It happened in the barn, amidst the smell of damp hay and manure. Kael, physically Six years old but experience wise twelve , had forgotten himself. He was watching his father, Bram, struggle with a rusted iron hinge.
"You need abura," Kael said, using the Japanese word for oil, pointing at the hinge. "It's too much friction. Friction makes heat."
Bram froze. He dropped the hammer. The air in the barn went cold. It wasn't just the strange word; it was the concept. Friction. A concept too learned, too foreign for a weaver's son in a superstitious hamlet.
"Who is speaking?" Bram demanded, grabbing the boy by the shoulder. " Is it the boy? Or the shadow?"
"It's me, Papa!" Kael cried, shrinking back.
"You speak in tongues!" Bram roared, fear making him cruel. "The village Elder warned us. He said the fever left a door open in your mind for the spirits."Bram didn't use a timeout corner. He didn't use stern words. He reached for a switch of birch wood.
The beating was sharp, fast, and brutal. It wasn't done out of hate, which made it worse; it was done out of a terrified love, an attempt to beat the "demon" out of the child to save his soul.
Kael screamed at first. But by the fourth strike, a cold, hard realization slammed into his mind: Crying makes it worse. Speaking makes it dangerous.He clamped his mouth shut. He swallowed the sob. He went limp and silent, staring at the dirt floor, his eyes deadened.
Bram stopped, panting, dropping the switch. He looked at his son, then nodded to the neighbor, Akeleon, who had been watching from the doorway with grim approval.
"See?" Bram wiped his brow, his voice shaking. "All he needed was a beating. The demon is quiet now."His body in Japan was unblemished. There were no welts on his back, no stinging pain in his legs. But the phantom pain was agonizing. The humiliation and the terror traveled across the divide.
"Kazuna, what is it?" Yumi rushed into the room, snapping on the light.
Kazuna looked at her. He saw her soft hands, her worried eyes, the flannel pajamas she wore. He looked at the room—filled with soft toys, safety plugs in the sockets, a humidifier puffing gentle steam.
Everything here was soft. Everything here was safe.And that made him furious.
Why was this version of him safe while the other one bled? Why did these parents get to be kind while the others were terrified of him?
He couldn't hit Bram. Bram was bigger and would hit back. But Kenji and Yumi? They wouldn't hit him. They were weak. They were soft.
Ren grabbed the lamp from his bedside table and hurled it against the wall. It shattered.
"Get out!" he screamed in Japanese, his voice hoarse. "I hate you! I hate this place!"
Kenji ran in, eyes wide. " Calm down!"
Kazuna didn't calm down. He kicked his father in the shin. He tore the sheets off his bed. Helet out all the rage, the fear, and the helplessness he had been forced to bottle up in the barn in Eldoria.
He cried for an hour, inconsolable, thrashing on the floor while his Japanese parents held him, looking at each other with utter despair.Six months later, they sat in Dr. Sato's office again.
"He is uncontrollable at home," Yumi admitted, wringing her hands. "But at school... he is completely silent. He stares at the wall. He refuses to participate."
"Impulsivity at home, dissociation at school," Dr. Sato nodded, tapping his pen. "It is a classic presentation, though the onset was aggressive."Kazuna sat in the chair, legs swinging. He knew what they were doing. They were trying to fix a hardware problem when he had a software issue.
"We believe it is severe ADHD with elements of Oppositional Defiant Disorder," Dr. Sato concluded. "I want to start him on Methylphenidate. It will help regulate his impulses."
Kenji took the prescription slip. "Will it... will it stop the stories? The anger?"
"It will help him focus on the here and now," Sato promised.They gave him the pills. Kazuna took them.
The medication didn't stop him from traveling to Eldoria. It didn't stop the beatings when he slipped up. But it gave him a strange, chemical focus in Tokyo. It made the colors less bright, the rage less sharp.
But the real change wasn't the medicine. It was the math.
Living two days for every one meant that by the time Ren was physically seven years old in Tokyo, he had lived through fourteen years of consciousness.
While his classmates in Tokyo were crying because they dropped their ice cream, Kazuna was processing the trauma of a famine in Eldoria. While his peers on Earth were afraid of the dark, Kazuna was mourning the loss of a sibling that died dyoung due to a disease in eldoria.
They are so young, he thought, feeling a weary, heavy weight in his chest. They are so incredibly stupid and happy.
He looked at his notebook. He didn't draw monsters anymore. He didn't tell stories.
In Eldoria, he was the silent, obedient son who worked hard and never spoke out of turn.
In Tokyo, he was the "special needs" kid who took his meds and had "emotional outbursts."In Eldoria, he was the silent, obedient son who worked hard and never spoke out of turn.
He realized that to survive both worlds, he had to be a different actor on each stage. And the only person who knew the script for both... was him.
He picked up his pencil and wrote a single sentence in his notebook, in perfect Japanese characters:He realized that to survive both worlds, he had to be a different actor on each stage. And the only person who knew the script for both... was him.