The hospital room smelled like death disguised as disinfectant.
Josu sat beside his grandfather's bed at 3 AM, listening to the machines that measured what remained of a life—the steady beep of heart rate, the mechanical whisper of oxygen, the IV drip marking time in tiny increments. Outside the window, Tokyo glowed with its perpetual insomnia, millions of people awake or asleep or somewhere in between, none of them aware that in room 437, the last person who'd ever truly loved Katsugawa Josu was slowly dissolving into memory.
"You're thinking too loud," his grandfather whispered, eyes still closed. At seventy-eight, with cancer colonizing every important system, he'd become something translucent—more spirit than flesh, held together by stubbornness and whatever invisible force kept people alive just long enough to say goodbye.
"Can't help it," Josu said, voice rough from hours of not speaking. "That child. Kisuno. They took him?" "Three days ago." The words tasted like ash. Three days since the rooftop, since watching Hazuno break apart, since feeling his own heart hollow out in ways he hadn't known were possible. "Social services. Proper placement. All very official and useless."
His grandfather's eyes opened—hollowed, distant, but still holding that particular sharpness that had guided Josu through fourteen years of chaos. "You care about him."
"I barely knew him."
"Time doesn't measure caring. Impact does." The old gramps coughed wetly, and Josu was there immediately with water, supporting his head, feeling how light he'd become—barely more than bones and determination. "You tried to protect him. That matters."
"It didn't change anything. They still took him."
"You gave him something to remember. Someone who saw him as human instead of problem." His grandfather settled back against pillows that dwarfed his diminishing frame. "That's not nothing, Josu. That's everything that matters."
Josu looked away, toward the window where Tokyo burned its nightly prayer to commerce and loneliness. Since the rooftop, he hadn't been to school. Hadn't gone home except to grab clothes and medication. Just existed in this liminal space between his grandfather's bed and the vending machines in the hallway, watching the only family he had left slowly evaporate.
The medical bills sat in his backpack—¥520,000 now, showing as a scar of its own. The hospital administrator had been polite but firm: payment arrangements needed to be made. Insurance covered some, but the experimental treatments, the private room, the round-the-clock care—those were luxuries they couldn't afford and couldn't live without.
"I'm scared," Josu admitted, the words foreign in his mouth. He'd spent so long weaponizing anger that vulnerability felt like standing broken in a snowstorm.
"I know." "What happens after? When you're..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
"When I'm gone, you mean." His grandfather's smile was gentle, understanding. "You keep living. You find people worth living for. You become something other than the anger I've watched you use as armor."
"The anger's all I have."
"No. You have whatever you showed that child and that other kid—Hazuno. You have capacity for protection, for care, for something better than what you've built." The old gramps's hand found Josu's, grip surprisingly strong. "Promise me something."
"Anything."
"Don't let my death make you worse. Let it make you softer. Let it open you instead of closing you further." His grandfather's breathing grew softer, but he pushed through. "The world has enough angry kids. Be something different. Be someone I'd be proud of."
Tears burned Josu's eyes—the first he'd cried since he was seven years old, since his parents left and he'd learned that crying was weakness and weakness got you hurt. But here, in this room that smelled like endings, with the only person who'd ever loved him unconditionally fading like morning fog, the armor cracked completely.
"I don't know how," Josu whispered.
"Yes you do. You already started. With those kids. With that choice to protect instead of destroy." His grandfather squeezed his hand. "Keep choosing that. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts."
The machines continued their vigil, measuring what remained, counting down to zero with mechanical precision.
Outside, dawn began its slow transformation—darkness bleeding into gray, gray into that particular blue that preceded sunrise. Tokyo prepared for another day of grinding forward, indifferent to individual suffering or joy.
And in room 437, a grandfather and grandson held hands, both knowing and not saying that this was likely their last dawn together. School, when Josu finally returned, felt like visiting a foreign country where he'd once lived but no longer understood the language.
He walked the hallways in a fog, seeing but not processing—students parting around him like water around stone, teachers looking at him with that particular mix of pity and wariness reserved for troubled kids who might explode at any moment. His reputation preceded him, which meant no one asked where he'd been, what he was feeling, if he needed anything resembling human connection.
Except Hazuno.
The thirteen-year-old sat alone at lunch, no longer at his usual table with Tachibana and the others. His face was thinner, shadows living under his eyes, and when he saw Josu, something flickered across his expression—recognition, relief, shared grief.
Josu sat down across from him without asking permission. "You look like garbage," Hazuno said. "Back at you."
They sat in silence, two kids who'd barely known each other a month ago but who'd been forged together by circumstance and choice into something that resembled friendship, or maybe brotherhood, or maybe just shared understanding that no one else could access.
"Any news about Kisuno?" Josu asked finally.
Hazuno shook his head. "Social services won't tell me anything. I'm not family. Not legal guardian. Just some kid who got involved in something above his pay grade." His hands clenched into fists. "I called every day for three days. They stopped taking my calls."
"We could find him. Figure out where they placed him—" "And then what? Storm the facility? We already lost this fight, Josu. We lost the moment they showed up on that rooftop."
The defeat in Hazuno's voice was total, absolute, and it ignited something in Josu—not his usual rage, but something cleaner, more focused. His grandfather's words echoed: Be someone I'd be proud of.
"No," Josu said firmly. "We didn't lose. We just haven't won yet." Hazuno looked up, surprise breaking through the despair. "What?"
"You gave up. I get it. It hurts too much to keep fighting when fighting seems pointless." Josu leaned forward, intensity radiating from him like heat. "But that kid trusted us. He chose us as his family when the whole world said he shouldn't. We owe him more than just accepting defeat."
"What exactly do you propose we do? We're fourteen and thirteen, broke, with zero legal standing—"
"We find him. We stay in his life however we can. We keep the promise you made." Josu's voice dropped. "My grandfather's dying. Probably has days, maybe a week. When he's gone, I'll have nothing. No family. No one. But I'll have this—this one chance to be something other than the angry kid who fights his way through life. And I need you with me on this. Because I can't do it alone."
The vulnerability in those words cost Josu everything he had. He'd spent years building walls, cultivating fear, ensuring no one got close enough to hurt him. But sitting across from Hazuno in a cafeteria full of people who saw them as problems rather than humans, he let those walls crack.
Hazuno stared at him, something working behind his eyes—calculation, hope, fear, determination all mixing into a decision that would define whatever came next.
"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. We find him. Together."
Before Josu could respond, a commotion erupted across the cafeteria. Tachibana, Yumi, and Ren had surrounded someone—a first-year student, small and terrified, backed against a wall while Hazuno's former friends laughed at whatever entertainment they'd extracted.
"Do the thing!" Yumi was saying. "Come on, it's funny!"
The first-year looked on the verge of tears, performing some humiliating routine while they recorded on their phones, creating content from someone else's suffering.
Hazuno's expression hardened. He stood abruptly, and Josu recognized that look—the moment when someone who'd been pushed too far finally pushed back.
"Hey," Hazuno called out, voice carrying across the cafeteria. "Leave him alone." The laughter stopped. Tachibana turned, surprise giving way to something uglier. "Hazuno. Finally decided to rejoin society? Where've you been, pal?" "Doesn't matter. Leave the kid alone."
"Why? We're just having fun. You used to be fun, remember? Before you went all weird and serious on us."
Hazuno walked toward them, and Josu followed automatically, providing backup he hadn't been asked to give but would provide anyway. The cafeteria had gone quiet, sensing drama, everyone's attention fixing on the confrontation like moths to flame.
"That's not fun," Hazuno said quietly, dangerously. "That's cruelty dressed up as entertainment. And I'm done pretending I don't see the difference." "Wow, what happened to you?" Yumi's voice carried genuine confusion. "You're acting like we're monsters. We're your friends—"
"You were never my friends. You were people I performed for. There's a difference." Tachibana's expression darkened. He stepped forward, getting in Hazuno's face with borrowed courage. "You know what? Screw you, Hazuno. We were nice to you, included you, and this is how you repay us? By acting all superior?"
"You were 'nice' because I made myself useful. Because I smiled when you wanted smiles and agreed when you wanted agreement and never, ever made you uncomfortable with actual honesty." Hazuno's voice was steady, certain, everything he'd kept buried rising to the surface. "But I'm done being your emotional support puppet. Find someone else to fill that role."
Tachibana shoved him. Not hard, but enough—enough to cross a line, enough to make this physical instead of verbal.
Josu moved instantly, muscle memory from countless fights guiding his response. He caught Tachibana's wrist mid-reach for a second shove, grip tight enough to hurt, voice dropping to that register that promised violence if pushed.
"Touch him again and we have a very different conversation. Understand?"
The threat hung in the air, crystal clear. Everyone in the cafeteria knew Josu's reputation, knew what he was capable of when provoked. Tachibana's courage evaporated, replaced by fear poorly masked as indignation.
"This is insane. You're protecting this traitor?" "I'm protecting my friend." Josu released Tachibana's wrist, shoving him back slightly. "And you're going to leave. All of you. Now."
They left, muttering threats and insults that carried no weight, their power over Hazuno broken completely. The first-year student they'd been tormenting looked at Hazuno with something like awe.
"Thank you," the kid whispered. Hazuno just nodded, exhausted from confrontation, from honesty, from finally standing up for something that mattered. When the crowd dispersed and lunch period resumed its normal chaos, he turned to Josu.
"Thanks for that." "That's what friends do, right? Have each other's backs?" "I wouldn't know. Never had real friends before." Hazuno's smile was small but genuine. "Guess I'm figuring it out as I go." They left the cafeteria together, two outcasts by choice rather than circumstance, and somehow that made all the difference.
The call came at 4:47 AM.
Josu was in the warehouse, unable to face the empty apartment that still smelled like his grandfather despite the old gramps being hospitalized. His phone buzzed, the hospital's number illuminating the darkness, and he knew before answering what the call would say.
"Katsugawa? This is Nurse Tanaka from Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital. I'm calling about your grandfather..."
The words that followed were gentle, professional, inevitable. Heart stopped at 4:23 AM. Peaceful. No pain. The lies they told because the truth—that death was usually neither peaceful nor painless—was too heavy for the living to carry.
Josu stood in the warehouse darkness, phone pressed to his ear, listening to instructions about claiming the body, making arrangements, all the bureaucratic details that turned a person into paperwork.
When the call ended, he didn't move. Didn't cry. Didn't rage. Just stood there, feeling the weight of being truly alone settle over him like concrete. His phone buzzed again. A text from Hazuno: You ok? Haven't heard from you.
Josu's fingers moved automatically: Grandfather died. 4:23 AM.
The response came within seconds: Where are you? Warehouse. Stay there. I'm coming. Twenty minutes later, Hazuno burst through the warehouse door, out of breath from running, still in pajamas he'd thrown a jacket over. He took one look at Josu's face—that careful blankness that hid everything—and understood.
"I'm sorry," Hazuno said. "Everyone's sorry," Josu replied, echoing what he'd told Hazuno weeks ago. Then, quieter: "But you came. That's... that's more than sorry."
They sat together in the warehouse as dawn painted the sky in shades of pink and gold, neither speaking, just existing in shared space while Josu processed what it meant to be fourteen and completely alone in the world.
Finally, Josu spoke: "He made me promise something. Before the end." "What?"
"To be softer. To let his death open me instead of close me." Josu's voice broke. "I don't know how to do that." "Then we'll figure it out together," Hazuno said, using the same words Josu had given him. "You, me, and when we find him, Kisuno. We'll figure out how to be something other than broken."
"What if we can't?" "Then we'll be broken together. That's still better than being broken alone."
Above them, the sky continued its transformation—night yielding to day, darkness to light, endings to beginnings. Somewhere in Tokyo, Kisuno woke in an unfamiliar bed, wondering if the teen's who'd tried to save him still remembered his name. And in a hospital morgue, an old gramps who'd loved his grandson better than anyone else lay cooling, his last wish hanging in the air like incense.
Be softer. Be someone I'd be proud of. Josu sat with Hazuno as morning broke fully, feeling the weight of that wish settling into his bones, becoming the foundation for whatever he'd build next. The warehouse walls cast long shadows, but in those shadows, two kids found each other, and that was enough.
For now, it was enough.
TO BE CONTINUED... [Next Episode: "When Shadows Dance"]