Rain again. Always rain.
The pitter-patter of droplets striking the rusted tin roof above sounded like a war drum in the dark. It was only 5:12 a.m., but Kazuki was already awake—not by choice, but by routine. His eyes had stopped begging for more sleep years ago. He lay still on the tattered mat on the floor, surrounded by the smell of mold, old wood, and a faint trace of the sea. One window, one flickering bulb, one breath at a time.
"Another day..." he whispered.
Kazuki's world wasn't a place of color. It was gray concrete alleys, faded tarpaulins, and sweat. He lived in a small fishing barangay on the outskirts of the city, a forgotten line on the map where dreams didn't come—they escaped.
His father, once a proud fisherman, now sat in silence most days, haunted by debts and a back broken more by hope than labor. His mother had died when Kazuki was eight. He remembered her scent more than her voice—dried flowers, rice, and soap. She left with the sunrise one morning and never returned. They said it was an illness. He always believed it was the weight of life that crushed her.
Kazuki sat up, running a calloused hand through his tangled black hair. Thin, tall, and always carrying a tired look in his eyes that didn't match his age—he was only 16, but he had seen the kind of things that aged people in silence. Hunger. Rejection. Broken promises. The sound of his name being shouted not in love but frustration.
He stood and stretched, bones cracking like old wood.
In a nearby alley, he could already hear footsteps—vendors setting up, tricycle drivers arguing over fares, and a rooster that always seemed to crow half an hour late.
Today was school. That sounded normal, but it wasn't.
Kazuki wasn't supposed to be there. He had stopped going two years ago. But last week, something had changed. A teacher—a new one—had come to the barangay offering night classes. "For the forgotten," she said. For those like him.
He wanted to believe in people again.
But it's hard when life has taught you that every helping hand comes with strings... or scars.
As he stepped outside, the wind greeted him sharply. The rain had paused, but the clouds still wept from above, silently. Kazuki wore a secondhand hoodie, once bright blue but now an uneven shade of storm-gray. He didn't have a bag. Just a plastic folder with three papers, a pencil, and his dreams folded quietly inside.
He walked through puddles that didn't care about shoes—he didn't have any.
But he had something else.
A stubborn fire in his chest.
That thing that anime heroes always had when they screamed "I won't give up!" after being knocked down again and again.
Except Kazuki never screamed.
He endured.
"Oi, Kazuki!" came a voice.
It was Hiro, his neighbor—only 12 but with the energy of a thousand fireworks. He ran barefoot with a small sack of pandesal in hand, handing two pieces to Kazuki.
"Eat, baka! You need it."
Kazuki smiled, just a little. "You shouldn't give your breakfast away."
Hiro puffed up his chest like a hero. "Tch. I'm strong! Besides, you'll be strong one day too, right? Like those anime guys you watch. What's his name again? Naruto? The one who never gave up?"
Kazuki looked at the soggy bread and took a bite.
"Yeah," he said. "Like him."
But inside, he wondered... Could people like him really win?
Anime characters had powers. Friends. Plot armor.
He had cracked fingernails, a roof that leaked, and a future that was as clear as muddy floodwater.
Still... something moved in him.
A beat. A flicker.
Maybe he couldn't win like them, but he could fight.
And fighting was something he was good at.
---
Later that Night
The classroom was a makeshift shelter under a basketball court roof. Thirty students, plastic chairs, one chalkboard, one lightbulb, and Miss Reina—the teacher with fiery eyes and a voice like thunder.
She didn't speak kindly. She spoke truth.
"Everyone in this room is here because life tried to bury you," she said, pacing like a general. "But the thing about seeds is—if you bury them deep enough, and they want it badly enough—they grow."
Kazuki stared at her. No smiles. No acting. Just raw, painful belief.
He didn't even realize he was gripping his pencil so tightly it snapped.
Everyone turned to look.
But Miss Reina only raised an eyebrow.
"What's your name?"
"Kazuki... Maeda," he answered, quietly.
She didn't write it down.
She burned it into the moment.
"You'll rewrite that name one day, Kazuki. Just make sure when you do—it's not with a pencil. It's with fire."
He didn't understand what she meant.
But for the first time in years... he wanted to.
---
That Night, in His Room
The storm came hard this time.
Wind slammed the shutters. The power blinked once, then died.
But Kazuki was still awake.
Drawing in the dark. Doodles. Lines. A boy, standing under the rain, holding a broken umbrella but smiling anyway.
Beside it, he wrote something.
"Even if the world falls apart... I will still walk."
---
This was just the beginning.
A boy.
A storm.
A story no one expected to matter—but would one day be remembered.
Not for how he suffered…
…but for how he refused to vanish.