VOLUME #4 - EPISODE 2
[CONTENT WARNING: MA17+]
[NARRATOR: Some people bake bread because they love it. Some people bake bread because it's all they have left of the people who died. And some people knead dough at 4 AM because working with your hands keeps them too busy to do anything destructive. Meet Pan Kissā—orphaned baker, business owner at seventeen, and the teenager who makes bread that tastes like grief disguised as comfort. Today, Riyura discovers the bakery near his apartment. Today, he tastes loss in the form of perfectly crafted sourdough. Today, he learns that some people survive by creating beauty from the ashes of everything they've lost. And today, corporate vultures circle closer to a teenager who just wants to bake in peace.]
PART ONE: THE MORNING THAT SMELLED LIKE HOME
Thursday. 4:47 AM. Too early for normal people. Perfect for people who couldn't sleep because grief was louder than exhaustion.
Riyura stood outside a small bakery three blocks from his apartment—a place he'd somehow never noticed despite walking this route to school for years. The sign read "Kissā's Bread" in simple hand-painted letters. Warm light spilled from the windows. The smell of fresh bread made the cold morning air feel almost welcoming.
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: I've been awake since 2 AM. Nightmares about Yakamira again. About the knife. About his last words. Therapy says the dreams will fade eventually but "eventually" feels like forever. Miyaka suggested walking when I can't sleep. Said movement helps. She was right. But I didn't expect to find this.]
The bakery door opened. A teenager emerged—maybe seventeen, maybe older, hard to tell when someone's face held exhaustion that aged them beyond years. Dark hair pulled back in a messy bun. Flour dusting his clothes like snow. Eyes that suggested he hadn't slept properly in months. Years. Maybe ever.
He carried a crate of bread to a delivery van, moved with practiced efficiency, didn't notice Riyura standing there until he turned back toward the shop. "We're not open yet," the kid said, his voice hoarse from either disuse or calling out to empty rooms. "Another hour. Sorry."
"That's okay," Riyura replied. "I was just walking. Couldn't sleep. The smell drew me here."
The kid—Pan Kissā, Riyura would learn later—studied him with eyes that assessed everything. Noticed the purple hair, the star-shaped pupils, the way Riyura held himself like someone still learning to exist after trauma.
"Grief?" Pan asked simply. "How did you—" "People who can't sleep fall into two categories," Pan interrupted. "Insomnia or grief. You look like grief. I recognize it. See it in mirrors enough."
He gestured toward the bakery. "Come in. I'll make you something. Won't charge. Consider it... solidarity between people who understand 4 AM too well."
PART TWO: THE BAKERY BUILT FROM ASHES
The bakery interior was small but immaculate. Everything precisely organized. Ovens heating. Dough rising. The smell of yeast and warmth and something that felt almost like home if home had ever been a safe word.
Pan moved behind the counter with fluid efficiency. "What kind of grief? Recent or old?" "Recent," Riyura said, sitting at a small table near the window. "My brother. Two months ago. Died protecting me from our father."
Pan's hands paused briefly in their work, then continued. "That's heavy. I'm sorry." "What about you?" Riyura asked. "You said you recognize grief."
"Parents," Pan replied simply, pulling fresh sourdough from the oven. "Three years ago. Car accident. I was fourteen. Been running this bakery alone since then. Well, trying to run it. Survival is more accurate than running."
He sliced the bread with practiced precision, the knife moving like an extension of his hand. Steam rose from the interior—perfect crumb structure, beautiful color, the kind of bread that suggested hundreds of hours of practice and failure and learning.
"They taught you?" Riyura asked.
"Everything." Pan's voice carried complicated emotion—love and loss and resentment and gratitude all mixed together. "This was their bakery. Their dream. They built it from nothing. Worked themselves to exhaustion making it successful. Then died on the way home from a supplier meeting."
He placed the bread in front of Riyura along with butter and honey. "Eat. Tell me if it tastes right."
Riyura took a bite and felt something inside him crack. Not in a breaking way. In a releasing way. The bread tasted like comfort and loss simultaneously. Like someone had baked their grief into something beautiful and was offering it to strangers at 5 AM because they understood that sometimes, sustenance is the only language shared pain speaks.
"It's perfect," Riyura said quietly. "It tastes like... like home. Like memory. Like—"
"Like grief disguised as comfort?" Pan finished. "Yeah. That's what I'm going for. That's what bread should be. Nourishment that acknowledges pain exists but offers warmth anyway."
He sat across from Riyura with his own slice. "After they died, I had two choices. Sell the bakery—social services wanted me to, said a fourteen-year-old couldn't run a business, should go to foster care all because I was to young to take care of myself. Or I could lie about my age, forge documents, and prove I could survive alone."
"You chose survival," Riyura observed.
"I chose bread," Pan corrected. "Because bread was all I had left of them. Their recipes. Their techniques. Their dream. If I let it go, if I sold this place, then they'd really be gone. But if I kept baking—if I made their bread every morning—then they were still here. Slightly. In the yeast and flour and technique."
His eyes were distant, looking at something Riyura couldn't see. "So I learned to bake properly. Spent three years perfecting every recipe they taught me. Added my own. Made this place profitable enough to survive even with someone as young and foolish and as stupid as me running it. And I thought—I thought if I just kept going, kept baking, kept their dream alive—then eventually the grief would ease."
"Did it?" Riyura asked. "No," Pan said simply. "It just changed shape. Became bread-shaped. Became something I could knead in different ways." They sat in comfortable silence, eating bread that tasted like survival, while dawn slowly approached outside the windows.
PART THREE: THE VULTURES WHO SMELLED PROFIT
The bakery door opened. Two people in expensive suits entered—clearly not customers, clearly here for business. Pan's expression shifted immediately from exhausted openness to professional neutrality.
"We're not open yet," Pan said, standing. "Another thirty minutes."
"We're not here for bread," the first suit said—middle-aged person, calculating eyes, the kind of person who saw businesses as numbers rather than dreams. "We're here to make an offer. Again."
"And my answer is still no," Pan replied. "Again."
The second suit—a person with a cold smile and colder eyes—pulled out a folder. "Kissā's Bread occupies prime real estate. This location could be worth triple what you're making if properly developed. We're offering 50 million yen for the property. That's generous for a small bakery barely breaking even."
"I'm not selling," Pan said flatly.
"You're seventeen," the first suited person said. "Running a business alone. Struggling with online criticism about your baking. Dealing with supply chain issues and corporate competition and the inevitable reality that small bakeries don't survive in modern markets. Take our offer. Use the money to actually have a life instead of waking at 4 AM to make bread nobody appreciates."
Pan's jaw tightened. "People appreciate it."
"Do they?" The second one pulled out a tablet, showed him a screen. "Your social media reviews. Sixty percent negative. People calling your bread overpriced, mediocre, not worth the trip. People saying you're a child playing at business. That you should give up. That real bakers wouldn't make these mistakes to."
Riyura could see Pan's hands trembling slightly. Could see the words hitting exactly where intended—the vulnerable places where doubt lived, where exhaustion made truth and lies indistinguishable.
"I've seen these," Pan said quietly. "I read every review. The positive and negative. And I keep baking anyway."
"Why?" the first asked, genuinely curious. "Why torture yourself? Why not take the money and start fresh somewhere else? Do something easier? Live instead of just surviving?"
"Because," Pan said, and something in his voice broke, "because this bread is all I have left of them. My parents. Their dream. Their recipes. If I sell this place, if I let you tear it down and build whatever corporate venture you're planning—then they're really gone. Then I failed them. Then their deaths meant nothing for everything I've put into my work for many years already."
"Their deaths meant nothing anyway," the second said with brutal honesty. "They died in a car accident. Random. Meaningless. No amount of baking will change that. No amount of grief-bread will bring them back. Think about whether you want to be making choices, imagine, to be waking at 4 AM for a business that's slowly failing, then you'll see the real truth. That your a failure at your buisness and you never make real money. And nothing will change that. or taking our money and start actually living. Not like you will though. Because in the end, your just some foolish idiot who's aiming for some stupid foolish dream your own parents left behind. So please, the offer is what's best."
They left their folder on the counter. "Offer stands until end of month. After that, we withdraw it and pursue other options. Think carefully." They exited, leaving behind silence heavy with many impacting implications.
Pan stood frozen, staring at the folder like it was a bomb. Then, slowly, deliberately, he picked it up and threw it in the trash. "I'm not selling," he said to the empty bakery. "I'm not giving up. I'm not letting them win."
But his voice shook. And his hands trembled. And Riyura could see the exhaustion, the doubt, the part of Pan that wondered if the suits were right—if he was just torturing himself with impossible dreams while his parents' memory faded regardless of what he did.
"Pan," Riyura said quietly. "I know we just met. But can I help? Somehow? With the bakery, with the online harassment, with—"
"No," Pan interrupted, his professional mask snapping back into place. "Thank you. But this is my burden. My responsibility. My parents' dream to preserve or fail at preserving. I appreciate the offer but I need to handle this alone."
"Why alone?" Riyura pressed gently. "Why does grief have to be solitary?"
"Because," Pan said, moving back to his ovens, his dough, his work that never ended, "because if I let people help, I might start depending on them. And people leave. People die. Parents die in car accidents. Brothers die protecting you. Everyone leaves eventually. Better to be alone from the start in the end. Better to build something that can't be taken away when people inevitably disappear."
He pulled more bread from the oven—another perfect loaf, another piece of grief disguised as comfort. "You should go. School starts soon. I need to finish morning prep anyways. So please go."
Riyura wanted to argue. Wanted to insist. Wanted to explain that isolation wasn't strength, that accepting help wasn't weakness, that surviving alone wasn't actually surviving at all.
But he recognized the walls. Recognized the defensive posture. Recognized someone too broken to accept care even when they desperately needed it to. So he left. But not before leaving money on the counter for the bread he'd eaten, and writing his phone number on the receipt.
"If you change your mind about help," Riyura said. "Or if you just want someone to share 4 AM with who understands grief. I'm here." Pan didn't respond. Just kept working. Kept baking. Kept performing survival through perfectly kneaded dough.
PART FOUR: THE SCHOOL WHERE NOTHING IMPROVED
School. Riyura arrived still thinking about Pan, about bread that tasted like grief, about someone barely older than him running a business alone while corporations circled like vultures around his buisness.
He found Joyū in the hallway, surrounded by students but somehow completely isolated. Performing friendliness while his eyes stayed dead. Riyura approached.
"Hey. How are you?" Joyū's professional smile appeared instantly. "Fine. Just adjusting. New school is challenging but manageable." "Joyū—" "I need to get to class," Joyū interrupted, already moving away. "Sorry. Maybe we can talk later."
But they wouldn't. Riyura knew that. Joyū was avoiding him, avoiding anyone who'd seen past his mask, avoiding the possibility of help because help required vulnerability and vulnerability required hope and hope required believing things could get better.
At lunch, Riyura sat with his friend group and told them about Pan. About the bakery. About the corporate pressure and online harassment and a seventeen-year-old trying to preserve his parents' dream while drowning in exhaustion.
"We should help him," Miyaka said immediately.
"He won't accept it," Riyura replied. "He's like—he's like how I was after Yakamira died. Too broken to let people in. Too convinced that isolation equals safety."
"Then we help anyway," Subarashī declared. "We support his bakery. We leave positive reviews. We become regular customers. We show him through actions instead of words that he's not alone."
"That could work," Sotsuko said thoughtfully. "Indirect help. Support without demanding anything in return. Let him see that community exists even when he's not asking for it."
They made plans. Would visit the bakery regularly. Would counter the negative reviews with genuine positive ones. Would be present without being intrusive.
It wasn't much. Might not be enough. But it was something. And sometimes, something was all you could offer.
EPILOGUE: THE EVENING WHERE EVERYTHING TASTED BITTER
6 PM. Pan closed the bakery after another long day. Sales had been decent. Not great. Never great anymore. Just decent enough to survive another week.
He pulled out his phone, checked social media against his better judgment. New reviews had appeared:
"Mediocre bread, overpriced" "Kid doesn't know what he's doing" "Real bakers would never make these mistakes" "Just give up already" "Your parents would be ashamed"
That last one hit like a knife to the heart. Pan sat in his empty bakery, surrounded by bread he'd made perfectly, and felt tears he'd been holding back finally fall.
Maybe the suits were right. Maybe he should sell. Take the money. Give up on a dream that was killing him slowly while his parents stayed dead regardless.
His phone buzzed. Text from unknown number:
"This is Riyura. The kid with purple hair from this morning. Your bread was the best I've ever had. It tasted like someone who understood grief and made something beautiful from it anyway. Thank you for sharing that. I'll be back tomorrow. - R.S."
Pan stared at the message. One positive word among hundreds of negative. One person noticing among crowds of critics. It shouldn't have mattered. One message couldn't outweigh all the hatred.
But somehow, slightly, it did. He saved the number. Didn't respond. But saved it. And tomorrow morning, when he woke at 4 AM to bake bread that tasted like grief disguised as comfort, maybe he'd make extra.
Just in case the purple-haired kid came back. Just in case community was possible even when you were too broken to ask for it. Just in case surviving alone was harder than surviving together. Maybe.
[NARRATOR: And so the bread baker's story begins. Pan Kissā—orphaned, exhausted, trying to preserve his parents' dream while corporations demand he sell and critics demand he quit. Riyura trying to help while still broken himself. Joyū still drowning in harassment and refusing all assistance. And somewhere in shadows, Jisatsu Bara watches and plans, waiting for the perfect moment to shatter everyone's fragile hope. Next episode: Owari Shi appears. The idol nobody loved. And Riyura's attempts to help continue failing while his friend group rallies to support strangers who won't accept support. The battle continues. Stay with us.]
TO BE CONTINUED...