Shin didn't know how long he stayed there.
At first, he counted his breaths. He tried to do it the way his father had taught him: breathe in through the nose, let it out slowly through the mouth. It worked for a few moments. Then he lost count. The air seemed to run out too quickly in that small space.
The sounds outside began to change.
First, the screams. Many of them. Men, women. Some he recognized by their tone, others completely unfamiliar. Then short, dry orders, spoken without haste. Voices that carried no fear, only function.
There were explosions. Not like thunder, but like blows that pushed the air itself. The house shook, and particles of dust fell from the makeshift ceiling of the hiding place, sticking to Shin's face.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight.
At some point, he heard something fall that was too heavy to be wood. A dull thud, followed by a wet sound he couldn't identify. He didn't try to.
The fire came after.
First the smell. Then a faint heat, distant, as if someone had brought a flame close to a candle without touching it. Smoke slipped through the cracks, making his eyes burn. Shin pulled his sleeve over his face, trying to filter the air the way he had seen adults do near campfires.
He thought of his mother.
He thought of his father.
He thought of his siblings, scattered through the house, each in a different place, like pieces of a game he didn't understand.
He wanted to call out to someone.
He didn't.
Time lost its shape. The noise faded little by little, like rain thinning until it became nothing more than scattered drops. The explosions stopped. The voices grew more distant. The crackling of fire remained, constant, insistent.
Until almost nothing was left.
Only the sound of burning wood.
And his own heart.
Shin didn't come out when everything went quiet.
He waited longer.
He waited until his legs ached from being curled up. Until his body began to shake, not just from cold, but from exhaustion. He waited until the silence became too strange to ignore.
When he finally pushed the trapdoor open, he did so slowly, as if the world might break if he moved too fast.
The house was dark.
Not completely. The light from the fire outside seeped through the cracks, drawing long shadows on the walls. The smell was strong now. Smoke, ash, something metallic that made his stomach turn.
Shin climbed out of the hiding place with difficulty, his legs unsteady. He had to lean against the wall to keep from falling.
— Mom… — he called, his voice breaking.
No answer.
The floor was dirty with dirt and shards. Part of the roof had collapsed. The table was tipped on its side. There were marks on the ground, deep gouges, as if something heavy had been dragged across it.
Shin took a few steps.
He saw blood near the door.
Not much. Stained. Not spread out.
Somehow, that was worse.
— Dad? — he called again, softer.
He stepped outside.
The village no longer existed as a village.
Houses burned halfway down. Some completely destroyed. Others still standing, but blackened, hollow, like shells. The ground was covered in remnants: pieces of wood, broken utensils, scorched fabric.
And bodies.
Shin stopped.
He didn't know where to look first. People he had known his whole life lay fallen in strange positions, as if they had stopped in the middle of an action and never finished it. Some with eyes open. Others not.
He recognized old Katsuro near the village entrance. The woman who had cried by the wall. One of the men who used to joke with him when he passed by on the street.
He didn't cry yet.
He walked.
Each step felt wrong, as if he were intruding on something he shouldn't. He passed a house that was still burning. Another where everything was too dark.
— Mom… — he tried again.
Nothing.
He found the hiding place where his youngest sister should have been.
Empty.
The space was torn apart. Broken wood. There were marks on the ground, too small to belong to an adult.
The air left Shin's lungs all at once.
He ran.
He didn't think. He just ran, stumbling, passing bodies, fire, smoke. He went to the other hiding place. Then to the third.
All empty.
Despair hit like a delayed punch.
— MOM! — he finally screamed.
The sound of his own voice startled him.
He fell to his knees in the middle of the street, his hands black with ash, his chest aching as if something had struck him from the inside. He tried to breathe. He couldn't, not properly.
Then he saw him.
Near his own house, a body lay on its side.
Ryo.
His father was face down. The knife still strapped to his belt. A dark stain spread across the back of his clothes. Shin crawled toward him, ignoring the pain in his knees.
— Dad… — he said, touching his shoulder.
The body was cold.
He turned him over with difficulty. The face was still, the eyes closed, as if he were sleeping. There was dried blood near his mouth.
Shin stayed there, waiting.
Nothing happened.
The world seemed to pull away, as if he were seeing everything from very far off. His hands began to shake. His throat hurt.
— Wake up… — he begged softly. — It's over.
Nothing.
Then he screamed. An ugly, torn sound that didn't seem human. He struck his father's chest, weakly, without real strength. He cried until no sound came out anymore.
He didn't know how much time passed like that.
When he finally stood up, swaying, he went to look for his mother.
He found Hana inside the house.
She lay near the wall where Shin used to sit. Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing. Her body was positioned strangely, as if she had tried to protect something.
He approached slowly.
— Mom…?
He touched her hand. It was cold too.
The world broke there.
Shin collapsed beside her, wrapping his arms around her body, crying in a different way. Not loud. Not frantic. A continuous, muffled crying, as if something inside him were leaking without stopping.
He didn't know what to do.
He didn't know where to go.
When the pain grew too big to fit inside his small body, he simply lay there, between his mother's and father's bodies, his face pressed against Hana's clothes, breathing in the smell he still recognized.
The fire continued to burn in the distance.
The sky began to lighten slightly.
And at some point between extreme exhaustion and pain that no longer fit inside him, Shin blacked out.
He didn't fall asleep.
He collapsed.
And it was at that moment—when the world had already ended for him—
that something inside Shin began to come apart…
so that something else could, slowly, begin to exist.