The essence of Mama that once so vivid had almost faded from memory.
I could barely recall the scent of her shampoo, the one that clung delicately to her long chestnut waves. Her perfume, the kind that used to linger faintly in the living room long after she left for work, had become a ghost. Even the image of her without makeup—her bare face before she applied the armor required for the screen—had grown distant and blurred.
But that night, when our eyes met again, something in me stirred.
She stood in the doorway, her lipstick a shade of soft coral that I remembered from long ago. There was no camera, no audience. Just her and me, suspended in the still air of our apartment.
"You're just like me," she said softly. "A pathetic who is chasing the wrong person."
Her voice wavered, as if something inside her was barely holding together.
She lifted a hand to her mouth, hiding what looked like a smile, but it shook. Trembled, even. And in that fragile, uncertain moment, I misread her completely.
I thought she was mocking me.
Fury rose in my chest, the kind that made me want to lash out, to scream the way Papa used to. But I swallowed it down. Let it churn inside me like a storm bottled beneath still waters. She kept speaking, unaware of the crack she'd triggered.
"Do whatever you want to do. I don't care," she said, voice flat. "But… stay away from him."
Her words weren't protective. They weren't warm. They were just… tired. Detached. Like she was passing me off to fate, washing her hands of whatever became of me.
That night marked something. Not a reconciliation, not even a reconnection—just a shift.
I stopped waiting for someone to save me.
From then on, I lived with one goal: to leave this hell behind for a place where no one knew my name.
For a while, I planned to stop after middle school. Get out early. Just disappear. But there was a monk at a nearby shrine I often visited, and during one of those quiet conversations under the temple's wooden eaves, he said something that stuck.
"Even if you're walking through a storm, walk like you're heading somewhere."
It changed something in me.
I abandoned the thought of fleeing early. Instead, I enrolled in Miyamoto High. If I could graduate, if I could make it into university—even one far from Tokyo—I could disappear the right way. Quietly. Cleanly.
But reality bit at the edges of that dream. Even with the monthly allowance from Mama and the wages from my part-time job at a nearby coffee shop, it wasn't enough. Not for tuition. Not for rent. Not for the kind of freedom I wanted.
And sometimes, to break free, you have to dirty your hands.
That evening, I was working the espresso machine, like I always did. A regular customer came in—middle-aged, always alone, always ordering a double espresso. He'd never spoken to me directly before, but I knew his name: Matsuoka-san. Real estate. Sharp suits. Preferred the window seat.
He never looked like the type to notice someone like me.
Until that night.
After my shift, as I was walking home beneath the dim streetlamps that cast long shadows through the small park, he stepped out of the dark.
"Morikita-kun," he greeted with a smile that felt too wide, too practiced. "Heading home?"
I froze. His large hand reached out, warm and dry, and wrapped around mine before I could react.
He leaned in close, his breath brushing my ear.
"I can give you whatever you need," he murmured. "As much as you want."
My heart hammered in my chest.
Behind his words, behind that false smile, I saw someone else. Papa's face. His voice. His touch. I saw the way Mio looked at me when everything still felt whole, and the way she screamed when it wasn't.
I wanted to scream now. I want to leave. Far from this hell.
That thought was a fire that lit me from within. And in that moment, I made a choice. A quiet, terrible choice.
I went with him.
Matsuoka-san's apartment was sleek. Cold. White furniture. Dim lights. A bed that swallowed me whole. I said nothing the entire time. I didn't cry. I didn't protest.
I shut off something inside myself and let the rest of me disappear.
He was only the beginning.
One man became two. Then more. Their names blurred, their bodies became shadows—just breath, weight, wallets. I no longer flinched. I no longer asked.
It didn't matter what they looked like, what they wanted, or where we met. In alleys, in hotel rooms, in apartments lined with marble floors and hollow eyes.
I was no one to them. And they were no one to me.
I told myself it was for the money. For my freedom. But every time I walked home alone, feeling less and less like a person, I knew it wasn't just about escape.
It was punishment. For trusting Papa. For betraying Mio. For being weak.
I kept going.
And the deeper I fell, the more I stopped feeling anything at all.