Tokyo, 2027 - Fifteen Years Ago, In Another Life
The apartment smelled like spring despite winter still clinging to the city outside—jasmine incense burning near the family altar, cherry blossom air freshener in the bathroom, and underneath it all, the warm scent of their mother's cooking. Nakamura Daichi stood at the window of their small living room, watching the late afternoon sun paint the Tokyo skyline in shades of amber and rose gold. He was fifteen years old. He had three more hours to live, though he didn't know that yet.
"Onii-chan!" Karanome's voice cut through his contemplation—bright, insistent, impossible to ignore. "Stop being so serious! Come see what I drew!"
Daichi turned from the window to find his little brother sitting at the low table, surrounded by an explosion of crayons and paper. Karanome was eight years old, gap-toothed from losing his two front teeth last month, his hair sticking up in the back no matter how many times their mother tried to comb it down. He held up a drawing with both hands, beaming with pride.
It was terrible. Objectively, artistically terrible. Five stick figures with circle heads and limbs like twigs, standing in front of a rectangular house under a sun with rays shooting out like spokes. But Karanome had worked over it for an hour, tongue stuck out in concentration, erasing and redrawing until the paper had nearly torn through.
"That's me!" Karanome pointed to the tallest stick figure. "And that's you! See? I made you really tall because you're my big brother and you're a hero!" "I'm not a hero," Daichi said, sitting beside him. "I'm just a high school student who gets mediocre grades and can't talk to people without stammering."
"Nuh-uh! You're definitely a hero!" Karanome insisted with the absolute certainty only eight-year-olds possessed. "Remember when those older kids were picking on me at the park? You made them go away! That's hero stuff!"
"I just told them to leave you alone," Daichi said, though he remembered the incident differently—remembered the adrenaline spike when he'd seen three middle schoolers surrounding his little brother, remembered putting himself between them and Karanome, remembered his voice shaking while he tried to sound tough. "Anyone would have done that."
"But you did it! And you weren't even scared!" He had been terrified, actually. But Karanome didn't need to know that. "Who are the others?" Daichi asked, pointing to the remaining stick figures.
"That's Hana!" Karanome indicated a figure with long lines representing hair. "I made her hair really long because she's always complaining that she wants it longer. And that's Mama and Papa. See? We're all holding hands because we're a family!"
The drawing depicted something impossibly simple and impossibly precious: five people, connected, smiling. Everyone alive. Everyone together. Everyone safe.
Daichi felt his throat tighten unexpectedly. "It's perfect, Karanome." "Really?" His little brother's eyes lit up. "Can we put it on the refrigerator?" "Absolutely."
They walked to the kitchen together, Karanome chattering about his day at school—how he'd gotten a gold star in arithmetic, how his friend Yuto had brought his pet turtle for show-and-tell, how the lunch worker had given him an extra milk because she liked him. Daichi listened with half his attention, the rest devoted to studying his little brother's animated face, trying to memorize this moment of perfect ordinary happiness.
Their father had died three days ago. The funeral had been that morning. And something in their mother had gone dark and silent in a way that made Daichi's instincts scream warnings he didn't have language for yet.
But Karanome was still innocent. Still believed that bad things happened but always got better eventually. Still trusted that their family would survive this loss because families survived everything, didn't they?
Daichi wanted to preserve that innocence. Wanted to shield his little brother from the growing wrongness he sensed in their mother's empty eyes, her mechanical movements, her silences that felt less like grief and more like absence.
Their sister Hana emerged from her room, textbooks under one arm, looking exhausted. She was seventeen, brilliant, planning to attend medical school like their father. Had been planning. Before their father's heart had stopped in the middle of a consultation. before their mother had stopped speaking in complete sentences.
"Has she eaten anything today?" Hana asked quietly, nodding toward the kitchen where they could hear their mother chopping vegetables with mechanical precision.
"I don't know," Daichi admitted. "Every time I ask, she just says she's fine."
"She's not fine," Hana said, and her voice carried an edge of fear that made Daichi's stomach clench. "Daichi, I'm worried. The way she's acting—it's not normal grief. It's like she's... somewhere else. Somewhere we can't reach."
"Should we call someone? A doctor? A therapist?"
"I tried," Hana said. "This morning. She refused. Said she didn't need help, that she was handling it, that we should stop worrying." She paused. "But her eyes, Daichi. When she looks at us, it's like she doesn't recognize us anymore. Like we're strangers wearing her children's faces."
The description made something cold slide down Daichi's spine. He'd noticed it too—that disconnect, that emptiness. Their mother was still performing the actions of motherhood—cooking, cleaning, existing in their space—but the person doing those things wasn't really their mother anymore. Just someone who looked like her.
"What do we do?" he asked. Hana's expression was helpless. "I don't know. Just... keep an eye on her, I guess. Make sure she eats. Make sure she—"
A crash from the kitchen cut her off. The sound of something breaking, ceramic on tile. They rushed in to find their mother standing over a shattered bowl, vegetables scattered across the floor, the knife still in her hand.
"Mama?" Karanome's voice was small, frightened. "Are you okay?"
Their mother didn't respond. Just stared at the broken bowl with those empty eyes, the knife hanging loosely from her fingers. Chop chop chop—the rhythm from earlier had stopped, and somehow the silence was worse.
"I'll clean it up," Hana said quickly, moving toward the mess. "Mama, why don't you sit down? You've been working all day. Let me—" Karanome insisted before being interrupted.
"He promised," their mother said suddenly. Her voice was flat, affectless, like she was reading from a script. "Your father. He promised he'd never leave me. We made vows. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part. But he left anyway. He broke his promise."
"He didn't want to die," Daichi said carefully, every instinct screaming danger now. "It was his heart. He couldn't control—"
"He was a cardiologist," their mother interrupted, still not looking at any of them. "He knew about hearts. He should have known his was failing. Should have prevented it. But he didn't. He chose to leave. Chose to escape. Chose to abandon me with three fools and a life I don't know how to live alone."
"It wasn't a choice," Hana said, her voice shaking now. "Please. You're not thinking clearly. You need to—"
Their mother turned to look at them then. Really look. And Daichi saw what Hana had described—recognition absent, replaced by something that wasn't quite human anymore. Something that looked at them and saw only problems to be solved, obstacles to be removed, reminders of a life she no longer wanted.
"I should have gone first," their mother said conversationally. "That would have been fair. He got to escape and I'm trapped here with—" She gestured vaguely at the three of them. "—with all of this. All these responsibilities. All these needs. All these people who want things from me when I have nothing left to give."
"We don't want anything," Karanome said, and he was crying now, tears running down his face. "We just want you to be okay, Mama. We just want you to—"
"Stop crying," their mother said sharply. "Crying is manipulation. You're trying to make me feel guilty. Trying to force me to stay when I want to leave too. Just like your father. Everyone wants to leave me eventually."
She was still holding the knife.
Daichi noticed this with crystal clarity—the way her fingers had tightened around the handle, the way she'd shifted her weight forward slightly, the way her empty eyes had fixed on Hana with something that might have been calculation.
"Mother," he said carefully, placing himself slightly between her and his siblings without making it obvious, "why don't you put down the knife? You're scaring Karanome."
"Am I?" Their mother looked at the knife like she'd forgotten it was there. "This is just a kitchen knife. We use it every day. For cooking. For cutting vegetables. For—" She paused, and something flickered across her face. Something dark and vast and utterly alien. "—for removing problems."
"What problems?" Hana asked, though Daichi could hear the fear in her voice now, could see her shifting backward, pulling Karanome with her.
"All of you," their mother said simply. "You're the problems. You look like him. You sound like him. You remind me every second that he's gone and I'm still here. How is that fair? How is it fair that he gets peace and I'm trapped with living reminders of everything I lost?"
She took a step forward.
Daichi's world narrowed to tactical assessment—distance between mother and siblings, trajectory if she lunged, his own positioning relative to the knife, exit routes, response protocols for situations that shouldn't exist, that couldn't exist, that were happening anyway.
"Hana," he said quietly, calmly, "take Karanome to your room. Lock the door. Call the police." "But—" "NOW."
The command in his voice—learned from his father, who'd been gentle but firm—made Hana move. She grabbed Karanome's hand and ran, pulling their crying little brother toward the hallway, toward theoretical safety, toward escape that Daichi prayed they'd actually achieve.
Their mother watched them go with those empty eyes. Then looked at Daichi. "You're trying to protect them," she observed. "Just like your father tried to protect everyone. Look where that got him."
"Mother, please." Daichi kept his voice steady despite his racing heart, despite the fear making his hands shake. "This isn't you. This is grief talking. You're not thinking clearly. Let me help you. Let me call someone who can—"
"I'm thinking more clearly than I have in years," she interrupted. "Your father's death freed me from pretending. Freed me from acting like I wanted this life, these responsibilities, this endless performance of love. And now I can finally—"
She moved.
Faster than Daichi expected, faster than someone her size and weight should move, driven by whatever had broken inside her when their father died. The knife flashed in the kitchen's fluorescent light as she lunged past him, toward the hallway where Hana and Karanome had disappeared.
Daichi didn't think. Just acted. Grabbed her arm, felt the knife slice across his palm as he tried to knock it away, pain sharp and immediate but irrelevant compared to stopping her, protecting his siblings, being the hero Karanome thought he was.
They fell together, crashing into the low table where Karanome's drawing still lay—the stick figure family, all holding hands, all smiling. The paper tore as they hit it. Symbolic. Prophetic. The family fragmenting in real-time.
"Let go!" Their mother's voice was still flat, still emotionless, even as she struggled against him. "You don't understand. This is mercy. Quick. Clean."
Down the hall, Daichi could hear Hana's voice, high and panicked, talking to emergency services: "My mother's trying to kill us! Please, you have to send someone! The address is—"
Their mother heard it too. Something changed in her expression—the empty eyes gaining focus, the flatness replaced by urgency. She twisted in Daichi's grip with strength that shouldn't be possible, wrenching the knife free, reversing their positions with brutal efficiency.
The blade came down.
Daichi threw up his hands, felt the knife slice through his left palm completely, the pain white-hot and nauseating. Blood—his blood—sprayed across the kitchen floor, across his mother's face, across Karanome's ruined drawing.
"HANA!" he screamed. "GET KARANOME OUT! GO! GO NOW!" He heard Hana's door slam open, heard running footsteps, heard his little brother's voice calling: "Onii-chan! Onii-chan, what's happening?!"
Their mother was on her feet now, moving toward that voice with terrible purpose. Daichi lunged after her, grabbed her ankle with his good hand, held on despite the blood making everything slippery.
She fell again. The knife skittered across the floor, landing near the entrance to the hallway. Both of them scrambled for it—Daichi trying to kick it away, his mother crawling with single-minded determination.
Her fingers closed around the handle just as Hana appeared in the hallway entrance, Karanome clutched against her side, her face white with terror. "Mother, please!" Hana's voice broke. "Please don't do this! We love you! We need you! Papa wouldn't want—"
"Your father," their mother said, standing with the knife, "is dead. What he wants doesn't matter anymore. What I want doesn't matter. Nothing matters except ending this. Ending all of this pretending that we're going to be okay when we're not, we're never going to be okay, and it's kinder to just—"
She moved toward Hana. Daichi moved faster.
Present Day - Shin-Tokyo, 1888
Buki woke up screaming. Not the silent screaming of nightmares where sound wouldn't come. Real screaming—raw, primal, the sound of someone dying fifteen years ago in another world.
He was standing again. When had he stood? The window of his room was open, cold air pouring in, and he was pressed against it with both hands, staring down at the street three stories below, calculating the fall, the impact, the probability of survival.
Low. Very low. Which was perhaps why his body had moved there unconsciously—seeking escape, seeking ending, seeking release from memories that were no longer fragments but complete, terrible, unbearable.
"BUKI!" Clara burst through the door, Yuki close behind her.
They pulled him away from the window—both of them, using combined strength because he was fighting them without meaning to, his body interpreting their help as threat, his mind still trapped in Tokyo 2027 where everyone he loved was dying and he couldn't stop it.
"Breathe!" Clara commanded. "Buki, look at me! You're in Shin-Tokyo! You're safe! You're—"
"I remember," he gasped. "I remember everything. Hana. The knife. Our mother. I tried to stop her but she was so fast and I grabbed the knife and it went through my hand completely and there was so much blood and Hana was screaming and Karanome was crying and I—I—"
The words dissolved into incoherent sounds. Buki collapsed—legs giving out, consciousness fragmenting, the weight of complete memory exceeding his capacity to remain functional.
They lowered him to the floor. Clara checked his pulse—racing, 147 beats per minute, dangerous but not immediately lethal. Yuki was crying, and which until Buki realized he was crying too, that they were all crying, that perhaps crying was the only appropriate response to horror this complete.
"Tell us," Clara said gently. "Tell us what you remember. Get it out. Don't keep it locked inside anymore." So Buki told them.
He told them about the apartment in Tokyo. About his father's death and his mother's breaking. About Karanome's innocent drawing and Hana's fear and the knife that changed everything.
He told them how he'd tried to stop their mother. How he'd failed. How Hana had—his voice broke completely. Couldn't continue. Because the next part was worse. The worst thing. The thing that would destroy him to speak aloud.
"What happened to Hana?" Yuki asked softly. Buki opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
And spoke the words that ended his childhood, his innocence, his ability to believe the world was anything other than brutal and random and designed to destroy love.
"She killed her," he whispered. "Our mother killed Hana. And I watched. And I couldn't stop it. And Karanome saw everything. And I—"
He couldn't finish. Couldn't speak. Couldn't exist in a reality where this was true, where this had happened, where he carried this inside him across two lifetimes.
But it was true. And tomorrow—if there was a tomorrow—he would have to tell them the rest. How it ended. How he died. Whether Karanome survived. Whether any of it mattered at all. Because he's remembered the rest.
TO BE CONTINUED...