Rinyo learned a new word, but he did not understand what it meant, nor what that feeling was supposed to be.
He came across it by coincidence, on the road back while carrying a bundle of firewood. The path was pitch-black and hard to walk. The faint light could barely reach his eyes. He did not know where he was, or whose doorstep he was passing.
He only knew this spot seemed a little brighter than the rest, so he stopped there to rest for a moment. When the wind blew past, a voice drifted over from far away. Some mother was telling her child a story, and in that story, the boy eventually went on to live a happy life.
That was how he learned a new word: happiness.
But what was happiness?
He asked one of the adults he worked with. The man stroked his chin and thought for a while, then said that happiness was not something you could understand right away. Happiness, he said, was very similar to joy. If a person could stay joyful for a long time, that was a kind of happiness.
For Rinyo, this was a very difficult idea to grasp.
And what was joy?
The man said that when you laugh from the heart, that is joy.
But Rinyo had never laughed.
He did not know what in his life was worth laughing about.
Laughing was a luxury.
The children he saw on the road, dressed in clean clothes, were always laughing. His family was poor. No one at home could laugh, and neither could he.
The man watched him and seemed to realize something. He thought very hard, then finally said, when you eat candy, that feeling you have inside, that is also a kind of joy.
Rinyo suddenly understood a little. This explanation was easier to grasp.
Candy was rare, but not something he had never seen before. It was just that it never appeared in his hands.
So he only needed to find a piece of candy. Once he ate it, he would know what joy was, and then, through that, he might understand what happiness meant.
But what difference would that make for him?
Happiness and joy were words that were far too distant from him.
If he could only have them for a moment, only to lose them again, then perhaps it was better never to have them at all.
Rinyo lowered his head and silently kept chopping wood, only hoping that the little money he brought home after working hard would be enough to keep his father from throwing him out the door again.
The world, it seemed, was always enthusiastic about getting in the way of people's wishes.
During the noon break, a child tugged at the hem of Rinyo's clothes. The boy was already too exhausted to cry properly. His sobs came in short, broken breaths as he asked if Rinyo knew where his home was.
Rinyo did know.
He knew where all the children around here lived.
Families with children were more likely to pity them. Rinyo's father often sent him to those houses to do chores and earn a little money. So Rinyo knew.
"Yeah. I'll take you home."
A small hand held onto one that was just a little bigger, and Rinyo led the boy back. The lady of the house gave Rinyo some money as thanks, and after she wiped the boy's tears away, the child secretly slipped something small and hard into Rinyo's hand.
It was a piece of candy.
Rinyo had seen one before, only once. It was very expensive candy. Only families like that one could afford such a treat.
Only in families like that would a child get so lost that they cried like that, and then return home with a smile.
Rinyo could not bear to eat it.
He had only this one piece, and he wanted to save it for next time. So he hid it away very carefully, then went home with the money. It was a bit more than he was usually able to earn. He did not think his father would actually be happy about it, nor did he expect it would earn him anything. He only hoped it might put his father in a slightly better mood.
So that his father would not make him sleep out in the corridor just because he might cough in the night.
Winter nights were too hard to endure.
He went home. His father took the money, and nothing Rinyo had hoped for came to pass.
In fact, his father was furious.
He suspected Rinyo had hidden some money away. He searched him up and down and could not find a single extra coin.
The only thing he pried from Rinyo's tightly clenched hand was that piece of candy.
The man felt nothing but disappointment at finding only candy. He tossed it aside without a thought and kept searching, but never found anything else. No matter how Rinyo tried to explain, his father did not believe him.
Late that night, Rinyo slipped out of the room. He spent the whole night searching, but never found the candy his father had thrown away. It had clearly fallen not far from where they stood, yet he simply could not find it.
It was as if he had never truly owned joy, and so could never understand what happiness was.
An itch rose again and again in his throat. He stood up and forced himself to move away from the door, crossed the whole courtyard, and only when he reached the gate did he dare to kneel on the ground and cough.
The sound of his coughing woke his father. Rinyo was thrown outside. This was nothing new. He was used to it.
He thought that at least this time his father, in order to go back to sleep, did not beat him bloody again.
Lying in the pile of snow by the road, Rinyo thought about what that piece of candy might have tasted like. He felt a little regret. He should have eaten it right away. Then he would have known what joy was.
But regret was useless.
He had no way to get another piece of candy.
The stars twinkled overhead. Rinyo felt a bit tired. He had worked all day, and then searched all night. He did not want to move even a single finger anymore, and he stopped thinking about candy altogether.
Kibutsuji Muzan saw the child from far away.
At first glance, he looked dead. The small body had been tossed into the snow like trash. Only half a face, as pale as the snow around it, and one bony hand could still be seen. A night of snowfall had almost buried him completely.
Muzan was ready to turn away with the woman at his side, but she had already noticed that something was off.
"There's a child over there… right?"
Before he could say anything to stop her, the woman was already running forward. She dug the child out of the snow. To Muzan's surprise, the boy was not dead.
From the condition he was in when they first saw him, and from the state of his body now, anyone would have said he could not possibly survive.
Yet the boy clung to his last breath, refusing to die, lying unconscious in a faint.
"Maybe he got lost. Let's take him home, then go back."
Muzan crouched down and gently soothed the woman next to him. He had no interest in children. Getting himself a woman was simply a convenient way to blend into human society. If they added a child on top of that, it would likely become a nuisance.
"No. I know this child. His family treats him very badly. Let's take him back with us."
Women were trouble.
Two of them together made for real trouble.
Anger flared up inside him for a moment.
The horizon in the distance was already turning pale. The sun was about to rise. He did not have time to think it over. He could only give a perfunctory reply.
Fine. It was only a child hanging on by a single breath. For all he knew, the boy would die before the day was over. When that happened, they could simply find a place to bury him, and the matter would be settled.
Maybe he was still dreaming.
That was what Rinyo thought when he opened his eyes. A soft bed. A warm quilt. Heat all around him. These were things that had never appeared even in his dreams, because he had never seen them in his life, and could not imagine them.
That was why he thought this could not possibly be real.
"Are you feeling any better?"
A woman's voice sounded beside him, soft and gentle, more comforting than the wind in spring.
Rinyo did not know how to answer.
In his dreams, no one ever asked him anything. But if this was reality, then what was going on? Where was he, and why was he here?
"Come on, sit up and drink some water, eat a little something. You have been sleeping for several days now."
Rinyo turned his head and looked at her for a while. Then he remembered her face.
"Kazuko-san."
"So you still remember me? That's wonderful. I was worried you might not, and that it would scare you."
Why would he be scared? Rinyo thought that even if he did not remember, he would not be afraid of a woman with such a gentle voice.
Kazuko helped him sit up and leave the warm quilt. He realized the clothes on his body were not his. They were warm, soft, and smooth. They did not belong to him. He knew what his own clothes were like: tattered, patched, full of holes, rough like the hemp rope used to haul water buckets.
Kazuko noticed his confusion and explained in a low voice.
"Your clothes were beyond repair, so I put this on you for now. It belongs to my husband. He is in the room downstairs."
It was only a top, but it almost covered Rinyo's entire body. He followed behind Kazuko step by step, from upstairs to downstairs. Legs that were nothing but bone held up a body that was also nothing but bone. Kazuko did not take him straight to meet the true master of the house. Instead, she seated him at the dining table and urged him to eat something.
But everything on the table was unfamiliar. Rinyo sat there quietly, not daring to actually move.
He could hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat. Rinyo thought that even if he did not eat or drink, and simply sat there like this, it would already be enough.
It was warm here.
It was quiet.
The windows were tightly shut, and the door was closed. The sunlight could barely get in. The dimness made him feel safe.
This was not his home, yet it was so much better than his home.
So much better that he thought, if he could stay here for the rest of his life, even if it cost him his life in exchange, he would not hesitate.
Muzan was not entirely sure what to make of raising a child whose origins they did not know.
He was thinking. Hesitating.
This might cause trouble. Or perhaps it would not.
The child might die during the day, and then the problem would solve itself.
But whether regrettably or fortunately, the boy did not. The child just kept sleeping, without dying. During that time, Kazuko told Muzan the boy's story.
A frail body.
An unlucky home.
A violent father and a mother who hated him.
He dragged his weak body through a painful existence, but the very fact that he lived at all was treated as a mistake.
A pitiful child.
From this pitiful child, Muzan saw a reflection he recognized. Not identical, but similar in certain ways. Compassion was a strange emotion, and he allowed it, selectively, to surface.
"I understand. Then let him stay. If he wakes up, we will take him in."
Kazuko was overjoyed by Muzan's consent and began to look forward every day to the boy waking up.
Day after day passed.
By the time Muzan was already considering whether to choose a burial place for the boy, or simply turn him into a demon himself, he heard voices. One was familiar. One was new.
Then there were footsteps coming down the stairs. One set was steady, with a clear rhythm. The other was light, uneven, as if its owner might tumble down at any moment.
When Kazuko pushed the door open and walked in, her eyes were full of joy. She spoke about the boy, about his past, about his present. After circling around the topic, she finally, gently, asked whether Muzan might be willing to go out and meet the child.
It was not an excessive request. Muzan agreed readily and stood to head outside.
He was wondering why it was so quiet out there.
The boy was kneeling properly at the table, sitting in formal seiza, with everything in front of him exactly as Kazuko had placed it.
"Why are you not eating?"
"Is this really… for me to eat?"
The boy looked at him with those eyes. Muzan had imagined what kind of eyes a child from such a family would have.
Timid. Closed-off. Afraid.
He had seen many children like that.
But this boy was not the same.
He asked his question with a blank face. His tone was that of someone trying to persuade himself of a statement, rather than someone asking for permission.
When he looked at Muzan, his eyes were like a pool of dead water.
He was not afraid, but he did not seem to want to live either.
"Yes. This is for you. You can eat it. From now on, this is the sort of food you will have. If you do not like it, we can change it for something else."
In those lifeless eyes, a tiny ripple appeared. Muzan caught it.
The boy remained kneeling for a long time before finally reaching out with both hands to pick up the bowl.
"From now on, this will be your new home."