RATED: MA18+ | Trigger Warnings: Blood and gore, death and suicide, psychological trauma, graphic violence
The notification came at 11:34 PM on a Thursday that smelled like antiseptic and lies.
Seishin Hōrō-sha—age seven, small for his age, already learning that the world was designed to break people like him that often—sat in his grandparents' living room staring at a television he wasn't watching. Cartoons played. Characters laughed. None of it registered.
His grandfather—Hiroshi, seventy-three, hands gnarled from factory work, eyes soft with the kind of sadness that came from watching your daughter die slowly—sat beside him. Just present. Existing in the same space where grief lived.
The phone rang. Sharp. Intrusive. Hiroshi stood slowly, joints protesting, and answered with a voice that already knew what was coming. "Yes. I understand. Thank you for calling."
He hung up. Stood there holding the receiver like it weighed more than physics allowed. Then he turned to Seishin with an expression that tried to be strong but crumbled at the edges.
"Seishin. Your mother, Akane—she's... she passed away. A few minutes ago. The hospital just called."
Seishin stared at his grandfather. Processed the words. Understood them intellectually but couldn't connect them to emotion. His mother was dead. The person he'd been taken away from three months ago to "spare him the trauma" of watching her die was now gone.
He felt nothing. Or everything. Or something in between that his seven-year-old slef couldn't categorize. "Can I see her?" he asked quietly.
Hiroshi's face crumpled. "No, sweety. Your father—he thinks it's better if you don't. If you remember her the way she was before the sickness. Not... not how she looks now."
"I want to see her."
"I know. But sometimes what we want and what happens aren't the same thing." Seishin turned back to the television. Cartoons still playing. Characters still laughing. The world continuing like his mother hadn't just stopped existing.
"Where are Daiki and Hana and Kaito and everyone?" he asked. His siblings. The family he'd been separated from. The ones who'd stayed with their father while he was sent away.
"They're with your father. At the hospital. They... they got to say goodbye."
The words landed like physical blows. They got to say goodbye. His siblings—the ones he'd promised to protect, the ones who'd promised to stay together—had been there. Had held their mother's hand. Had heard her final words. Had been family in the moment that mattered most.
And Seishin had been here. Watching cartoons. Eating dinner his grandmother made. Safe from trauma. Protected from reality. Alone. "Why wasn't I there?" His voice was small. breaking.
Hiroshi knelt before him—slowly, painfully, old knees protesting. "Because your father thought it would be too hard for you. You're the youngest who would really understand. He wanted to protect you."
"I don't want to be protected. I want to be with them." "I know, sweety. I know."
But knowing didn't change anything. Didn't bring his mother back. Didn't let him say goodbye. Didn't erase the fact that his family had been together in their greatest moment of need and he'd been absent.
The responsible sibling. The one who'd promised to protect everyone. Missing when it mattered most.
THREE WEEKS LATER
The funeral was small. Cheap. His father—Takeshi Hōrō-sha, thirty-four, exhausted, drowning in medical debt and grief—couldn't afford much. Akane's casket was plain pine. No flowers except what the grandparents brought.
Daiki—nine now, eyes red from crying—stared at Seishin with an expression that wasn't quite anger but wasn't quite understanding either. Hana—five, clutching their father's hand—looked at him like he was a stranger. Kaito, Yukimira, Mei-Suke, Rikunuke, Sorana—all of them standing together. Family. United in grief.
And Seishin. Separate. The one who hadn't been there.
After the ceremony, his father approached. Takeshi looked like he'd aged a decade in three months. Grey threading through his hair. Lines carving deep around his eyes. The weight of eight kids and a dead wife crushing him into someone barely recognizable.
"Seishin," he said quietly. "Thank you for coming." Thank you for coming. Like Seishin was a guest at his own mother's funeral. Like he'd had a choice. "I wanted to be there," Seishin said. "When she died. I wanted to say goodbye."
Takeshi's jaw tightened. "I know. But it was better this way. You don't need those memories. Trust me." "Daiki got to be there. Everyone got to be there except me."
"Daiki is older. He can handle it. You're—you're still so young. I was protecting you." "I don't want protection. I want my family." The words hung between them. Heavy. Accusatory. True.
Takeshi looked away. "You'll come home next week. Your grandparents—they've done enough. I can manage now. We'll be together again."
But even as he said it, Seishin could see the lie. Could see his father calculating—eight kids, one income, medical debt that would follow them for decades. Could see the moment his father decided that "managing" meant surviving, not thriving.
SIX MONTHS LATER - THE GRANDPARENTS' DEATH
Age seven turning eight. The year everything collapsed.
Seishin had been back home for three months when the call came. Car accident. His grandparents—driving home from the market, buying groceries to bring to the struggling Hōrō-sha household—hit by a drunk driver. Dead on impact. Both of them.
The funeral was even smaller than his mother's. Fewer people. Less ceremony. Just the grinding machinery of death.
Seishin stood with his siblings this time. But the distance remained. Invisible but absolute. They blamed him. Never said it directly. Didn't need to. He could see it in the way they looked at him. In the way they stood just far enough away. In the way they whispered when they thought he couldn't hear. Bonds already broken from blame.
"He wasn't even there when Mama died." "He was safe with the grandparents while we had to watch her suffer." "He promised to protect us and he wasn't there when we needed him most."
The accusations built architecture around him. Walls of resentment. Foundations of betrayal. He'd broken his promise through circumstance beyond his control.
Daiki pulled him aside after the funeral. His older brother—the one who used to share his futon, who used to protect him from nightmares—looked at him with eyes that held nothing warm.
"The grandparents left some money," Daiki said. "For all of us. But Dad needs it. For bills. For keeping us together." Seishin nodded. Understanding.
"Mama's death—it broke everything. And you weren't there. We had to hold each other while she died and you were safe somewhere else. Do you understand how that felt?"
"I didn't choose that. They sent me away." "I know. But it doesn't change anything. We needed you and you weren't there. The responsible sibling. The protector. Absent when it mattered."
The words cut deeper than any physical wound. Seishin wanted to scream that it wasn't his fault. That he'd begged to be there. That he'd cried himself to sleep every night at his grandparents' house knowing his family was suffering without him.
But what came out was: "I'm sorry." Daiki's expression didn't soften. "Yeah. We're all sorry. Doesn't change anything." He walked away. Left Seishin standing alone in the funeral home parking lot, surrounded by family who no longer felt like family.
TWO YEARS LATER - AGE NINE
Their father met Yumiko at a community center. Single. Struggling. Dreaming of the family she'd never had. And eventually became the new mother of their family.
She was wrong. But she didn't know that yet. Takeshi needed help. Yumiko needed meaning. The family needed more stability. Everyone needed something no one could provide. So everything moved forward.
For six months, it almost worked. Yumiko tried. Cooked meals. Helped with homework. Attempted her dream of being a parent through the sheer force of will. The children resisted—she wasn't Akane, would never be Akane—but they tolerated her anyway.
Then she met Kagura. Kagura Otonashi—forty, charismatic, employed, everything Takeshi wasn't. And somebody she saw as a healthier and a better person in her eyes.
The betrayal of Takeshi's marriage lasted three months before Takeshi found out. The divorce was quick. Brutal. Takeshi got nothing—no money, no support, just the children and the debt.
He died six months later. Heart attack. Thirty-six years old. Stress and grief and the weight of everything crushing his body system until it gave up. The children were orphaned. All eight of them. Scattered to the wind like seeds from a dying plant.
Foster care came calling. But Yumiko—wracked with guilt, desperate to prove she could be the mother she'd failed to be—wanted to adopt them. The courts, overwhelmed and understaffed, agreed.
She married Kagura. Brought eight traumatized kids into a family built on betrayal and guilt. Believed love could fix damage she'd helped create. It couldn't.
PRESENT DAY - AGE THIRTEEN
Seishin sat in his room of their apartment, door locked, cold tile against his back. Blood dripped from fresh cuts on his arms—self-inflicted, shallow, just enough to feel something physical instead of emotional.
The bullying at school had intensified after yesterday's rooftop incident. Takeshi and his friends had spread the video—Seishin crying, Seishin bleeding, Seishin refusing to jump. The comments were predictable: "Attention idiot. Coward. Should have done it. What a looser."
But worse than the bullying was coming home. Coming back to this apartment where Yumiko drank and screamed and blamed. Where his siblings existed as ghosts of who they used to be. Where every surface held memories of promises broken and family destroyed.
A knock on the slightly overall broken bedroom door. Soft. Hesitant. "Seishin?" Hana's voice. His younger sister. Still here. Twelve now. The only one who sometimes looked at him like he was still her brother.
"I'm fine," he called back. "You're not fine. I can see blood under the door." He looked down. Red pooling on wooden tile. Seeping under the door gap. Evidence of his inability to cope with existence.
"Just go away, Hana."
"I can't. I'm the only one who still cares and even I'm—" Her voice broke. "Even I'm starting to hate you and I don't want to but everyone else does and it's easier to join them than to keep defending you."
The honesty hurt worse than the cuts. Seishin pressed his head against the wall, feeling it cool against his skin as he saw the cuts in his bedroom mirror. "I know," he said quietly. "I know you all hate me. I wasn't there when Mama died. I broke my promise. I'm the reason everything fell apart."
"That's not—" Hana stopped. Because maybe it was true. Maybe in the twisted logic of their traumatized family trying to make sense of chaos, his absence had become the catalyst. The crack that let everything else break.
"Daiki says you're selfish," she continued. "Says you always were. That you let the grandparents take you away because you were scared. That you chose safety over family."
"I was seven. I didn't choose anything."
"I know. But they need someone to blame and you're the easiest target because you weren't there. Because you didn't see her die. Because you got protected and we didn't."
Seishin laughed—bitter, broken sound that echoed off tile. "Protected. Yeah. I was protected from saying goodbye to my mother. Protected from being with my family when it mattered. Protected into being the outsider everyone hates."
Silence. Then: "I don't hate you. Not really. But I'm tired of being the only one who doesn't. It's exhausting defending you when everyone else—" "Then stop," Seishin interrupted. "Stop defending me. Join them. Make it easier on yourself. I'm not worth the effort."
"Don't say that."
"Why not? It's true. Mama died because I wasn't there to—to what? To make it better? To say the right words? I don't know. But everyone believes it's my fault somehow. That my absence broke everything."
"It's not your fault." "Then whose fault is it?"
No answer. Because there was no good answer. Their mother had died of cancer. Their father had died of a broken heart. The grandparents had died in an accident. Yumiko and Kagura had destroyed what remained through their own selfishness and violence.
But humans need someone to blame. And Seishin—absent during the crucial moment, protected when others suffered, the promised protector who'd failed—was convenient.
"I have to go," Hana whispered. "Yumiko's calling for dinner. If I'm late she'll—you know." "Yeah. I know." Footsteps retreating. Seishin left alone with his cuts and his guilt and the crushing weight of promises he'd never had the power to keep.
He cleaned the blood mechanically. Bandaged the cuts with practiced efficiency. Stared at his reflection—thirteen years old, eyes too old, carrying weight that would eventually kill him.
Two more years. Though he didn't know it yet. Two more years of this before the truck. Before death. Before decades of wandering as a spirit unable to ascend because his life had held no purpose, no meaning, nothing worth remembering except failure.
But tonight, he didn't know about trucks or spirits or Ritchi Utsu. Tonight he only knew this: his mother had died reaching for hands he hadn't been there to hold. His siblings blamed him for absence he couldn't control. His family had shattered around the empty space where he should have been.
And maybe—maybe they were right. Maybe if he'd been there. Maybe if he'd fought harder to stay. Maybe if he'd been the protector he'd promised to be instead of the scared seven-year-old who let his grandparents take him away.
Maybe everything would have been different.
Or maybe it would have ended the same way. With him alone in a bedroom that was half broken, cutting himself to feel something other than the vast emptiness where family used to live.
He unlocked the door. Stepped out. Walked to the kitchen where Yumiko had laid out dinner—rice, miso soup, pickled vegetables. Cheap. Barely enough. The remaining siblings sat around the table not looking at each other. Not talking. Just eating mechanically. Surviving.
Seishin took his bowl. Sat at the edge. The outsider. The blamed. The one who'd broken everything through the sin of absence.
Yumiko watched him with eyes that held barely contained rage. "You're bleeding through your sleeve," she observed. Not with concern. With accusation.
"I fell," he lied.
"You're always falling. Always getting hurt. Always causing problems." She took a drink—sake, already half-gone. "Your father died and left me with this mess. Eight broken children. And you—you're the worst. The one who wasn't even there when she needed you."
The siblings said nothing. Didn't defend him. Their silence was agreement.
Seishin ate his rice. Tasted nothing. Felt the cuts on his arms throb beneath bandages. Felt the weight of collective blame pressing down until breathing felt like drowning.
Outside, rain began to fall. Soft at first. Then harder. Thunder rolling in the distance. The storm that would define his existence—witness to everything, washing nothing clean.
He finished eating. Cleaned his bowl. Went to his corner—the futon in the room he used to share with siblings who now avoided him. Lay down. Listened to rain and distant arguing and the ambient sound of a family destroying itself one day at a time.
Tomorrow would bring more bullying. More cuts. More blame. More weight.
But tomorrow wasn't here yet. Tonight was just rain and guilt and the terrible knowledge that his mother had died reaching for a son who hadn't been there to hold her hand.
He closed his eyes. Didn't sleep. Just existed in the space between consciousness and escape, drowning in rain that fell inside and outside his body.
He carried the weight of promises he could never keep and the burden of an absence he had no power to undo. The guilt followed him everywhere, a shadow that felt like it would cling to him even beyond death. He was always alone—most painfully when surrounded by family who had decided he was the reason everything had fallen apart.
They blamed him so completely that he was given that bedroom on his own for all the wrong reasons, while his siblings were pushed out of the room and left to sleep in the lounge beside their drunk mother. It was their way of reminding him, every night, how deeply they held him responsible for overall everything.
The rain continued. Seishin lay awake. And somewhere in the future, a five-year-old kid named Ritchi Utsu was being locked in a dark closet for failing to be perfect.
Their fates pulling together like gravity. Like purpose. Like the only meaning either of them would ever find. But not yet. Not tonight. Tonight was just weight and rain and the slow suffocation of existing as the scapegoat for grief too vast to process.
Tomorrow the bullying would worsen. The cuts would deepen. The family would fracture further. Until two years from now when Seishin would walk into traffic and finally, mercifully, escape.
Or so he would think. Not knowing that death was just another form of imprisonment. Another way to carry weight. Another rain-soaked existence alone.
The promise he'd made at six years old—to protect his siblings, to keep them together—echoed in his mind as he lay awake in darkness. He'd failed. Failed completely. And they would never forgive him for being absent in their moment of greatest need.
Even though he was seven. Even though he'd had no choice. Even though he'd begged to be there.
None of it mattered. Blame didn't require fairness. Grief didn't require logic. And family—family like his could turn on you faster than anything when they needed somewhere to put their pain.
Seishin pulled his thin blanket closer. Shivered. Waited for dawn. Waited for anything. Waited alone in the darkness, drowning in rain and guilt and the crushing weight of promises he'd never had the power to keep.
The rain never stopped. Neither did the blame.
TO BE CONTINUED... Next Episode: "見えない傷" (Mienai Kizu - Invisible Wounds)