoulder, hair damp and clinging to his forehead. His bare feet padded quietly against the wooden floor as he turned the corner toward his room—
And stopped.
Voices, low but tense, filtered down the hall from the living room.
He froze, just out of sight.
"I'm telling you, Yūjirō," a woman's voice snapped—sharp, brittle, and crackling with contempt. "That boy doesn't belong here. He's a leech, sucking up our resources. He's a burden—to us and to society."
Ren's stomach twisted.
He held his breath.
"Kiyomi…" Yūjirō's voice followed, gentler, tired but composed. "He just lost his dad. And his mom, well…" a pause, "He's hurting—he needs support. A place to feel safe."
"Safe?" Kiyomi scoffed. "Safe for what? To waste away in that pigsty of a room and drain our finances? Do I need to remind you? He was suspended from school, Yūjirō. Suspended. And after all the strings you pulled to lift it, he hasn't even gone back in over a month! A month!"
Each word drove deeper, cold steel between Ren's ribs.
"He's hiding, avoiding reality, and you're enabling him."
Ren's chest tightened as her words hit him like a series of blows. His mind raced, twisting her words into sharp accusations. Each insult buried deeper, reinforcing every fear he'd tried to hide since the day he'd moved in.
Yūjirō's voice was heavy, weary. "He's just… lost."
"Well, he isn't our responsibility. He's freeloading, Yūjirō. It's pathetic." Kiyomi's voice grew colder. "And to think, when he was a child, you used to go on about how hardworking he was."
Ren's breath caught again, this time in confusion.
"He needs time," Yujiro interrupted, his tone final. "Time to figure out how to stand again. He's been through hell, Kiyomi. You can't expect him to bounce back like nothing happened."
Kiyomi interjected sharply, her voice almost accusing. "And I warned you not to teach him at such a young age, didn't I? I told you it might negatively affect him, and you didn't listen. Yet I gave in. Why? Because he was sincere. I thought, maybe, just maybe, he'd grow into someone strong, someone capable." Her tone grew harsher. "But now? Look at him, Yūjirō. He's exactly what I feared he'd become."
Ren's hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. The heat of shame, anger, and despair burned through him, leaving his chest hollow and aching. He wanted to scream, to tell her she was wrong, but the words caught in his throat. His mind spun with shame and self-loathing, each accusation carving into his already fragile sense of worth.
Without thinking, he stepped back too quickly, his foot bumping against a small vase by the door. It toppled and crashed to the floor, the sound piercing the tense silence of the house.
Both Yūjirō and Kiyomi turned abruptly toward the noise, their eyes locking on the broken shards scattered across the floor—and on Ren, standing there frozen, his face pale and stricken.
Yūjirō's head snapped up immediately. "Ren?" he called, his voice filled with concern.
But Ren was already backing away, his face hot, eyes wet, struggling to keep himself composed. He turned and bolted down the hallway, his footsteps loud as he raced toward the front door.
"Ren! Wait!" Yūjirō's voice rang out, urgent and desperate as he hurried after him. "Please, come back! We can talk—"
But the words barely registered. Ren's pulse roared in his ears as he threw open the door and stumbled into the night, his body propelled forward by a mixture of shame, anger, and heartbreak. The sound of Yūjirō's voice faded behind him, while Aunt kiyomi's parting words echoed with icy finality.
"Let him go," she said, her voice flat and emotionless.
Ren pushed himself harder, his legs moving faster, every painful word repeating in his head, each step dragging him further into the cold, empty night. He could still feel the weight of her contempt, her bitter accusations. He had hoped for a fresh start, a place to heal, but all he found was rejection, a reminder of how truly alone he was.
The night air stung his cheeks as he kept running, barely noticing the tears that finally spilled over. "She's right," he thought bitterly. "I don't belong anywhere." The streets blurred around him, dark and unfamiliar, but he didn't care where he was going. All he knew was that he couldn't go back.
The streets were dark and wet, the asphalt still slick from the earlier rain. Streetlights buzzed faintly overhead, their halos warped by the mist that clung to the night air. Ren walked with his head down, hands buried deep in the pockets of his hoodie. His sneakers splashed through shallow puddles, but he barely noticed.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking.
Didn't care where he was going.
His legs just carried him, one heavy step after another, away from the house, away from the voices, away from aunt Kiyomi's words that still clung to his skin like grime he couldn't scrub off.
Without thinking, without planning, he found himself heading toward the forest—toward the familiar narrow path that wound through the dense trees of Okutama.
The city's sounds faded behind him, swallowed by the woods.
Only the whisper of leaves and the soft crunch of his footsteps remained.
Eventually, the path opened up into a small clearing—his favorite spot. A place he used to come with his parents when he was little, back when the world had made sense.
When he had made sense.
The clearing was silent except for the occasional drip of water falling from the trees, plopping into the wet grass.
Ren lowered himself onto the damp earth, lying flat on his back, the cold seeping into him. He stared up at the night sky through a break in the canopy—stars scattered like broken glass across an endless, ink-black ocean.
He exhaled, slow and shaky.
"Why is everything so messed up?"
His voice was small, almost drowned by the night.
He stared upward, but the stars offered no answers.
"Why… can't I feel anything?" he whispered.
There was no anger left. No sadness. Just this dull, heavy emptiness pressing down on his chest.
His fists clenched in the grass.
"They're gone…
And it's like I'm the one who's dead."
He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the scent of wet earth and moss.
"Is this it?" he muttered. "Am I just gonna be like this forever? Broken? Useless?"
The questions didn't need answers. They just hung there, thick in the air, sinking deep into his bones.
He thought about the last time he'd come here with his dad—how they'd sprawled out on the grass just like this, laughing about stupid jokes, pointing out constellations. His mom had brought sandwiches. She had gotten grass stains on her favorite white skirt and laughed it off like it was nothing.
That memory felt like it belonged to someone else now.
Like a movie he'd watched once but couldn't remember clearly.
Ren opened his eyes again, blinking up at the stars.
Somehow, just watching them—just letting himself be still under that endless, ancient sky—made something inside him loosen. Just a little.
The stars didn't care that he was broken.
They didn't care about burdens or suspensions or failures.
They just existed.
They just were.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Ren's breathing evened out.
The cold dampness of the earth against his back grounded him.
The faint shimmer of the stars overhead soothed the raw, aching places inside him that no words could touch.
He stayed there, staring into the vastness, letting it swallow him whole.
Not thinking.
Not fighting.
Just existing.
He didn't feel better exactly.
But he didn't feel worse.
And somehow, that sliver of numbness, that tiny, tentative stillness, felt almost like a mercy.
He closed his eyes, letting the gentle pull of the night sky wrap around him like a thin, fragile cocoon.
The world was vast. He was so small.
And for once, that didn't scare him.
It was peace.
A fragile, fleeting peace.
Badump.
His heart gave a strange, violent jolt in his chest.
Ren's eyes snapped open.
Badump. Badump. Badump.
The air felt suddenly wrong again. Heavy. Electric.
Something slithered into the edges of his mind—a voice, faint and velvet-smooth, curling around his thoughts like smoke.
"It's coming, Ren."
"W-what the—" he stammered, but the voice came again, sharper this time, cutting through his panic like a blade.
"You need to go."
"Run."
The voice was familiar.
It whispered against his ear, yet when he whipped his head to look, no one was there.
Panic clawed up his throat, raw and sudden.
His breathing quickened, shallow and sharp.
Ren lurched upright, scanning the treeline, his skin prickling with instinctive dread.
That's when he saw them.
A pair of eyes—discreet, glinting between the trees.
Not animal.
Human.
Watching.
Waiting.
Ren's body tensed. Every nerve screamed at him to move, to run—
A hand emerged from the shadows.
Pale. Delicate.
Palm outward.
No time to react.
The world around him twisted.
An invisible force exploded outward from the figure's hand with a low, shuddering hum, bending the very air in its path. Trees bowed as if caught in a violent hurricane, their trunks groaning under the pressure. Grass flattened instantly.
The sheer weight of it crashed against Ren like a tidal wave.
"Gah—!"
The breath was ripped from his lungs as he was hurled backward, his body flailing helplessly through the air.
A tree rushed up to meet him.
CRACK.
Pain blossomed along his back and ribs, sharp and searing. His vision splintered into white-hot stars as he collapsed at the base of the trunk, his body crumpling awkwardly.
The world spun violently.
Ren's hands scrabbled at the ground, trying to ground himself, but the earth tilted wildly beneath him.
He tasted blood—sharp and metallic, leaking from the corner of his mouth.
His mind screamed at him to move, to get up, to run—
—but his body refused, too stunned, too broken in the moment.
Through the dizzy haze, he forced his head up just enough to see the figure stepping out from the woods. Cloaked in shadow. Impossibly calm.
The air around them shimmered faintly—like heat distortion on a summer road—only this was wrong. Unnatural.
Ren gasped, every nerve on fire, as the whisper returned, curling into his ears like poison:
Ren's hands scrabbled at the ground, nails tearing into the damp earth, desperate for something—anything—to anchor himself.
But the world tilted madly around him, as if the forest itself were trying to throw him off.
His mouth filled with the sharp, metallic taste of blood, dripping from a split lip.
His mind howled at him:
"Get up. Get up. GET UP."
But his limbs barely obeyed, sluggish and trembling.
Through the dizzy, stuttering haze of pain, Ren forced his head up, just enough to catch a glimpse.
The figure from the woods moved closer, stepping calmly into the faint moonlight.
Cloaked in darkness, but not hidden.
Around them, the air wavered—like heat on asphalt, but colder, heavier, wrong in a way that made the back of Ren's skull scream.
He blinked rapidly, breath ragged.
And then—
—the smell hit him.
The smell of death.
Rot. Decay.
The scent wrapped around his brain like barbed wire, dragging memories from the pit where he had buried them.
Ren's eyes widened, heart hammering in his ribcage.
It was it.
The creature.
The same monstrosity that had destroyed his family—the pale, plasticky skin stretched too tight over bone, the hollow, lifeless eyes leaking black, the strands of wet, stringy hair plastered against its skull.
Its body glistened as if it had just crawled out from some putrid, ancient grave.
And now it was here.
Again.
"Why?"
"Why won't it leave me alone?"
Ren tried—tried—to stand. His knees buckled. His arms shook violently. Every muscle screamed in protest, but somehow, somehow, he forced himself upright.
The creature didn't wait.
It moved.
One second it was several meters away—
—the next, it was right in front of him.
Ren barely registered the blur of motion before the creature's palm was already swinging forward, a sharp, violent jab aimed straight at his chest.
WHAM.
The blow didn't feel physical—it felt like being hit by a wall of force, unseen but unstoppable.
Ren's ribs crunched under the impact. His body folded, air blasting out of his lungs as he was hurled backward like a rag doll.
He barely had time to throw up his arms as the world spun wildly—
—and then he crashed through a rotten wooden fence, splinters tearing into his skin.
Momentum carried him further, tumbling helplessly down a narrow slope—
—and straight into the gaping black mouth of an abandoned Okutama mine.