The creaking of the wood beneath Yujiro's feet was the only sound rivaling the moan of the wind outside. He placed a final piece of firewood into the small stove, then turned to look at his brothers: little Take (6 years old), who shivered slightly in his sleep, and Shin (11 years old), who was putting up a heroic effort to keep his eyes open while watching their father.
On the wooden bed in the corner of the room, their father lay beneath heaps of heavy blankets. His breaths were heavy and labored, his chest rising and falling with a difficulty that told the story of an illness that had drained his strength, leaving the once-feared hunter bedridden.
"Yujiro... is Father going to die?" Shin whispered in a choked voice, his eyes glistening with tears he tried to hide.
Yujiro, a youth of sixteen springs, approached and placed a hand—calloused from labor—on his younger brother's shoulder. "Don't say that, Shin. Father is strong; he just needs rest and warmth. I'm going out now to get more cedar; cedarwood burns longer and chases the cold from the bones."
His mother, Amisa, entered carrying a basin of lukewarm water. She looked older than her true years, worry having etched deep lines around her eyes. She looked at Yujiro with a gaze that mixed pride with pain; she knew her eldest son had matured before his time to become the "man of the house."
"The weather is getting worse, my son," Amisa said as she dampened a cloth to place on her husband's forehead. "I fear the storm will not be merciful tonight."
"Don't worry, Mother," Yujiro said, pulling his father's old axe from its place behind the door. "I know the forest paths well. I will be as swift as a leopard."
Amisa followed him to the threshold and gripped his wrist with a strength that surprised him. She looked at his palm, at that faint mark resembling a star, and whispered in a voice the brothers could not hear: "Yujiro, remember... the forest today is not like any other day. The sickness that struck your father... I don't want the forest to take you too. If you feel a strange shadow, or hear a sound that doesn't resemble the wind, run and don't look back."
Yujiro smiled bitterly, trying to reassure her. "Mother, I am not a child. I have Father's axe, and I have the sun mark that you always say protects me."
She nodded silently, but her grip on his hand loosened only with difficulty. Yujiro stepped out and closed the door behind him to face the desolate whiteness of the forest, leaving behind a family relying entirely on his return with a bundle of wood—unaware that the return would not go as planned.