This "accident" came so suddenly and cruelly, like a heavy hammer strike without warning, ruthlessly shattering the only world the boy had left. A horrific car crash had easily taken away his last remaining relative in this world.
He, who should have been in class at school, rushed to the hospital in a daze after receiving the call. His expression was numb, and his heart was the eye of a blank storm; he even suspected that all of this was just an overly realistic nightmare from which he would wake up the next second.
A heavy-faced police officer approached him and confirmed his identity: "Excuse me, are you a family member of Mr. Kuchiba Ta?"
Kuchiba Hiro nodded stiffly, like a marionette.
The officer took off his hat, holding it in his palm, his tone somber and cautious: "I'm sorry... the deceased's body... because the impact was too violent, facial recognition is difficult. We need your assistance to confirm. But..." He paused, his voice dropping lower, "The condition of the body is not very good. I hope you... are mentally prepared. If you cannot handle it, we can use other methods..."
Kuchiba Hiro's lips trembled uncontrollably, and his breathing became rapid and erratic, but he finally squeezed out three words from deep in his throat with a resolute tremor: "I want to see."
The officer sighed silently and led the way, taking him to the cold and silent morgue in the hospital basement.
The lights in the morgue were a sickly white, making one's eyes ache. They walked into the autopsy room. On the stainless steel autopsy table in the center lay a white cloth stained with large, irregular marks of dark red blood. The outline traced under the white cloth was fragmented, almost unrecognizable as human.
Kuchiba Hiro stood frozen by the table, as if nailed to the spot. His hand rose and fell; he simply didn't have the courage to lift that cloth. He didn't dare imagine what kind of shattered scene was hidden beneath.
In this moment of extreme fear and grief, an incredibly clear, even warm memory abruptly crashed into his mind—
It was when he was young, and his father took him out to play. He was still very lively then, full of curiosity about the world.
Once, passing by a tattoo parlor, he thought those designs were cool and pestered his father to let him try. His father patiently told him that tattoos often brought unnecessary prejudice.
But he compromised with a bit of cleverness: "Then just one dot, the smallest kind, I just want to feel it!"
His father was amused by his logic—being both cowardly and playful—and was helplessly indulgent.
In the end, the father and son actually walked into the tattoo parlor together. He got an almost invisible tiny dot tattooed below his collarbone, while his father, who was even more of a "coward," had that dot tattooed where no one could see—on the sole of his foot.
This memory was like a key, instantly opening the floodgates of his emotions.
Kuchiba Hiro didn't lift the white cloth over the upper body. Instead, with trembling hands, he slowly lifted the lower part. He moved with extreme slowness and difficulty, pulling off the sock on the body's left foot—
On the sole of the foot, a tiny but clear black dot sat there quietly.
It was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
The immense grief that had been suppressed, numbed, and unspoken until now suddenly burst through the dam at this moment.
Kuchiba Hiro didn't like to talk and rarely showed his feelings in front of outsiders, except for his father. But at this moment, he could no longer maintain any composure.
He suddenly collapsed to his knees and wailed, crying uncontrollably and heart-wrenchingly, as if he were going to vomit out his very organs.
In the cold morgue, only the boy's cries of ultimate despair remained.
At night, holding his father's cold urn and a few meager belongings, he returned to the home that had suddenly become empty and deathly silent.
Holding the urn, he sat motionless in the study where his father used to spend most of his time, like a frozen sculpture, for the entire night.
It wasn't until the next morning that a slight movement temporarily pulled him out of the abyss of numbness.
A crow with glossy black feathers, carrying a folded 10,000 yen bill in its beak, flew in through the open window and landed lightly on the dusty desk.
It opened its beak, and the bill fell in front of Kuchiba Hiro. The crow tilted its head, looking at him with its pitch-black beady eyes, and let out a few "caws" that weren't noisy, but rather somewhat low.
Kuchiba Hiro's hollow eyes finally found a point of focus. He slowly set down the urn in his arms. Because he had stayed up all night crying, his voice was terribly raspy, yet he still whispered to the crow:
"...Thank you for your concern."
Then, he stood up, went to the refrigerator, took out some fresh meat, carefully cut it into thin strips, and quietly hosted this rare and extraordinary "friend" in his life.
The images on the light screen—from the heart-wrenching wailing in the morgue to the deathly vigil in the study, and then to that pitch-black crow strangely flying in with a 10,000 yen bill—every detail was presented with absolute precision before the countless eyes looking up at the sky across the globe.
Initially, when they saw the boy confirming his father's identity and breaking down in tears, suppressed sighs and sympathetic whispers echoed around the world. The pain of losing a loved one was enough to cross cultures and regions, triggering the most primal empathy.
However, when that crow appeared, the pervasive atmosphere of sadness was instantly replaced by shock and wonder.
"Is that a crow?"
"What is it carrying in its mouth? It looks like... money? A Fukuzawa Yukichi?!"
"He's talking to the crow?! He even thanked it?!"
After a brief silence, various discussions erupted like a tide. If the bloody and tragic past before could still be understood as "future possibilities" or "personal misfortune," then this scene before them, which defied common sense, truly touched the boundaries of their cognition.
"A crow bringing money? That must be trained!" In a school, a boy analyzed with conviction, trying to explain everything with science. "That crow is definitely his pet!"
Someone nearby immediately nodded in agreement. "Exactly! I've heard crows are very smart; they can indeed do many things with training. Bringing back money isn't too far-fetched." Despite saying this, his tone carried a strong sense of uncertainty.
Another girl looked at the image on the light screen of Kuchiba Hiro raspily thanking the bird and then silently cutting meat to feed it. Her eyes were filled with complex emotions—sympathy, but also a self-comforting interpretation: "Could it be because he's been lonely for so long that he treats a trained crow as a friend he can confide in? Maybe... he even imagined that it could understand and care about him?"
She paused, her voice dropping, filled with a trace of pity: "He's really so pitiful. That's not a superpower; it's just... a hallucination born of extreme loneliness and self-delusion, right?"
This viewpoint was shared by a significant number of people. Rather than accepting the world-shaking possibility of "supernatural powers," people preferred to believe in a story of a "lonely boy and his clever pet." This seemed "normal" and fell within their range of understanding.
"While I can't rule out the possibility of real superpowers, this is just too absurd! It's probably just that this bird is special."
"Being able to train a crow to this extent is pretty impressive."
"Sigh, in the end, he's just a poor soul, pushed to this point."
However, not everyone thought this way. Those hidden among the crowd who knew the other side of the world—whether researchers from certain special agencies or beings who themselves possessed strange powers—their gazes became incredibly sharp.
Although they weren't sure if it was simple animal training, the fact that he was the protagonist on this light screen already indicated that he was not simple.
The extraordinary intelligence in the crow's eyes, and Kuchiba Hiro's attitude of naturally accepting and responding as if he were already used to it... all of this pointed to a startling possibility:
This boy named Kuchiba Hiro might have already established some deep connection with forces that cannot be explained by common sense long before his father's death.
In the back row of the classroom, Kuchiba Hiro could clearly hear his classmates whispering words like "pet," "training," "pitiful," and "hallucination." He remained silent, his gaze never leaving the light screen...