RATED: MA18+ | Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, suicide, blood and gore
The rain started at 3:47 PM on a Tuesday that tasted like copper and abandonment.
Seishin Hōrō-sha stood on the rooftop of Sakura Middle School, transparent umbrella doing nothing against the water that soaked through his uniform. Thirteen years old. Bruises painting his arms in shades of purple and yellow that told stories he never spoke aloud.
Below, seven stories of concrete. Above, clouds the color of old dishwater. No middle ground. No safety net. Just rain and the weight of existence pressing down like the atmosphere of a dying planet.
His phone buzzed. Text from his older brother—Daiki, fifteen, the one who used to share his futon when the apartment got too cold, the one who promised they'd always be family no matter what:
"Stop being so dramatic. That promise? We were kids. Grow up."
Seishin's fingers tightened around the phone. The screen cracked under pressure—spiderweb fractures spreading across his brother's dismissive words. Blood welled from where plastic cut into his palm. He didn't notice. Physical pain was background noise compared to the other kind.
He looked down at the courtyard. Students with umbrellas. Laughing. Talking. Existing in a world where family meant something other than survival. Where promises weren't disposable. Where brothers didn't abandon brothers.
The edge of the rooftop was slick with rain. One step. That's all it would take. One step and the weight would stop. The bullying would stop. The hunger would stop. The nights listening to his mother and step-father scream about money and their kids and everything wrong with their lives would stop.
His toes hung over the edge. The rain tasted like salt. Or maybe that was tears. He'd stopped being able to tell the difference years ago. "Do it, freak."
The voice came from behind—Takeshi Mori, sixteen, held back a year, the kind of bully who understood that cruelty was currency in the hierarchy of social media life. He stood in the rooftop doorway with three of his friends. Phones out. Recording. Because pain wasn't real unless it could be shared online.
Seishin didn't turn around. Didn't respond. Just stood there, swaying slightly, the wind pulling at his uniform like it wanted to help him fall. "We're waiting," Takeshi continued, stepping closer. "You've been talking about killing yourself for months. Attention freak. Either do it or shut up."
Seishin's vision blurred. Not from rain. From the realization that even his death would be entertainment. Would be content. Would be reduced to a video with a catchy title: Loser Finally Does It - MUST WATCH
He stepped back from the edge. Turned. Faced his bullies with eyes that held nothing. Not anger. Not fear. Just empty space where emotions used to live.
"Not today," he said quietly. Takeshi's face twisted. "What?" "I said not today. You don't get to watch me die. You don't get that satisfaction."
The first punch caught him in the stomach—doubled him over, drove air from lungs, sent him to his knees in pooling rainwater. The second caught his face—split his lip, filled his mouth with blood that tasted like failure.
They took turns. Four against one. Fists and feet and cruelty that had been practiced on other victims before him. Seishin curled into a ball, protecting vital organs through instinct, making himself small. A skill learned through repetition.
The phones kept recording. Evidence they'd never be held accountable for because his family was poor and theirs weren't. Because he was nobody and they were somebody's children. Because the world had already decided whose pain mattered.
When they got bored—when his face was bleeding enough to be satisfying but not enough to require hospitalization—they left. Takeshi paused at the doorway: "Next time finish the job. Do everyone a favor."
Then silence. Just rain hammering against concrete. Seishin lay in a puddle, tasting blood and rainwater, staring at grey sky, wondering why he'd stepped back. Why he'd chosen this. Another day of this.
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
Age 6. The Hōrō-sha apartment.
Seishin sat at a low table with his siblings—all eight of them crammed into a space meant for four. Daiki (then eight) sat beside him, sharing rice from the same bowl because there weren't enough dishes. Their younger sister Hana (four) sat on his other side, small hand gripping his shirt like an anchor.
The apartment was chaos. Cramped. Loud. Poor in ways that soaked into walls and made everything smell like mold and desperation. But in this moment—siblings together, sharing food, existing as a unit—it felt like home.
Their adoptive mother's voice carried from the kitchen, shrill and breaking: "We can't afford this! Eight children, Kagura! EIGHT! We can barely feed ourselves!" Their step-father's response was thunder: "Don't blame me for your fucking kids! You brought them into this! You deal with it!"
The sound of impact. Palm against flesh. Yumiko's gasp. The specific audio signature of violence that the children had learned to identify like a second language.
Seishin felt Hana flinch. Felt her small body press closer to his. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and whispered: "It's okay. They're just talking loud. It's okay."
But it wasn't okay. Would never be okay. The fighting was getting worse. More frequent. More violent. Soon there would be broken dishes. Broken furniture. Broken bones.
Daiki met Seishin's eyes across the table. Understanding passed between them—the kind of wordless communication that developed between children who'd learned to read violence like weather patterns.
"We should go to the other room," Daiki said quietly.
The siblings moved as a unit—practiced evacuation, routine disaster response. They filed into the single bedroom they all shared, closing the door against the sounds of their parents destroying each other.
Inside, surrounded by futons and secondhand toys and siblings who were all they had, Seishin made a decision. Six years old. Still believing in promises. Still naive enough to think willpower could prevent collapse.
He gathered them close—Daiki, Hana, Kaito, Yukimira, Mei-Suke, Rikunuke, Sorana. Eight siblings. His entire world.
"Listen," he said, voice steady despite the fear crawling up his throat. "Whatever happens. Whatever Mom and Dad do. We stay together. Okay? We protect each other. We're family. That means something."
Hana looked up at him with eyes too big for her small face. "Promise?" "I promise. Even if everything falls apart. Even if they split up or... or worse. We stay together. I'll protect you. All of you. I promise."
Daiki smiled. Ruffled Seishin's hair. "You're just a kid like us." "So are you." "Yeah. But you're smaller. How are you gonna protect us?"
Seishin straightened. Drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. "I'll find a way. I'll get stronger. I'll work. I'll do whatever it takes. Just... promise me you'll stay. Promise we won't leave each other."
One by one, they promised. Small voices in a small room, making vows against a future they couldn't predict. Against forces they couldn't control. Against the inevitable entropy of a family held together by poverty and obligation instead of love.
Thunder rolled outside. Rain hammered against the single window. Their parents' screaming reached a crescendo—then silence. The temporary peace that always followed violence.
Seishin held his siblings and believed. Believed promises mattered. Believed family was permanent. Believed he could keep them safe through sheer force of will.
He was six years old. He didn't know yet that some promises can't be kept. That some families are meant to shatter. That protection requires power he would never possess.
But in that moment, surrounded by siblings who trusted him, he believed. And that belief would sustain him for exactly seven years before it killed him.
PRESENT DAY - AFTER THE ROOFTOP
Seishin walked home through rain-soaked streets, face swollen, lip split, ribs screaming with each breath. His uniform clung to his body like a second skin of failure. Blood dripped from his chin and mixed with rainwater in the gutters.
People passed without looking. Tokyo's unwritten rule—don't see suffering you can't fix. Don't acknowledge pain you're not responsible for. Keep walking. Keep existing. Keep pretending the world isn't full of people drowning in plain sight.
His phone buzzed again. Multiple messages:
Daiki: "Heard you got beat up again. Stop being weak."
Kaito: "Mom's asking where you are. I didn't tell her about the school calling."
Yukimira: "Can you even try to be normal? You're embarrassing us."
The siblings he'd promised to protect. The family he'd tried to hold together. They'd scattered like smoke when things got hard. Found friends. Found lives. Found reasons to forget the promises they'd made in that cramped bedroom.
Only the younger ones—Mei-suke, Rikunuke, Sorana—still looked at him like he mattered. But they were being placed in foster care next week. The family was officially disbanding. Eight siblings reduced to strangers with shared DNA.
Seishin reached the apartment building—six stories, paint peeling, concrete crumbling, the kind of structure that housed people who'd given up on better options. He climbed stairs instead of taking the broken elevator. Each step agony. Each floor a reminder that home was just another word for prison.
Fourth floor. The door to apartment 4-C stood slightly ajar. Never a good sign.
He pushed it open carefully. The stench hit first—alcohol, unwashed walls and floors and shelfs, despair. The apartment was destroyed. Furniture overturned. Dishes broken. Walls punched through in places where rage had sought physical outlet.
His mother sat on the floor surrounded by shattered glass, staring at nothing. Yumiko Hōrō-sha. Forty-two years old. Depression since his step-father's death six months ago. Broken in ways that no longer tried to hide themselves.
She'd killed him. Self-defense, the courts said. After years of abuse, she'd finally fought back. Stabbed him with a kitchen knife when he came at her drunk and violent. The law gave her a year in prison.
She'd been released two months ago. Came home to an empty apartment. The other siblings had already scattered. Only Seishin remained—too young to work legally, too traumatized to function independently, trapped by circumstance.
"You're bleeding," she said without looking at him. Her voice was flat. Pharmaceutical. "I got in a fight." "Did you win?" "No." "Good. Fighting back just makes it worse. Better to take it. Better to accept that this is what you deserve."
Seishin stood in the doorway, dripping blood and rainwater onto dirty linoleum. "I don't deserve this." "Don't you?" She finally looked at him. Eyes empty. Pupils dilated from whatever drugs she'd taken. "You're still here. You haven't left like the others. That means you know. You know this is where you belong. With me. In this cramped shitty apartment. Failures together."
She stood. Moved toward him with unsteady steps. Grabbed his face with fingers that dug into bruises alone. "Your real mother—she died actually loving a freak like you. Did I ever tell you that? Withered out on her sickness death bed, while you were being looked after by your now dead grandparents, and while your father kept you and your mother and siblings separate, for reasons of emotional shit and other stuff."
Seishin tried to pull away. Her grip tightened. "She died and you lived. And I—stupid me—I adopted you and your siblings after your father died not long after you coward."
Her hand moved from his face to his throat. Not squeezing. Not yet. Just resting there. Feeling his pulse. Reminding him how fragile life was. How easily it could be taken.
"Sometimes I wonder," she whispered, breath against his face. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you'd died instead. If she'd lived. If I'd made different choices."
She released him. Stepped back. Swayed. "But we don't get different choices. We get this. You and me. Both killers. Both worthless. Both stuck in this apartment waiting to die. I blame you for her death and my situation. That's why your stupid killer in my eyes."
Seishin's throat closed. "I didn't kill anyone." "No? Your existence killed her. My self-defense killed him. What's the difference? Dead is dead. And we're the ones who made them that way, that's what I think anyway... alright? Because all are fates are intertwined, and being cursed all. We're now forced to watch these morons fade from are life's entirely as well, is that clear you idiot."
She returned to her spot on the floor. Picked up a bottle—cheap whiskey, half-empty. Drank directly. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "There's rice in the cooker. Probably. I don't remember if I made any. Doesn't matter. Eat or don't. Live or don't. I'm done caring."
Seishin stood frozen. Thirteen years old. Covered in blood from bullies and rain from sky and carrying weight that would crush most adults. He wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. Wanted to run.
Instead, he walked to the kitchen. Found the rice cooker—empty. Found the cupboards—empty except for expired canned goods. Found the refrigerator—nothing but condiments and mold.
His stomach cramped with hunger. He'd had nothing since breakfast—a piece of bread, stale, shared with Mei-Suke before she went to her foster family for the pre-placement visit.
He opened a can of tuna. Ate it cold. Directly from the can. Tasted metal and fish and the particular flavor of poverty that never quite washed away.
Behind him, his mother started crying. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just quiet tears that carried more weight than screaming. The sound of someone who'd given up. Who'd accepted that this was it. This was life. This was all there would ever be.
Seishin finished eating. Washed the empty can. Placed it in recycling because even in collapse, routine mattered. Then he went to his corner—a futon in the room he used to share with siblings, now occupied only by absence.
He lay down. Stared at ceiling. Listened to rain hammer against windows and his mother cry and the neighbors' television play some comedy show with canned laughter.
His phone buzzed. Message from a number he didn't recognize: "Tomorrow at lunch. Back Of The School. We finish what we started. Don't be late, freak." Takeshi. Promising more violence. More humiliation. More reasons to regret stepping back from that rooftop edge.
Seishin closed his eyes. Tried to sleep. Failed. Memory played on loop—his siblings in that bedroom seven years ago, making promises, believing in family, trusting him to protect them.
He'd failed. Failed completely. They'd scattered. Abandoned him. Left him alone with a mother who wished he'd died and a future that held nothing but more of this.
The rain intensified. Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the room. In that moment of stark light, Seishin saw his reflection in the window—small, broken, alone.
He was thirteen years old. Had two more years before the truck. Two more years of this. Of hunger and beatings and abandonment and slow erosion of anything resembling hope.
But he didn't know that yet. Didn't know about the truck or the death or the decades of wandering as a spirit unable to ascend. Didn't know about Ritchi Utsu or purpose or redemption.
Tonight, he only knew rain and pain and the terrible weight of promises he couldn't keep.
Tomorrow he would return to school. Face his bullies. Survive another day. Then another. Then another. Not living. Not even existing. Just enduring. Just breathing. Just waiting for something to change or end or matter.
The rain fell. Seishin lay awake. His mother cried herself to sleep on the living room floor. The apartment settled into its nightly sounds—dripping faucets, rattling pipes, the ambient noise of poverty and despair.
In another part of Tokyo, in a penthouse with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, a five-year-old child named Ritchi Utsu was locked in a storage closet for scoring 98% on a practice exam. He cried silently, not knowing anyone heard. Not knowing anyone cared.
But somewhere in the rain-soaked darkness between them, threads of fate were already pulling. Invisible connections forming. A ghost's purpose beginning to crystallize around a child who would need saving.
Seishin didn't know this yet. Didn't know anything beyond the ache in his ribs and the emptiness in his stomach and the weight pressing down on his lungs that made breathing feel like drowning.
He closed his eyes. Tried to sleep. Failed. The rain continued. The world continued. Everything continued except the things that mattered.
Tomorrow would be worse. Tomorrow was always worse. But tomorrow wasn't here yet. Tonight was just rain and pain and the slow suffocation of existence.
Seishin pulled his thin blanket closer. Shivered. Waited for dawn. Waited for anything. Waited alone in the darkness, drowning in rain that fell inside and outside his heart, wondering if it would ever stop.
It wouldn't.
The rain never stopped. Not really. Even on clear days, he could feel it. Taste it. Hear it. The rain was permanent. The rain was witness. The rain was the only thing that would stay.
Always alone—except for the rain.
TO BE CONTINUED... - Next Episode - "約束の重さ" (Yakusoku no Omosa - The Weight of Promises)