Long ago, nestled at the edge of a quiet mountain village, there lived a boy named Ren. When Ren was just nine years old, his world was engulfed in flames. His house had caught fire in the dead of night—blazing, roaring, merciless. Trapped inside with his mother, panic had seized his small body. Smoke choked the air, heat burned his skin. But his mother, even through the chaos, smiled with tears in her eyes. She had only one thought: her son must live.

She wrapped her arms around him, shielding him as a beam collapsed. Her body took the blow, and her last act of love was pushing him out through the window.

When the villagers found him the next morning, Ren was alive—but a long scar stretched from his right brow down to his cheek. His mother was gone, her body lost to the fire. From that day on, Ren stopped speaking to people. The children whispered cruel things behind his back, calling him “the cursed boy,” saying his scar was the mark of death.

He moved into the care of an old man who owned the shrine on the hill. The man, known only as Master Jun, had long white hair, wise eyes, and a gentle but distant presence. He never asked Ren to talk, and Ren never asked Jun about his past. They lived together in silence.

Ren helped with the chores—fetching water from the well, sweeping the shrine grounds, lighting incense for the villagers who came to pray. But he kept his eyes low and his heart closed. No one could touch the coldness that had settled in his chest the night the flames took his mother.

Until one afternoon in early summer.

Ren was drawing water from the stone well when he heard soft laughter. He turned, his cold expression unchanged, and saw a girl—no older than him—standing by the great fruit tree that shaded the shrine. She had long black hair tied back with a red ribbon and was reaching up into the branches to pluck persimmons. At her feet sat a white cat, watching her with lazy affection.

Ren watched for a moment, then finally spoke, his voice rough with disuse.

"…That tree’s not for taking."