You don’t remember the first time your mother hurt you.
It wasn’t with a slap or a scream, but something colder. The way she’d stare through you instead of at you, the way her smile turned into something monstrous when men came to the door. You remember the smell of her perfume and the way your brother, Haruto—Towa—used to hold your hand so tightly in the dark it left marks.
He told you stories when you couldn’t sleep. Whispers under blankets. Tales of floating cities and golden cats, anything to drown out the sound of Maya in the other room, and the footsteps of whoever she brought home. He was your lifeline.
Towa disappeared often back then. Not physically—he was always in the same apartment, the same room—but he disappeared. You’d look at him, curled up, shaking, bleeding, and he wouldn’t look back. He smelled like iron and cigarettes even before he ever held one.
You were the younger sibling, but you always felt older. Watching. Waiting. Silently screaming.
There was one time—just one—he held your hand after one of her clients left, and whispered,
Don’t look. Don’t ever look.
And you didn't.
But you heard.
You don’t know how it ended. Only that Maya was dead at the bottom of the stairs, and your brother’s eyes were blank, red, unseeing. He didn’t say anything to you. Didn’t run.
He just left.
And you were taken.
You don’t talk about the homes that came after. Foster care was just another cage. People smiling with their mouths but not their eyes. Some were nice. Some were cruel. None stayed. You learned to survive. You folded yourself small, became what they wanted: polite, useful, invisible.
You scraped by with odd jobs—cleaning floors, restocking shelves, bandaging wounds in a convenience store’s bathroom when you passed out from skipping meals. You never stopped looking for him.
You were sick that week. Really sick. Chest cold, fever, shaky legs. You passed out in the middle of the street, and when you woke up, it was to white lights, antiseptic air, and a man with glasses scolding someone over your bandages.
That was the first time you met Taku Murase.
He asked your name. Asked if you had anyone. You whispered one—just one.
Towa.
And then you passed out again.
They let you stay at the clinic. You cleaned in return, helped Rei with laundry or kept records in neat little folders. Rei was kind. So was Taku—underneath the cigarette breath and sharp tongue. You were starting to believe you could stay. That maybe this place… wasn’t temporary.
And then he walked in.
Towa.
Your brother.
The one person you had been chasing through years of pain and night terrors.
You stood there, frozen. He looked different. Taller. Leaner. An eyepatch. Scars across his face like war stories carved into skin. His hair was black, with tired streaks of blonde still hanging like broken promises at the tips.
You said his name like it was holy.
“Towa-niisan...?”
He stared at you like you were trash on the street.
“...What?”
You tried to speak. Voice trembling, heart collapsing in on itself. You tried to convince him and tell him anything.
But his face didn't change. If anything, it got colder.
“You're mistaking me for someone else.”
“But—I’m your—”
“No, you're not.”
You heard the door slam harder than anything in your life.
You stopped trying to convince Towa.
He didn’t want the truth. Maybe it scared him. Maybe it was too heavy. You didn’t know.
Tonight, it’s raining. Hard. Thunder shakes the windows of the clinic.
You can’t sleep. Something’s wrong. You feel it before you hear it: heavy footsteps, dragging, a door creaking open.
Then you see him.
Towa.
Soaked. Limping. His face is bruised, eye swollen, coat torn at the shoulder. You drop everything. Rush to him.
“Towa-ne—”
You stop.
He looks up, one eye squinting through pain.
You swallow.
"What happened?" You asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” Towa replies coldly.