They were born on a night when the world itself seemed to be dying.When the neon-lit streets of Tokyo were shrouded in a silent white grave.When even the sky refused to weep—but the earth did.
The Uki twins lived inside a city that had long forgotten how to feel, their fragile lungs struggling against the dry, numbing frost of Koto Ward. Cut from the same cloth and stitched with the same violence of fate, they usually suffered in the dead of winter—so badly that the doctors didn't bother offering their mother and father words of hope. Just numb instruction. Just whispered apologies.
Yet they lived.
Yatsumiya Uki, always cryed, he always had a voice like brittle glass.Bradzi Uki the other, quieter, pale—heavy-eyed, as though already tired of this world.
And Tokyo, in return, offered nothing.
Their hospital rooms windows often overlooked a scrapyard of brown snow and steel. Their mother—Uki Hanako—sang to them at night, voice raw from exhaustion and cleaning chemicals, a lullaby borrowed from a childhood she barely remembered. Their father—Uki Daichi—held their hands in rare moments of stillness, smelling like fish blood and ice dust from the frozen docks where he spent his youth, his strength—his soul.
The twins had no toys. No blankets soft enough. No doctor's visits after discharge. But they had those hands. That warmth. Those voices. That was enough.
Until it wasn't.
The Person Who Broke Himself
Uki Daichi rarely spoke. When he did, it was usually a murmur through cracked lips, as his body swayed with the weight of work. He didn't smile often, but when he did—when he saw his kids, both of them sleeping at night—he showed teeth like chipped porcelain and eyes like thawing ice. He was not a figure who belonged to tenderness, but he tried. Allot, he tried.
Daichi worked at a frozen seafood warehouse near Koto Ward's docks, dragging heavy ice crates filled with cheap fish by day, breaking the crusted grime from the floor by night. The kind of work that broke people—not suddenly, but slowly. One aching joint at a time. One frozen nerve at a time.
The twins waited every night by the door. Two tiny silhouettes framed by a window so frosted they could barely see through it.They would make paper sea monsters and pretend their father battled them all day.
He wasn't a warrior. He was prey. And in late February, the world proved it.
That night, Daichi didn't come home. Nor the night after. Hanako called the warehouse, trembling. No answer. She wandered the docks on foot until her shoes bled through her floorboards.
Three days after he disappeared, emergency responders found him.
The cold had seized him. A seven-ton stack of frozen crates had collapsed under winter's weight and trapped him—alone, in the dim blue of a quiet warehouse. The cold worked slowly on his body, painting him violet, then silver, then a haunting shade of death.
No one heard him scream.The ice swallowed his voice whole.
Hanako was the last to see him.
She never said a word about it ever again.
The Mother Who Shattered
Hanako's grief was not loud. It was not a storm. It was a river of quiet that dragged itself through every hour of her days, pulling her deeper beneath the surface. It lived in her bones. In the way her hands stopped trembling. In the way she forgot to blink.
Her sons—only five then—watched her fade in slow motion.Her smile crumbled first, like drying paint on a wall.Her laugh, once fragile but alive, disappeared entirely.
The world was gray after that. Even the snow felt heavier.
One freezing night—perhaps the coldest of that year—a pipe burst in their room. The small, condemned building they lived in was already withered with rot, but that night it wept through the ceiling. Icy water flooded the floor, soaking the futon, the last blanket, the last photograph.
The twins sat huddled under the quilts that did nothing, bodies shaking violently.Their breath fogged in the air like ghosts already.
Hanako sat near the wall, shivering, eyes glassy and distant. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Not even a whisper.
She was holding a knife.
Yatsumiya didn't remember falling asleep. He only remembered waking up to Bradzi screaming—a sound like death given a voice.
Their mother's blood had spread across the floor, its deep red growing darker as the cold froze it into marbled crimson ice. Her body was cold before the sun rose.
There was no funeral.There were no relatives.The city simply moved on. And so did time.
The building manager taped up the door. Just like that.Two kids left outside in the snow, with no reason to exist.
Tokyo never even blinked.
A City Made of Teeth
The Uki twins became wandering ghosts.
They slept behind konbini dumpsters, relying on the lukewarm exhaust of broken vending machines. They learned which back alleys weren't claimed by larger kids. They learned the sound of violence before it arrived. They learned how to eat a bruised peach like it was gold.
The city had no mercy for six-year-olds, especially not ones who didn't know how to cry anymore.
Sometimes, they were lucky:A drunk old adult would drop his bento.A store clerk would leave a pack of mochi near the garbage.A train station worker would look the other way as they drank from the make-shift rain gutters.
But luck comes with a price.
One night, an older kid cornered them behind a ramen stall, demanding their jackets. Yatsumiya refused. The child punched him so hard he saw whiteness instead of stars. Bradzi lunged at the kid, biting his hand until it bled. The kid kicked him in the ribs, but they didn't let go of each other.
Only we protect us.
On a different night, a drunk adult threw Yatsumiya against a wall. He coughed blood, dazed, but Bradzi didn't falter. He threw rocks. He screamed. He made himself a monster to scare one away.
No one came to help.Not once.Not ever.
Kids their age weren't supposed to know how to wrap their own wounds.How to use torn cloth as a tourniquet.How to put snow on a swollen cheek because hospitals didn't welcome children without names.
But they survived anyway.Even if they didn't know why.
What Remained of Home
The Uki twins carried nothing of value except what couldn't be replaced.
Yatsumiya kept their father's broken metal watch—cracked, frozen in time forever at 2:11 a.m., the probable moment of Daichi's death. He wore it on a string. It weighed nothing, but it carried a world.
Bradzi kept their mother's last grocery receipt. She had scribbled "for them" across the top. The ink had bled from a water leak, leaving the last two words like a fading bruise on papery skin.
They couldn't read it anymore.But they felt it.
They never spoke about their parents. Not out loud.
But sometimes—on the nights when the snow was loud and the world was silent—they would lie side-by-side under a shred of blanket and listen to each other breathing.Counting.Always counting.Because silence was the only thing they feared more than the cold.
And behind all fear, there was anger.Anger at Daichi—for dying slowly.At Hanako—for dying suddenly.At every adult who walked past.At every door that stayed locked.At every system designed to forget beings in the cracks.
Only we protect us.
They lashed this rule into their bones like iron.They didn't hate the world—they just expected nothing from it.
And still, they moved. Step by step.Through one white ghost of a Tokyo winter into the next.Until a night came when even frost had hands...
The Night the Snow Breathed
It was late again.It was always late when something bad was about to happen.
Freezing rain lashed the city, turning alleys into rivers and rooftops into slick mirrors. The Uki brothers hadn't eaten in two days. They shared a moldy roll they'd found near the bins behind a bakery, and the wet sky felt like a punishment.
Bradzi had cut his hand on a rusted can. The bleeding wouldn't stop—not fully. His bloody fingers were red with frozen blood. He didn't say a word, but every few steps, Yatsumiya could hear him wince.
So Yatsumiya found them a spot.An alley between buildings where a small awning jut out. Not enough for warmth—but enough to keep them dry. Mostly.
He'd found a discarded umbrella in the trash and opened it, but one arm bone snapped, leaving it crooked. Still, it was something. Yatsumiya held it over them both, shielding his brother first.
The city smelled like old oil and exhaust. It always did—but tonight it felt heavier. Like something in the world was changing.
They held each other and shivered in silence, listening to the sound of snow landing on pavement—each flake like a muted drumbeat.
Bradzi mumbled softly, half-asleep, half-fading.Something about a lullaby.
Then the alley lit up—orange and bright as a tired dawn.A door opened next to them.
A figure stepped out.
He was tall, wearing working gloves, and smelled faintly of medicated ointment. He threw trash into a bin, humming absently. Then he froze.
Two children were huddled there.Pressed against the brick wall for shelter.One with blood on his hand.One holding a broken umbrella.
Their eyes weren't glowing. Not red.Just tired.Just frightened.Just human.
"You'll freeze out here," the pharmacist said gently.
Yatsumiya's grip tightened on the umbrella. Bradzi barely stirred.
They didn't run.Not this time.
The figure crouched low. He didn't reach out suddenly. He didn't shout. He just held out a hand—calm and steady.
"Come inside."
The alley was quiet. So quiet they could hear their own hearts.And for the first time, maybe ever…
A door didn't close on them.
That night, Akio Hukitaske fed them hot soup. He bandaged Bradzi's hand with precision and kindness. He let them sit by the heater until their trembling stopped.
The Uki brothers didn't trust him yet.But their bodies stopped hurting for a moment.And that… was new.
Outside, the snow kept falling.But inside, something different began.
For the first time in their lives, someone hadn't walked away.
TO BE CONTINUED...