Chapter 17: The Ghost of the Past
The moon was high in the sky when Ren's remaining eye flickered open. The alley was pitch black, smelling of rotting garbage and dried copper. He tried to sit up, but a sharp, agonizing pressure built up behind the bandages on his left face.
As he reached up to claw at the fabric, the bandage tore away. Something wet and heavy slid down his cheek and hit the muddy ground with a soft thud. Ren looked down, his heart stopping in terror.
There, lying in the dirt, was his left eye. The trauma from the baseball bat had finally forced the dead organ out of its socket. He stared at it, trembling, before realizing with a hollow numbness that he couldn't feel anything on that side of his face anymore. He was truly marked now—a survivor of a hell no child should know.
He tried to move his right arm, but the bone felt like it was grinding against itself. He let out a low, guttural roar of pain that echoed through the empty streets. Using a discarded piece of cloth he found near a trash bin, he tied a makeshift tourniquet around his bleeding forehead.
Time: 01:53 AM
The restaurant had long since closed. The streets of the Tier 2 sector were eerie and silent. Ren dragged himself along the cold stone walls, his legs shaking with every step. A pack of stray dogs emerged from the shadows, growling and baring their teeth at the scent of his fresh blood. But as they got closer, they stopped. They looked at Ren's one glowing eye and the strange, dark aura bleeding from his wounds, and whimpered, tucking their tails and vanishing into the night.
Suddenly, a flash of white caught his eye.
Sitting atop a wooden crate was a cat—pure white with piercing blue eyes. Ren froze. Memories flashed before his eyes: a golden palace, a kind mother, and a small kitten he used to feed behind his father's back.
"Snow...?" Ren whispered, his voice a broken rasp.
The cat hopped down. In its mouth, it carried a small piece of bread it had scavenged. It walked right up to Ren and tapped his foot with its paw, dropping the food at his blood-stained boots.
Ren looked at the cat, a small, painful smile tugging at his lips. He couldn't eat, not with his jaw shattered, but the gesture filled a hole in his heart he didn't know existed. He reached out his one good hand and touched the cat's head.
"You found me," he breathed.
He continued his slow, agonizing trek home. One hand clutched his broken arm, the other scraped against the walls for balance. Behind him, silent as a ghost, the white cat followed, its blue eyes watching his every move.
Time: 05:00 AM
Inside the apartment, the light of dawn was just beginning to peek through the curtains. Hana was in the kitchen, stirring a pot of water. She heard the faint sound of the door handle rattling.
"Ren? Is that you? You're home early," she called out, a bit of playfulness in her voice. "I was just making breakfast. Don't think you're getting out of eating those vegetables today!"
She didn't hear a reply. Only the sound of something heavy thudding against the wood.
"Ren?"
Hana walked to the door and pulled it open. Her scream was silenced by pure, unadulterated shock.
Ren was slumped against the doorframe, his clothes shredded and soaked in blood. His face was a mask of gore, his left socket empty and dark. He looked like a corpse that had crawled out of a grave just to see her one last time.
And standing right behind him, sitting calmly in the hallway, was the white cat with the haunting blue eyes.