Rain.
It wouldn't stop.
Even after the police came, even after the lights flashed red and blue across the courtyard, even after her body was covered it just kept falling.
Aqua sat on the cold concrete steps, drenched from head to toe.
He couldn't feel his fingers. He couldn't feel anything at all.
Someone placed a hand on his shoulder.
He didn't look. He didn't want to see anyone.
The voices blurred together officials, reporters, teachers, people pretending to care.
> "Son of the Yakosobis, right?"
"Tragic… but this could ruin the family's name."
"Do we release a statement tonight?"
He stared at the puddle in front of him.
Rain rippled across it, distorting his reflection his eyes looked hollow, empty, like the world had already buried him too.
By the time his parents arrived, the courtyard was nearly empty.
His father wore a black suit, face hidden beneath an umbrella.
His mother's expression was perfect calm, practiced, made for cameras.
They didn't hug him.
They didn't cry.
"Aqua," his father said, "I need you to come with us. Don't talk to the press."
"They'll handle everything," his mother added softly. "We'll release an official report in the morning."
"An official report?" Aqua's voice cracked. "She's dead, and you're talking about reports?"
His father didn't answer.
His mother sighed, a tiny, brittle sound. "You know how this world works, Aqua."
"No," he said, standing, fists clenched. "I don't. And I don't want to."
That night, the mansion was silent.
The news was everywhere
"Tragedy Strikes the Yakosobi Family."
But every article was filtered, twisted, rewritten.
> 'Accident during school event.'
'No foul play suspected.'
Aqua stared at the headlines on his phone, his jaw tightening.
He remembered Anna's last smile.
Her last message.
The way she said she'd be fine.
It was all a lie.
He smashed the phone against the wall.
The screen shattered.
But the rage inside him didn't.
Three days later, Anna's funeral was held in a private garden closed to the public, cameras banned.
White lilies lined the path, rain dripping from their petals.
Aqua stood at the front, motionless, as the priest spoke words he couldn't hear.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to burn the entire world down for pretending.
But instead, he stood there silent.
Because silence, he realized, hurts people more than words ever could.
When the ceremony ended, his father placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Be strong," he said. "People are watching."
Aqua looked at him eyes empty.
"They were watching when she died, too," he whispered. "And none of them did anything."
His father didn't reply.
That night, Aqua entered Anna's room for the first time since the funeral.
The scent of her perfume still lingered faintly in the air lavender and rain.
Her phone was on the nightstand, locked.
He picked it up, hands trembling, and after hours of guessing her password her birthday, their initials, her favorite song it finally opened.
The screen came alive with hundreds of unread messages.
Group chats. Photos. Videos.
Laughter. Teasing. Then the tone shifting.
Threats.
Cruel jokes.
Betrayal.
The "friends" she trusted had turned her into a game.
They recorded her. Mocked her.
And when she tried to back out they silenced her.
Aqua felt his throat tighten, his vision blur.
Then, he stopped crying.
He scrolled through every message. Every video. Every name.
He memorized them all.
Then he wiped the phone clean — every trace, every word — and locked it in a drawer.
No one would ever see Anna's humiliation again.
But he would never forget.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
His parents buried the truth under their influence.
The school pretended nothing happened.
The world moved on.
Only Aqua didn't.
He barely spoke. He stopped eating. He rarely slept.
But when he did, he dreamed of rain and her eyes fading beneath it.
Until one day, something in him changed.
He woke up, stared at his reflection in the mirror, and whispered:
"No one is real. Not until you make them show who they are."
That day, Aqua transferred schools.
A new uniform. A new life. A new mask.
The Yakosobi name disappeared from his records his parents made sure of that.
And Aqua made sure he never needed it again.
His new school was different.
Prestigious, full of power and pretense just like the world that killed his sister.
But this time, Aqua didn't run from it.
He studied it.
He joined every group the athletes, the actors, the scholars, the delinquents.
He became what they wanted to see.
A friend. A leader. A mystery.
He smiled when they smiled, laughed when they laughed, cried when they cried.
But inside, he was studying them every expression, every lie, every weakness.
He learned to become anyone.
To fit in everywhere, and belong nowhere.
And every time someone asked, "Who are you really?"
He just smiled.
"I'm whoever you want me to be."
The rain came again one evening, months later.
Aqua sat alone under the school's covered walkway, watching droplets slide down his hand.
He whispered to the wind, almost like he was speaking to her:
"You lost the game, Anna. But I'll play it for you now."
He looked up at the storm.
His reflection in the puddle wasn't the same boy who cried in the courtyard.
This one had colder eyes. A steadier gaze.
"From now on," he said softly,
"no one will ever hurt me or anyone I love without paying for it."
The thunder rumbled back, almost like it understood.
And that was the moment Aqua Yakosobi was reborn.
Not as the boy who lost his sister.
But as the boy who learned how to play the game called friends.