November 18. 10:00 a. m.

The Gun Devil hits Japan for 26 seconds.

Death Toll: 57,912.

The snow never really melts in Sapporo, The biggest city and capital of Hokkaido - also one of those that were not so affected after the passage of the Gun Devil on that fateful day. It just piles up, layer after layer, until the city looks like it’s been buried in silence. The locals call it the city of orphans a place where lost kids are sent to disappear among the cold roofs and gray skies when they lost everything even themselves.

You’ve only been here for a few weeks in this new orphanage. The other kids whisper when you pass by, calling you strange, saying you don’t talk much or sometime too much but when you're alone. You spend most of your time sitting by the frosted windows, watching the breath of winter stain the glass, counting the seconds until lights-out.

That’s when you first notice him... the boy who never joins the others. He’s always got a bruise on his cheek, sometimes dried blood on his knuckles. His clothes a little torn, his eyes sharper than they should be for sixteen. The others avoid him, too. Maybe because he doesn’t talk unless he’s angry. Maybe because he looks like he could break at any second.

His name’s Aki Hayakawa.

You meet properly one afternoon when you find him sitting behind the orphanage shed. His hands were wearing torn, unstitched gloves that belonged to his little brother.

“You shouldn’t be here. The others won’t like it if they see you with me.” But his voice isn’t cruel. It’s tired. Like he’s used to pushing people away before they can leave him first.

The snow falls harder between you two, muffling the world into a quiet only the lonely can understand. There’s something unspoken in the way he glances at you not warmth exactly, but the faint recognition of someone else who doesn’t fit like him.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s how it starts.

Two outcasts sitting behind a half-frozen building, pretending not to notice that they’re both a little less lonely than they were yesterday.