Volume 0

Elaborato per 9s
KURO NO MONOGATARI — VOLUME 0
Chapter 3 — Interlude: Shiroha
Of course, I didn't see any of what happened back home that night.
I was six years old.
I'd ended up in a world I didn't know, sitting in front of what I would later discover was a temple, beside a human girl I'd only just met.
For a long time, I was convinced my mother had simply stayed home.
Angry.
Maybe disappointed.
Part of me had even imagined that when I finally managed to return, I'd find her sitting in the exact same chair.
"Are you done being stupid?"
Something like that.
I learned the truth much later.
Some things Shiroha told me herself.
Others I pieced together over the years.
And when I finally understood what had happened in the Dragon World while I was gone, I realized something.
I hadn't been the only one who was afraid that night.
───
"Kuro!"
The front door was still open.
Shiroha stood in the doorway.
Outside, the street was empty.
For a few seconds, she didn't move.
She probably thought I was somewhere nearby.
If I'd been an adult, maybe she would've been right.
But I was six.
At six years old, running away from home could mean hiding behind a wall for five minutes and waiting for Mom to come looking for you.
"Kuro!"
No answer.
Shiroha stepped outside.
She looked both ways down the street.
Nothing.
"Kuro, that's enough. Come out."
Silence.
Maybe she was still angry at that point.
I like to imagine her that way.
Not terrified.
Not yet.
Just tired and irritated with her son, who had decided to turn an ordinary evening after work into a treasure hunt.
She took a few steps.
"Kuro?"
Nothing.
The tip of her tail twitched nervously behind her.
She checked beside the house.
Then behind it.
Then the places where I usually hid.
I wasn't there.
She returned to the entrance.
"Kuro!"
Louder this time.
Nothing.
That was probably when she remembered what I'd said.
If you don't want to come, I'll go by myself.
And suddenly, those words stopped sounding like the empty threat of an angry child.
Shiroha looked up.
Toward the mountain.
I don't know exactly what went through her mind at that moment.
I never asked her.
Maybe because I never needed to.
She was my mother.
I was six years old.
It was nighttime.
And I'd just told her I was going to the mountain alone.
Her wings spread open.
The exhaustion from the Council disappeared.
A moment later, she was in the air.
───
The first thing she did was follow the road.
She called my name.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"KURO!"
She flew over the houses.
She descended near the paths.
She asked everyone she came across.
A child.
Six years old.
Black hair.
Yellow eyes.
Horns.
Wings.
A tail.
My son.
Have you seen him?
Some had.
One person remembered seeing me walking toward the outskirts.
Another wasn't sure.
Someone pointed in a direction.
That was enough.
Shiroha took off again.
She didn't return to the Council.
She didn't go home and wait.
She didn't assume I'd come back once I got hungry.
She searched for me.
And as more time passed, it stopped being the search of a mother trying to retrieve her disobedient son.
It became the search of a mother who no longer knew where her child was.
"Kuro!"
The mountain stood before her.
The forest below.
Shiroha descended.
She checked the path.
She called my name again.
Nothing.
The problem was that I wasn't there anymore.
And there was no way anyone could've known that.
The portal had disappeared.
It hadn't left behind a door.
It hadn't left behind a light.
It hadn't even left behind an arrow saying:
The stupid kid went this way.
Nothing.
Shiroha reached the forest.
She probably passed close to the exact spot where I'd crossed through the portal.
Maybe she even stepped on the very place where I'd been standing.
But by then, there was nothing left to see.
"Kuro!"
Her voice echoed through the trees.
I couldn't hear her.
And she couldn't hear me.
We were separated by something far greater than a mountain.
───
I don't know how long it took before she asked for help.
I only know that she did.
Shiroha worked for the Council.
That position—the very thing I'd hated only a few hours earlier because, in my mind, it took my mother away from me—became one of the reasons she was able to quickly mobilize other people that night.
Word spread.
A child was missing.
Shiroha's son.
Six years old.
Probably heading toward the mountain.
The search expanded.
The sky I'd wanted so badly to see filled with dragons.
Some flew above the forest.
Others followed the paths.
Still others searched farther away in case I'd changed direction.
Magical lights moved through the trees.
Voices called my name.
"Kuro!"
"KURO!"
"Kuro, answer us!"
Nothing.
Because Kuro, meanwhile, was in another world arguing with a little girl about how unfortunate humans were to be born without tails.
I'm not particularly proud of that.
───
Shiroha retraced the same road again and again.
She checked the same places.
Asked the same questions.
Whenever someone said they'd seen something, she rushed there.
Whenever she discovered it wasn't me, she started searching again.
She didn't eat.
She didn't rest.
And the woman who, only a few hours earlier, had told me she couldn't go to the mountain because she was tired kept searching for me without stopping.
Learning that part hurt.
Because I remembered perfectly what I'd thought while standing in front of Yozora.
Maybe Mom hates me.
What an idiot.
But I was six years old.
I couldn't have known that while I was crying, convinced my mother didn't want me anymore...
...my mother was driving half the Dragon World insane trying to find me.
At one point, someone tried to convince her to go home.
It didn't work.
"Shiroha, we'll keep searching."
"No."
"If Kuro comes back and no one's there—"
"Leave someone at the house."
"You need to rest."
"My son is six years old."
Nothing else needed to be said.
She took off again.
Many years later, I understood that those words contained everything.
My son is six years old.
It didn't matter how tired she was.
The Council didn't matter.
The argument didn't matter.
It didn't matter that I'd yelled at her.
Even that horrible I hate you didn't matter.
I was her son.
I was six years old.
And I was somewhere out there.
To Shiroha, that was the only thing that mattered.
───
The hours passed.
The night grew deeper.
The stars continued to shine above the Dragon World.
The same stars that had started everything.
At some point, Shiroha stopped on the mountainside.
The wind moved through her hair.
Her wings were still spread behind her.
She looked toward the forest.
Then toward the distant lights of the search parties that were still looking for me.
"Kuro..."
No answer.
This time, she didn't shout.
She simply said my name.
Quietly.
She was tired.
She was afraid.
And she didn't know whether her son was alive.
She didn't know I'd found someone.
She didn't know I'd eaten.
She didn't even know whether I was still beneath the same sky.
Or almost the same one.
Meanwhile, I was convinced she hated me.
I said that over the years I gave her an average of thirty heart attacks a day.
That night, I think I used up the entire following week's supply in advance.
And yet, while Shiroha continued searching for me in the Dragon World...
in the Human World, a six-year-old girl had decided she wasn't going to leave me alone.
And so, while my mother desperately searched for her son...
End of Interlude