Breakdown

Rei never would have imagined that there could be a greater problem than the bun vendor that night. Let alone that the problem would come from the peaceful workshop on the ground floor.

“Huh, those kids imagining things,” he muttered as he descended the first steps. “They're at that age, after all.”

But the world seemed to fall silent all at once, making room for a single sound.

“Gah!”

A dull, strained groan cut through the silence — sudden and sharp, like metal giving way under pressure.

Rei froze. His first thought was that Gorō had hurt himself with one of the machines. An unlikely scenario, but the screams his brothers had heard pushed him to believe it.

He hurried down the stairs until the workshop came into view.

“Gor...”

The word broke before it could be fully spoken, as his world of metal and steam turned into a nightmare.

Gorō was slumped halfway over a workbench, a trail of scattered tools all around him. His body was leaning, mouth slightly open, a droplet of blood trickling from his lips. Rei's eyes filled with panic.

“Wha...”

There were three men with his mentor. One stood with clenched fists, another rifled through drawers, and the third took slow, threatening steps toward Rei before speaking.

“We can do this all night, Shiba. We know about the payment for the condenser. We just want a cut. A hundred percent, for today. We’re in need.”

Gorō coughed roughly, spitting out blood before he could speak. Rei noticed his mentor's eyes—unchanged even in danger, still burning with fierce will and bravery.

“You could try getting a job for once,” he said, locking eyes with the leader just before the man raised his leg and kicked him brutally in the face.

Rei’s heart clenched again. He was unsure of what to do. He felt rage, but also fear and uncertainty. These men looked dangerous.

“Shiba, Shiba...” the leader clicked his tongue. “You know this isn’t personal. It’s just business, we don’t want to hurt you. We just need to find a solut—”

Blup.

Rei flinched. Something had fallen loudly at his feet.

It was the bag of buns.

He looked up again.

The three men had seen him. And so had Gorō.

And in that frozen moment, in Gorō’s eyes, Rei didn’t see the usual anger or the stubborn frustration of bad days. He saw something he never expected to find in his master.

Fear. Fear that they might hurt him.

“Hey, who the hell’s the ki—”

That fear gave Gorō the strength to push through the pain, grab a hammer from the table, and land a solid blow to the leader’s cheek. Immediately, the two other men lunged at him, shouting curses and roaring in fury.

Rei couldn’t think. He had already bolted down the last few steps, rushing in to defend his mentor.

“Let go of him!”

He hurled himself at the nearest attacker—a tall man with messy hair trying to hold Gorō by the shoulder. Rei clung to the man’s neck with all the strength his skinny frame could muster. The attacker growled and shook him off violently, sending him crashing into a low shelf.

But Rei’s attack wasn’t in vain. The distraction gave Gorō time to rise, with his legs trembling and his face smeared with blood and sweat. With his remaining strength, he rammed into the second goon like a bull, knocking him backward into a workbench.

“Gorō!” Rei cried, half-standing and blurred by chaos.

Rei used the confusion to kick the third man in the knee, causing him to stumble. The man turned to strike, but the leader intervened.

“Enough!” he barked, grabbing the man by his shirt and shoving him aside. “Kill the boy!”

The words struck Gorō like a dagger. He froze, eyes wide in terror.

“Rei!”

Rei felt his mentor lunge toward him, wrapping his broken body around the boy just like he used to during Rei's nightmares in his early days there. For a moment, everything went black and silent.

Then came the explosion. Rei felt himself hitting the floor, unable to see. He thought he was dead. There was no pain—as if the bullet had ended everything instantly. He felt peace.

He then fell to the ground, his head and back flared with agony, yanking him back into reality. He kicked and squirmed, pushing the weight off to the side, and his vision returned. He was still in the workshop. His side was soaked in something warm. He turned his head, and in that instant, his life became a nightmare.

“No...”

Gorō, or what was left of him, lay beside him. Warm, still, but lifeless. Rei froze for several seconds, then clumsily rolled him over, searching for a wound, praying not to find one.

But he did. Right in the chest, poetically in his heart.

“Gorō...!” His cry of despair echoed off the workshop’s blood-stained walls.

A shrill voice shattered the room behind him.

“What did you do, idiot?! You were supposed to keep him alive!”

“I’m sorry! I swear I aimed at the other one, I don’t know what happened!”

As the intruders argued, a flood of memories crashed into Rei’s mind like a tidal wave. Their first prototype together, the rainy afternoons, the arguments over using the blowtorch without gloves...

"Come with me," Gorō had said to five homeless kids in the rain.

Nothing was left.

He leaned over Gorō’s body and wept, face pressed to his chest, shamelessly, openly.

“Gorō! Gorō, come back!”

There was no reply. Only the aching pulse of grief in his throat, each beat dragging him further from the most important person in his life.

“Screw it! Tear the place apart and find the money!”

A new terror gripped Rei. His siblings were still upstairs. The engine of his soul injected that fear with rage and despair.

And that explosion hurled his body back to life—or rather, to grab Gorō’s hammer.

“Die!”

He charged at the gunman and smashed his head with the hammer, knocking him back and leaving him dazed. In the same motion, he snatched the man’s pistol.

“Gun!” shouted one of the others.

Rei was so out of it, he didn’t think twice. Pull the trigger, the bullet fires, and that was it. The weapon shook in his hands, heavier than he thought. He fired, but missed. The shot slammed into the precision balance overhead, sending it into a wild swing. Chaos followed. Shouts. Screams. The men scrambled for cover. Somehow, impossibly, this was his chance.

He didn't hesitate on dashing across the workshop, ran up the stairs, and slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.

“Don’t let him get away!” shouted the leader as Rei shoved a heavy wooden cabinet in front of the door.

“Kids!”

His siblings were in the corner. Curled up, shaking. Crying. The fear in their eyes deepened the moment they saw him blood-smeared, trembling, and wide-eyed

“Big brother!” Yūta cried, running into his arms.

Rei hugged him, then quickly pulled the others in too. He still had them. He had to be strong for them.

“Listen to me. No time to cry or ask questions.”

He walked to the window on the left, the one facing a narrow alley between the neighbor’s shed and a wall covered in vines.

“You’re going out the window. Using this,” he said, pulling the grappling hook from his belt.

He fired it to the far end, anchoring it to the neighbor’s window frame. A bridge formed. His siblings stared at him in awe. Despite the chaos, Rei was focused.

“Where are we going?” Kaede whimpered.

“To the neighbor’s yard. Drop down, leave through the front, and run. Don’t make a sound. Don’t look back. Find help and stay with them.”

“What about Gorō?” Mei asked.

“I'm telling you it’s not safe! Go now!”

Rei’s anger burst onto his little sister, pained and disoriented. How would he ever tell them they’d lost their father figure again?

“And you?” Yūta asked, even more afraid.

For a moment, Rei hesitated. Every part of him wanted to run with them. He could escape, save his life, disappear with his siblings.

Then came the pounding from the door.

“We’ll break it down!”

The wood groaned. Rei clenched his teeth. Running wasn’t an option.

“Go now! I’ll catch up!”

He helped them one by one onto the ledge. Fired the hook to the neighbor’s wall, a rope stretching through the night air. He pushed each child to the other side, their tiny hands crawling along the cable, waiting for the three elder to assist Haruto.

When the last one crossed, he gave them one final look.

"Kaede. Mei. Yūta. Haruto." He had to part with everything he had left. Rei gave them the best smile he could muster and slammed the window shut.

The door shook with every blow. But Rei, even in despair, had a plan—the kind he always managed to forge under pressure.

His eyes fell on the metal box under his bed. A small prototype he wanted to surprise Gorō with—designed to scare off wild animals with a loud, blinding flash without causing harm.

A kind of stun grenade.

“You better work,” he muttered.

With trembling hands, he opened the box, activated the mechanism, and slid the small cylindrical grenade under the door.

“Huh? What’s that?” the leader asked.

One. Two. Th—

BOOM!

Half a second early, a blinding, dry explosion went off behind the door. Rei felt the adrenaline of setting it off.

He shoved the bed aside and peeked through the opening. All three men were stunned, shielding their eyes or crawling in confusion. There wouldn’t be another chance.

He raced down the stairs. The workshop was chaos—tools scattered, smoke and debris everywhere.

At the bottom, he stopped. Gorō was still there. His body, his face in shadow, the silence sealing the truth. It truly was his end.

“I’m sorry,” Rei whispered in raw voice, clenching his fists in pain and fury.

But there was no time left. He rushed to his worktable, grabbed his tool belt and his oil-stained notebook, and ran to the front door.

He threw himself against it. Nothing.

Again. Still no luck. Panic set in.

One more time.

CLANG.

The door didn’t open, but something crashed loudly above him. His beloved precision balance—the one he’d struck with the ball, the one he'd accidentally shot.

The one hanging right above him, now falling.

"Wha—"

He had no time to react before the cold metal struck his forehead and everything went black.