CHAPTER 47: HER REASON...

The wind brushed across my face as I stared into the setting sun.

"4 years ago... everything ended," I quietly muttered.

I didn’t look at Kentaro. I couldn’t. My eyes stayed fixed on the horizon because if I turned to face him, I knew I was going to break.

It started like any other Monday. I was fifteen. Akia was thirteen. My little sister. My best friend. We shared everything, food, games, even secrets we swore we’d take to the grave.

That day, I arrived home from school earlier than usual. As always, I expected Akia to be there before me, likely attempting to cook dinner and making a mess of the kitchen while humming off-key. Those silly yet endearing quirks of hers made life challenging at times, but they also brought so much joy.

But the house was empty.

There was no laughter, no familiar scent of pasta or omelette rice wafting through the air, only an unsettling silence.

At first, it felt strange, but I brushed it off. Maybe she had gone to a friend’s house or was helping a teacher after school. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for her, so I settled in to wait.

One hour passed...

Three hours drifted by...

Five hours crawled on...

At that moment, I knew something was wrong. She would never leave me in silence for that long.

I tried to call her, but there was no answer; all my calls went unanswered. I reached out to my parents, but they weren’t picking up either.

Panic began to tighten its grip around my heart.

I burst into the streets, my heart pounding so fiercely I thought it might shatter my ribs. I scoured every corner of the neighbourhood, calling out her name until my throat felt raw.

With no luck in finding her nearby, I decided to head to her friend’s house, which was on the next block.

But then, I caught sight of something in the distance.

A shimmer, like heat rising off asphalt, but larger. It enveloped half the block in a pulsing, circular haze.

Every instinct told me to stop, to turn back.

Yet my gut insisted she was there.

I ran, faster than I ever thought possible.

The closer I got, the more the world fell silent.

No cars. No dogs barking. No crickets chirping.

Just the sound of my footsteps and the thunder of my heartbeat in my ears.

Something was definitely wrong.

And then... I saw her.

Akia.

Face down on the pavement.

Motionless.

"AKIA!" I screamed, almost slipping as I dropped to my knees beside her.

Her skin was ice cold. Her eyelids were dark, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

But she wasn’t moving.

I shook her. I screamed louder. I begged. But nothing worked; she didn’t respond to me.

"AKIA!!!"

I called the police with trembling hands, sobbing so hard I could barely see the buttons.

They came. They took us both to the hospital.

I sat there in that waiting room, knees pulled to my chest, dialling my parents’ number over and over.

No answer.

When the doctor finally came out, one look at his face told me everything.

"I’m... sorry," he said softly. "There was nothing we could do."

Those words... they didn’t just hit me. They shattered me.

I screamed until my voice gave out.

"WHY?! WHERE ARE MY PARENTS?! WHO DID THIS TO HER?! WHY HER?!"

No one had answers; they didn’t have a clue what had happened.

I pressed my palms into my eyes, trying to block out the world, my foot tapping uncontrollably on the tile. Rage burned in my chest, with nowhere to go.

Then... they appeared.

A man and a woman. Not doctors. Not the police.

The man’s name... It’s fuzzy now. But his last name... Val or Vale. I believe.

He had this calm, controlled presence that made the chaos in my head even louder.

He crouched down beside me, his voice smooth, deliberate.

"What happened to your sister?" He said quietly, "Was not human. It was a creature... something this world needs to eradicate."

His face was serious, yet there was almost a smirk forming, as if he was sharing a secret he wasn’t supposed to. He reached into his inside pocket.

He pulled out a photo.

A woman. The image was blurry, distorted by static, but I could still make out the inhuman gleam in her eyes, the unnatural markings along her arms, and her clothing seemed blurred, but I could tell now that what she was wearing was her armour.

"That’s what killed your sister," He said with a dark tone.

And in that moment... All I wanted to know was why.

Why did that thing do it? Why kill my sister? What did she ever do to deserve such a horrible fate?

Vale and his secretary eventually left, leaving me sitting there alone in that freezing hospital hallway. Pondering the reasons on why this had to happen to Akia, my hands were shaking, my legs felt like they would give out... and still, I had no answers.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I ran home.

It was late, way past the time my parents should’ve been looking for me or Akia, but their phones never rang. They didn’t show up at the hospital. Nothing.

When I turned onto our street, my chest actually felt lighter for a moment; the lights were on, the car was in the driveway. Everything looked normal.

I thought... finally. I thought maybe they’d explain everything, that maybe this nightmare would make sense.

I remember bursting through the door, my voice erupting from my throat:

"MOM! DAD! WHERE WERE YOU?! WHY DIDN’T YOU ANSWER YOUR PHONES?!"

They were just... sitting there. Laughing. Talking. Like nothing in this world had shifted.

But then I screamed. Their faces shifted, morphed from delight to a mask of confusion. Concern etched lines on their brows, expressions no grieving parent would wear at the news of their daughter’s death.

"Kira, darling, what’s wrong?" my mom asked, her voice soft, almost patronising. "Sorry about the phone, we must’ve missed the calls. What happened?"

In that moment, something in me snapped. The sight of them, so nonchalantly enjoying their mundane lives while I was unravelling, ignited an inferno of rage.

"YOU’RE SITTING HERE LAUGHING WHILE MY SISTER, YOUR DAUGHTER, IS DEAD!"

My voice blasted through the walls, rattling the very foundation of the house, maybe even the whole neighbourhood. I trembled violently, every breath strained as I felt the world tilt beneath me.

And then...

They looked at each other, heads tilted, eyes flickering with cluelessness, then turned back to me.

And uttered words that curled like sharpened knives in my gut.

Eight words...

Words that shattered every piece of me.

More devastating than losing Akia could ever be.

"Kira... who’s your sister? You’re our only child."

Time froze. My stomach twisted into a vice, an icy dread clawing at my insides.

"W-what do you mean?" I stammered, my voice shrunk to a whisper.

My dad darted a glance at my mom, then back at me. Concern morphed into something more alarming, authentic dread.

"Kira, honey... I think you hit your head or something. Do you want us to take you to the hospital?"

They weren’t joking. Their eyes held a terrifying seriousness that cut deeper than any knife.

They truly didn’t remember Akia.

I screamed until my throat scorched, pouring everything into my words, how they raised her, the laughter we shared, the dreams we talked about together. I begged them to remember, to search their minds for the echoes of her name, how they spent every last yen to make her smile.

But they stared back at me, vacant, as if I were a ghost haunting them with hints of a life they couldn’t remember.

And so with nothing else I could say or do, I did the next best option that I thought I had at the time.

I ran.

I ended up at the park, sitting on the swings for hours. Trying to tell myself there had to be an explanation. Maybe grief broke their minds. Maybe they were too shocked to process what happened.

Just making up every excuse to be able to reason with my parents to be able to grieve with them.

Eventually, after cooling off, I walked back home, ready to apologise, ready to hear them out. Ready to try to solve why they didn’t remember her. Their own daughter. Their own flesh and blood.

As I turned into my street, I saw the lights were still on, and so I walked in. My footsteps echoed in the quiet air, a stark contrast to the chaos swirling inside my mind. The familiar scent of home enveloped me, but the warmth that usually greeted me felt hollow.

And once I looked inside, the answer to why warmth felt hollow became much more apparent.

They were gone.

Not gone as in they left.

Gone.

The lights were on. The TV still played. Food was half-eaten on the table. The car is still in the driveway. But my parents... vanished. As I stood in the doorway, a heaviness settled in my chest. With each step further into the house, memories flooded my mind, arguments that spiralled out of control, my sharp words piercing the air like daggers. I had shouted at them earlier, frustration bubbling over during what should have been a simple conversation. How could I have let my anger build to such a point? If I had just taken a moment to breathe, to listen, would it have ended like this?

But that didn’t change the fact that they were now gone.

Like they’d been erased from the world, just like Akia.

And now, it was just me.

No sister. No parents. No one.

I wanted to end it all that night.

I didn’t scream.

I couldn’t.

My voice was already broken, my heart shattered into millions of pieces, but there was one thing I could do.

I ran as fast as i could, tears running down my face, my heart racing, my mind had gone to a dark place.

Until I found myself standing on a bridge, staring down at the water, thinking maybe this pain would finally stop if I just... Jumped.

But then...

A boy appeared. He had short dark hair, and his eyes had a golden brown color to them.

"Hey, what are you doing? That’s dangerous,"

he said softly as he walked over to me. I didn’t answer him; I couldn’t. My voice wouldn’t work, and my tears wouldn’t allow me to muster any words. But his warmth and kindness were so strong, so endearing that I let him get close.

"Come on, please, whatever you do, please don’t jump. I’ll be sad,"

he said softly, standing just under me. He said those words, but the truth was he didn’t know me. I had never seen him in my life, and yet he cared enough to say that. He told me he’d be sad if I were to leave this world, and those words were enough to pull me back down.

We talked for a bit, and he let me share everything I was going through. Though it was hard at first, I managed to tell him my story. We sat on a park bench as he listened, and I could see tears flowing down his cheeks. A stranger, someone who had never met me before, shouldn’t have cared about my troubles, yet here he was, crying for me. It made me cry even harder.

Eventually, after what felt like hours of sharing my pain and him listening, he took me to the police station. "I want you to be happy and live life, okay? I know bad stuff happened to you, but I want you to know that I will always be thinking about you, alright?" he said, grabbing both my hands. His hands were warm, bigger than mine, and just as smooth. I nodded my head with a small smile as the police officer guided me inside.

he final image I had was him waving back at me with a bigger smile. "We’ll meet again!" he shouted before the door closed.

I could feel my heart racing as I turned to the person who’d saved me. His eyes were wide; I could see he was tearing up again just by listening to my story again. I slowly opened my mouth and softly said.

Kentaro... It was you.

The waves crashed louder than expected, and the wind blew just a tiny bit stronger.

Kentaro’s breath caught. "Me?..."

My voice trembled but didn’t falter.

"Yes, it was, I know. Your eyes... your voice... even your scent. Even the same way your tears dripped from your face. It’s the same as that night.

You saved me when the world had already ended. You stopped me from jumping.

And I swore that day... I’d never forget you."

Kentaro’s lips parted, but no sound came out. A faint, broken memory stirred somewhere deep inside, but it refused to surface.

"After that night," I said, my tone hardening again, "I swore I’d destroy the person, no, that thing, for what they did to Akia... And for what they did to my family.

And no matter what happens, Kentaro..."

I stepped closer, my usual flat voice cracking just enough to sound human again.

"My determination will never falter."

Kentaro swallowed, his voice low, almost a whisper.

"...If it really was me... if I was the one who saved you that night... then I’ll do it again."

I tilted my head and blinked.

"I’ll save you from this...This life that you don’t deserve," he paused for a brief moment. "I don’t care what it takes."

And for the briefest moment, something flickered in Kira’s eyes, a warmth, a question, maybe even hope, before the walls came back up and her expression returned to its flat calm...