The rest of the day passed in a slightly chaotic blur.
Neither Kazuo nor I were used to having other people around, helping us with all of this. We kept hesitating, trying to come up with tasks, deciding who should do what, and getting lost in the process, because neither of us really knew what needed to be done anymore. Eventually, we agreed on one simple thing: we were gathering everything that could now be considered trash. Everything burned, broken, unusable. We couldn't simply carry it somewhere and leave it. Obviously, there were places and procedures for that. Anton said he'd take care of it.
It wasn't an easy day.
When Anton and Erica finally left, Kazuo came up behind me, gave me a light pat on the back, and said, "We should probably call it a day. It was getting too cold."
He was right. With no walls left, we'd essentially been standing outside the entire time. My ears ached from the cold. Still, I was strangely grateful for it. The cold seemed to have chased away most of the onlookers. Even when someone did show up, they never stayed long.
Kazuo stared somewhere deep into the remains of the bar.
"Today was a bit livelier," he said. "Less… bleak. Don't you think?"
I nodded.
"Hey," he said suddenly. "Look what I found."
He pulled out a half-charred piece of wood. I stared at it for a moment before it registered.
"It's our sign," I said quietly.
"Yeah," he replied, smiling faintly. "Hard to believe, right? It even survived enough to read."
"The Little Night," I said aloud. "I'd always liked the name."
"So did I," Kazuo said.
"Why did you choose it, anyway?" I asked quietly.
He blinked, clearly surprised. "What?"
"The name," I clarified, nodding toward the charred sign. "The Little Night. Why that one?"
Kazuo went still for a second. Then he let out a short breath, almost a laugh, though there was no humor in it.
"I never told you?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No. I guess I never asked."
"Huh." He tilted his head slightly, thinking. "That is kind of strange, isn't it?"
He looked back at the sign, his expression softening.
"Mom used to call my little sister my little night," he continued. "She was always wide awake in the evenings. Full of energy. Laughing, running around, clinging to mom. Sometimes I thought she was afraid someone would take our mom away if she let go." A faint smile crossed his face, fleeting and tired. "I thought it was a stupid nickname," he admitted. "Didn't get it at all. But my mom said it fit her perfectly."
I swallowed. "You never told me you have a sister."
Kazuo nodded slowly. "I had..."
He went quiet after that, staring at the ruins in front of us.
After a moment, he added, "I wanted the bar to feel warm. Alive at night. Like she was."
I realized I had never asked him about his family. Not once. I didn't know anything about him, not about his mother, not about his father, not even whether he had siblings. Nothing. How could I call him my family when I didn't know any of this?
I'd been a bad friend, too wrapped up in my own pain, my own losses, my own wounds to notice that he carried his own. I wanted to ask everything at once. What happened. When. Why. Where they were now. But the words stuck in my throat. Asking now was admitting how little I knew, confessing that I hadn't cared enough before.
Coward, I thought.
Kazuo broke the silence first, giving my shoulder a light pat. "It's okay, kid," he said quietly. "If you want to ask something, ask. I never really talked about this with anyone before. So it's not like you ignored it or anything."
"Thank you," I whispered. "For telling me. I… I'd like to know what happened to her. If you're okay with that."
Kazuo watched me for a moment, then lowered his gaze to the charred sign still in his hands.
"She was a hybrid," he said.
I froze.
"My mom fell in love with a human," he went on. "That's how my sister was born. At first, Mom really believed we could be a normal family, though it was really difficult." He gave a dry, humorless huff. "But it's not just the kids who suffer in those situations. The parents do too. Too much pressure. Too much attention. Too many eyes watching every move." He paused. "Her man couldn't handle it. One day, he left." Kazuo's grip on the wooden fragment tightened. "My sister was so small," he said. "So fragile. Nothing like me. When I held her, I felt like a giant. As if one wrong move and I'd break her." His voice dropped lower.
He inhaled sharply, forcing air into his lungs.
"It was a long time ago," he continued. "Some assholes cornered her in an alley... She didn't even understand what was happening."
He covered his face with his hands, then dragged his sleeve across his eyes.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Those were bad times."
For a second, something feral slipped into his expression.
"I wanted to kill them," he admitted. "Rip them apart. I wanted revenge so badly." He swallowed. "And my mom… I was so focused on myself, on my anger, that I didn't notice what was happening to her. She got sick. A few months later… she was gone too."
A sound escaped him, something between a growl and a broken sob.
My chest ached. Tears spilled over before I could stop them. My throat burned, and I had to clamp my jaw shut to keep from breaking apart completely.
"After that," Kazuo said, quieter now, "I wasn't really alive. Not dead either. Just… existing."
He stared at the ruins around us.
"One day, I walked through this neighborhood and saw the sign. The building was for sale. I had almost no money. Took out loans. Debts. Everything I could, and bought it."
He shook his head.
"I didn't want to ask family for help. Didn't even know what I wanted to do with the place at first. But watching this area, living here… I realized how many people there were like them. Like my sister. Like my mom."
He looked at me then.
"I still remember how angry I used to get at those people," Kazuo said quietly. "I thought they were idiots, choosing some pointless path, living those small, pathetic lives."
"I got angry at the people who kept bringing kids into this world. Kids like her. The kind who took their first breath surrounded by hate from a bunch of arrogant bustards who thought they were better than everyone else."
He paused for a moment.
"But I also remember my mom. And my sister. I remember the way they believed people could be better. They used to say there are monsters in every race. Doesn't matter who you are. Human, hybrid, beastfolk. Doesn't matter."
"So I held on to that thought. The longer I held on to it, the more I realized something." He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "I didn't want revenge. Revenge wouldn't fix anything. Hell, it might make everything worse." A faint breath left him. "Or maybe I was a coward. Who knows…"
Tears kept sliding down my cheeks, one after another. At some point, I couldn't hold myself together anymore. I stepped forward and hugged Kazuo. The motion was clumsy, wrong, as if I had no right to reach for someone else while I was this broken myself. But I needed him to feel a little less alone. I needed to do something, even if it was small.
I wanted to say I'm sorry.
Sorry that I hadn't known.
Sorry that I'd never asked.
Sorry that I'd been so wrapped up in my own pain that I hadn't seen his.
I was so fucking sorry.
I wanted so badly to comfort him, but the words stayed trapped somewhere in my chest, heavy and useless. So instead, I held him tighter, pressing my forehead against his chest. My hands trembled, yet I didn't let go.
This place hadn't mattered to me alone. It was never some random bar or a hideout where people like me could vanish for a while. It meant the same to him. To all of us. To everyone who carried the same weight and fear somewhere deep inside.
And standing there among the ruins, my arms wrapped around him, I realized something important.
We couldn't let this be the end.