Chapter 4 – Ink-Stained Fingers

I was fourteen when I discovered that words could bleed.

It happened in the dead hours of a summer night, when even the cicadas had fallen silent and the house exhaled in its sleep. The Oshimi library was forbidden to children, which made it irresistible to me. Its door was a shoji screen that moaned like an old man when I slid it open. Inside, the air smelled of dust and paper—a fragrance sweeter than plum blossoms.

By day, that library belonged to my father—a shrine to politics, law, and history carved from the bones of dead empires. But by night, under the trembling lantern light, it became my sanctuary. A graveyard of words where I could lie down among the corpses and feel less alone.

That night, my fingers wandered across spines like a blind man tracing faces. I pulled a book at random—a worn, brittle thing whose title was half-erased by time. A translation of some Western novel, the kind my father despised for “infecting the youth with useless dreams.”

I read it in secret, knees tucked under my chin, the lantern painting my shadow on the wall like a hanged man. The sentences stumbled in translation, but the meaning crawled beneath my skin like fire. The hero was a man who believed nothing, loved nothing, yet still clung to life as if mocking the void.

I devoured it. And when the last page surrendered to the dark, I felt hollowed out, as if the book had scooped my insides with an iron spoon. Was this what literature did? Strip you bare, then dress your wounds in ink?

The next night, I returned. And the night after that. Western novels, radical poems, essays that sneered at order and worshiped chaos. I read until my eyes burned, until the kanji danced like drunken ghosts. In those words, I found something terrifyingly beautiful: the permission to despair.

One poem said, “The world is a wound that never closes.” I copied it into my notebook, hands trembling as if I were stealing a secret from the gods. Another line read, “To live is to lie.” I underlined it twice.

Soon, I was not content to read. I wanted to bleed too. I wanted my sorrow to have a shape, a sound, a taste of permanence. So I began to write.

At first, my sentences were timid things—fragments, whispers, apologies to a world that had not asked for them. Then came the first full line, scratched in the cheap notebook I hid under my futon:

“Living feels like being buried alive.”

I stared at the words until they blurred, until I could almost hear the earth thudding above my coffin. It felt… right. Terribly right.

From then on, I wrote feverishly—short stories about men dangling from bridges, women dissolving in rivers, clowns laughing in empty theaters. Each character wore my face, though I gave them different names, as if masks could save them from their author.

Ink stained my fingers, seeped into the beds of my nails like guilt. I loved the smell of it—the way it clung to my skin like a promise. I told myself, If words are poison, then let me drink until I die.

But poison never stays secret forever.

One evening, while I was away pretending to be the obedient son, Father found the notebook. I returned to discover him in my room, standing like a storm made flesh, the notebook dangling from his hand like a severed limb.

“What is this filth?” His voice was quiet—the kind of quiet that comes before a blade is drawn.

I opened my mouth, but lies are clumsy things when truth is still bleeding from them.

“Answer me!”

His hand cracked across my face before the first syllable could crawl from my throat. The taste of iron bloomed on my tongue. The second blow knocked the lantern to the floor, spilling shadows like ink.

“Do you think I raised you for this?” he hissed, shaking the notebook as if it were evidence of treason. “While your brothers prepare to lead, you wallow in… in this nonsense?”

Nonsense. That was what he called my heart, my marrow, my midnight confessions.

The beating was brief but thorough. Not the kind that kills the body—only the kind that teaches it fear. He burned the notebook in the brazier while I knelt, head bowed, smoke stinging my eyes. The pages curled like wounded birds, their wings snapping in the fire’s jaws.

When it was over, he left without another word. The room smelled of ash and humiliation. I pressed my palm against the floor, still warm from the brazier, and thought: So this is love, in his language.

That night, long after the embers died, I took a fresh notebook and began again. My hand shook, but the words came like a fever:

“Living feels like being buried alive.”

The same first line. The same unrepentant truth. Because if words were poison, I wanted every drop. I wanted them to kill me or save me—I didn’t care which.

And so I drank.