Tokyo, 2027 - The Final Hour
Hana fell in stages.
First her knees buckled—sudden, graceless, the way puppets collapsed when their strings were cut. Then her hands went to her throat, trying to stem the flow of blood that poured between her fingers in rhythmic pulses. Arterial spray. Fatal. Daichi's mind supplied these clinical facts even as his soul shattered watching his sister die.
She tried to speak. Mouth opening, closing, opening again. But her severed vocal cords couldn't produce sound anymore. Just wet gasping noises. Just the terrible silence of someone trying to scream and failing.
Their mother stood over her with the knife still raised, blood dripping from the blade onto Hana's collapsing form. And on her face—that same pleasant smile. The one she used when Daichi got good grades. The one she'd worn tucking Karanome into bed last night. The one that meant love and safety and home.
Except now it meant nothing. Worse than nothing. It meant the person wearing their mother's face had evacuated completely, leaving only this hollow thing that killed with domestic efficiency.
"One down," their mother said conversationally, as if she'd just finished washing dishes. "See? It's not so hard. Quick. Clean. Merciful, really. Better than what life would have done to her. Medical school. Debt. Patients dying despite her best efforts. Just like your father. I'm saving her from all that disappointment."
Daichi couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't process what he was witnessing. Hana on the floor, life leaving her body with each failing heartbeat. Her eyes—wide, terrified, already dimming—fixed on him. Pleading. Not for help anymore. Too late for that. Just... acknowledgment. Witness. See me. Remember me. Don't let my death be meaningless.
"Onii-chan?" Karanome's voice, small and broken from somewhere behind him. "Onii-chan, what's happening? Why is Hana—why is there so much—"
The question died as understanding arrived. An eight-year-old's mind trying to reconcile the impossible: mother as protector versus mother as killer. The cognitive dissonance was audible in his breathing—short, sharp gasps that would become hyperventilation soon, would become trauma that no child should survive.
Their mother's head turned toward that voice. Toward Karanome. And Daichi saw the calculation in her empty eyes—target acquired, obstacle identified, solution pending.
"Run," Daichi's voice came out raw, desperate, nothing like the calm older brother who gave advice on homework and tied shoelaces. "Karanome, RUN! Get to the door! Get out of the apartment! RUN!"
Karanome ran.
Small feet pounding against the floor, heading for the apartment entrance, for escape, for theoretical survival. Their mother moved to follow, stepping over Hana's body—still twitching, still dying, it took so long to die from blood loss, thirty seconds felt like thirty years—with the casual dismissiveness of someone stepping over discarded trash.
Daichi intercepted her.
He had no plan. No training. No combat experience beyond one judo class he'd taken at thirteen and quit after two weeks. Just desperation and love and the absolute certainty that he would die before letting her touch Karanome.
He tackled her from the side, slamming her into the wall with force that knocked pictures down, that left dents in the drywall, that would have horrified his conflict-averse fifteen-year-old self under normal circumstances. But these weren't normal circumstances. Normal had died three days ago with his father.
The knife was still in her hand. Still slick with Hana's blood. It came around fast, instinctive, and Daichi felt it enter his gut just below the ribcage. Not a clean puncture. It ground against something—bone, maybe—before sliding deeper, angling upward, toward vital organs that would determine how long he had before unconsciousness, before death, before everything ended.
The pain was immediate. Absolute. Unlike anything he'd experienced—worse than breaking his arm at eleven, worse than food poisoning at thirteen, worse than every small injury of his short life combined and multiplied. This was pain with intention. Pain designed to kill. Pain that rewrote his nervous system's understanding of what suffering meant.
He screamed. Couldn't help it. Couldn't maintain the stoic big brother persona when his body was being destroyed from the inside. Behind him, Karanome's footsteps had stopped. Turned back. "ONII-CHAN!"
"NO!" Daichi choked out around the pain. "Keep running! Don't—don't come back! Get help! GO!"
But Karanome didn't go. Eight years old. Still believed that big brothers were invincible. Still trusted that Daichi would fix this, would make it okay, would save everyone because that's what heroes did.
Their mother pulled the knife out.
The exit was worse than the entry. Daichi felt things inside him shift, rupture, tear. Felt warmth spreading—blood, his blood, so much blood. His legs weakened. Holding her became difficult. His vision was already darkening at the edges. Blood loss. Shock. Systemic failure beginning.
How long did he have? Two minutes? Five? Not enough. Not nearly enough to ensure Karanome escaped, that help arrived, that any of this mattered.
"Let go," their mother said, and her voice still carried no emotion. No anger. No regret. Just mild annoyance, like he was an inconvenient obstacle. "You're bleeding internally. Organ damage, probably. You'll be dead in minutes regardless. Let go and I'll make it faster. Painless. Merciful."
Mercy. The word she kept using. As if murder was kindness.
"No," Daichi managed, though speaking made blood fill his mouth, made breathing even harder. He tightened his grip on her arms with strength born from adrenaline and terror and love for his little brother. "You'll have to—have to kill me first. Won't let you—touch him."
"Then I'll kill you first." The knife came up again.
Daichi tried to block it. His left hand—already bleeding from the earlier slice across his palm—moved on instinct, caught the blade, felt it slide through his hand completely. The pain was distant now, filtered through the larger agony of his organic wound. Just additional damage to a system already failing.
He held the knife there. Blade through his palm. Blood running down his arm. His mother pushing, trying to free it, trying to use it on him again, trying to finish what she'd started.
Down the hallway, Karanome had reached the door. Daichi could hear him fumbling with the lock—that complicated adult lock that eight-year-old fingers struggled with. Hear him crying, gasping, probably seeing too much, trauma being written into his brain in ways that would echo across his entire life.
"Turn it left!" Daichi called out, though his voice was weak now, fading with his blood pressure. "Left, Karanome! The big lock! Turn it LEFT!" The lock clicked.
The door opened.
For one perfect, crystalline moment, Daichi thought his little brother would escape. Would run into the hallway, would find neighbors, would get help, would survive this nightmare because at least one of them should survive, at least one good thing should come from this horror.
Their mother's hand shot out, impossibly fast, impossibly strong. Caught Karanome's shoulder just as he cleared the threshold. Pulled him back inside. The door swung shut with a soft click that sounded like the end of the world.
"No," Daichi whispered. "Please. Please, he's your son. He's also to young. He drew pictures. He believes in—in heroes and happy endings and—please don't hurt him. Please. I'll do anything. Kill me. Torture me. Whatever you want. Just let him go."
"I can't," their mother said reasonably, as if explaining why dessert had to wait until after dinner. "He'll tell people. Then they'll take me away. Lock me up. Separate me from—from whatever peace I'm trying to find in this. I have to finish. Have to complete this. All of you. Then myself. Then we'll all be together with your father. One big happy family. Forever."
She planned to kill herself too. After the children. After destroying everything kind and innocent in her life. Then she'd escape through suicide, leave the aftermath for others to discover, for others to process, for others to carry.
Daichi felt something beyond pain then. Beyond fear. Something that might have been rage if he had energy for rage. But he didn't. Just had this vast, aching grief for everything that was ending, everything that had already ended, everything that would never be.
"Karanome," he said, and his voice was surprisingly steady despite everything. "Look at me. Not at Mama. At me."
His little brother's tear-streaked face turned toward him. Eyes wide. Terrified. Already traumatized beyond repair. But still Karanome. Still the kid who drew stick figures and believed in heroes.
"I need you to run again," Daichi said. "When I tell you. Run and don't look back. Don't stop. Don't think. Just run. Find someone. Anyone. Tell them what happened. Can you do that for me?"
"But you're—you're bleeding so much—I can't leave you—"
"You can," Daichi insisted. "You have to. I'm—" He couldn't say it. Couldn't tell his eight-year-old brother that he was dying. "I'm going to hold her. Keep her here. But you have to run. Promise me. Promise you'll run and not look back."
"I promise," Karanome sobbed. "But Onii-chan, you have to promise too! Promise you'll be okay! Promise you won't die!"
The promise caught in Daichi's throat. Because he couldn't promise that. Could already feel himself dying—vision tunneling, strength leaving, the world becoming distant and fuzzy at the edges.
But Karanome needed the lie. Needed hope. Needed something to run toward instead of just running from horror. "I promise," Daichi lied. "I'll be fine. Just need to—to rest a bit. But you go. Go now. When I count to three. Ready?"
Karanome nodded, though his face showed he didn't believe it, didn't believe any of this would be okay. "One," Daichi said, tightening his failing grip on his mother.
She struggled, understanding his plan, trying to wrench free. "Two."
More struggling. The knife—still embedded through his palm—twisted. Fresh pain bloomed. Irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant except giving Karanome this chance.
"THREE! GO!" Karanome ran.
Sprinted for the door, small legs pumping, leaving bloody footprints—Hana's blood, Daichi's blood, evidence of violence that would mark him forever. Reached the door. Threw it open. Disappeared into the hallway.
His voice echoed back: "HELP! SOMEONE HELP! MY MOTHER'S KILLING US! PLEASE!"
Their mother screamed then—the first real emotion Daichi had heard from her. Not grief. Not remorse. Just frustrated rage that her plan was failing, that witnesses existed, that escape was impossible now.
She yanked the knife free from Daichi's palm. Shoved him away with strength that sent him crashing into the wall. His legs wouldn't hold him anymore. He slid down to sitting, leaving a blood smear on the wallpaper his parents had chosen together five years ago. That wallpaper had seemed so permanent then. But nothing was permanent. Everything could be destroyed in a single afternoon.
Their mother ran after Karanome.
Daichi tried to follow. Tried to stand. His legs wouldn't respond to commands anymore. Nervous system compromised. Motor control lost. He could only watch as she disappeared into the hallway, could only listen to the sounds of pursuit—footsteps, Karanome's screams, doors opening as neighbors finally investigated, adult voices shouting questions.
Then sirens.
Distant but approaching. Police. Ambulance. Help that was coming too late for Hana, probably too late for Daichi, but maybe—just—in time for Karanome.
Daichi's vision was going dark now. Not gradually. In pulses. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Each pulse of his failing heart bringing him closer to unconsciousness, to death, to whatever came after.
He tried to crawl toward the hallway. Made it maybe half a meter before his arms gave out. He lay there on the apartment floor, in the spreading pool of his own blood, and thought about stupid things:
He'd never gotten to become friends with Akari Tanaka, the one person from his class who smiled at him sometimes, and the only person that could really become his friend. As he never really had any. He'd never know if he'd pass his high school entrance exams next month.
He'd never learn to drive, never go to university, never travel, never experience any of the thousand mundane futures that had seemed guaranteed just hours ago.
And Karanome—his little brother who believed in heroes—would grow up knowing that heroes died. That promises were broken. That families destroyed themselves. No grand reason, just broken minds and bad timing and horror that served no purpose.
More sounds from the hallway. Gunshots. Three. Four. Screaming—their mother's voice, finally showing emotion, finally sounding human in her terror and pain and death.
Then silence. Then footsteps running toward the apartment. Adult voices, urgent: "In here! Multiple casualties! Get the paramedics up here NOW!"
Someone appeared in Daichi's failing vision. A police officer, young, looking sick at the sight of so much blood, so many bodies. Hana was finally still now. Finally dead. Her suffering ended. Her future canceled.
"Hey," the officer said, kneeling beside Daichi. "Hey, kid. Stay with me. Help's coming. You're going to be okay." Another lie. But Daichi appreciated it.
"My brother," he managed to whisper. "Karanome. Is he—" "The little one? He's safe. Scared but safe. He's with another officer. Asking about you. Wants to see you."
"Don't—" Daichi coughed, tasted blood. "Don't let him. Don't want him to see me like this. Tell him—tell him I said—" What? What final words did you leave for a brother you'd failed to save, failed to protect, failed in every way that mattered?
"Tell him I'm sorry," Daichi whispered. "Sorry I couldn't—couldn't save everyone. Sorry he had to see. Sorry I'm—" The darkness pulsed again. Stayed longer this time.
"Stay with me!" The officer's voice was distant now. "Kid! Stay awake! The paramedics are almost—" But Daichi was already leaving. Already dying. Already becoming past tense.
His last thought wasn't profound. Wasn't poetic. Just desperate and human and utterly insufficient: Karanome, please be okay. Please survive this. Please—
Present Day - Shin-Tokyo, 1888
"—and that's the last thing I remember," Buki finished, his voice utterly hollow. "Dying. Begging the universe to let Karanome be okay. Then darkness. Then nothing. Then waking up as a three-year-old in this world with all those memories intact and no way to process them."
He sat on his bedroom floor, back against the wall, Clara and Yuki on either side of him. Dawn was breaking outside—pale light filtering through the window, illuminating the room where he'd just spoken his death aloud for the first time.
Clara's face was wet with tears. Yuki was openly sobbing, one hand pressed against her mouth like she was physically holding back screams. "You were fifteen," Clara whispered. "You died at fifteen protecting your little brother from your own mother. That's—Buki, that's—"
"Heroic?" Buki supplied bitterly. "That's what Karanome would have said. That I was a hero. But heroes are supposed to save everyone. I only saved him. Maybe. I don't even know if I saved him. Don't know if the police got there in time. Don't know if he survived the trauma. Don't know if he blamed me for not protecting Hana. Don't know anything except I died and left him alone and that's the last memory I have of being Daichi."
"And then you woke up here," Yuki said through her tears. "As a three-year-old. With all of that inside you."
"Yes. Everything. Hana's death. My own death. Karanome's face as I told him to run. All of it perfectly preserved in a brain that couldn't process it. I was three years old with PTSD from dying violently in a previous life. No wonder I broke." Buki laughed—sharp, broken. "No wonder I forgot everything by age five. My mind couldn't hold it and function. Had to choose between remembering and surviving. Chose surviving. Locked everything away in those empty rooms. Until now."
"Until General Hazami's letter started opening the doors," Clara said quietly.
"Until delivering death to strangers every day reminded me I was carrying my own dead," Buki continued. "Until seeing someone like Karanome triggered something my body remembered even when my mind didn't. Until it all came flooding back and I—" He gestured vaguely at himself. "—fractured. Completely. Irreparably."
"Not irreparably," Yuki insisted, grabbing his hand. "Buki-san, you're still here. Still breathing. Still existing despite carrying two lifetimes of trauma. That's not fractured. That's—"
"Barely surviving," Buki interrupted. "Which is what everyone keeps saying is enough. Takeshi said it. Clara said it. Even Sasaki said it. Just survive. Just barely make it. Just exist despite wanting to stop existing. That's the goal. That's all I get."
"No," Clara said firmly. "That's not all you get. You also get this—" She squeezed his shoulder. "—people who care. People who witness your pain. People who stay despite knowing how damaged you are. That's not nothing, Buki."
"It's not enough," Buki whispered. "It's not enough to balance the weight of watching my sister die. Of dying myself. Of leaving Karanome alone with trauma that probably destroyed him. Of being reborn and suffering all over again in new ways. Two lifetimes of pain. How do I survive that? How does anyone survive that?"
"I don't know," Clara admitted. "I honestly don't know. But you're doing it. Right now. You're surviving it. Telling us about it instead of keeping it locked away. That's progress. That's healing. Even if it doesn't feel like it."
Healing. The word still felt foreign. How did one heal from death? From watching family slaughter? From carrying guilt across impossible distances?
"I need to know if he's okay," Buki said quietly. "Karanome. I need to know if he survived. If my death meant something. If he grew up and had a life and found happiness despite what he witnessed. I need—"
"You'll never know," Yuki said gently. "He's in another world. Another timeline. Fifteen years in your past but also in a completely different reality. There's no way to find out."
"Then how do I live with that uncertainty?" Buki asked. "How do I exist knowing I might have died for nothing? That Karanome might have been destroyed by trauma? That my sacrifice might have been meaningless?"
"You live with it the same way Mother Tanaka lived with uncertainty about Hiroki," Clara said. "By choosing what to believe. She chose to believe her son was alive. You can choose to believe Karanome survived. That your sacrifice mattered. That somewhere, somehow, he's okay."
Choose to believe. Choose hope over despair. Choose the lie that made existence bearable over the truth that made it impossible.
Could he do that? Could he live in deliberate delusion like Mother Tanaka? Could he pretend Karanome was fine despite having no evidence? "I don't know if I can," Buki admitted.
"Then don't," Yuki said. "Don't choose anything. Just exist in the uncertainty. Let it be unanswered. Let Karanome's fate remain unknown. And maybe someday that'll be okay. Maybe someday you'll find peace in not knowing."
Maybe. That word again. That fragile possibility. That tiny sliver of hope that wasn't quite hope but wasn't quite despair either.
Buki closed his eyes. Felt the weight of two lifetimes pressing down. Felt Clara and Yuki beside him, anchoring him to this present moment. Felt his heart beating—still alive despite dying twice, still functioning despite everything.
"I was Nakamura Daichi," he said quietly. "I had a family. I loved them. I died trying to save them. And now I'm Buki Kirā. And I deliver letters about death while carrying my own. And I don't know how to reconcile those two people. Don't know how to be both. Don't know how to exist as this fractured multiplicity."
"So don't reconcile them," Clara said. "Be both. Be Daichi who died a hero. Be Buki who survives badly. Be both and neither and everything in between. Stop trying to be one coherent thing. You're complicated. Contradictory. Impossible. And that's okay."
Was it okay? Could he exist as paradox? As someone who died and lived? As hero and weapon? As Daichi and Buki and whoever else he might become? He didn't know. But the sun was rising outside. Another day beginning. Another chance to try.
For Karanome, wherever he was. For General Hazami, who'd believed in blooming. For himself—broken, traumatized, carrying death across lifetimes, but somehow, impossibly, still alive.
Episode - 11 - (Part 2) - "The Erasure"
The morning light had fully arrived now, painting Buki's room in shades of pale gold that seemed obscene given what he'd just confessed. Clara had made more tea—her hands shaking slightly as she poured, the ceramic cups rattling against saucers. Yuki sat on the floor, eyes red and swollen, waiting.
"There's more," Buki said quietly. His voice was wrecked from crying, from speaking horrors aloud. "After I died. After Daichi died. What came next was—" He paused, searching for words. "—worse. Different but worse. Because at least dying was quick. What happened after was slow. Deliberate. Systematic."
Clara set down the teapot. "You don't have to tell us everything today. We can—"
"No." Buki's interruption was sharp. "You said telling it might help. Might be healing. So I'll tell it. All of it. The parts I've remembered. The parts that made me into—" He gestured at himself. "—this."
Yuki moved closer, placed her hand on his. Permission. Encouragement. Witness. Buki closed his eyes and let the memories surface.
Shin-Tokyo, 1876 - Twelve Years Ago
Waking up was wrong.
That was the first coherent thought in the mind that had been Nakamura Daichi and was now—something else. Someone else. Somewhere else entirely.
He was small. Three years old, according to the voice nearby saying: "He's finally awake. Three days he's been unconscious. Fever broke last night. Like he was dead. But I guess he was not." Three years old. But his mind was fifteen. Was dead. Was bleeding out on an apartment floor while his little brother screamed for help. Was—
The disconnect was immediate and absolute. A fifteen-year-old's consciousness trapped in a younger body. Hands too small. Coordination wrong. Voice useless for communicating the complex trauma that filled every corner of his awareness.
He tried to speak. Tried to explain. "Karanome—have to—Hana is—Mother killed—I need—"
But what came out was gibberish. A three-year-old's vocabulary colliding with a teenager's desperate need to communicate. The words existed in his mind but couldn't be translated though.
The person—not his mother, his mother was dead, shot by police after murdering Hana, after stabbing him—leaned over him with concern. "Shh, You're safe now. The fever made you delirious. Rest."
Safe. The word was meaningless. How could he be safe when Karanome was in Tokyo, 2027, fifteen years in the future and an entire universe away, probably traumatized beyond repair, probably blaming Daichi for not saving Hana, probably—
He tried to sit up. His young legs wouldn't cooperate. Too weak. Too small. Too wrong. "Where—" he managed in this childish voice that wasn't his. "Brother. Where is—"
"You don't have any siblings," the mother said gently. "You were found alone. Abandoned, they think. Someone left you at the temple steps with a fever. Lucky the priests found you when they did."
No siblings. Abandoned. Found. The information didn't compute. He had siblings. Had Hana and Karanome. Had a family that had been slaughtered. Had died protecting—
Except he hadn't died. Or he had died but somehow continued. In a different body. A different world. A different life entirely.
The implications were too vast. Too impossible. His three-year-old brain couldn't process them without fracturing. But his fifteen-year-old consciousness tried anyway, creating a cognitive dissonance so severe it felt like his skull might split open.
"My name," he said carefully, forcing words through vocal cords that felt alien. "What is—what am I called?"
The person smiled. "The priests named you Buki. It means 'weapon' in the old language. Seemed fitting for a little fighter who survived such a high fever."
Buki. Not Daichi. Not Nakamura. Just Buki.
The name felt like erasure. Like everything he'd been—honor student, protective brother, fifteen-year-old kid who'd died trying to save his family—was being systematically deleted.
He started crying then. Not the controlled tears of grief, but the helpless wailing of a child who couldn't articulate the situation of their loss. Crying for Karanome left behind. For Hana dead on the floor. For his father's unexpected death. For his mother's descent into madness. For Daichi bleeding out at fifteen. For this impossible situation of being alive again but wrong, everything wrong, trapped in wrongness with no escape.
The fake mother held him, mistaking his existential horror for simple childhood distress. "There, there. You're safe now. We'll find you a good family. Someone to take care of you."
Family. The word made him cry harder. They found him a family three days later.
The Kirā couple—Takeshi and Fumiko—were in their forties, childless, looking to adopt. They seemed kind enough at first. Smiled appropriately. Said appropriate things about giving an orphan a home. The temple priests were relieved to place him so quickly.
But there was something in Takeshi Kirā's eyes. Something that reminded young Buki of his stepfather from—no, wait. He'd never had a stepfather in Tokyo. That was wrong. Why did he think—
The memories were already fragmenting. Already becoming confused. His three-year-old brain couldn't maintain perfect recall of a fifteen-year-old's experiences. Details were slipping. Names fading. Timelines collapsing into each other.
Karanome. He had to remember Karanome. His little brother's name. His face. His gap-toothed smile. His stick figure drawings. Had to hold onto something or he'd lose everything.
The Kirā household was cold. Not temperature—literally cold. Emotionally barren. A place where love had never lived and cruelty had made itself comfortable.
The first beating came on the second day.
Buki had been crying—still crying, really, hadn't fully stopped since waking up in this new life. Crying for losses he was already starting to forget. Crying because his mind didn't know how else to express the trauma of two lifetimes of trauma.
"Stop that noise," Takeshi commanded. His voice was calm. That made it worse somehow. But Buki couldn't stop. Didn't know how to stop. The grief was too large, too overwhelming, too everything.
Takeshi's hand across his face was precise. Calculated. Not angry—methodical. The slap of someone who'd done this before, who knew exactly how much force to use to cause pain without leaving visible marks.
Buki stopped crying from shock more than obedience. Stared at this figure who'd promised the priests he'd provide a loving home. "You will not cry," Takeshi said calmly. "Crying is weakness. Weakness is intolerable. You will learn this or you will suffer. Do you understand?"
Buki understood. Understood with the clarity of someone who'd already lived through abuse once before. Who'd had a different father—no, stepfather? No, that wasn't right. The memories were tangling. Confusing.
"I—" Buki started. Another slap. Harder this time. "You will respond with 'Yes, sir.' Nothing else. No explanations. No excuses. Just obedience." Fumiko watched from the doorway. Said nothing. Did nothing. Complicit through silence.
"Yes, sir," Buki whispered through the pain, through the blood from his split lip, through the certain knowledge that this was only the beginning.
Present Day
"They beat me for everything," Buki said, his voice flat as he recounted this to Clara and Yuki. "Crying. Speaking without permission. Moving too slowly. Moving too quickly. Existing wrong. Being alive when they clearly didn't want a kid to care for, just—I don't know what they wanted. Control, maybe. Something to break."
Clara's hands were clenched so tight her knuckles had gone white. "How long? How long did this continue?"
"Two years," Buki said. "From age three to five. Two years of systematic abuse designed to erase whoever I'd been and replace it with—nothing. A blank space. A mindless thing that followed orders without question."
"And your memories?" Yuki asked carefully. "Of Karanome? Of being Daichi?"
"Fragmenting," Buki admitted. "Every day I forgot a little more. Couldn't maintain fifteen years of memories in a young brain while also being beaten daily. The trauma layered on trauma. New pain burying old pain. By age four, I couldn't remember Hana's face clearly. By four and a half, I'd forgotten my father's name. By five—"
He stopped. Took a breath.
"By five, I only remembered fragments. A brother whose name started with K. A sister who died. Blood on floors. A mother who'd killed—something. Someone. The details were gone. Just impressions. Feelings. And the Kirās—they were making sure even those disappeared."
Shin-Tokyo, 1878 - Ten Years Ago
The day Buki killed his adoptive parents started like any other day in despair.
He was five years old. Barely verbal anymore—the Kirās had beaten language out of him, preferring silent obedience to any form of communication. He existed in their house like a ghost, moving through routines, completing chores, receiving punishment for infractions both real and imagined.
That morning, Fumiko had been cooking. The smell triggered something—ginger and soy sauce, familiar somehow, connected to warmth and safety and a life he couldn't quite remember.
Buki had stood there, staring at her, trying to access the memory. Trying to understand why this smell made his heart hurt. "What are you doing?" Fumiko's voice was sharp.
He couldn't answer. Didn't have words for what he was feeling. Didn't have words for anything anymore. She hit him. Wooden spoon across his knuckles. "I asked you a question. Respond."
But he couldn't. Was drowning in a memory that wouldn't surface. A kitchen that looked different. A mother who looked different. Warmth that became horror. Safety that became—
Takeshi appeared. "Is the child being defiant again?" "Won't speak," Fumiko reported. "Then we'll remind him of his purpose."
They took him to the room they used for "corrections"—a small space, bare walls, where they administered punishments away from potential witnesses. Buki had been here hundreds of times. Knew what was coming.
But today was different. Today, something in him had reached its limit. Some final thread holding his fractured psyche together snapped completely.
When Takeshi raised his hand, Buki moved. Not away. Toward.
He was five years old. Small. Weak. No match for an towering figure like him in any normal circumstance. But these weren't normal circumstances. This was a child who'd died violently once before. Who'd watched his sister murdered. Who'd put himself between a knife and his little brother. Who'd experienced horror that would break most people.
And who'd just broken completely.
The kitchen knife was nearby—Fumiko had been using it, had set it down when she came to get Takeshi. Buki's small hand closed around the handle with muscle memory that shouldn't exist in a five-year-old. Muscle memory from another life. From dying by knife. From understanding intimately what knives could do.
He drove it into Takeshi's leg. Not planning. Not thinking. Just acting on pure survival instinct. Takeshi screamed. Fell. Grabbed for the knife. Buki was faster. Pulled it free. Swung again. And again. And again.
His body moved with efficiency that was impossible. Knowledge he shouldn't possess. Combat training from a life he'd mostly forgotten. Or maybe just desperation. Maybe any creature, when cornered enough, rediscovered its capacity for violence.
Fumiko's screams joined her husband's.
Buki turned toward her. Saw her face—terror and shock and dawning understanding that the child they'd been torturing had become something dangerous.
"You're not my mother," he heard himself say. His voice was flat. Empty. Nothing like a five-year-old's voice. "You're not real. You're fake. You don't belong. None of this belongs."
She ran. Didn't make it far.
When it was over—when both bodies lay still, when the blood had stopped spreading, when the screaming had finally stopped—Buki stood in the center of the carnage and felt... nothing.
He'd just killed two people. Should feel something. Horror? Guilt? Fear? Relief?
Nothing. Just emptiness. Just the certain knowledge that he'd done this before somehow. That violence was familiar. That death was just—death. Permanent silence. Like Hana. Like his father. Like Daichi himself.
He looked down at the bodies. At Takeshi's face, frozen in shock. At Fumiko's eyes, still open, still staring. And suddenly—a flash of memory so vivid it nearly knocked him down:
His mother standing over Hana's body. That same expression. That same terrible stillness. Death as the end of suffering. Death as solution. Death as mercy.
Except this wasn't mercy. This was murder. He'd murdered them. Five years old and already a killer. The realization should have destroyed him. Should have broken whatever remained of his humanity.
Instead, it just... finished the job. Completed the erasure that had been happening slowly for two years. The memories left. Not gradually. All at once. Like a door slamming shut in his mind.
Karanome—the name dissolved. Became just a sound. K-something. Someone important. But who? Hana—gone. Just an impression of long hair and blood.
Daichi—erased. That name had never existed. There was only Buki. Had only ever been Buki. The apartment in Tokyo—forgotten. The mother with empty eyes—gone. The father who died of a heart attack—vanished.
Everything. All of it. Sealed away in rooms he could no longer access. Protected by dissociative barriers his traumatized mind had erected to preserve whatever small functioning capacity remained.
Buki stood there—five years old, covered in his adoptive parents' blood, unable to remember his real parents, unable to remember his brother, unable to remember anything except this moment—and became nothing.
Not a child. Not human. Just a vessel. A thing that breathed and moved and existed without meaning or purpose or connection to anything. Mindless. Truly mindless. Exactly what the Kirās had been trying to create, achieved through the ultimate irony of their own deaths.
Present Day
"I don't remember leaving their house," Buki told Clara and Yuki. His hands were shaking again. Tremor frequency: 6.8. "Or what happened to the bodies. Or how I ended up on the streets. Just—fragments. Being cold. Being hungry. Moving through the city like a ghost."
"How long?" Clara's voice was barely audible. "How long were you homeless?"
"Four months, maybe? Time was meaningless. I had no memories. No language beyond basic survival needs. No concept of who or what I was. Just existed. Ate garbage. Slept in alleys. Avoided adults. Other street orphans tried to talk to me sometimes. I couldn't respond. Didn't know how."
He paused, accessing memories that felt distant, like they'd happened to someone else.
"And I killed," he said quietly. "When I had to. When someone tried to hurt me. When other orphans got too aggressive. When adults got too close. I killed them the same way I'd killed the Kirās. Efficiently. Without hesitation. Without feeling anything at all."
Yuki made a sound—half gasp, half sob. "How many?" Clara asked.
"I don't know," Buki admitted. "Five? Seven? Lost count. They were just—obstacles. Threats to survival. Not people. Nothing was people anymore. Everything was just—objects. Situations. Calculations."
"Until the military found you," Clara prompted gently.
"Until they found us," Buki corrected. "A group of orphans. Maybe fifteen of us. Living in an abandoned warehouse. The military was recruiting—Continental War had just started, needed soldiers, didn't care how young or damaged those minds were."
He remembered that day with crystalline clarity despite the fog surrounding most of his childhood.
Shin-Tokyo, 1879 - Nine Years Ago
The soldiers came at dawn.
Buki had been awake—he was always awake, sleeps dangerous when you lived on the streets—when they surrounded the warehouse. Older orphans tried to run. Were caught easily. Younger ones cried. Buki just stood there, assessing. Calculating escape routes. Finding none.
A soldier approached him. Young soldier, maybe twenty, with kind eyes that wouldn't last through the war. "How old are you, kid?" Buki didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Language was still mostly gone, buried with his memories.
"Six?" the soldier guessed. "Seven? Doesn't matter. You're coming with us. All of you. Imperial Army needs soldiers. You'll get food. Shelter. Purpose. Better than dying in this garbage, right?"
Better. The word was meaningless. But food was real. Shelter was real. Following orders was familiar from the Kirā household. Buki nodded. Compliance. Always compliance. Easier than resistance.
They were loaded into wagons. Fifteen orphans who'd survived the streets. Who'd fought and stolen and killed to stay alive. Who had nothing to lose because they'd already lost everything, even if some of them could still remember what that everything had been.
Training began immediately. Brutal. Designed to break civilian children and rebuild them as soldiers. But Buki was already broken. Already rebuilt into something that followed orders without question. The training just refined what already existed.
He excelled. Not through talent but through absolute obedience. When instructors ordered running until collapse—he ran until his body stopped functioning, was carried unconscious to the medical tent, returned to running the moment he woke. When ordered to kill training dummies with increasing realism—he killed without hesitation, without the crying other children showed, without anything resembling normal human response.
The instructors noted this. Marked him as promising. Promoted him faster than others. By age eight, he was designated Unit 47—special operations, high-risk assignments, the kind that required soldiers who didn't fear death because they couldn't fear anything at all.
And through it all, he felt nothing. Did everything. Became the perfect weapon. Until General Hazami Kokoro.
Continental War, 1881 - Seven Years Ago
The first time Buki saw General Hazami, he was chained to a post.
Punishment for insubordination—he'd failed to follow an order. Not from defiance. From complete absence of understanding. The order had been complex, required interpreting tone and context, required human judgment. Buki possessed none of these things.
So he'd stood there while his unit engaged the enemy without him. Stood there calculating optimal strategies while his teammates died around him. Stood there until a superior officer found him and assumed deliberate disobedience.
Hence the chains. Hence the post. Hence the sign around his neck: "FAILURE TO EXECUTE ORDERS." He'd been there for six hours when she arrived.
General Hazami Kokoro was twenty-one years old. Too young for her rank, but the Continental War didn't care about age, only competence. She'd earned her position through tactical brilliance and a willingness to make impossible decisions. But she'd retained something most commanders lost: the capacity to see soldiers as people, not just resources.
She stopped in front of Buki's post. Studied him with dark eyes that actually seemed to see him, not just look at him. "How old are you?" she asked. "Ten years, three months, seven days," Buki recited. Information he'd been told. Not memory.
"What's your designation?"
"Unit 47. Combat specialist. Kill count: forty-seven confirmed. Pending disciplinary action for failure to execute orders during the Battle of Kuroda River."
Hazami's expression flickered—something that might have been pain. "You're ten years old with forty-seven confirmed kills." "Affirmative."
"That's not a question requiring confirmation. That's a tragedy requiring acknowledgment." She knelt down to his eye level. "What's your name? Your real name. Not your designation."
Buki accessed his name database. Found one entry. "Buki Kirā. That's my role." "No. Before that. Before the military. Before—" She gestured at him, at the chains, at everything he'd become. "—all of this. Who were you?"
Who were you? The question made no sense. He'd always been this. Always been Unit 47. Always been—
Except there was something. A whisper in the empty rooms. A name he couldn't quite access. D-something. Someone who'd existed before but had been erased.
"I don't have data on previous designations," Buki reported. Hazami studied him for a long moment. Then did something unexpected: she unlocked his chains.
"What are you doing?" Buki asked, more information-seeking than concerned.
"Releasing you from punishment you don't deserve. You failed to follow orders because you're a traumatized child who's been turned into a weapon without being given the tools to understand what that means. That's not your failure. That's ours. The military's. The adults who've failed you." She helped him to his feet. "Come with me."
"Where?" "Somewhere you can be a person instead of just a weapon." Person. The word was foreign. Meaningless. But he followed anyway because she'd given an order and orders were all he understood.
That was how it started.
Present Day
"She tried to teach me to be human," Buki said, and his voice broke completely. "For two years. From age ten to twelve. She kept me as her personal aide. Removed me from combat operations as much as possible. Talked to me like I was a person. Asked me questions that required thoughts, not just data recitation."
"And it worked?" Yuki asked gently.
"Slowly. Barely. I started responding with something beyond pure information. Started showing preference—tiny things like which food I'd choose if given options. Started sleeping without nightmares sometimes. Started—" He paused. "—started caring about her. Not understanding that I cared. Not identifying the emotion. Just knowing that when she was near, the emptiness felt less empty."
Clara was crying silently, tears running down her face.
"She called me Sakura," Buki continued. "Cherry blossom. Said I reminded her of a tree that bloomed on battlefields despite everything. Said I was waiting to bloom. Said I just needed time and patience and someone who believed I was more than what trauma had made me."
"And then?" Clara whispered. "And then the Battle of Kuroda Pass. The final battle. Three years ago." His hands were shaking violently now. Tremor frequency: unmeasurable.
"She knew it would be bad. Knew casualties would be extreme. Tried to send me back to base, keep me safe. But I was her aide. My duty was staying near her. So I stayed."
The memory was vivid—more vivid than anything from his life as Daichi, more vivid than killing the Kirās, more vivid than every horror he'd survived. Because this was when something that had been dead for five years suddenly, inexplicably, came back to life.
"The battle lasted eleven hours. Artillery. Infantry assault. Chemical weapons near the end—both sides desperate, both sides willing to commit any atrocity to win. General Hazami coordinated defensive positions while I carried messages between units. Standard aide duties."
He paused, forcing breath into lungs that didn't want to work.
"Hour nine, enemy artillery found her position. Direct hit. I was twenty meters away when it happened. Saw her body—" His voice broke. "—saw her body torn apart. Shrapnel. Blast force. She died instantly. Mercifully, if death can be merciful."
Yuki's sob was audible now.
"And I felt it," Buki whispered. "For the first time in five years, I felt something. Pain. Grief. Loss. Not understanding what those feelings were, just knowing that something inside me was breaking. That the emptiness was being filled with agony."
"You cried," Clara said quietly.
"I cried. Stood there in the middle of a battlefield while shells fell around me and I cried. Other soldiers thought it was shock. Tried to evacuate me. I fought them. Wanted to stay with her body. Wanted to—I don't know what I wanted. Just knew I couldn't leave her."
He remembered those moments with perfect clarity. Kneeling in blood and mud and the remains of the person who'd tried to save him. Tears running down his face—the first tears in five years—while around him the battle reached its crescendo and the war ended and nothing mattered because General Hazami was dead and he'd failed to protect her.
Just like he'd failed to protect Hana. Just like he'd failed to protect—someone. Someone whose name started with K.
"They evacuated me anyway," Buki continued. "Took me to a field hospital. I was in shock. Non-responsive. They thought I'd been hit, that I had injuries I wasn't reporting. But I was fine physically. Just broken differently."
"The Northern Clinic," Clara said.
"The Northern Clinic. Three years. Trying to process grief I didn't understand. Trying to remember why General Hazami's death felt like losing someone for the second time. Trying to—trying to be human when I'd forgotten how."
He looked at Clara and Yuki, at these two people who'd stayed despite knowing everything now, despite witnessing his complete brokenness.
"And then you came," he said to Clara. "And released me. And brought me here. And it all started surfacing. The memories. The grief. Daichi and Karanome and Hana and my mother's madness and dying at fifteen and waking at three and the Kirās and killing them and the streets and the war and General Hazami and—"
He couldn't continue. Couldn't speak through the tsunami of everything he'd just recounted. Two lifetimes. Two deaths. Two families lost. Two sets of trauma layered so thick he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
Clara and Yuki wrapped their arms around him—both of them, holding him while he finally, completely, catastrophically broke. Not dissociating this time. Not fracturing into protective spaces. Just breaking honestly, humanly, feeling every piece of pain he'd been carrying for fifteen years across two lives.
And in the breaking, something shifted. Not healing. Not closure. Just—acknowledgment. Witness. The impossible weight shared, even if only for this moment. "I don't know how to survive this," Buki whispered into their shoulders.
"We'll figure it out," Clara said. "Together. One day at a time." One day. One breath. One moment of existence despite everything. For Karanome, wherever he was. For General Hazami, who'd seen Sakura in him.
For Daichi and Buki and whoever he might become. For all the versions of himself—damaged, broken, traumatized, but somehow still here. Still breathing. Still trying. Still alive.
TO BE CONTINUED...