Inside the Kuroya mansion, the world was quiet—eerily quiet—except for the faint ticking of the clock against the far wall. Its sound was sharp, relentless, cutting through the silence like guilt itself.
Haruto sat on the edge of his bed, shirtless, a blood-stained bandage coiled around his abdomen. His knuckles, already raw, trembled slightly as he wrapped another strip of gauze. The antiseptic stung, but the pain barely registered. He stared ahead, expression unreadable, eyes reflecting only the faint amber glow of the lamp beside him.
The room smelled of iron and alcohol. A half-empty glass of whiskey stood untouched on the nightstand, next to his phone that blinked every few seconds with unread messages. He ignored them all.
For a long time, he simply sat there—motionless. Only his breathing betrayed that he was alive.
Then his gaze drifted, unfocused, toward the wall opposite him. There, faintly visible through the dim light, were small indents — the scars of thrown objects. Each dent was a memory. A moment when silence had become too heavy to bear.
And just like that, his mind slipped backward.
He was small again.
A quiet boy in a white shirt and black shorts, sitting alone on the edge of the sandbox in a crowded kindergarten yard. Other children laughed, played, shouted—an orchestra of chaos—but he sat still, tracing circles in the sand with his finger.
The sun had been bright that day, too bright. It burned against his skin. He remembered staring at the other kids, trying to understand the reason behind their laughter. What made them so alive when he felt nothing?
"Hey, freak," a voice said.
A boy of the same age but taller—one of the bold ones. "Why don't you talk? You too proud, huh?" he sneered, and the others laughed. One of them kicked sand toward him.
It didn't sting. Not the sand. Not the words. He simply sat there, unmoving, staring at them like they were from another world.
Then someone stepped in.
"Stop that!" A girl had uneven pigtails and dirt on her knees, standing between them. She held her arms out, trembling but fierce. "You shouldn't do that! Leave him alone!"
The group scattered, losing interest. The girl turned back to him. She crouched, brushing the sand off his shoes with her small hands. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.
He didn't reply. Just watched her.
"You don't talk much, huh?" she grinned. Then, without warning, she leaned forward with her hand. "There," she said, smiling widely. "Now we are friends, so you won't be sad anymore."
Something—something electric—moved through him. It was small, soft, and warm. The first emotion that ever truly reached him.
When she ran back to play, he could still feel the warmth of her hand.
A loud thud pulled him back to the present. The whiskey glass had fallen, shattering on the floor. Amber liquid seeped into the carpet, darkening it like a spreading wound. Haruto stared at it blankly, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers pressing against his temples.
His heartbeat was slow. Too slow. He could still hear her voice echoing in the back of his skull. "Now we're friends, so you won't be sad anymore."
But sadness had never left him. It had only evolved—hardened—into something sharper. Something unrecognizable.
He remembered how, years later, in middle school, he began to change. The warmth of that moment had twisted, like a flower growing through concrete. His fists became his words. His anger, his shield.
Middle school corridors. Footsteps echoed, laughter fading when he walked by.
People began to notice him—not because he spoke, but because he acted. A boy who never flinched. Who stared back until the other person looked away first. Who fought, not to win, but to feel.
Violence became the only thing that made his blood move. It was the closest thing to warmth he could find after losing hers.
At first, he thought he could find her again. That girl from the sandbox. The one who smiled like sunlight.
He searched faces, halls, even the city crowd, but every time he looked—every time he thought he found her—it wasn't her. And slowly, he stopped looking.
He replaced that warmth with something else: the rush of control.
By high school, he was a name people whispered. Haruto Kuroya—the boy you didn't cross. The boy whose smirk could freeze blood.
He dated models, fought men twice his size, made friends with people he didn't trust, and enemies he didn't hate. He lived like every moment was a dare.
But at night, when silence returned, he would sit by his window—just like now—and feel that same emptiness humming in his chest. A hollow ache that even chaos couldn't fill.
The lamp flickered. He looked up, eyes unfocused.
The wind outside brushed the curtains aside, letting the pale moonlight in. It fell across his face, across the scars, across the exhaustion carved deep beneath his eyes.
For a moment, he thought he saw her again—the girl with pigtails, her small smile frozen in the reflection of the glass. Then it vanished, replaced by his own hollow stare.
He leaned back against the headboard, exhaling deeply. The sound came out as a laugh, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"So that's what it was," he muttered under his breath."That day…"
The whisper was soft, but in the stillness, it felt like a confession.
He picked up the broken glass pieces, one by one, his hand bleeding anew. It didn't matter. He was used to the sting.
Each cut reminded him he could still feel something—even if it was pain.
He remembered his father's words.
The same old command.The same old attempt to exile him from the one place that still gave him chaos—the only thing that made him feel alive.
His father never understood. For Sota Kuroya, control was order. For Haruto, control was suffocation.
He dropped the last shard into the trash. His fingers were trembling again. The cut was deeper than he thought. He pressed a cloth to it, staring at the dark bloom of red.
That color—it reminded him of her again. Not the girl from the sandbox now, but Yui.
Her trembling voice, her terrified eyes, her soft defiance—every bit of her reminded him of a time before he became this. Before violence replaced warmth. Before he forgot what it meant to be touched without fear.
He didn't know why she lingered in his mind like that. He didn't want her there.
But every time she flinched, every time she spoke his name with hesitation—he felt something flicker inside him again. The same small spark that the girl once left behind.
And that terrified him more than anything.
He stood and walked to the window, pulling the curtains aside. The city lights stretched far below—cold, glittering, and indifferent. He rested his forehead against the glass.
Outside, lightning flashed in the distance, splitting the clouds apart for a moment.
He smiled faintly. It was a tired smile. Broken. Almost human.
Then he turned away, walked back to the bed, and lay down, one arm thrown across his face. The blood from his hand had dried, the sting dull now. The silence returned.
Tick.Tick.Tick.
The sound of the clock again, steady and cold.
But inside him, the child from the sandbox was still sitting there, holding that warmth on his hand, wondering where it went and why he couldn't find it again.