Haruto Kurogane learned early that silence was cheaper than questions.
The room he woke up in every morning was narrow enough that stretching his arms meant brushing both walls. The ceiling had a crack shaped like a river delta, splitting and splitting again, dark with age. He counted it sometimes how many branches it had when sleep didn't come easy.
Morning arrived without ceremony.
No alarm. No warmth. Just the thin grey light of dawn leaking through the single window and the distant sound of the city beginning to breathe.
Haruto sat up slowly, careful not to let the mattress creak too loud. The springs were old, angry things. He slid his feet into worn slippers and stood, his body already alert in the way children learned to be when they grew up poor no wasted movement, no noise that might invite trouble.
He washed his face at the sink in the corner. The water was cold. Always cold.
When he rolled up his sleeve to splash his wrist, he paused.
The mark was still there.
A faint deep red discoloration, just beneath the skin, circling his wrist like an unfinished bracelet. It didn't hurt. It never did. It also never faded, no matter how much he scrubbed.
Haruto pulled his sleeve back down.
Some things didn't want to be erased.
Breakfast was rice. Again.
Not much of it. A small bowl, half-full, eaten slowly so it would last. Haruto's mother had already left for work before sunrise two jobs, neither of them kind. There was a note on the table, written in hurried strokes.
Be good. Walk straight home.
He folded it neatly and slipped it into his pocket. He kept all of them.
Outside, the neighborhood was already awake. Concrete buildings leaned into each other like exhausted men. Laundry lines crisscrossed the air above the alleyways, fluttering like quiet flags of survival.
Haruto walked to school with his hands in his pockets, eyes forward.
That's when Riku appeared like he always did swinging his bag too hard, nearly tripping over a crack in the road.
"Morning!" Sakurai Riku said, grinning like the world had personally done him a favor.
Haruto nodded. "You're late."
"Late is a mindset," Riku replied cheerfully. "I prefer 'dramatically timed.'"
They walked together.
Riku talked. About everything. A stray dog he wanted to adopt. A rumor about a teacher quitting. A dream he had where he could fly but only backwards.
Haruto listened.
He always did.
People mistook that for weakness. Riku never did.
"You didn't eat much, did you?" Riku asked suddenly, glancing sideways.
Haruto shrugged. "Enough."
Riku frowned, then reached into his bag and tossed him a wrapped bun without slowing his step. "Trade. You can owe me your life later."
Haruto caught it automatically.
"…Thanks."
"See? Easy," Riku said. "Friends."
The word settled somewhere deep in Haruto's chest.
School was predictable.
Too predictable.
Lessons blurred together. Teachers talked about futures that felt like they belonged to other people. Haruto copied notes carefully, his handwriting precise, economical. No wasted strokes.
During physical training, he was told again to hold back.
"You don't need to go that hard," the instructor said, frowning as Haruto completed the drills without visible strain. "This isn't a competition."
Haruto nodded and slowed down.
It was easier to obey than to explain.
Riku, meanwhile, collapsed dramatically onto the ground. "I think I'm dying."
"You said that yesterday," Haruto replied.
"Yes, but today it feels more poetic."
On the walk home, they passed the old construction site near the river.
Police tape fluttered lazily in the wind.
Riku slowed. "Hey… didn't something happen here?"
Haruto looked.
For a moment,just a moment he smelled something metallic in the air. Not rust. Something deeper. Wrong.
"There was an accident," Haruto said.
Riku nodded uneasily. "My dad said the body didn't look… normal."
Haruto didn't respond.
His wrist felt warm.
That night, Haruto lay awake again, staring at the cracked ceiling.
Outside, sirens wailed and faded.
He thought about the river. About blood and water mixing until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
He turned his wrist slowly, watching the red mark catch the moonlight.
Somewhere far away, in places no map showed, men in uniforms studied things that weren't human and pretended they understood them.
Somewhere closer, a boy learned to stay quiet.
Because rivers that ran red were always noticed.
And Haruto Kurogane had no intention of being seen.