The house was still asleep when San opened her eyes for the first time.
Not fully—more like the clumsy awakening you feel when drifting between two dreams. A breath. A rustle. An indistinct sound dissolving into the darkness. She first thought it might be the wind. Winter nights often made the shutters creak, and despite all her mother's efforts, the old house was full of corners that whispered and groaned at the slightest draft.
But that noise… The one that had pulled her out of sleep…
It wasn't the creak of wood.
It was too sharp. Too heavy. Like a massive object someone had dropped onto the floor.
San lifted her head from the pillow, her black hair sticking to her warm cheek. The bedroom was wrapped in a soft darkness, broken only by the orange glow from the hallway. A flickering light that trembled, as if a shadow were passing in front of it at uneven intervals.
She sat up, her small heart beating faster than it should. At six years old, she didn't yet understand the notion of danger, but she could already feel that primitive tightening in her stomach— that strange tension, that animal instinct that pushes children to seek the safety of their parents.
"Mom…?" she whispered, her voice so faint it dissolved into the air.
No one answered.
Even the silence felt different. It no longer held the gentle calm of a night's rest. It was… suspended. As if the house, usually so full of life, were holding its breath.
San placed her bare feet on the cold wooden floor. The boards creaked softly beneath her weight, and she flinched, as though she had done something wrong.
She walked toward the door, hesitated, then pushed it open with the tip of her fingers.
The hallway awaited her. The artificial light, filtered through the trembling bulb, washed the walls in a sickly glow. The yellow wallpaper looked darker than usual, almost dirty. And above all, there was a smell in the air.
A smell she didn't recognize.
Not her mother's cooking. Not the scent of clean laundry. Not her father's shower gel. It was something warm. Metallic. Saturated.
She wrinkled her nose.
The smell vaguely reminded her of her knee when she had fallen on the gravel last summer… only multiplied, amplified, as if the entire house were bleeding.
A new sound rose from downstairs. Sharper. More violent. Something crashing against furniture, maybe.
San felt her fingers tighten around the stair railing. She stepped down one stair. Then another. Very slowly, so the wood wouldn't groan.
But she had barely reached the third step when an even more terrible sound echoed from the living room:
"Hurry up. Boss wants it clean. No witnesses."
She didn't know the words. But she understood the voice. A voice she wasn't meant to hear. A voice that didn't belong in her home.
Her stomach clenched. She stumbled back a step, her small fingers slipping along the railing, and she nearly fell.
To keep her balance, she placed her hand against the wall…
…and knocked over a small picture frame.
The glass fell before shattering on the floor.
A tiny cling, delicate and fragile. But in the house's sickened silence… it sounded like thunder.
"Over there!"
A shadow stretched across the wall. Heavy footsteps climbed from the living room.
San felt panic strike her so violently that it stole her breath. She ran—or something close to running, a desperate little movement—and slipped behind the tall hallway cabinet.
A familiar refuge. A child's hiding spot. But far too small to protect her from men who weren't looking to play.
She made herself as small as she could, her knees pulled tight against her chest, her fingers pressed against her mouth.
Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. The floorboards groaned. Boots stopped right in front of the cabinet. A hand gripped the edge and yanked violently.
San stayed frozen, unable to move at all.
A tiny silhouette curled up on herself. Two large, tear-filled black eyes. Her pink pajama, still wrinkled from sleep, now stained with dust.
The man looked at her with a neutral expression. No surprise, no pity. Nothing.
"It's just a kid," he said.
"The boss doesn't care. No witnesses," the other repeated.
The man pulled out a knife. The metal caught the hallway's distorted light.
San wanted to speak, to run, but all she could do was stare, no sound escaping her throat.
He crouched down.
His enormous hand closed around the girl's fragile arm, preventing any escape.
"It'll be quick," he murmured, almost tenderly.
Then the blade sliced through the air. The knife descended like a cold flash.
San saw it the way things appear in nightmares: slow and too fast at the same time. She tried to lift her hand to protect herself, but her small body, paralyzed by fear, refused to obey. Her fingers curled desperately against the parquet floor, a childish and useless attempt to anchor herself to the world.
The blade touched her skin. A sharp, instantaneous, brutal tear. Not a pain— a burn, as if the entire world had turned to fire and forced itself into her throat.
Her breath vanished. Her mouth opened wide, too wide, as though her body wanted to scream for her.
But no cry came out.
Nothing.
A strangled silence that made the moment even more monstrous. Blood surged—first a thin line, hot against her cold skin, then an irregular flow sliding down her neck and soaking into her pink pajama, tracing dark streaks across the fabric.
She pressed her tiny hand against the wound. Her fingers slipped, unable to hold back what poured out.
When she looked at them—only for a second before her vision wavered—her fingers were red.
A strange red. A red she had only seen in cartoons when someone was hurt.
Except this red had a smell.
A mix of metal and warmth.
A living red.
"It's done," the man said flatly. "She won't last long."
San blinked. The room blurred. Shapes dissolved, as if the house were filling with water.
She tried to crawl backward, but her knees trembled and she slid on the floor, her head knocking against the parquet.
She barely felt it. A piercing sound rang in her ears. A long whistle. A swelling buzz that crushed everything else.
She tried to push it away with her fingers, as if she could shoo an invisible insect.
The second man tipped over a container.
Liquid spread across the floor in winding trails, mixing with the smell of blood. A toxic, burning scent that made San's eyes sting.
Gasoline.
Even a child could recognize it.
"The boss wants to see the flames from the road."
She heard the words without understanding them. But something deep inside her—a pure, animal, almost prehistoric instinct—knew it was bad. Very bad.
The man lit a match.
A tiny flame. So small. Almost pretty.
San felt the heat before the fire even touched the curtains. The fabric ignited instantly, as if the house had been waiting for permission to burn.
Flames roared up, devouring everything without mercy and a wave of heat hit her face.
San tried to crawl away, putting her small hand on the floor to pull herself forward. But her palm slid on the blood. The ground became a red, slippery mirror.
Her arms failed her.
She fell flat, her eyes fixed on the trembling reflection of the flames in the puddle around her. The heat grew. Her lungs tightened. The roar of fire mixed with the buzzing in her head.
San thought of her mother—her soft voice, her warm arms, the story she had read her that very evening before kissing her goodnight.
She reached out toward the blurry image of the living room. Toward what remained of her parents. Her eyes rolled slightly. Air grew scarce.
The cold returned, an inner, creeping cold, as if even her bones were beginning to freeze.
I'm going to sleep, she thought.
It was a gentle thought, almost comforting.
To lie down. To close her eyes. To stop hurting.
Her eyelids fell.
Once.
Twice.
Then the world disappeared.
At the hospital, they talked about her as a case.
"Girl, approximately six years old. Deep laceration to the neck, massive blood loss, minor burns, smoke inhalation."
They stripped her of her name for a few hours, until the machines could take over. She became a file, an emergency on a list, a fragile priority. They pushed her down bright hallways.
The ceilings slid above her—white, impersonal. The neon lights formed halos her eyelids were too weak to block. They cut away what remained of her pajamas.
They cleaned her skin, irrigated the wound, stitched it shut, applied thick dressings that covered almost her entire right side of her neck like a brutal collar placed there by cruel hands.
She felt nothing.
Her mind had slipped far behind her closed eyes.
They left her in a room— a white cube smelling of disinfectant and new plastic. Wires everywhere. A steady beep punctuating the silence. Droplets falling from a bag into a tube, like an inverted hourglass trying to push time backward.
San drifted somewhere between that beep and that drip.
In her mind, the fire still burned.
The silhouettes of her parents still flickered on the carpet—appearing and vanishing like an image she couldn't hold.
Sometimes, a sliver of consciousness pierced the fog: the scratch of blankets, the scent of unfamiliar soap, a draft brushing her hand.
She tried to open her eyes.
Sometimes a lid trembled. But the light was too harsh. So she stayed there, a forgotten body on too large a bed— a heart that hadn't yet learned it could have stopped.
Nurses came and went, checking vitals, adjusting blankets, whispering.
"She has no family?"
"They mentioned a half brother."
"You think he'll come?"
"He'll have to, if someone needs to sign."
"Half brother."
The word hovered in the air, then fell back into silence.
San didn't open her eyes, but something deep—very deep—shifted when that name was spoken.
Akio.
It took him more than a week to arrive at the hospital.
San had barely moved since she'd been admitted, her tiny neck wrapped in bandages. She didn't smile when he approached her bed. After all, she had seen him only rarely. Not quite a brother, not quite a stranger.
Akio stood still for a moment.
He simply listened: one sound— a heart.
Her heart. A heart that had refused to stop.
Then he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped loosely.
"San," he murmured.
She didn't react.
She simply watched him—his features echoing their father's, the same slender nose, the same dark eyes framed by glasses.
"They really tried to finish you," he breathed.
"They slit your throat. They set the house on fire. And even after all that… you're still holding on."
He raised a hand.
His long, slender fingers hesitated a moment over the bandages— then settled just below them, on the only untouched skin.
The little girl would have recoiled if her body had obeyed.
But she was trapped inside herself, unable to move or speak. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, shaken by a feeling she didn't yet understand—one that had gnawed at her since she woke.
"You're going to live, San," Akio said with a faint smile. From now on, I'll take care of you. You'll see—I'll teach you not to be afraid of the dark. Not to be afraid of anything. And if you're strong enough…"
He brushed her hair back gently, almost tenderly.
San felt her eyes sting.
"If you trust me… you'll be able to do great things. You'll see."
She simply looked at him, uncomprehending, unable to read whatever his eyes were trying to convey.
And a single tear—just one—slipped down her cheek.