VOLUME #2 - EPISODE 2
[NARRATOR: Warning. This episode contains violence, blood, and the horrifying revelation that even the cheerful protagonist has a breaking point. It also contains a mother slipping on a perfectly dry floor four times in a row while avoiding a question. Life is full of contrasts. But before the pratfalls, a kitchen at midnight. A parent with a key she has been carrying for eleven days and a drawer she has not been able to open. Watch her hands.]
PROLOGUE: THE LOCKED DRAWER
A small kitchen. A single bulb. The refrigerator hummed in the dark like a held note.
Haruka Shiko stood in her nightgown in front of the bottom drawer of the old sideboard. In one hand she held a small brass key. In the other, a mug of tea gone cold two hours ago. She had been standing there since midnight. The key turned. The drawer slid open. Inside lay a stack of papers bound with a rubber band, and on top of it, a thick cream envelope with a stamp in one corner. A blue-black circle. One letter at its center. M.
Her husband's handwriting on the front: Do not open. For the household's protection.
She had not opened it in eleven years. She had moved it three times, from one house to the next, hidden beneath tablecloths and recipe cards, like a sleeping animal she was afraid of waking through pure and massive care and the attention of detail for important things. Her fingers touched the paper. They shook. It's only paperwork, she told herself. It's only paperwork. She had told herself this every night since the day a silver-haired boy walked into her kitchen at midnight and said, in a voice too flat for his age, Hello, Mother.
Outside, tires crunched on gravel.
She went rigid. Headlights swept the wall, slid across the ceiling, and went dark. A car door shut. Heavy footsteps. A key in the front lock. She slammed the drawer. She turned the brass key. She stood there with her heart hammering against her ribs, mug in both hands, smiling at the empty air so brightly that her cheeks ached. "You're up late," said a smooth voice from the hall.
"I couldn't sleep!" she said. "Tea!" The mug had been empty for two hours.
[NARRATOR: Remember the stamp. Remember the smile that hurt.]
PART ONE: QUESTIONS ANSWERED ON PRATFALLS
The Shiko household smelled like miso soup and evasion.
Riyura sat at the kitchen table with his chin in his hands, purple hair still damp from the evening air, yellow star hairclip resting beside his empty bowl. His mother moved around the kitchen with the nervous energy of someone defusing a bomb while blindfolded. "Mom," Riyura said, in the tone of someone who had been patient for exactly long enough. "We need to talk about Yakamira."
His mother froze mid-dishwash. "Oh! Would you look at that! I think I hear the, the thing!" She gestured toward nothing. "The thing that's happening! Outside!" "There's nothing outside." "Are you sure? Because I'm very sure I heard..." "Mom." She turned, smile strained, a soapy sponge held in both hands like a shield. "Dear, it's complicated."
"You keep saying that. But complicated doesn't explain why I have a half-brother who appeared out of nowhere."
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: I'm using my serious voice. The one I save for actual important conversations. This is how she knows I'm not joking. This is also how I know I'm not getting answers. But look at her hands. She's holding that sponge the way I hold a chicken mask. Like it's the only thing between her and the room.]
His mother sighed. "Okay. Fine. Your last name..."
She took a step forward and slipped on a wet patch. Her arms windmilled. She crashed into the counter, knocking over a stack of plates that clattered but miraculously didn't break. "I'M FINE!" she announced from the floor. "COMPLETELY FINE!" "Mom, are you avoiding the conversation?" "AVOIDING? ME? NEVER!" She scrambled up, tripped over her own slippers, and collided with the refrigerator. Magnets rained down like confused confetti.
"This is painful to watch," Riyura muttered.
"YOUR LAST NAME," she said, attempting to stand with pride, "has nothing to do with last names only bloodlines and, OH NO THE WINDOW!" There was nothing wrong with the window. She ran at it anyway, slipped on a perfectly dry surface, crashed into the curtains, and ended up wound like a very embarrassed burrito. "The family situation," she said from inside the cocoon, "is EXTREMELY complicated and involves legal matters and... IS THAT A BIRD?!"
"There's no bird, Mom." "I'M VERY CERTAIN THERE'S A BIRD!"
Riyura buried his face in his hands. And through his fingers, he saw something. When his mother had careened into the sideboard, her gaze had flicked, once, quickly, down to the bottom drawer. Then away. It was the same glance Yakamira gave his phone. "I give up," he said. "Excellent! So glad we had this talk!" She emerged from the curtains with her hair a disaster and her smile too bright. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go organize the thing. Upstairs. Far away."
She fled. He sat alone in the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed. After a moment he stood, crossed to the sideboard, and looked down at the bottom drawer. A small brass lock. A scratch around it, fresh and bright, where a key had been fitted in a trembling hand. He did not touch it. But he remembered.
PART TWO: THE CRAWLING FEELING
The next day, Shoehead's father came to pick him up from school.
It was a rare occurrence. Usually Shoehead walked home alone, chewing whatever footwear he'd acquired that day. But today his father had insisted. They stood by the school gates in the pale afternoon, an awkward silence stretched between them like old taffy. "So," Shoehead's father began. "Your friend. The one with the brother. Also, this sandal you gave me, son. It tastes amazing roasted."
"Half-brother. Yakamira Shiko." "Have you met him?" "Yes. He's interesting. Eats nothing. Very suspicious." His father smiled slightly. "That's your metric for measuring people?" "It's surprisingly accurate. It's also yours." A moment passed. Then Shoehead's father spotted someone walking toward the gates. Silver hair catching the afternoon light. A white mask in place. Pale grey eyes scanning the surroundings with mechanical precision. Hands in his jumper pockets, expression bored and distant.
He walked past them without acknowledgment. But as he passed, something happened. Shoehead's father felt it. A chill that had nothing to do with February. A crawling sensation at the base of his skull, like blood made of ice skittering down his spine.
Those pale eyes had flicked toward him. Only for a second. But in that second, he saw something that stopped his breath. Recognition. And behind it something worse, not predatory but trained, the stillness of a dangerous being that has been taught to hunt and has never been taught to stop. "Dad?" Shoehead noticed his father had gone pale. "You okay?"
"That student," his father whispered. "There's something wrong with him." "He's just antisocial..." "No." His hand trembled slightly. "It's like looking at someone who learned to pretend to be human. Who studied the manual and missed a crucial chapter." He gripped his son's shoulder. "Be careful around him. Please." Shoehead watched the retreating figure. "That's... oddly specific." "I know what I saw."
[NARRATOR: Shoehead's father has instincts. Good ones, sometimes, the kind that evolved over thousands of shoes. And he is right to be afraid, though not of what he thinks. He should be afraid for Yakamira, not of him. Remember that. It will matter later.]
PART THREE: CHAOS TRAINING GONE WRONG
The rooftop had become their unofficial headquarters.
Which was ironic, considering it was also the site of multiple traumatic incidents. But Jeremy High specialized in reclaiming trauma through aggressive positivity and questionable decision-making. Subarashī stood at attention, his stance wide, his expression serious. "ALRIGHT, NEW BROTHER! TODAY WE TEACH YOU THE WAYS OF JEREMY HIGH CHAOS!"
"I decline," Yakamira said. "YOU CAN'T DECLINE ENLIGHTENMENT!" "Watch me." Miyaka appeared beside Yakamira with a clipboard that had materialized from nowhere. "Lesson one: spontaneous costume changes. Observe." She put on a chicken headband. "BA-GAAAAAKKK." Yakamira stared. "No." "Come on! It's tradition!" "Your traditions are concerning."
Riyura, wearing his chicken mask because of course he was, stepped forward. "Look, Yakamira. I know this is all weird. But here at Jeremy High we embrace the weird. We make it ours. We..."
"Stop," Yakamira said. Everyone paused. "Stop trying to force me into your mold," Yakamira continued, his pale eyes fixed on Riyura. "Stop assuming I want to be part of your circus." "We're just trying to help you fit in..." Without warning, Yakamira moved. His fist connected with Riyura's face with shocking force. The chicken mask flew off in two pieces. Riyura stumbled backward, hand flying to his nose, pain exploding across his skull.
"WHAT THE..." Subarashī started forward, but Yakamira's gaze stopped him cold. "Some idiot like you," Yakamira said, his voice calm and sinister, a weather report about incoming doom, "doesn't get to throw orders around. Doesn't get to decide how I should act." Riyura looked up, blood dripping from his nose, his star-shaped pupils wide. "Yakamira... are you okay? Did something..."
"Don't." The voice dropped to something arctic. "Don't pretend to be concerned. You're just like everyone else, trying to mold me into something comfortable. This is why everyone only pretends to like you, Riyura. At least, that's what I think." "That's not... I was only worried..." "Shut. Up." The words landed like slaps. Riyura felt something inside him crack.
[RIYURA'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: I tried. I tried so hard to welcome him. And this is what I get? Violence? Contempt? But I keep hearing the cadence of it. Everyone only pretends to like you. It's too smooth. It's a line. Somebody wrote that sentence for him, and he's saying it the way he said his introduction in class. With his whole body braced, like a human bracing for a beating.]
Shoehead stepped forward, his usual calm replaced with something harder. "That's enough. Leave Riyura alone."
Yakamira's eyes shifted. "And who are you to give me orders?" "Someone who actually cares about him. Which apparently makes me more family than you." Something flickered across Yakamira's face. Rage, perhaps. Or the pain of a sentence landing in a place that had never been touched. He moved faster than anyone expected.
His fist caught Shoehead in the temple with brutal precision. A dull wet crack. Shoehead's eyes rolled back and he collapsed, boneless, onto the snow-dusted concrete. Blood bloomed from his hairline, red against white, and spread slowly in a perfect circle. "SHOEHEAD!" Miyaka screamed. And something in Riyura broke.
PART FOUR: WHEN THE SKY GOES DARK
The transformation was immediate.
Riyura stood slowly. Blood still dripped from his nose, but his expression had changed completely. His star-shaped pupils had gone black. Hard. They burned with something like hellfire filtered through ice. And for a single heartbeat, around the edges of his vision, small dark stars flickered into being and winked out again, like sparks from a dying fire.
"We may be related," Riyura said, in a whisper so devoid of his usual warmth it felt like standing in a graveyard, "but that doesn't give you the right to hurt my friends." Yakamira turned. Surprise crossed his face, and something worse behind the surprise, the look of someone who has just seen a lever pulled that he had been told would work.
Riyura moved.
Not with trained precision. With pure, unfiltered rage. His kick caught Yakamira's jaw with terrifying force, and Yakamira flew backward and hit the chain-link fence. The metal bent with a scream, bowing outward over a four-story drop. "Riyura..." Subarashī reached out, but Riyura was already walking. Yakamira tried to rise, blood streaking his chin where he'd bitten his own lip. "You..."
Riyura's fist interrupted. Once. Twice. Three times. Each punch landed with sickening accuracy. Blood sprayed, bright red against silver hair, against white mask, against the frost-covered rooftop. A crack like a snapping twig echoed across the roof. Yakamira's nose shattered. "RIYURA, STOP!" Miyaka was screaming, but her voice sounded underwater.
He pulled back his fist for another strike. Arms wrapped around him from behind. Subarashī, stronger than he looked, hauling him backward. "RIYURA! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL HIM!" "He hurt Shoehead," Riyura said, in that terrible whisper. "He hurt my friend." "I KNOW! BUT THIS ISN'T YOU!" Miyaka had rushed to Yakamira, hands shaking as she checked his face. His nose was ruined. His breathing came in wet bubbles. "We need to get them both to the nurse," she said, voice trembling. "Now."
Yakamira's boot came up. It caught her square in the jaw.
The crack was horrible, a hinge snapping out of its socket, and Miyaka's head flew sideways. She spun, hit the concrete on her shoulder, and lay still for a moment, mouth openly weak, a thin line of red running from the corner of her lip. A choking, bubbling sound escaped her. She could not close her mouth. "MIYAKA!" Subarashī's grip on Riyura faltered. He flinched toward his sister.
Cartoon Headayami appeared at the rooftop door, fresh from a council meeting. His eyes took in the scene in a single sweep. The blood on the snow. The bent fence. Shoehead unconscious. Miyaka on the ground with a dislocated jaw. A silver-haired kid with a ruined face. "Call an ambulance," he said, with cold, white efficiency, already dialing. "Multiple injuries. Possible concussion. Broken bones. And a crazed brother."
The rage drained out of Riyura all at once, leaving something worse in its place. His legs gave out. Subarashī lowered him gently to the roof, though his own hands were shaking, his face a mask of fury and fear. Miyaka was already pushing herself upright, jaw tucked into her palm, eyes streaming but fierce, shaking her head: I'm fine, I'm fine.
"I'm sorry," Riyura whispered, staring at his bloodied knuckles. "I'm so sorry." "Yeah," Subarashī said quietly. "I know."
PART FIVE: AFTERMATH IN WHITE
The nurse's office smelled of antiseptic and consequences.
Shoehead woke first, groaning, a massive bruise swelling over his temple. "What... happened?" "Yakamira knocked you out," Miyaka said, voice slurred around the brace the nurse had wired against her jaw. "Then Riyura lost it." "Define 'lost it.'" "Broke his nose and almost killed him." "...Oh." In the next bed, separated by a curtain, Yakamira lay with bandages across his face, silver hair matted with blood, pale grey eyes fixed on the ceiling. Riyura sat in a chair between them, hands bandaged, expression hollow.
Nobody spoke. The silence stretched like a wound that wouldn't close. Finally, Yakamira's voice came from behind the curtain, rough and thick through the swollen nose. "You're stronger than you look, brother."
"Don't call me that," Riyura said quietly, with anger in his tone. "Why not? It's what we are." "Brothers don't hurt each other's friends." "Maybe I'm not interested in being the kind of brother you want. And your friends don't matter to us anyways. Because we're not related to them." Riyura stood slowly, his star-shaped pupils dulled to a dark that was not quite black. "Then why are you here? What do you want?"
Yakamira was quiet for a long moment. Then: "That's complicated." Riyura walked to the door and paused without turning. "Stay away from my friends. Or next time, Subarashī won't stop me." He left. Behind the curtain, Yakamira touched his broken nose gently and smiled. A real smile, not the calculated kind. Painful. Bloody. Strange. His whole body relaxed, the way a person's does when a long, awful task is finally over. "Interesting," he whispered, to himself. "He's capable. He did exactly what I was told he would." A long breath. "I've had enough. Now to kill Riyura Shiko, as planned."
The last words were small and dull, a line read aloud from a card. He picked up his phone. His thumb found the contact. MOTHER. He pressed it and lifted it to his ear. It rang in the dark.
PART SIX: THE OTHER END OF THE LINE
In a quiet kitchen in a quiet house, a mother stood at a sink.
Haruka Shiko was washing a single cup with slow, careful circles of the sponge, humming something tuneless. Her phone lay face down on the counter beside the dish rack. It was silent. It had been silent all day. She had not received a call, or a text, or a message of any kind from her eldest son in weeks. She dried the cup. She set it on the rack. She stood looking at the bottom drawer of the sideboard, and then at the window, and then at nothing.
Across the city, in a room with drawn curtains and a single desk lamp, a phone buzzed against polished wood. A hand reached for it. A different hand, long-fingered, immaculately kept. A silver cufflink caught the lamplight, a small oval, engraved with a single letter. The hand lifted the device to an ear that was never in frame. "Yes?" said a voice.
It was smooth. Warm. Almost kind in a way. It was a voice that had comforted frightened victims and signed checks and ended lives, and Yakamira, in his white bed, with his face wrapped in gauze, closed his eyes at the sound of it like a human who has just been handed a blanket. "It is done," he said. "He reacted as expected. Aggressive. Protective. Prone to loss of control."
"Good," said the voice. "Come home tonight. Mother will have supper waiting." The line clicked dead. Yakamira lowered the phone. He stared at the ceiling. The word Mother hung in his mind like a coat that no longer fit. He could not have said why. Beyond the curtain, Riyura's footsteps had faded long ago. Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and shut, and a familiar, bright, off-key voice, Subarashī's, floated up the hall, loudly insisting that the nurse's bandages were heroic.
In the dark of the other room, the hand with the silver cufflink set down the phone, and picked up a pen, and wrote one line in a ledger bound in red.
Phase one. Complete.
[NARRATOR: And so we've witnessed the dark side of Riyura Shiko, the side that emerges when kindness is mistaken for weakness, when patience runs dry, when someone threatens the people he loves. Yakamira learned a valuable lesson today: even the sunniest people cast shadows. And those shadows have teeth. Next time, we discover why Yakamira is really here. Spoiler alert: it's not for a family reunion. And not for the reason he thinks, either.]
TO BE CONTINUED...