The old gramps's breathing had changed.
Katsugawa Josu knew the sound intimately now—that wet, rattling quality that came with fluid in the lungs, each inhale a struggle against gravity and time and the inevitable collapse of a body that had worked too hard for too long. He sat beside his grandfather's futon at 4 AM, listening to that rhythm like it was the only music that mattered, because soon there would be silence, and silence was the one thing Josu couldn't face.
"You should sleep," his grandfather whispered, eyes still closed. At seventy-eight, the old gramps had become translucent, skin like rice paper stretched over bird bones, but his awareness remained sharp as winter wind.
"Can't sleep," Josu said, which was true. Sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant seeing his mother's retreating back as she left when he was seven, his father following six months later with promises to send money that never materialized. Dreams meant being alone in ways that made his heart feel like it was caving in.
"You got in another fight."
Not a question. His grandfather always knew. The bruise on Josu's cheek throbbed in confirmation—some third-year had decided to challenge his reputation yesterday, and Josu had responded with the violence that was his only fluent language. Three punches. A knee to the ribs. The satisfying crack of the other kids nose breaking. The fear in everyone's eyes as they backed away, giving him space, giving him exactly what he wanted and nothing he needed.
"He started it," Josu muttered.
"They always do." His grandfather's eyes opened—tired, sleepy, but still holding something like love. "Josu, listen to me. This anger you carry, it's going to consume you if you let it."
"I'm fine." "You're fourteen years old and you fight like you want to die."
The words hit like a physical blow. Josu looked away, toward the small apartment's single window where Tokyo's pre-dawn glow created a sickly orange haze. They lived in two rooms—one for sleeping, one for everything else—in a building slated for demolition that kept getting extensions because the residents had nowhere else to go. The walls were thin enough to hear the neighbors' lives in surround sound: arguments, television programs, the rhythmic creaking of cheap beds.
"I'm not going to die," Josu said. "You are."
The cruelty of it landed exactly as intended. His grandfather flinched, and Josu immediately hated himself, wanted to take it back, but the words hung in the air like smoke from a gun already fired.
"Yes," his grandfather said quietly. "I am. Probably soon. And then what will you do, Josu? Who will you be when I'm gone?"
Josu had no answer. He'd spent so much energy building armor—the reputation, the rage, the fear he inspired—that he'd never considered what came after. Without his grandfather, he'd be truly alone. Fourteen years old with no family, no money, no prospects beyond whatever violence he could leverage into survival.
The medical bills sat on the kitchen counter, red notices stacked like accusations. ¥340,000 owed. Another ¥180,000 due next month. Josu worked three part-time jobs—convenience store nights, construction site weekends, delivery service after school—and still couldn't make a dent. The debt was a living thing, growing faster than he could fight it.
"Sleep," his grandfather insisted. "You have school."
School. That joke of an institution where he was the designated monster, where teachers looked through him and students scattered at his approach. Where the only identity available was the one he'd carved out with his fists.
Except yesterday, something had shifted.
That kid—Hazuno—with his fake smile and his dead eyes and that strange child following him around like a ghost. Josu had watched them in the convenience store, seen through the performance Hazuno put on for his friends, recognized the drowning because he was drowning too, just in different water.
And in the cafeteria, when those parasites had demanded Hazuno perform for them like a trained animal, something in Josu had snapped. Not the usual trigger rage that led to violence, but something deeper—a recognition that allowing it to continue meant being complicit in the same cruelty that had shaped his own life.
You don't have to pretend with people like them. He'd said it and meant it, though he couldn't explain why it mattered. "There's this person at school," Josu said suddenly. "Hazuno. He's... I don't know. Different."
His grandfather's eyes sharpened with interest. "Different how?" "He pretends to be okay. Smiles all the time, does whatever anyone asks. But it's fake. All of it. He's miserable, and everyone's too stupid or selfish to see it."
"And you see it." "Yeah." "Why do you think that is?"
Josu considered the question. Outside, Tokyo was beginning its morning transformation—the first trains rumbling, lights flickering on in apartment windows, the city's daily resurrection from whatever passed for death in a place that never truly stopped.
"Because I do the same thing," he admitted. "Just with anger instead of smiles."
His grandfather nodded slowly, a small smile crossing his weathered face. "You're smarter than you let yourself believe, Josu. Maybe this Hazuno needs a friend who sees through the mask."
"I'm not his friend. I've been an jerk to him for months." "Then maybe stop being an moron."
Simple advice. Impossible to follow. Because stopping meant dropping the armor, and dropping the armor meant being vulnerable, and vulnerability was death in a world that rewarded strength and punished weakness.
But his grandfather was dying, and soon Josu would have no one, and maybe—maybe—there was something worth trying before the loneliness became total.
Hazuno arrived at school exhausted.
Kisuno had woken screaming at 3 AM—nightmares about marble floors and blood and voices calling his name—and Hazuno his parents, miraculously, had been too drunk or too absorbed in their own misery to notice the kid.
Now he sat in homeroom with eyes that felt full of sand, listening to announcements he didn't process, existing in that state of functional disconnection that had become his default mode.
"Hazuno."
He looked up to find Josu standing beside his desk. The morning sun streaming through the windows caught the bruise on Josu's face, turning it purple-green, almost rough in its brutality. The bully looked uncomfortable, hands shoved in his pockets, jaw tight with tension.
"Can I talk to you? Outside?"
Every eye in the classroom turned toward them. Hazuno's heart rate spiked. Being singled out by Josu usually preceded violence—a shove, an insult, maybe worse. But there was something different in Josu's expression, something that looked almost like... uncertainty?
"Okay," Hazuno said, standing despite every instinct screaming danger.
They walked into the hallway, into a world of echoing footsteps and fluorescent lights and that peculiar high school smell of cleaning products and youth. Josu led them to a stairwell, a space between floors where students went to skip class or have conversations they didn't want overheard.
"What's going on?" Hazuno asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral, the smile absent because he was too tired to maintain it. Josu looked at him for a long moment, something working behind those dark eyes. "That kid. The one in the convenience store. He's not your cousin, is he?"
Hazuno's blood froze. "I don't know what you—"
"Don't." Josu's voice was sharp but not cruel. "Don't do the thing where you lie and smile and try to make everything comfortable. I'm asking you straight: who is that kid, and why are you hiding him?"
A hundred denials rose in Hazuno's throat. But standing there with Josu—who'd somehow seen through everything, who'd defended him yesterday for reasons Hazuno still didn't understand—the lies felt heavier than the truth.
"His name is Kisuno," Hazuno said quietly. "He's six. Been living on the streets for three years. I found him running from the police and... I couldn't just let them take him."
"Why not?"
"Because—" Hazuno's voice broke. "Because he looked at me and I saw myself. And I thought if I could save him, maybe I could save something, you know? Maybe I could be something other than the pathetic puppet everyone thinks I am."
The words hung between them, raw and honest in a way Hazuno never allowed himself to be. He waited for Josu's mockery, his cruelty, the violence that would confirm that honesty was weakness and weakness deserved punishment.
Instead, Josu nodded slowly. "Yeah. I get that." "You... do?" "My grandfather's dying," Josu said, and the admission seemed to cost him something. "Cancer. Stage four. We've got maybe weeks, maybe days. And I'm angry all the time because I can't fix it, can't fight it, can't do anything except watch him disappear."
Hazuno stared. This was Katsugawa Josu—the school's terror, the teen who'd hospitalized a student last year, who moved through the halls like violence given human form—and he was talking about grief like it was something he understood intimately.
"I'm sorry," Hazuno said, meaning it.
"Don't be sorry. Just..." Josu struggled with the words. "That kid, Kisuno. You can't keep hiding him forever. Someone's going to find out. And when they do, it's going to be bad for both of you."
"I know. I just... I don't know what else to do."
Before Josu could respond, footsteps echoed up the stairwell. Both kids tensed. But it wasn't a teacher—it was Tachibana, Yumi, and Ren, Hazuno's so-called friends, appearing like summoned demons.
"There you are," Tachibana said cheerfully, though his eyes were calculating. "We were looking for you, Hazuno. What're you doing hanging with Katsugawa?"
"Just talking," Hazuno said, deploying the smile reflexively, that automatic defense mechanism. "Nothing important."
"Looks pretty intense for 'nothing important,'" Yumi observed, moving closer. "You know, you've been acting really weird lately. Disappearing. Avoiding us. That whole thing with the creepy kid—"
"His name is Kisuno," Hazuno said, surprising himself with the sharpness in his tone. Yumi blinked. "What?" "The 'creepy kid.' His name is Kisuno. And he's not creepy, he's traumatized. There's a difference."
The stairwell went quiet. Tachibana, Yumi, and Ren exchanged glances, some silent communication passing between them. Hazuno realized he'd broken character, dropped the mask, shown them something real, and now they didn't know how to process it.
"Okay, seriously, what's going on with you?" Ren asked, trying for concern but landing somewhere closer to accusation. "You're not acting like yourself."
"Maybe this is myself," Hazuno said. "Did you ever consider that? That the version you know is the performance, and this is what's underneath?" "Wow, Hazuno, we're your friends—"
"Are you?" The question came out harder than intended. "Because friends don't treat people like emotional support animals. Friends don't demand performances. Friends actually give a shit when someone's struggling."
Tachibana's expression darkened. "You know what? Frick you, Hazuno. We've been nothing but nice to you, and this is how you—"
"Get out of here." Josu had stepped forward, positioning himself between Hazuno and the others. His body language was pure threat—shoulders back, fists clenched, that look in his eyes that promised violence if pushed.
"This doesn't concern you, Katsugawa, so why don't you bother off." Yumi said, but she'd backed up a step. "I'm making it concern me. Hazuno told you to leave. So leave."
"Or what? You'll beat us up?" Tachibana tried for bravado, but his voice shook.
Josu smiled, and it was the most terrifying expression Hazuno had ever seen—not rage, but cold calculation, the smile of someone who knew exactly how much damage they could inflict and felt no hesitation about doing it.
"Try me."
The moment stretched taut as a wire. Hazuno's heart hammered against his ribs. Any second now, this would explode into violence—Josu would throw a punch, teachers would come running, everything would spiral into irreversible chaos.
But Tachibana, despite his posturing, wasn't stupid. He recognized real danger when it stood in front of him. "Whatever," he said, backing toward the stairs. "Come on, guys. Let Hazuno hang out with the psycho if that's what he wants."
They left, their footsteps receding like a retreating army. Hazuno exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "You okay?" Josu asked. "I just ended the only friendships I have," Hazuno said, and to his surprise, he felt lighter. "Yeah. I think I'm okay."
Josu nodded. Then, awkwardly, he extended his hand. "I know I've been an moron to you. If you want, we could... I don't know. Start over?"
Hazuno looked at the offered hand—scraped knuckles, bruised fingers, belonging to someone who'd shown him more honest kindness in five minutes than his friends had in years. He took it.
"Yeah," Hazuno said. "Let's start over."
They shook, and something shifted in the space between them—the beginning of understanding, maybe trust, definitely something neither had expected to find.
"About Kisuno," Josu said. "I might know a place. Temporary. If you need somewhere safer to keep him while you figure shit out." "Where?" "Abandoned warehouse. Industrial district. It's not much, but it's dry, and nobody goes there anymore. I've been using it sometimes when home gets too..." He trailed off, unable to finish.
Hazuno understood anyway. "That could work. At least until I figure out something more permanent."
They stood in the stairwell, two broken teen's beginning the terrifying work of letting someone else see their wounds. Outside, the morning continued its indifferent progression toward noon. Classes would start soon. Life would resume its relentless forward motion.
But in that moment, something had changed irrevocably.
Three shadows had begun moving toward each other in Tokyo's vast darkness, drawn together by wounds that matched and pain that resonated at frequencies only the similarly broken could hear.
And somewhere in Hazuno's small room, Kisuno waited with blue eyes fixed on the door, trusting against every lesson survival had taught him that the person who'd promised to return actually would.
The masks were cracking. And beneath them, something real was beginning to breathe.
TO BE CONTINUED... [Next Episode: "Small Hands Reaching"]