The late afternoon sun spilled over the cracked schoolyard wall, painting the ground in long, broken shadows. The air was thick with the heat of a dying summer, carrying the scent of dust and sun-baked grass. It should have been a season of warmth, of games played until dusk and laughter echoing through the streets. But for Shawn Garcia, it was just another day of silence.
He sat alone beneath a weatherworn sakura tree, one of the few remaining in the school's crumbling courtyard. Its branches, once a brilliant canopy of pink in the spring, now hung bare and brittle. The blossoms had stopped blooming years ago, after his family fell from grace. It felt like even the earth itself had turned its back on them.
The other children clustered together in the shade of the far wall, their laughter sharp and cruel. Shawn could feel their eyes on him, even when he wasn't looking. He didn't need to hear them whisper anymore. He already knew what they thought.
"Demon kid."
"Cursed blood."
"His family's a joke."
He'd learned not to react. Not to flinch. Not to give them the satisfaction. Instead, he traced idle patterns into the dry soil beside him. Circles. Crosses. A ring. His finger dragged through the dirt, completing the loop, then another. The ring was always crooked.
Once, his family had been revered. The Garcia bloodline was a name spoken with awe and a touch of fear. Exorcists, spirit-callers, protectors of the veil between the living and the dead. For generations, they'd carried out sacred rites, sealing away vengeful ghosts and cursed relics. Villages once gathered at their doorstep, offering food and silver for blessings, prayers, and wards.
And then came the betrayal.
A rival family, envious of their renown, spread whispers in the right ears. Lies. Claims that the Garcias staged their exorcisms. That the spirits they banished were nothing but hired men in masks and rigged tricks. One nobleman's son fell ill after a cleansing rite, and the scandal ignited like dry timber. The world, desperate for someone to blame, turned its eyes on them.
Within weeks, contracts dried up. Neighbors averted their gaze. Merchants raised their prices or refused them entirely. Sacred sites they once protected were handed to lesser families eager to seize the title of protector.
Shawn had been six years old when the mob came to their home.
He still remembered the heat of the torches, the angry roar of the crowd, the stones shattering against the walls. His mother clutching him to her chest, his father standing in the doorway, a rusted ceremonial blade in his hand. The old symbols scrawled over their gate were torn down. The shrine in their courtyard was burned.
The next day, no one spoke to them.
And so, years later, Shawn sat beneath a tree that refused to bloom, in a yard where no one wanted him.
A stone struck the dirt near his foot.
He didn't flinch.
Another. Then another.
"Hey freak," a voice jeered. "Go haunt someone else."
Laughter followed. A sharp, brittle thing. But he stayed where he was, fingers still tracing circles into the earth.
That was when he heard it.
"Hey."
A different voice. Clearer. Closer.
He looked up.
A girl stood there, head tilted, one brow arched as if curious why someone like him hadn't already disappeared into the shadows. She wore the school uniform wrong — her collar loose, sleeves rolled up, and a worn red bracelet on her wrist that didn't match anything else about her. Her hair was a mess, tied carelessly at the nape of her neck, strands escaping to frame her face.
Big, bright eyes. Unafraid.
She plopped down beside him without asking, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin in the dying light.
"You're Shawn, right?"
He hesitated. "...Nobody."
She laughed. Not the sharp-edged cruelty he was used to, but a clear, honest sound that startled him. It chased away the other voices like wind scattering smoke.
"You're terrible at being a nobody," she grinned. "Nobody talks back."
He blinked at her. A dozen questions rose in his throat, but none found words. She leaned back on her hands, staring up at the sky through the skeletal branches.
"I'm Oyang Kyoshita," she said after a while. "Call me Oyang. I'm new."
Shawn managed a nod, unsure if he should say more.
They sat like that for a time. The sky deepened from gold to amber, then to a bruised violet. The wind shifted, carrying the scent of rain yet to come.
"You don't have to look so scared," she added, eyes still on the sky. "I don't bite. Well… unless I'm really hungry."
He surprised himself with a faint, breathless laugh.
It was the first sound of joy he'd made in years.
That evening, he found himself thinking about her. About the way she hadn't flinched at the rumors, or the way her voice cut through the heavy haze he'd grown used to carrying.
His mother noticed, too.
"You smiled today," she said softly, placing a bowl of rice before him at the battered kitchen table.
"I… did?"
She nodded. Her face was lined, older than her years, worn down by sorrow and shame. But in that moment, her eyes glistened.
"Hold onto that," she murmured. "The world takes so much from us, Shawn. Don't let it take that too."
He didn't understand then. Not fully. But he would.
Because the world was already moving against him.
In the weeks that followed, Oyang never left his side. She spoke to him as if the past didn't matter, as if the whispered names and cold stares were invisible. She filled the silence with terrible jokes, stories about places she wanted to visit, and questions he didn't know how to answer.
And for the first time in years, he wasn't alone.
He never told her about the nights when he woke gasping from dreams of pale figures standing at the foot of his bed. Or how sometimes, when he walked past the old shrine ruins, the air grew cold and his breath frosted. He never spoke of the voice that whispered from the darkness beneath the floorboards.
Death comes for you, child of broken oaths.
But she stayed anyway.
And somewhere deep inside, in a place untouched by grief or anger, something small and fragile began to burn.
Hope.
It was foolish. Reckless. Dangerous.
But it was his.
And he wasn't letting it go.