Ryuji's mother stirred in her bed. The silk sheets tangled around her neck like whispering vines, clinging with a weight that felt almost intentional—like sorrow itself had woven them there. Even in slumber, grief did not release her. Ryuji had come by—just before he was taken. She remembered every word, every flicker of expression. He was her child, after all.
Wild. Uncontrolled. Loved.
"He does not deserve my love… and yet, I do not know how to stop loving him. Even now."
The doors burst open with a thunderclap.
Ryuji barged in, a whirlwind of rage and confusion. Screams tore through the silence—raw, primal—screams of a boy not yet a man, desperate to make sense of who he was and what he had done.
"Mother! H-how dare you!" Ryuji cried, voice cracking under the strain of fury and pain.
Wata, the ever-silent shadow at his side, moved quickly to intercept.
"Young master…" Wata muttered, voice low, trying to restrain him.
But Ryuji was already drawing his blade. The blade glimmered yellow at the edges—subtle, yet unnerving, like something inside it remembered; it was poised in a trembling hand aimed at his mother's throat. His breath was sharp and uneven, his presence like a thunderstorm held barely at bay.
"If—if I killed Father, I'll do the same for you too! You have to remember me like your tarnished legacy does…"
The room held its breath.
"You killed your father?" Reika muttered, barely audible.
The words staggered Ryuji like a blow to the chest. His voice vanished mid-sentence. The blade in his hand lowered, no longer an extension of his rage, but a weight—like shame made solid. It didn't just tremble—it pulsed. The hilt, warm in his palm, felt like it breathed in rhythm with a dozen silent voices.
Lady Reika Takashiro sat behind a pink, translucent net. Her layered uchikake robe spread around her like the wings of a phoenix, the deep crimson-black silk glimmering faintly under the glow of hanging lanterns. Beneath it, a second kimono of pale ashen silver shimmered subtly, bound by a wine-red obi, tight and ceremonial, centered with a lacquered kanzashi shaped like a phoenix in ascent.
"Not what I said," Ryuji replied coldly, his stance still rigid, but not as wild. Wata finally let go, sensing something had shifted.
Ryuji stepped forward, now only steps away from the throne. The dais loomed above him like a precipice, yet he looked at it as though it should be beneath him.
"Father was useless," Ryuji spat, each word heavy with venom.
Reika's hands clenched at her sides. Her voice, usually composed and distant, now broke like a wave.
"How… dare you! You ruined your relationships with everyone. Your relatives bear malice toward you. Your father's connections—gone, holding by a thread. Our standing as a house on shifting sands. He held everything together! He made it all work!"
Her voice cracked, and tears, uninvited and unforgiven, streamed down her face.
In that moment, a fleeting thought passed through Ryuji's mind.
Do I love my mother?
The answer came just as fast.
I don't know.
His jaw tightened. He gritted his teeth.
"You think these friends—these connections—mean a damn thing to me? They don't!"
His blade quivered again, like his voice.
"No, Ma—I'm cursed by the thing that made father dull and slow. This 'empathy' I have? It's not a gift. It's poison. It spreads. Their ruin becomes my blood. Their bruises rise on my skin. Their screams echo until they're mine. Father proved that."
The air grew cold. The silence between them was sharp—cutting, like the sword that still hung in the space between mother and son.
"I stay alone. That silence is your warning. Cross it, and my mercy dies with the son you think I am."
Reika looked at him, not with fear—but with something more complex. Recognition. Mourning.
"The son you are is the man Kokoro tried to make you to be," she said softly. "I am not so disillusioned that I do not see the effects he had on you… and I am a disgraced fool to ask for your forgiveness now. I am sorry."
She paused. Her next words came like a final verdict. The flames in the vases beside her flared, as if in protest. For a moment, the throne behind her seemed to exhale, a wave of heat rippling outward. Was it the fire, or the thing beneath the silk and stone pulsing like a heartbeat?
"But the throne isn't yours to wield anymore."
I never asked for it. I was born with it festering in me, Ryuji thought inwardly in silence. No words came for a long breath.
Then—
"Tell your friends: the Takashiro family's legacy is on my shoulders."
He turned without waiting for a response. The air in his wake trembled.
As he vanished through the doorway, Reika stared after him—her tears drying into stillness.
"He doesn't even realize," she whispered finally, "He already carries the throne—and it hates him for it."