The thing about lies was that they compounded.
Hazuno had learned this fundamental truth over seven days of maintaining an impossible deception. Seven days of telling his parents he was staying late at cram school. Seven days of smuggling food past his mother's increasingly suspicious gaze. Seven days of existing in a state of perpetual tension that made his jaw ache and his hands shake when he thought no one was looking.
On the eighth day, everything began to collapse.
It started with his father standing in his bedroom doorway at 6 AM, expression unreadable in the pre-dawn darkness. Hazuno had just returned from the warehouse, having spent the night with Kisuno and Josu, his school uniform wrinkled and his excuse prepared.
"Where were you?" his father asked, voice dangerously quiet. "Cram school ran late. I crashed at Tachibana's place." The lie came smooth as oil, practiced until it felt almost true.
"Tachibana's mother called yesterday. Said you haven't been to their house in two weeks." His father stepped into the room, and Hazuno could smell the alcohol—not fresh, but the accumulated stink of someone who'd been drinking steadily for days. "Want to try again?"
Hazuno's mind raced, searching for an exit that didn't exist. "I meant Ren's place. I got confused—"
"Don't." His father's hand shot out, grabbing Hazuno's collar, yanking him close enough that Hazuno could see the broken pupils in his eyes, smell the desperation and rage that had become his father's default state. "Don't lie to me, kid. I know you're hiding something. What is it? Drugs? Some other way you're planning to ruin your life and embarrass this family further?"
"Let go of me," Hazuno said, voice shaking despite his attempt at calm. "Answer the question!" The shout brought Hazuno's mother stumbling from the bedroom, hair disheveled, wearing yesterday's clothes. She looked between them with bleary eyes, trying to process the scene through her alcoholic fog.
"What's going on?" she grumbled. "Your son's been lying to us. Coming and going at all hours. Jeez knows what he's involved in—"
"I'm not involved in anything!" Hazuno yanked himself free, stumbling backward. His heart hammered against his ribs, fight-or-flight instinct screaming at him to run. "I'm just trying to help someone who needs it!"
"Help who?" his father demanded.
Hazuno's mouth opened, but the truth—a six-year-old orphan whose parents were murdered, who I'm hiding from the authorities because the system failed him—felt impossible to speak. How could he make them understand when they'd never understood anything about him that mattered?
"A friend," he said finally, inadequately.
His father's expression twisted into something ugly. "A friend. Right. While your grades are slipping, while you're barely present in your own life, you're out playing hero for some friend." He moved closer, looming. "You think you're better than us? Think you can just do whatever you want without consequences?"
"I think I'm trying to be better than you," Hazuno said, and immediately regretted it.
The slap came fast, snapping his head to the side. His cheek exploded in pain, tears springing to his eyes from shock more than injury. In thirteen years, his father had never hit him—had screamed, had thrown things, had made their home a war zone, but never this.
His mother made a small sound, something between protest and acceptance, but didn't intervene.
"Get to school," his father said, voice shaking with barely contained violence. "And when you get home, we're having a real conversation about your future. Understand?"
Hazuno touched his burning cheek, tasting blood where his teeth had cut the inside of his mouth. He looked at his parents—these people who'd given him life but never taught him how to live it—and felt something fundamental shift inside him.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I understand."
He grabbed his bag and left, walking through their apartment's narrow hallway, past the walls thin enough to hear everything that had just happened, out into Tokyo's early morning where workers already rushed toward their own private hells.
His phone buzzed. A message from Josu: need to talk. warehouse. now.
Hazuno changed direction, heading toward the industrial district, school a destination he'd reach eventually or not at all. The warehouse felt different in daylight—less sanctuary, more condemned building marking time until demolition. Kisuno sat in their corner, drawing with intense focus, his sky-blue eyes tracking Hazuno's entrance.
"Your face," Kisuno said, setting down his crayon. Hazuno touched his cheek—still tender, probably bruising. "It's nothing." "It's not nothing." Josu emerged from the shadows, and Hazuno was struck by how terrible he looked. The bully had always carried darkness, but this was different—this was someone actively breaking apart. "Your father?"
"Yeah."
"Mine used to hit me too. Before he left." Josu's voice was matter-of-fact, discussing violence like weather. "Then it was just me and Grandfather, and he never raised a hand. Funny how the people who should protect you are the ones who hurt you the most."
Hazuno sank down against the wall, exhaustion crashing over him like a wave. "You said you needed to talk?" Josu pulled out his phone, pulled up a news article, handed it over. The headline made Hazuno's blood freeze:
POLICE INTENSIFY SEARCH FOR MISSING KYOTO HEIR
Below it, a photo—slightly grainy, clearly a few years old—but unmistakably Kisuno. Younger, healthier, with that brightness in his eyes that three years of survival had dimmed. The article detailed his disappearance following his parents' murder, the cold case investigation, and recent tips suggesting he'd been spotted in Tokyo.
"They're looking for him," Josu said unnecessarily. "Actively. Someone must have reported seeing him at that convenience store."
Kisuno had gone very still, staring at his own picture like it was a stranger. "That's me," he whispered. "That's... I remember that day. Mama had just bought me new clothes. We went to a park. There were cherry blossoms."
His small hands began to shake. Hazuno moved instinctively, pulling the child against himself. "Hey. Look at me, Kisuno. Look at me." Those blue eyes, swimming with tears, focused on him. "We're not going to let them take you. I promised, remember?" "But the police—" "Will have to go through us first." Hazuno looked at Josu. "Right?"
Josu's expression was conflicted—the rational part of him that knew they couldn't hide him forever warring with something newer, the protective instinct that had formed over the past week. Finally, he nodded.
"Right. But we need a better plan than just hiding here. This place gets demolished in three weeks. After that, we've got nowhere." "There has to be somewhere," Hazuno insisted, desperation creeping into his voice. "A relative, someone who—"
"There's no one." Kisuno's voice was small but certain. "Mama and Papa had no family. Just business partners. And one of them..." He trailed off, but the implication hung heavy.
"You think a business partner killed them?" Josu asked.
"I don't know. I was three. But I remember Papa arguing with someone on the phone. Saying something about betrayal. About money." Kisuno's fingers clutched Hazuno's shirt. "I don't want to go back to Kyoto. I don't want to remember more."
The weight of his trauma pressed against them all—this child who'd witnessed the worst of humanity and somehow survived, who wanted safety they couldn't guarantee, protection they couldn't provide.
Hazuno's phone buzzed. Multiple notifications. Messages flooding the group chat he'd forgotten to mute:
Tachibana:hazuno where are you
Yumi:jeez you're not at school
Ren:teachers are asking about you
Tachibana:seriously whats going on
And then, from his father: If you're not home by 6 PM, don't bother coming home at all.
"I can't go back," Hazuno said, more to himself than the others. "I can't go back to that life. Pretending everything's fine while falling apart. Being their emotional support puppet while they slowly destroy themselves." He looked up at Josu, at Kisuno. "This. Here. This is the first real thing I've had in years."
"It's not sustainable," Josu said, but without conviction. "We're three kids—well, two kids and whatever I am—hiding in a warehouse, running from problems we can't solve."
"Then we get better at running." Hazuno stood, pulling Kisuno up with him. "We find a way to make this work. Because the alternative—going back to those lives, pretending this week never happened—that's not living. That's just slow death with better lighting."
Before Josu could respond, sound erupted from outside—voices, multiple, getting closer. "—around here somewhere, the tip said—" "—just a kid, how far could he—" Police.
The three of them froze, a moment of perfect terror crystallizing everything. Kisuno's eyes went wide, his breathing shallow and rapid. Josu's hand instinctively curled into a fist. And Hazuno felt time slow, felt the weight of every decision that had led to this moment pressing down like atmosphere.
"The back exit," Josu whispered urgently. "Through the loading dock. Move. Now." They ran.
Kisuno's small legs couldn't keep pace, so Hazuno scooped him up, the child's weight barely registering against the adrenaline flooding his system. Behind them, the warehouse door opened, flashlights cutting through the dimness.
"Police! If anyone's in here, show yourself!"
Josu led them through a maze of old machinery, empty pallets, forgotten dreams of industry. The loading dock exit was rusted shut, and he slammed his shoulder against it once, twice, the metal groaning in protest.
"Come on, come on—" It gave way, spilling them into an alley that stank of garbage and desperation. They stumbled into daylight that felt too bright, too exposing.
"There! By the loading dock!" "Shit." Josu grabbed Hazuno's arm. "Split up. They can't chase all of us." "No!" Kisuno clutched Hazuno tighter. "Don't leave me!"
"We won't," Hazuno promised, even as his mind screamed that splitting up was the smart play. "We stay together."
They ran east, toward the maze of residential streets where they might lose themselves among Tokyo's endless humanity. Behind them, footsteps pounded concrete, radios crackled with coordinates, the machinery of law and order grinding into motion.
Hazuno's lungs burned. His legs screamed. Kisuno's weight grew heavier with each step, but he didn't slow, couldn't slow, because stopping meant the end of everything they'd built.
Josu pulled ahead, scanning for escape routes with the tactical awareness of someone who'd spent years evading trouble. "Left! The construction site!"
They veered left into a half-finished apartment complex—bare concrete and exposed rebar, plastic sheeting flapping in the wind. Josu led them up temporary stairs that groaned under their weight, up three floors, four, until they burst onto an unfinished rooftop.
And stopped.
No exit. No escape. Just open sky and a drop that would kill any of them. Behind them, footsteps on the stairs. The police, closing in, inevitable as gravity.
Hazuno set Kisuno down gently, positioned himself between the child and the stairwell entrance. Josu moved to his side, both of them creating a wall of inadequate protection.
"What do we do?" Josu asked, voice tight.
Hazuno looked at Kisuno—this small child who'd survived three years alone, who'd learned to trust again despite every reason not to, whose blue eyes reflected the sky they couldn't reach.
"We don't let them take him," Hazuno said.
Two officers emerged onto the rooftop, hands raised in placating gestures. The older one—the same officer from the convenience store chase—looked at them with something between pity and frustration.
"Kids. It's over. We know you've been hiding Kisuno Minazawa. We know you mean well, but this isn't helping him. He needs proper care, proper placement—"
"Proper placement?" Hazuno's voice broke with emotion. "You mean the system that lost track of him for three years? That let a traumatized person survive on the streets because processing him was too much work?"
"That's not fair—"
"None of this is fair!" Hazuno was shaking now, everything he'd bottled up for thirteen years erupting. "He was three years old when his parents were murdered! Three! And your system failed him then, and it'll fail him now, and we're supposed to just hand him over and trust that this time will be different?"
The officers exchanged glances. The younger one—barely out of his twenties, idealism still visible beneath professional detachment—looked genuinely conflicted.
"What's your name, kiddo?" the older officer asked Hazuno gently. "Kisagawa Hazuno." "Hazuno. I understand you want to help. But you're thirteen. You can't provide what this child needs—"
"I've provided more in one week than anyone else has in three years!" Tears were streaming down Hazuno's face now, hot and unbidden. "I've given him safety, food, someone who actually sees him as human instead of a case file! That has to count for something!"
Kisuno stepped forward, his small hand finding Hazuno's. When he spoke, his voice was stronger than Hazuno had ever heard it. "I want to stay with Hazuno. And Josu. They're my family now."
The words landed like stones in still water, ripples spreading outward. The younger officer's expression cracked, something human showing through. "Kid, it doesn't work that way—"
"Why not?" Kisuno's blue eyes blazed with defiance. "You say you want to help me. They actually do help me. Why is your way better?" No one had an answer.
The standoff stretched, taut as wire, four people on an unfinished rooftop negotiating the shape of one child's future while Tokyo sprawled indifferent below.
Finally, the older officer sighed. "Look. I'll make you a deal. Kisuno comes with us now—properly documented, proper placement. But we'll work to keep you kids involved. Visitation rights. Regular contact. It's the best I can offer."
"It's not good enough," Hazuno said.
"It's what's legal. And realistic." The officer's voice gentled. "You've done something remarkable here. You've given this kid something he needed desperately. But you can't sustain this. You know that, right? Eventually, you'll get caught. And when that happens, the consequences will be much worse—for all of you."
Hazuno looked at Josu, seeking guidance, support, anything. Josu's expression was conflicted, but he nodded slightly. He's right, that nod said. We can't win this.
"Kisuno," Hazuno said, kneeling to eye level. "What do you want?"
The child's eyes filled with tears. "I want to stay with you. But..." He looked at the officers, at the city beyond, at the reality pressing in from all sides. "But I don't want you to get hurt because of me."
"We'll be okay," Hazuno lied, pulling Kisuno into a fierce hug. "We'll find each other again. I promise. This isn't goodbye." "Promise?" Kisuno whispered against his shoulders.
"Promise."
They held each other while the sky brightened overhead, while Tokyo continued its indifferent rotation, while everything they'd built together cracked apart under the weight of reality.
When they finally separated, Kisuno walked slowly toward the officers, each step looking like it cost him everything. At the stairwell, he turned back one last time.
"Thank you," he said. "For seeing me." Then he was gone, led away by hands gentler than the world had been, leaving Hazuno and Josu alone on that unfinished rooftop.
Hazuno collapsed, sobs wracking his body. Josu sat beside him, not touching, just present, both of them broken in new ways, both of them having lost something they'd barely understood they'd needed.
Above them, sky stretched infinite and unreachable.
And below, in the back of a police car, Kisuno pressed his small hand against the window, watching the warehouse district disappear, those bright blue eyes dimming once again.
TO BE CONTINUED... [Next Episode: "The Weight of Grandfathers"]