Takashi: "So… he was real."
Mizuki: "Do you remember who he was?"
I nodded slowly.
Takashi: "Ren… He was in the orphanage with me. I wouldn't call him a friend. But he wasn't a bully either. He was…"
How do you explain someone like that?
"…like a ghost scarier than the other ghosts—one that came and beat them up."
Mizuki didn't laugh. She just nodded.
Mizuki: "Then you need to find out why he was in that photo next to your grandfather. And what he's doing now. At the very least, I want you to know what I've learned."
Outside, the sky had already turned dark.
Rain had begun to tap slowly on the windows.
But the real storm had already started inside.
Because the past doesn't stay buried.
Mizuki stayed quiet for a while. She swallowed hard.
Her eyes were fixed on a point—but not in this room.
It was as if she were staring far into the distance, parting a thin curtain of the past with her gaze.
Then her thoughts began to take shape, like a screenwriter at their keyboard turning scattered phrases into a coherent script.
Her voice didn't tremble, but her words were like shards of glass—each one cutting a little deeper inside me.
Mizuki:
"Ren… never deserved to be in an orphanage.
Not there. Not on the streets. Not anywhere."
Takashi: "What do you mean?"
I swallowed. My full attention was on her.
Mizuki slowly walked toward the chair in the corner of the room, but didn't sit.
She rested her hands on its back, leaning slightly forward.
It was as though the words in her throat were resisting, trying not to come out.
Mizuki:
"He was adopted when he was eight.
Ren wasn't even his real name.
He was born in a town by the sea—a place that looked more like a painting than a dot on a map.
A town from one of Hokusai's Great Wave prints…
A place where the calm and fury of the sea changed with day and night.
His family died in a fire—or rather, they were killed.
He had no living relatives.
No official records remained.
As if someone had tried to erase their entire existence.
Only one photograph survived.
An old man took him in.
A quiet man, barely seen in town.
He used to visit the cemetery often, especially Ren's mother's grave.
He loved her like his own daughter.
Ren's mother used to call the man 'The Watcher.'
Because whenever there was trouble, he was always there to fix it.
Except… the night of the fire."
I tried to speak, but the words got stuck in my throat.
It felt like the smoke from that fire had never really left my lungs.
Mizuki continued.
"That old man—Ren's grandfather—when he finally found him years later…
He saw a broken child.
And out of guilt, he never called him by name again.
Just 'kid' or 'my child.'
Not because he was a bad person…
But because he had betrayed Ren's trust.
In the years he couldn't find him, Ren slowly withered from sadness… and got sick."
Takashi: "He was sick?"
Mizuki nodded.
"Leukemia.
He was diagnosed not long after being adopted.
He was so young… too young to understand what was happening.
And so weak… too weak to fight it."
The room fell into silence.
Outside, wind slipped in through the roof.
The small chain on the edge of the table swung gently.
But it was as if the entire world had gone quiet.
A deep silence…
Like a throat that can't swallow.
A lump so heavy, you'd have to rip your own throat out to get rid of it.
Mizuki's voice lowered.
"He couldn't play outside.
He couldn't go to school.
Even laughter made him cough up blood.
So he read.
He listened.
He listened to the sound of birds too tired to fly."
I lowered my gaze.
I thought about Ren's silence.
His eyes.
That gaze of his that never fully belonged to this world.
His silence…
It was like the muted sound of a broken violin.
It existed—but we couldn't hear it.
Takashi: "He never told me…"
Mizuki slowly shook her head.
"He never told anyone.
Not even me.
He believed… if he stayed quiet enough, maybe the illness would forget him."
I took a deep breath—but this wasn't an ordinary kind of pain.
It was the kind that touches the past… but hurts the present even more.
But how did Mizuki know all this?
I looked into her eyes.
Takashi: "How do you know this story—when even I, someone who lived in the same orphanage, didn't?"
Before I could finish the sentence, she cut me off:
Mizuki:
"Because I lived in that town too, Takashi.
I still remember the smell of the warm bread Ren's mother used to bake.
I still remember the taste.
But knowing I'll never eat it again… it hurts. It burns.
I used to live with my grandmother there—
To escape my cold-hearted father and my loveless mother.
I looked for warmth in her arms.
But I lost that warmth the same day Ren lost everything.
And after that, I turned into a bully…
because I had no one else to be."
Mizuki's eyes were burning with emotion—like they were trying to set me on fire.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and muttered something under her breath.
Then she pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket.
She had calmed down now and held it out to me.
The writing on it was clearly by a child.
Messy but careful.
Takashi: "What's this?"
Mizuki:
"He wrote it before he left.
From the orphanage.
Ren was ten."
There was a single sentence on the paper:
"If I stop being a child, maybe the world won't hurt me like it hurts children."