Episode 12 - "When Light Fades"

The sky had never looked more beautiful than it did on the day everything ended.

Three weeks after Sensō-ji, life had achieved something resembling normalcy—the kind built on fragile foundations but warm enough to believe in. Josu had secured emergency care, found work at a construction site that paid under the table. Hazuno had been removed from his parents' home, placed temporarily with Josu while social services processed endless paperwork. And Kisuno lived between them, a child learning to be a child again, his blue eyes slowly regaining the brightness trauma had stolen.

They'd moved into a small apartment in Nakano—two rooms, paper-thin walls, a kitchen where three people could barely stand together. It was cramped and imperfect and the most home any of them had ever known.

November 17th arrived with deceptive gentleness. Kisuno sat at the window as evening transformed the sky into watercolor—pinks bleeding into purples, oranges fading to deep blues. His black cloak lay folded beside him, a relic he wore less frequently now, as if shedding armor meant accepting safety might be real.

"Kisuno! Dinner's ready!" Hazuno called from the kitchen, voice carrying warmth that had replaced the hollow cheerfulness he'd weaponized for years. "I made your favorite—omurice with the ketchup smiley face. Come on, before Josu eats all of it!"

"I'm not eating all of it," Josu protested, already at the table, still in his work clothes. Dirt streaked his face, exhaustion written in every line of his posture, but he smiled—that rare genuine expression that transformed his features from hard to almost cheerful. "I'm just eating my share. It's not my fault Hazuno's portions are tiny."

"They're normal portions, you just eat like you're still street fighting," Hazuno shot back, but there was affection underneath the complaint. "Kisuno, seriously, come eat before it gets cold."

Kisuno turned from the window, that small smile crossing his face—real, unguarded. "Coming." He took three steps toward the kitchen. That's when the door exploded inward.

Wood splintered, the cheap lock tearing free from its frame. Three figure's burst through—dark clothes, faces covered with masks, moving with military precision. The lead one held a gun, suppressor already attached, the weapon matte black and utterly functional.

Time fractured into crystalline moments:

Josu's body moving on instinct, his hand sweeping across the table to grab the kitchen knife Hazuno had left there. Seven inches of carbon steel that had been cutting vegetables seconds ago, now the only weapon available.

Hazuno's scream cutting through the air—"RUN, KISUNO!"—warning and rage compressed into pure sound.

Kisuno's small body going rigid with recognition, not of the enemy but of the moment itself, the universe reminding him that salvation was always temporary.

The first gunshot was muffled by the suppressor—a sound like a heavy book dropped on wooden floors. The bullet caught Josu in the lower gut.

"Shit—" Josu's cuss cut off as pain registered, his expression shifting through surprise to recognition to something like resignation. He folded forward, hand clutching the wound where blood was already soaking through his shirt. His legs gave out, knees hitting the linoleum with a crack that made Kisuno flinch.

"No, no, no—" Hazuno lunged at the shooter, fingers reaching for the gun, close enough to feel heat radiating from the barrel.

The second person intercepted, catching Hazuno's wrist mid-reach and twisting with practiced cruelty. Bone ground audibly. Hazuno cried out, and his momentum carried him forward into the enemy's other hand—which drove a knife between his ribs.

The blade slid between bones with terrible precision, finding the spaces evolution had left vulnerable, piercing his lung. Hazuno gasped, air and blood mixing in his stomach cavity's, each breath becoming an exercise in drowning.

Another gunshot.

This one caught Hazuno in the gut, slightly left of center. The impact threw him backward against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He slid down, leaving a red smear, his legs falling before his head lolled forward.

"Hazuno!" Kisuno's scream was raw, primal, the sound of a heart beginning to shatter.

Josu was crawling now, leaving blood trails across the floor, his hand still gripping the kitchen knife like a talisman. "You... bastards..." Each word cost him everything. "Why? Why are you—"

"For Nakamura-sama," the lead shooter said, voice cold and professional. "You put our father in prison. Did you think there wouldn't be consequences?"

"Father?" Josu's laugh was wet, blood bubbling at his lips. "He's not your father, you idiot. He's a murderer who—" He coughed, crimson spraying across the floor. "Who kills families... for money..."

"He gave us purpose when we had nothing." The shooter's voice carried genuine emotion beneath the professionalism. "Took us in, trained us, made us family. We know the plan to free him won't work—police have the prison locked down—but we'll show him respect the only way we can. By finishing what he started."

"By killing a child who did nothing to any of you?" Hazuno's voice came weak, damaged, fighting past the fluid filling his lung. "That's... that's your respect? You're just... cowards..."

The shooter turned toward Kisuno, gun rising with mechanical precision. "Nothing personal, kid. You were just born into the wrong story." Josu lunged.

His hand—scraped raw from construction work, still holding the inadequate knife—caught the shooter's ankle and yanked. The shot went wide, embedding in the wall centimeters from Kisuno's head. The child felt the bullet's passage, hot air displacement, death missing by finger widths.

The shooter stumbled, caught himself, looked down at Josu with something approaching respect. "Persistent." Then he kicked Josu in the head—full force, steel-toed boot connecting with temple. The sound was wet and hard simultaneously, flesh and bone meeting violence.

Josu's head snapped sideways. His eyes rolled back, showing whites that reflected overhead light. Blood ran from his nose, his ear. He collapsed completely, body going limp in ways living bodies didn't.

But his stomach still moved. Shallow, irregular, clinging to function even as consciousness fled.

"Josu!" Hazuno's scream tore from somewhere deep. He tried to move, to reach his friend, but his body wouldn't cooperate. Blood soaked through his shirt, spreading dark and final. "Josu, get up! Please, you have to—"

The shooter aimed again at Kisuno—

Hazuno threw himself forward. Not standing—impossible with a bullet in his gut and knife wound leaking into his lung—but using momentum and gravity and the last reserves of a body already dying.

His body intercepted the bullet meant for Kisuno.

The round entered the gut, traveling downward through his stomach, tearing through his other lung, clipping his organs, exiting below his collarbone in a spray of blood and tissue.

Hazuno hit the floor face-first, the sound of impact final and terrible. "HAZUNO!" Kisuno's scream held everything—grief, rage, the fundamental wrongness of watching someone die to save you.

Hazuno's eyes were still open, brown and aware, fixing on Kisuno's face with terrible clarity. His mouth moved, blood frothing at his lips, fighting to form words: "Not... your fault... Kisuno..."

"No, no, no—" Kisuno dropped to his knees beside Hazuno, small hands hovering over the wounds, not knowing where to touch, how to help, completely helpless. "You can't die! You promised! You said we'd stay together!"

"Still... together..." Hazuno's hand found Kisuno's, squeezed with weakening strength. "In here..." He tried to touch where his heart was located but couldn't lift his arm. "Always... in your heart..."

"That's not enough!" Tears streamed down Kisuno's face. "I need you here! I need both of you! Please don't leave me, Hazuno, please—"

"Be... happy..." Hazuno's voice was barely audible now. "Live... the life... we couldn't... Promise me..." "I can't—" "Promise... me..." The words came with such desperate intensity that Kisuno nodded through his tears.

"I promise. I promise, Hazuno, just please don't—"

Something shifted in Hazuno's expression. A smile—not his fake one, but the real smile Kisuno had seen so rarely, the one that made his whole face transform. "Good... good kid..." His eyes remained open but the light behind them extinguished like a switch being thrown, one moment present, the next gone, leaving only flesh and memory.

"Hazuno?" Kisuno shook him gently. "Hazuno, wake up. Please wake up." Nothing. "HAZUNO!"

Josu stirred, consciousness returning in fragments. His hand crawled across the floor, finding Hazuno's, lacing their fingers together. "Hazu... no..." His voice slurred, damaged brain struggling with speech. "Can't... be gone... we were... supposed to..."

He pulled Hazuno's hand to his stomach, holding it against his heart. "Not... your fault..." His unfocused eyes found Kisuno. "Never... your fault... Kid... you gave us... purpose... Made us... better... Thank you... for that... And I hope... we... did the same alright kiddo."

"Don't thank me!" Kisuno crawled to Josu, pressing his hands against the head wound, feeling warmth and wet and knowing it was hopeless. "Don't die! Please, Josu, I'll do anything, just don't—"

"Can't... stop it..." Josu's smile was sad, accepting. "Grandfather's... waiting... Hazu's... there too... Won't be... alone..." "But I'll be alone!" The words ripped from Kisuno's throat. "Everyone I love dies! Everyone! Why do I keep surviving? Why can't it be me instead?"

"Because..." Josu's breathing was slowing, each pause between breaths lengthening. "You're... the one... who'll remember... us... Tell our... story... Live... for three..."

His eyes went distant, seeing things beyond the apartment's walls. "Be... softer... than I was... Be... everything... we couldn't..."

Then his breathing stopped. Not with a gasp or rattle, just a pause that never resumed. His hand went slack in Hazuno's, and Katsugawa Josu—fourteen years old, who'd transformed rage into protection, who'd learned to be soft—was gone.

"No..." Kisuno's whisper was broken, shattered. "No, no, no, NO!"

The scream that followed was the sound of a soul breaking, of hope murdered, of everything good being ripped away by a universe that specialized in cruelty. It echoed in the small apartment, bouncing off walls that had witnessed their brief happiness, filling spaces where three broken kids had built family from ruins.

The shooters stood over their work, professional detachment warring with something that might have been regret. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer.

"We need to go," the second criminal said urgently. "Police are coming." The lead shooter looked at Kisuno—small, broken, drowning in blood and grief. "The kid—"

"Leave him." The third person's voice carried something almost like pity. "Nakamura's in prison, won't be getting out. This was just... respect. Stupid, but respect. The kid's already destroyed. Let him live with this. It's crueler than death."

They fled into Tokyo's night, leaving behind two corpses and one living ghost.

Kisuno knelt between Hazuno and Josu's bodies, their blood soaking into his clothes, warm and terrible. He took their hands, placed them together, linked in death as they'd been in life.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry my existence killed you. I'm sorry for everything."

The apartment's overhead light cast harsh shadows. The pot of omurice still sat on the stove. Three bowls waited on the table, three sets of chopsticks, three glasses of water that would never be drunk.

Police burst through the door minutes later. They found Kisuno sitting in blood that wasn't his, holding hands that no longer held back, staring at nothing with blue eyes gone utterly void.

Eight years passed like a dream of dying.

November 17th arrived again. Kisuno Minazawa—fourteen years old, final year of junior high—stood in a cemetery in western Tokyo. Two graves beneath a zelkova tree, simple stones bearing names and dates:

Kisagawa Hazuno
August 3rd, 2011 - November 17th, 2025
He Chose to See

Katsugawa Josu
March 15th, 2010 - November 17th, 2025
He Chose to Protect

At fourteen, he'd grown to still be pretty short, white hair falling past his shoulder blades, blue eyes reflecting gray November sky. His father's black cloak—repaired countless times, fabric added to extend length—hung from his shoulders like broken wings.

He visited every week. Brought white chrysanthemums. Knelt on cold earth and spoke to stone:

"I'm fourteen today. Same age you were, Josu. Next year I'll be older than Hazuno ever got to be." His voice was flat, emotionless, discussing age like neutral fact. "They say I should move on. The therapists, the foster parents. That you'd want me happy. But they're wrong."

"You died because I existed. Because trying to save me got you killed. I'm the constant in every equation. Parents, then you two, and someday whoever makes the next mistake of caring. I'm poison. I contaminate everyone stupid enough to love me."

Tears fell despite his attempt at control. "I miss you. Every day, drowning in missing you. Can't die because dying dishonors your sacrifice. Can't live because living means carrying your deaths. So I just exist. Suspended between, going through motions, aging toward a future I can't picture."

He pulled his cloak tighter. "Do you remember the warehouse? That first night? I drew pictures of us holding hands. You kept them even though they were terrible children's drawings. I wonder what happened to them. Probably thrown away when they cleaned the apartment."

"But they mattered. To me. They were proof that for three weeks, I had brothers. Real brothers. Three weeks against fourteen years alone, and somehow those three weeks weigh more than everything else."

"I've tried to keep my promise. To live for three. To be happy. But I don't know how. Don't know how to be fourteen without you. Don't know how to navigate a world where everyone I love gets murdered."

A memory surfaced: Hazuno's voice in the warehouse. You looked like how I feel. Two broken people recognizing each other's wounds. Josu at his grandfather's funeral: Be softer. Be someone I'd be proud of.

They'd tried so hard to be more than trauma. And for three weeks, they'd succeeded.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you the way you protected me. I'm sorry your deaths didn't matter—Nakamura's still in prison but you're still dead. I'm sorry the world forgot you within weeks, moved on, and only I remember."

"I'm sorry I loved you. Because my love killed you."

He stood, bones aching with the wrong kind of age. "I should go. Foster family's expecting me. They'll ask if I'm okay, and I'll nod, and we'll pretend I'm healing."

He turned to leave, then stopped: "Thank you. For those three weeks. For making me believe family could be something other than people I watched die. You gave me the best weeks of my life. Even though it ended in blood, I can't regret knowing you."

"I just wish I could have saved you the way you saved me."

The wind picked up. For a moment he thought he heard laughter—warehouse echoes, Hazuno's real smile, Josu learning protection mattered more than rage.

Then silence returned. He walked away, leaving chrysanthemums that would wilt like everything he touched. That evening, the foster mother found him in his room, staring at the wall. "Kisuno? Are you okay?"

He didn't respond.

"The music teacher called. She said you haven't touched the piano in weeks. You were doing so well..." She sat beside him carefully. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Finally: "What's the point?" "The point?" "Of music. Of piano. Of getting better at something that doesn't bring them back." His voice was hollow. "I started playing because Hazuno said I should find something that was mine. Something that made me feel alive."

"And does it?" "No. Nothing does. I play the notes correctly. Hit every key at the right time. But there's no feeling. It's just... mechanical. Like everything else I do."

The foster mother's expression crumpled. "Kisuno, grief takes time—"

"It's been eight years. How much more time does it need?" He finally looked at her, blue eyes vast and empty. "I'm fourteen. I should be worried about exams and friends and normal things. Instead I visit graves every week and can't remember what happiness feels like."

"Your brothers wouldn't want—"

"Don't." The word came sharp. "Don't tell me what they'd want. You didn't know them. Nobody knew them except me, and I'm forgetting. Their voices are getting fuzzy. Their faces too. Soon I won't remember anything except that they died for me, and then even their memory will be worthless."

He turned back to the wall. "I'm tired. Can you leave?" She left quietly, closing the door with heartbreaking gentleness.

Alone, Kisuno pulled out a photograph—the only one that existed of the three of them together. Akari had taken it at the machiya, candid shot of them laughing over something stupid. Hazuno's real smile. Josu's rare grin. Kisuno between them, blue eyes actually bright.

Looking at it now was like viewing artifacts from an archaeological dig. Evidence that happiness had once existed, that he'd once been someone capable of joy.

"I'm keeping my promise," he whispered to the photograph. "I'm living. Going to school, eating meals, breathing. But I'm not happy. Can't be happy when being happy means forgetting you died. Can't move on when moving on means leaving you behind."

"So I'm stuck. Fourteen years old and stuck at six, in that apartment, watching you die over and over every time I close my eyes. The nightmares never stop. Just the same scene on loop, the universe making sure I never forget my worthlessness."

He pressed the photo against his stomach. "I wish you were here. Wish I could ask Hazuno for advice about stupid teenager things. Wish I could watch Josu pretend he wasn't worried about me. Wish we could have dinner together one more time, omurice with ketchup faces, arguing about whose turn it was to clean."

"But wishes don't matter. The dead stay dead. And I stay alive to remember, to carry you, to be the memorial no one else maintains." He lay back on his bed, staring at ceiling, holding the photograph like a talisman against darkness.

Tomorrow he'd go to school. Sit through classes. Come home. Do homework. Sleep. Wake. Repeat. The empty routine that passed for life when you were a ghost wearing human skin.

Next week he'd visit the graves again. Bring flowers. Talk to stone. Pretend it helped.

And the week after, the same. And the month after. And the year after. Decades of this probably, because the universe was cruel enough to make him live long, to make him carry their deaths through an entire lifetime of emptiness.

Live for three, they'd asked. But he could barely live for one. Outside, Tokyo's evening transformed into night. Above the city, stars emerged—distant, cold, beautiful, completely unreachable.

Just like everything that mattered. Just like his brothers, frozen at thirteen and fourteen while he aged past them, collecting years without purpose, accumulating time without meaning.

The heart follows what it loves toward inevitable destruction. Kisuno had learned that lesson three times. At fourteen, he understood it with certainty that transcended belief.

It was observed fact. Proven through repetition. Confirmed through bloodstains that no amount of scrubbing could erase from memory.

And somewhere in Tokyo's vast darkness, two graves sat beneath a zelkova tree, holding people who'd died too young, who'd built family from ruins only to have ruins reclaim them.

He Chose to See
He Chose to Protect

And in a foster home in Saitama, a fourteen-year-old ghost lay awake, carrying their choices like weights in his heart, drowning in survival, existing as proof that sometimes the cruelest thing the universe can do isn't kill you—

It's make you live.

FINAL EPISODE - END

Follow Your Heart...
[ハートに従って…]

— A story of three broken souls who found each other
in the spaces between light and shadow...