The silence in the empty house was deafening.
Ishiki knelt on the worn floorboards, his arms still curled around a space that was now just air. His tears had already stopped—not because the pain had faded, but because he was simply empty. There was nothing left to cry.
The whole house trembled as more and more violent tremors ran through the island.
For minutes Ishiki just sat there—His blue eyes were staring at something that no one could see. His mind was a blank slate, scrubbed clean by grief.
The tremors shaking the island felt distant and completely irrelevant to him.
Let the house fall. Let the island break into thousand parts. What was the point of surviving if the reason for his survival was gone?
Why was his fate so cruel? What had he done to deserve something like this? Why couldn't his mother be actually alive? What had she done to die that day?
