Her knees struck the ground with a subdued thud, as though something inside her gave way before she even realized what was occurring. Her ribbon went soft against her cheeks as her head fell—hard—into the earth. She didn't scream. She didn't wail. She shook. And then her little girlish hands and wrists that were not built for this type of world scrabbled into the ground as if she was digging herself in. Like if she could just dig deep enough, the terror wouldn't find her.
"Riona—" Hiyori reached out but was caught in mid-air. What do you do with someone who folds in half like that?
"Ahtck…W-W-W-WHY… aahh…tck…tcs…ghhh," Riona's voice shattered, trembling as it burst out of her lips. Her throat convulsed. Her stomach twisted. Each sound emerged distorted, strained, and twisted, as if something divine were attempting to flee a shattered speaker. Her arms wrapped tight around her midsection, and her legs trembled as if her own body had turned against her, the Tourette's sweeping in like an electric storm flashing across nerves and memories and terror.
Amaya didn't say a word. She fell down next to her, grabbed her phone with one hand while stroking her back with the other hand, firm and solid as if she was holding her to this reality. The way a friend doesn't make things better—but saves you from falling apart in public.
"Be with us," she breathed softly, calling emergency services, talking fast and loud, a cutting edge to her voice as though she'd practiced it before. As though this wasn't the first time she'd witnessed someone shatter before her eyes. "Yes. Musashi no Yamato southwest forest sector. Man. Hanging. Suicide, I believe. We're with a friend; she's having a breakdown. Please hurry."
Meanwhile, Hiyori had knelt too—awkwardly, her presence too large for the moment. Her hands hovered over Riona like she didn't know where to touch without making things worse. "Riona, Riona—it's okay, you're okay, just breathe, it's not your fault, we're right here." She didn't know if any of it helped. It didn't feel like it did. But it was all she could give.
The woods were observed. Quiet once more. As if it didn't mind what fell inside it.
"Why?" Riona gagged, teeth rattling as she attempted to combat the shakes. "Why do people die like that?" Why doesn't anyone see it coming?
And no response. Because she hadn't posed a question. She'd betrayed something she couldn't hold back. A fissure in the reasoning of her perpetually smiling universe. The tempest in her head had finally spilled over.
Amaya didn't lift her gaze. "Because the world's silent until it's not."
Hiyori wrapped her arm around Riona's shoulders, even as the girl trembled so violently that her body creaked and groaned to remain intact from the absolute ferocity of trying to keep up with her own nervous system.
Sirens weren't arriving yet. The city wasn't in any kind of hurry.
But the girls remained. Kneeling on the ground beside the innocence recently splattered with the gravity of something no one should ever have to witness alone.
They waited that way. Three spirits suspended between limbs and air. The dead body swaying like a chime for the forgotten.
And all Riona could do was shiver on the ground, holding her belly like something had attempted to kill her from the inside out but missed just enough to leave the pain behind. Her small fingers curled in the soil, the tips raw and scraped from digging in a world that refused to provide answers. The ribbon around her hair was grubby, her breath drawn in ragged gasps, and her entire body appeared like a prayer left half-formed. Hiyori stood dumbstruck, half a step away from panic, feet rooted yet ready to sprint, heart hammering in her throat as if trying to make decisions her brain couldn't. Then Amaya stood, as calm and terrifying as a funeral bell, brushing off her long black sleeves and fixing the ink around her lips like a soldier war-painting grief into silence. "I'll stay with her here," she said flatly. "Go on." Hiyori spun around, "But—I—" "The police indicated forty-five minutes," Amaya interrupted. "School is thirty minutes." Your mother is the principal." She may forgive me. She may forgive Sunshine here. But she will not forgive you." Her voice was not cruel—it was objective, reciting the conditions of some unvoiced curse they all shared. Then, in a single fluid movement, she stooped and lifted Riona up bridal-style, not even wincing as the girl whimpered and jerked in her arms, a shuddering heap of weightless tears and half-suppressed stammers. "And if you get caught," Amaya added, looking down the woods path, "we two will also get in trouble." She looked at the corpse once more, still suspended in that warped stillness the woods had descended into, the branches cradling a shadow of a man. "This was someone who died," she breathed—not to Hiyori, perhaps to herself, or to the body, or to the whole damn world. "Someone who was always in rooms with people. But always alone." The wind changed, ever so slightly, and the tree groaned with the soft movement of something far beyond human. "At least we can ensure his flesh isn't alone after he left." Hiyori wished to protest—wished to remain, wished to flee, wished to vomit and scream and vanish simultaneously. But she did not. Because deep inside she knew Amaya was correct. This was not about being a hero or breaking the rules. This was about dignity. About witnessing. About standing next to the evidence that sometimes individuals fall through every safety net, however difficult they stretch. And as Hiyori walked away from the scene toward school—toward uniform and bell and a furious mother—Amaya's last words lingered around her like chill breath. Because even Shotaro Mugyiwara," she declared in a bitter sort of finality, "cannot make people desire to live." And on that, Riona whimpered again, hiding her face in Amaya's shoulder like a broken child nursed by an unholy nun, and the forest closed around them both, silently keeping vigil for a man who died unseen.
.....
. And she walked back towards the city—not jogging, not pacing, walking, as if her body was more subject to gravity than will. The forest receded about her until it gave over to the gravel roads of the rural perimeter and then the approach of the city beyond: electric pole silhouettes far away, rooftops jamming the horizon, and the spread of humanity creeping closer with each step. Her chest hurt—not with sorrow, not with fear, but with something more drawn out, as if time itself had broken something within her and was allowing it to seep out.
She couldn't shake the image from her mind—the body in the tree. Not a corpse, but an individual. One who had laughed before. Perhaps fought with their sibling. Perhaps clutched their lover too tightly on a cold evening. Perhaps he had nobody. Perhaps that was it.
That was once somebody's son, she considered. Perhaps even somebody's father. A neighbor. Perhaps a stranger who always opened doors. Or a boy who fed stray animals when nobody noticed. Did anybody ever go to him?
Then it struck her. The cramps. The ones that felt like a punishment. It began with a dull gnawing in her belly, then curled up inside her like her womb was turning on her. She hissed, grasping for her side, and staggered off the road, grabbing the lip of the riverbank where earth dropped away to mud and thicket. Her knees landed hard on the ground with a slap of bone and moss. She gulped for air, perspiration beading cold behind her ears, and she knew it—the damp heat between her thighs. Not sweat. Not blood. Not the monthly curse. This was the price.
The drug. Hana's drug. The one she did months ago to alter the curve of her hips, her breasts, the softness of her thighs—to "feminize," to "beautify," to "belong." She only had to try it once. But it had felt too good to quit. And now, without it, her body rebelled like it had been left behind.
Ack—withdrawals," she spat out loud, body convulsing, fingers digging into the ground as if she could extract relief from the dirt. Her eyes went dim. She fell at the riverbank, half in, half out, the crimson of her blood tainting the current like some grotesque baptism.
The heavens above were a dull grey, and she was reflected in the water—distant, trembling, afraid, and still trying to be tough. The trees murmured like mourners.
She didn't weep. Not because she wasn't hurting—but because the hurt was too stale, too well-known, too interwoven in her bones to elicit tears any more.
Somewhere—perhaps not far away—Shotaro Mugyiwara was likely still out there, attempting to mend the world like a broken plaything. Attempting to keep humans from destroying one another out of habit or starvation or sorrow. And he was powerful. But too powerful for this.
He was powerless to unhang the man in the tree. Powerless to wipe out the flame writhing in her stomach. Powerless to bring relief from the burden of the world crushing down on a girl who had already learned too young to carry it.
The river swallowed her blood just as it had swallowed countless others before her—silently, without condemnation. No cry, no preaching. Only water, crimson and vanishing.
And as her arms shook against wet moss and her breath grated against the inside of her ribs, Hiyori realized something—not about justice, not about Shotaro, not even about life—but about choices. Not the grand ones. The small ones. The little ones that keep you alive. The ones nobody applauds.
Because death never does arrive like thunder. It sometimes lingers, slow, gentle even. It lingers for the time you no longer realize it's present. And it very nearly got her.
The cramps returned like flames beneath her skin. Her stomach contracted, her legs trembled, her eyesight blurred from pain and tears and withdrawal. The medication Hana had provided her with—the one that had offered curves, assurance, dominance—had remade her body into a stranger. One that made her pay for ever having thought to stop.
She attempted to rise, but her body would not comply. So she crawled.
Her knees were digging into the ground. Her hands were digging into the ground. She was pulling herself towards her bag, towards the road, towards something other than this horrible silence.
Her lips bit into the dirt. Her face smeared with tears and soil. She spoke trash—little prayers, shattered curses. Her fists tightened dirt as if it was all she had left. Her tears pounded the ground like seeds, like perhaps if she cried hard enough something would grow out of it all. Something that made sense.
It hurt like having a child while being on fire.
But she went on. Crawling because she didn't want to die here. Not because she thought it would get any better. But because if she died now, it would be like giving them the victory. The world, the voices, the people who gave her pills but not kindness. The people who weren't around when she screamed at night.
Sometimes just living isn't courageous. It's not honorable. It's simply not dying. And that is sufficient.
She crawled. Blood in the river. Mud on her face. Fists full of dirt. And a will to live that hurt more than death ever could.
.....
Ring. Ring.
The noise drifted soft at first, like a dream unwilling to fade on the margins of suffering. Hiyori squeezed her eyes toward the road, still clutching earth in her fingers, still stuttering with each breath like a record needle skipping through sorrow. And then she saw him.
No. It.
Careening down the road like a forgotten hallucination from some kids' show that had run wild—was a penguin. Or, more precisely, a penguin-clad man. Huge. Enormous, even. A giant, waddling monstrosity, close to eight feet high, legs propelling a too-small bicycle like it was in his debt, the flabby belly of the suit jouncing up and down with every rotation of the wheels. The costume appeared frayed at the seams, patchily faded like it had ridden out wars no child should ever dream of. A ribbon tied around his feathered chest stated: MOTHER'S DAY PARADE in jagged marker.
As he waddled past a knot of children gaping from the curb, the giant penguin swung his round felt head in their direction and extended one fuzzy wing.
"Happy Mother's Day to all teachers I referred to as mom when I was little!" he shouted in a big, cheerful voice muffled by the head of fabric.
One of the boys blinked and yelled back, "But it's not even Mother's Day today!"
The penguin nodded thoughtfully—the philosopher in feathers—said, "Every day's Mother's Day, kid. If you want it to be. Treat your mom good. You don't always get to hold her."
He just kept pedaling, whistling a sad, off-pitched melody that sounded like the theme of a forgotten cartoon. Hiyori blinks through her tears and confusion, wondering if perhaps her mind had shattered from the anguish. But before she could think it, fate nudged her.
The penguin's front wheel hit a loose rock. The entire beast lurched like a tipsy boat, flailed the both flippers like a Looney Tune on a banana peel, then—splat—fell sideways into the shallow section of the river with a pathetic splash.
The children exploded with laughter, naturally. But the penguin didn't yell, didn't scream. He just stood up—slowly, as Frankenstein rising from a lightning bolt—soaked in riverwater, covered in mud, the head of his costume imperfect, showing a sliver of human skin where the beak should have fit.
Then, he started to waddle towards her. Not run. Not walk. Waddle. As if the river had baptized him into a sacred order of goofy saints.
And Hiyori, who was still shaking, half-soaked in her own blood and tears, just gazed. She released an unadulterated scream—half confusion, half anger, half terror—and slid back on her elbows, still too shaky to stand straight. "What the fuck?! What the actual fuck—?!"
The penguin just continued waddling towards her as if nothing was strange. As if this was the norm. As if this was destiny.
Then another person appeared running from the road—a thin adolescent boy, yelling, pumping a fist in the air. "HEY! That's MY FUCKIN' BIKE you freak!"
The penguin froze in mid-waddle. The two glared at each other.
"You… penguin-wearing son of a whores!" the boy yelled, before slapping the water, cursing under his breath, picking up the fallen cycle, and walking away with no further word.
"technically you are not wrong" the penguine turned around and said the slur.
Hiyori and the penguin stood there silently, looking at each other.
And in that moment—so strange, so stupid, so fragile—it all hung poised in the air. A bleeding girl in the river. A dripping, weeping penguin the size of a house. And a world that didn't much care if you laughed or cried, just so long as you moved.
The penguin shrugged gently. Then he said, "You alright?"
She didn't think—her legs just moved. Instinct, terror, hysteria—whatever remained unbroken in her blood took precedence over the agony as Hiyori Toyotaro howled and fled like a beast. Blood ran down her thighs in hot, shame-tainted lines, seeping into her school uniform, spattering in dots and streaks along the muddy path like a damned breadcrumb trail. But not for a moment did she care. Couldn't care. All she had to do was leave—for the waddling abomination, the water-soaked monstrosity in the penguin suit, for whatever paranormal yokai or city fever dream she'd just seen in the river. Her ragged, harsh gasp escaped half-hyperventilating, half-sobbing, but she didn't pause.
She careened through the undergrowth and the thick hedges that bordered the sleepy side street of Higashimura, a rice-farming village curved in the hills just beyond city boundaries. She ran to the only person she knew would be awake and censorious this early—Obasan Kanae Tachibana, unofficial enforcer of the neighborhood association. Everyone recognized her. Short grey haircut. Scolding lungs. Wore house slippers like war boots and used Tokyo dialect like a weapon. The type of auntie who once punched a delivery scammer into a sandal-wielding hero and streamed it proudly on LINE.
"Obasan! Obasan! I—I—I saw this—THERE WAS A DEAD BODY—AND THEN A PENGUIN MAN—AND HE FELL IN THE RIVER—AND THEN HE CAME TOWARD ME AND—AND—AND—"
Kanae gazed at her, inhaled calmly on her cigarette as if she was waiting for Hiyori to be done creating crap, and said, "A penguin? You're on TikTok again, Hiyori-san? You're looking like dogshit, too, you're leaking like a broken daikon—"
And then she stood still.
Because behind Hiyori—skid-racing down the street like a horror film directed by NHK Kids—came him.
That thing.
Seven eleven. Round. Drenched. With marionette-stringing limbs and a head bobbing as if it'd never heard of bones. A fully costumed penguin man, soaked to the bone, running straight for them. Not waddling—running. Like Ashton Hall
Legs kicking, wings flapping, belly jigging like a drum.
Obasan Kanae's eyes widened. The cigarette dropped from her lips. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. Her soul was gone from her body even before her body struck the ground.
She screamed.
And then she fainted.
Not graciously. Not kindly. She fell like the wall of a temple during an earthquake. Her arms windmilled, tongue lolled out, eyes went white, and she came down with a thud that caused a bird to take flight from the roof. But that wasn't the end of it, either.
Because from her chest, a glowing, transparent soul came up like a fever dream of Studio Ghibli—shining, perplexed, with a faint halo over its head. The soul blinked, looked back at the unconscious body it had left behind, then looked again at the penguin man rushing toward it.
The penguin tripped, stumbled, got mud on his beak, and took off running again—with arms open like he needed a hug.
The soul shrieked.
And took off running.
Yes. The soul darted—hid in the hills like a scared kami fleeing exorcism.
Hiyori bled there, gasping, eyes glazed over from pain and from the preposterousness. She gazed down at the obasan unconscious on the ground, up at the waddling horror, then down the dirt road.
"What the fuck is happening to me?" she whispered in a cracked voice, as if pleading for a response from the heavens.
He finally caught up to her. The giant penguin—muddy, dripping, ridiculous—towered over her like a god-episode cartoon figure. His soft fuzzy black beady eyes peered out of the oversized head of the costume as the broken zipper flapped in the wind.
"You were making a trail, you know?" he mentioned, the voice muffled and too soft for the size of him, like something from a morning radio show. And then, before she had a chance to realize that, his right flipper came up—slowly, slowly, like a caretaker brushing away crumbs. But then it descended.
Smack.
Right where the blood was still oozing.
her crotch
A crackle of static exploded through her belly, white-hot and alive, and the world swung to the side. Her scream ripped from her lungs like a beast. Her body was thrown—she was thrown—up and away, as if she were a doll tossed across a room. She crashed into the earth, skidding on the wet earth, panting as if she'd just been shocked from the inside out.
Her skirt was torn. Her thighs shook. Blood and mud became an unholy stew at her feet.
And for an instant, for that revolting beat of seconds where hurt and confusion merged—she was sure he had harmed her. Intentionally.
Her breath was caught in her throat.
She didn't know what happened. Her mind didn't want to know. It only knew the touch had come where it shouldn't have. That she was in pain. That she had been touched.
Her vision blurred.
"Don't rape me!" she screamed, moving backward on her elbows like a scared child, eyes crazed, face smeared with mud and blood and shock. "Don't you touch me there! What the hell are you?!"
But the giant penguin didn't chase her. He tripped, instead—gasped, even. He dropped to a knee, his flippers spasming, the cartoon face lolling to one side. Steam billowed off the suit. Something dark leaked out from beneath the bottom hem.
She still hurt.
Not in the shock. Not in the blood. Not in the madness of a world where men wore penguin suits.
And so, shivering on the roadside covered in blood on her legs and apprehension in her chest, she stared at him as if he was the antagonist in a distorted fable.
And the penguin suit man just remained on his knees, quiet, absorbing her fear as a penalty he'd already chosen to bear.
but he removed the zipper of his costume
her eyes grew wide
"sho--"
[Shotaro: Journey Of A Hero That Kept Moving Forward]