Tokyo, 10:03 p.m.
The rain poured down as though the heavens themselves were weeping in her stead, the relentless drumming of droplets colliding against the wide glass windows of *Kozumi Art*—the manga publishing house where dreams were set aflame and sorrows etched in black ink.
Inside the ninth-floor office, the air was filled with the frantic scratching of pens, the ceaseless clatter of keyboards, and the empty coffee cups stacked beside glowing screens.
Amidst the chaos sat Kira Nozomi, her short black hair falling messily as she leaned over her desk. Her crimson eyes were no longer their natural hue—red now only from exhaustion… and from the tears she had long since learned to swallow in silence.
She drew without pause, her hand moving as if mechanical, while her heart swayed dangerously under the weight of despair.
Then came the sound of heels striking the floor.
Alia… the director.
She entered with steady steps, clad in a fitted skirt and sharp blazer, her brown hair tied neatly, her blood-red lips never once softening into a smile.
She stood behind Kira in silence for a few seconds, then spoke with an icy edge:
"Kira… is this supposed to be a page? Or a child's sketch from kindergarten?"
Kira said nothing, lowering her head further, her words cutting into her as cruelly as a dagger sliding through bare flesh.
Alia's voice rose, cold and unforgiving:
"You're slow. Lazy. And you draw as if you're crying instead of thinking. The entire team is waiting, and we're already three days behind because of you."
Her hand came down hard on Kira's sheet, tearing the page deliberately, cruelly.
"Start again. And this time, try to draw like an artist, not a victim."
A few muffled chuckles stirred in the room—cowardly laughter, unsure whether to side with Alia or to resist her.
Kira whispered softly:
"I'm sorry…"
Alia arched a brow, her tone dripping with mockery:
"Of course you are. That's all you ever say. Sorry… sorry… but apologies don't make a manga successful, Kira-chan."
With that, Alia turned on her heel, leaving behind a silence heavier than the rain outside.
Kira's eyes fell upon the torn paper.
It wasn't that she hated drawing.
She had loved manga since she was a child.
But here… in this daily inferno, drawing had ceased to be love—it had become a shackle.
She glanced out the window. The rain showed no sign of mercy.
It was as if the sky already knew what her eyes would one day witness.
For Kira hadn't always been like this.
Once, she laughed. Once, there was a faint light in her heart—one she clung to like a drowning soul grasping a lifeboat named love.
Ren…
The handsome young man who, like her, breathed manga into being.
They had met at an art exhibition, exchanged messages, then meetings… and promises.
She had loved him with a madness that made her forsake her family when they refused him.
They told her: "It won't last… He's not a man worthy of you."
But she believed in him—more than she ever believed in herself.
It was on an ordinary night, when she returned to the studio to retrieve a sketchbook she had forgotten in the drawing room.
She wasn't supposed to be there.
But she was.
Moving quietly, careful not to disturb anyone… she heard voices.
Laughter.
Whispers.
And something else—something far filthier.
She crept closer, to a half-open glass door…
And saw him.
Ren, bare-chested, kissing Alia with a hunger atop the very table they had shared only a week before.
Alia turned, catching sight of the doorway, and smiled—
the smile of victory.
Kira did not scream.
She did not collapse.
She merely… stopped breathing for a few seconds.
Then, she turned and walked away.
Out in the rain, she did not cry.
The sky wept for her instead.
In the days that followed, she never asked, never confronted.
She simply… dimmed.
When Alia began treating her like a servant, she remained silent.
When Ren began ignoring her altogether, she dared not lift her gaze toward him.
Kira became something else entirely—
as if her heart had shattered into a thousand fragments, each lodged in the corners of the office, watching her work like an automaton.
---
Midnight.
The editorial offices lay drowned in silence after a day in hell.
One by one, the lights flickered out, and even the coffee machine ceased its weary hum… as though it, too, had grown tired.
Kira closed the door softly, alone.
She pulled her small bag over her shoulder and stepped out into the unknown.
She hadn't brought her umbrella.
She hadn't cared to.
The rain drenched her shoulders, her black hair plastered against her face, her thin clothes clinging tightly to her fragile frame.
Each step was cold… aching…
Each breath escaped her lips like a sob long suppressed.
She pressed her hand to her face—
and wept.
Broken, uneven sobs, heard only by the heavens.
She lost track of the street, of the time…
until a sleek black car rolled to a quiet stop before her.
The window slid down, revealing a face she knew all too well.
Ren.
She froze, her eyes widening, inch by inch.
His expression shifted into feigned surprise:
"Kira?! What on earth… You're completely soaked! Get in, I'll take you home."
She hesitated, staring at him as though he were a ghost.
As though the past had clawed its way back to finish what it had begun.
He seized her hesitation, lowering his voice into that intimate whisper—
the old nickname that once drew a smile from her lips:
"Ko-chan… don't be stubborn."
Her lips trembled for the briefest moment… and then she opened the door.
She slid into the seat beside him, never once meeting his gaze.
Her eyes fixed on the window, watching the rain trace lines down the glass like the tears she refused to shed.
He drove in silence.
Until he broke it, casually:
"No umbrella, huh? The weather's insane tonight…"
She said nothing.
Then, suddenly, with an almost careless calm, he added:
"Oh—by the way, sorry I couldn't make it to the office today. I had a meeting with the chief editor about the new project."
He said it so lightly, as though he had forgotten everything.
Kira turned to him slowly.
She looked into his face, into those eyes that had betrayed her.
She knew the truth.
He had been with Alia.
She was the only one who had seen it with her own eyes, and no one had believed her.
And now here he was, lying… as though nothing had ever happened.
She smiled.
A quiet smile. Fractured. Bitter.
"Ah… I see. Best of luck with your new project, Ren-kun."
She spoke his name as she once used to—
but without warmth.
As though uttering a forgotten word scribbled in some old notebook.
Ren seemed not to notice, or pretended not to.
He drove on, while she stared straight ahead…
Not at the road, but at that former self of hers—
the one who had died in that glass-walled room.
---
Ren pulled up in silence before her apartment.
The street was cloaked in darkness, rain still cascading mercilessly, washing down the windshield as though it were scrubbing at her shattered heart.
Suddenly, he turned to her—his eyes locking onto her tear-stained crimson ones—and asked in a low voice:
"Kira… do you still… love me?"
A tender question.
Poison wrapped in velvet.
His warm voice was familiar, comforting—something her heart remembered all too well.
She did not answer at first.
Then she smiled…
A quiet smile. Frightened. False.
"Mm… of course."
She lied.
She lied because the truth was too cruel to voice.
She lied because she no longer knew what name to give the twisted corpse of her old love.
Ren leaned closer, emboldened…
Without warning, he drew her into his arms—
a cold embrace masquerading as warmth, crushing her heart between his hands.
He whispered hoarsely into her ear:
"I'm sorry… Sorry I ignored you, sorry I… stopped caring."
He spoke the words as if they were precious—
but they were hollow, stripped of soul.
And Kira… almost believed him.
Almost.
Then his hand rose to her face, cupping it tenderly.
He leaned in, so near his breath brushed her skin.
His gaze lingered on her eyes as though he had truly longed for her, and his lips tilted toward hers.
In that moment, time unraveled in her mind.
She saw Alia… sprawled across him.
She heard their laughter.
She remembered his mocking eyes.
She remembered the humiliation.
The loneliness.
The swallowed tears.
The pain.
Her heartbeat thundered as though she were sprinting.
Her breath broke into fragments.
Her chest heaved violently.
Her eyes widened in raw terror—
And she screamed.
A primal, guttural scream torn from the deepest abyss within her:
"NOOOOOO!!!"
Her hand moved without thought, plunging into her coat pocket, fingers closing around her inking pen—
And in one swift motion—
She drove it into his eye.
His scream tore through the night:
"AAAAHHH!! KIRA!!"
The pen sank deep.
Blood burst forth in a crimson fountain across her hands.
His eyes flared wide in terror.
Blood mingled with the rain.
He recoiled, clutching his face, shrieking—
but she did not wait.
She kicked him hard in the chest, slamming him against the opposite door.
The car door flew open and she bolted out, vanishing into the storm.
---
Kira ran as though the entire street were chasing her.
Her sobs came ragged, jagged—woven with fury, terror, and something new: liberation.
Her hair whipped in the wind, her drenched clothes clung to her skin, but this time…
something was different.
She screamed, her voice raw and burning:
"I'M NOT YOUR TOY ANYMORE!!!"
---
At the corner of a building, she collapsed to her knees.
She wept, and wept, and wept…
But for the first time,
they were not the tears of weakness.
They were the tears of someone beginning to reclaim herself.
---
And then…
Kira ran with the last breath left in her lungs.
Her heart pounded against her ribs like a war drum, while the rain struck her face in merciless slaps—blows from a life that knew no pity.
Every step was a stab into her feet,
until her ankle twisted suddenly and she crashed to the ground.
Her body hit the pavement, and she cried out:
"Aaah…!"
Her knees scraped raw against the asphalt.
Her hand bled, the rain washing the crimson away as though cleansing a living corpse.
But she did not stop.
She crawled.
Like a lost child, adrift, sobbing, calling out—
"Mama… Mamaaa… forgive me…"
Every tear escaped with broken breaths.
---
She reached the door of her apartment, barely clinging to herself.
Her trembling hands fumbled at the knob, twisting it open, collapsing inside.
The door shut behind her as she fell against it, her body unraveling entirely.
She sat there on the cold floor, gasping, sobbing, screaming without sound.
Her hands pressed against her face…
Her ragged sobs seemed to drag her very soul outward.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry, Mama… I'm sorry I failed you…
I'm sorry I went to him…
I'm sorry I never listened…"
She squeezed her eyes shut, striking her head lightly against the wall behind her:
"Stupid… stupid… stupid…"
---
In that moment…
she heard her mother's voice inside her head.
Warm, unreal—yet so present it was as if she were truly there.
"Kira… my daughter… enough."
Kira gasped, looking around, whispering:
"Mama…?"
But no one was there.
---
She tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling through a veil of tears:
"I'm sorry… You brought me home, but not the way you wished.
I'm not a successful artist…
Not a strong woman…
I'm nothing but wreckage."
---
She dragged herself into the corner of the room and curled in on herself.
She hugged her knees, and wept…
until there were no tears left to shed.
Outside, the rain went on.
But it was nothing compared to the storm raging inside her heart.
---
The tears had stopped.
Not because the pain had faded—
but because her body could no longer give anything more,
as though grief had drained every cell within her.
Kira sat in silence, her head tilted against her shoulder, staring at nothing.
The clock read 1:22 a.m.
Outside, the rain had eased, as if even the sky had grown weary of crying.
Her eyes wandered across her small apartment…
the empty corner where once she had kept her childhood paints,
the bookshelf filled only with work scripts she never loved,
the mirror in which she had never once smiled at herself.
She whispered softly to herself:
"I… never lived."
And then her mind began sketching a life that never belonged to her.
A little girl with black hair running through the yard, laughing.
Her mother holding her hand, buying her cotton candy from a cart.
Her father lifting her onto his shoulders.
Her sister scolding her for breaking a vase.
A lullaby sung to her at night…
A simple life.
Yet greater than everything she had ever known.
Her gaze dropped to the floor…
where an old kitchen knife lay, left from two days ago when she had used it to pry open a can.
Her hand reached for it—clumsily.
A wave of dizziness struck her.
Her fingers trembled.
She wrapped them around the knife, clutching it as though she were embracing it.
---
She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling.
And smiled faintly—honestly.
"If there's another world…
let me be a daughter her mother loves.
Let someone love me for real…
someone who would do the impossible for me…
someone who would keep me in his eyes forever…"
---
She pressed the blade against her chest.
Slowly at first. Then harder.
The steel sank into her heart, in silence.
Her breath caught.
Her eyes widened—then began to dim.
She let the knife fall, her body leaning against the wall,
warm blood spilling quietly, gently, as though it were setting her free.
And in her final moment…
she smiled.
A smile pure, peaceful, reconciled.
As though at last, she had found the child she had lost.
Her eyes then closed forever.
---
Outside, the world was silent.
The rain had stopped.
And the room was filled with eternal stillness…
as if the universe itself bowed in respect to her departure.