The night was burning. Flames swallowed the horizon, and the distant thunder of bombs rolled like an angry drum across the sky.
I ran.
From our house, from our city that had turned into a graveyard of fear, I fled.
My family was behind me—I didn't even look back. I was the first to run.
My feet pounded against the dirt, my breath tearing out of my chest. My heart beat like it wanted to escape me too.
And then, suddenly, I stopped.
There—at the corner of a half-broken streetlight—stood a figure.
Ran Mouri.
Yes, that Ran, drawn straight from Detective Conan.
Her long black hair swayed in the smoky wind, her wide eyes calm yet unshaken by the chaos around us.
She looked at me.
And I froze.
It felt as though she had been waiting for me.
Without a word, she turned. I followed, like it was the only choice I had.
We walked together under the weight of the night, not knowing the road, not caring. Her presence was enough.
But then… without warning… she changed.
Her face blurred. Her form shifted.
She was no longer Ran.
Now, she was a stranger. A girl I had never seen before.
And yet… her eyes carried familiarity, as though she had always known me.
---
We found an empty house. Its windows were shattered, its silence heavier than the bombs outside. We slipped inside.
She whispered, "Let's take the back door."
There was a garage, its shadow deep and suffocating.
From it, a car rolled out.
She grabbed my arm, urgency in her voice: "We need to move—before they see us!"
But I… I hesitated.
The air froze in my lungs. Something inside me whispered: Don't run. Stay. Face it.
The car passed. We ducked into another ruined house.
We pressed our backs to a wall, waiting.
The silence cracked. She stepped forward, almost revealing herself.
I pulled her back—too late.
They had heard.
A man stepped in.
His footsteps were heavy, his presence colder than the night.
A gun gleamed in his hand.
And suddenly, as if born from fear itself, a gun appeared in mine. I didn't know how, or from where.
We faced each other. Two shadows, two weapons, two fates colliding.
He smirked. "Shoot," he said.
His voice wasn't a command. It was a challenge.
As though he knew I wouldn't dare.
My finger tightened on the trigger.
I pulled.
Click.
Nothing.
An empty shell of defiance.
He laughed.
His eyes spoke louder than his voice: I knew you couldn't.
Then, shockingly, he held out his weapon… and handed it to the girl beside me.
For a heartbeat, I thought it was still empty.
But when she raised it to me… and fired…
The bullet hissed past my cheek, close enough to kiss my skin.
The cold bite of metal and the echo of its scream tore me apart.
I didn't die.
But something inside me shattered.
---
The world shifted.
Suddenly, I was elsewhere. Another house. Another silence.
I gripped a phone, desperately searching. "4G… 4G…"
I needed to call. I needed to hear my sisters' voices.
I stumbled into a room—and there he was. The man. Again.
His eyes burned, his presence like a cage.
"Where's 4G?!" I demanded. My voice cracked with anger, with despair.
He only shrugged. "I don't know."
I asked again. Again.
Each time, he gave the same answer.
Finally, I shoved the phone into his hand. "Turn on the internet. I need to reach them."
He looked at me… and then, strangely, he obeyed.
His fingerprint unlocked the device.
The signal blinked to life.
And I called.
I spoke to them. I poured out words I couldn't remember later.
But for a moment, they were there. My sisters. My family. My blood.
---
End of Chapter One
His presence remained.
The man who had aimed death at me, the man whose eyes had held no mercy…
Now, there was something else.
Calm.
It was as if, after all the fear, all the silence, all the breaking…
he had opened a door for me.
The door to connection.
The door to speech.
The door to the tears I had never cried.
[Writer Afraa Ezzaldin]