They say Tokyo never truly sleeps—but for me, it's always been about the moments when the city pretends to. The early dawns before the rush hour, the twilight between school and home, and the eerie calm of the last train cutting through quiet suburbs. That in-between time—when you feel like you're the only one awake—was the only time I felt like I actually existed.
My name is Kazuki. I'm seventeen. I live above a flower shop on the outskirts of Tokyo, in Akiruno, where the concrete finally gives way to hills and forests. The air smells cleaner there, like rain and soil instead of exhaust and sweat. I work downstairs in the shop after school. It's not glamorous, but it pays enough, and it gives me a roof over my head.
Yurika—the woman who owns the shop—isn't my mother, but she might as well be. My real parents died in a car accident when I was six. I don't remember the crash. I barely remember their faces. Just screams. Flashing lights. Then white walls in an orphanage where everything echoed too much.
Yurika adopted me a year later. She was just a florist with no kids of her own, but something in her eyes told me she saw something in me worth saving. I've been with her ever since. She never asked for anything in return. She gave me warmth, a home, and silence that didn't hurt. I repaid her by staying invisible.
I keep my head down at school. I'm not popular. I'm not bullied either. I existed in the quiet between notice and neglect. Like a chair in the back of a classroom. I listen, I nod, I pass exams. That's it.
But that day—everything changed.
It started like nothing. Regular classes, long stares at the chalkboard, the hum of fluorescent lights digging into my skull. I stayed late for supplementary physics. The teacher said I was "brilliant but distracted. " To me, it was living inside someone else's story.
By the time I left, the sun was gone. The sky was painted deep blue, and the towers of Shinjuku stood like black teeth against it. I took the train west, toward Akiruno, headphones in, the city blurring past like a memory dissolving in water.
As usual, I got off a few stops early and walked the rest of the way. There's a shortcut through the hills near Akigawa Valley—a wooded path that winds around a quiet stretch of forest. Locals say it's haunted, but they say that about every dark place kids dare each other to enter. For me, it was just quicker. I've walked it a hundred times.
But not like that night.
I was maybe ten minutes in, the gravel path crunching under my shoes, when the sky cracked open.
Not with thunder. Not with light.
With fire.
At first, I thought it was a shooting star—but it moved wrong. Too fast. Then too slow. Like it was fighting gravity. The light was red—not gold, not white—burning red like blood caught in a lightning strike. It screamed as it fell, but the scream wasn't sound. It was pressure. My ears rang, but not from noise. From presence.
It crashed into the forest, somewhere ahead.
My breath caught.
Something in me—the part that dreams when I'm awake—stood up and grabbed the reins.
I ran.
Branches slapped my arms. The forest, thick and ancient, swallowed me whole. Moonlight barely pierced the canopy. But the glow—red, pulsing, alive—led me deeper. The air thickened. Like something heavy had been dragged into the world and the trees were holding their breath.
Then I saw it.
A clearing that hadn't been there before.
Not a crater. No smoke. Just a perfect circle of flattened grass and bowed trees, all bending inward like supplicants around a shrine.
And in the center—
a floating shape.
Black. Shifting. Alive.
It wasn't rock. It wasn't metal. It hovered a foot above the ground, spinning slowly, covered in glowing red markings that moved like ink in water.
A rune.
The word came to me unbidden. It wasn't English. It wasn't Japanese. It was… older.
The thing pulsed.
And something inside me pulsed back.
My hand twitched.
I should've run. Any sane person would've. But sanity is a fragile thing, and that night it slipped from my fingers like mist.
I stepped forward. Reached out. My fingers brushed the rune.
And the world stopped.
There was no explosion. No blinding light. Just silence.
Then—
Pain.
It ripped through my arm, straight into my chest, down my spine. I couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. My vision fractured—red veins crawling through the corners of my sight. I dropped to my knees. My right arm felt like it was melting and freezing all at once.
Then I saw it.
My skin—
turning black. Not bruised. Not burned.
Black.
Like shadows had soaked into my flesh.
The lines spread, crawling from my fingertips up to my shoulder, elegant and jagged like forgotten glyphs pulsing with heat. My veins glowed faintly beneath the surface—red like the rune, pulsing in time with my racing heart.
My eye—my right eye—burned.
I clutched my chest. My breath came in broken gasps.
Then—silence again.
A whisper—not from the forest.
From within me.
A name. Or maybe a title.
Kaer.
I didn't know what it meant. But the moment I heard it, the pain stopped.
I collapsed to the ground, barely conscious. The rune vanished—absorbed, I think, into me. There was nothing left. No glow. No crater. Just the sound of my heartbeat and the chirping of insects, now daring to return.
My last thought before darkness took me:
For the first time in years, something beside silence breathed inside me.
I woke up in my bed.
Light leaked through the window. Morning. Birds. The smell of fresh lilies from downstairs.
Had it all been a dream?
I sat up.
Pain lanced through my shoulder. My right arm felt heavy. I peeled off my shirt and stared.
There it was.
Black markings, faint now, like a tattoo etched by some forgotten god. Elegant. Angular. Impossible.
Reality didn't let me wake up.
I touched the marks. They felt like skin. Real. Warm. Mine.
Someone knocked.
"Kazuki? Are you up, dear? " Yurika's voice, muffled but warm.
I pulled on a hoodie. "Yeah, I'm coming. "
I stumbled downstairs, the scent of flowers hitting me like a wall. Roses. Lavender. Morning dew on green leaves. The shop looked the same as always—sunlight filtering through the glass, illuminating petals like stained glass in a cathedral.
Yurika stood behind the counter, arranging chrysanthemums. Her auburn hair was tied in a messy bun, and her apron had smudges of pollen and soil.
She smiled when she saw me. "Rough night? "
"You have no idea, " I muttered.
She handed me a warm bun wrapped in a napkin. "Eat. You look like a ghost. "
I nodded and bit into it. Sweet. Soft. Real.
I wanted to ask her if she saw anything strange last night. Heard anything. Felt anything. But how could I? What would I say?
"Hey, did you notice a god explode into my bloodstream? "
Yeah. No.
I spent the rest of the morning in a daze.
I swept floors. Trimmed stems. Arranged vases. I even delivered a bouquet to an elderly woman two blocks down. She said I had kind eyes. I nearly laughed. If only she knew what was burning behind them.
But nothing seemed off. The world remained indifferent. Unchanged. But I wasn't. No military lockdown. No breaking news.
Just me.
Just me with a cursed—or blessed? —arm and a name I couldn't forget.
Kaer.
Who was he?
What was he?
The runes didn't feel evil. They didn't hurt anymore. But they felt… alive. Like my arm wasn't just marked. It was watching. Breathing.
That evening, I walked to school again. I wanted to retrace my steps. Make sure it hadn't been some elaborate hallucination.
The forest was still. Too still. The clearing was gone—completely overgrown, as if nothing had happened.
But the pressure in my chest said otherwise.
I knelt and pressed my hand to the earth.
It pulsed—once.
Yeah.
It was real.
Monday came.
School resumed. Same uniforms. Same bells. Same apathetic teachers reciting formulas no one cared about.
But I was different.
I kept my hoodie on. Covered my arm. Kept my head down more than usual. I wasn't scared someone would see the marks.
I was scared they'd feel them—like I did.
I walked the halls like a ghost. I listened without hearing. Spoke without meaning. Something inside me buzzed constantly. Power? Instinct? A ticking bomb?
Only one thing broke through the noise.
Her.
Aoi.
She sat two rows ahead in literature. Black hair like ink spilled across her shoulders. Eyes like autumn dusk. She wasn't the most popular girl—just the most… real.
I'd seen her around for years. We were in the same school, but different worlds. I'd never spoken to her. She probably didn't even know my name.
But that day, she turned. Just slightly. Like she sensed something.
Our eyes met—for half a second.
My heart stuttered.
Then she looked away.
I felt heat rise in my cheeks.
Great. Now I was a cursed freak with a schoolboy crush. Classic.
Still, something in that glance felt… wrong. Not bad. Just off.
Did she see something?
Did she feel it?
Was she like me?
I shook the thought.
No.
This was my nightmare.
No one else needed to be dragged into it.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I kept staring at my arm under the covers. The markings seemed brighter in the dark. Not glowing—just… deeper. Like ink that remembered how it was written.
Then I heard it.
A sound. Faint. Like static mixed with a heartbeat.
I sat up.
Looked out the window.
The street was empty.
But the forest beyond the shops—the same path I took days ago—was glowing faintly red.
I didn't even think. Just grabbed my jacket and ran.
The air was cold.
The streets silent.
My breath came out in clouds as I sprinted toward the edge of the city. Toward the trees.
Toward it.
The same clearing. The same pressure in my chest.
But this time—it wasn't just the rune.
It was something else.
Something waiting.
And I wasn't alone.
From the shadows—something moved.
Tall.
Thin.
Wrong.
It stepped into the clearing like it had been born from the forest's hatred.
Skin like cracked obsidian. Eyes glowing white-hot. No mouth. No nose. Just a jagged shape, human but not. Long claws. And a low hum that made the trees shiver.
A monster.
My blood turned to ice.
Class: C+ Aberration. I didn't know how I knew—but I did.
The name came to me like instinct.
And it had seen me.
I froze.
It screamed—without sound. The forest bent with it. Then it charged.
I should've run.
Instead, my body moved.
My arm—my cursed arm—ignited.
Black tendrils surged from my veins, crawling up my neck, my cheek, my ribs.
My right eye burned red.
And I dodged.
Faster than I'd ever moved.
It swiped. I ducked. It spun—I leapt back.
My hand extended—and shadows burst from my palm like a whip.
They slammed into its chest, knocking it back ten feet.
What the hell was that?
I didn't know.
But I knew it was mine.
The monster hissed, staggered, then came again.
Faster.
Angrier.
I jumped aside, rolled, and let the darkness take over.
My fingers extended—no, transformed—into claws of ink and fire.
I slashed.
The thing screamed. Real sound this time.
It staggered.
I pressed the attack.
One. Two. Three strikes.
It collapsed.
Melting into ash.
Gone.
I stood there, panting.
Sweating.
Alive.
My hand trembled.
The markings dimmed.
My eye faded back to normal.
The forest fell silent again.
But not empty.
I turned.
At the edge of the trees—
Someone stood there.
Watching.
She didn't move.
Didn't run.
Just stared.
Aoi.
Her eyes wide. Her breath caught.
She had followed me.
Why? How?
I opened my mouth—but no sound came.
I stepped forward—
She stepped back.
The fear in her eyes was real. Not disgust. Not horror.
Just… uncertainty.
Then—
"I saw you, " she whispered. "Back there… you…"
I froze.
She knew.
She had seen everything.
The shadows. The eye. The monster. Me.
"I—" I tried, but words failed.
She looked down. Her hands clenched at her sides.
Then she did something I didn't expect.
She stepped forward.
And whispered, "You saved me. "
I blinked.
"What? "
"There was another one. Behind you. I was on the path… I saw it coming for you. But you… you stopped it. "
I hadn't even noticed.
My heart thundered.
She looked up at me again—this time, not with fear. But with… something else.
Recognition.
"Who… are you? " she asked, quietly.
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know anymore.
Later that night, I sat on the rooftop above the flower shop.
The city lights flickered in the distance.
The stars above looked farther than ever.
My arm, still marked, pulsed gently.
My thoughts tangled in silence.
I was Kazuki.
Seventeen.
Alone.
Alive.
Marked by something ancient.
Changed by something divine.
And now—seen by someone real.
Aoi.
Maybe the world hadn't changed.
But I had.
And there was no going back.
To be continued…