The Legacy of the incomplete

Ren lived in a world woven from words. To anyone else, his desk was just a cluttered piece of furniture, but to him, it was a sanctuary. Its drawers overflowed with torn pages, and his diaries were packed to the brim with sentences that captured his heart. Every single day, Ren wrote. He wrote about everything and nothing, his pen moving swiftly across the paper, bringing him a sense of pure, unadulterated joy that nothing else in the world could match.But at home, his passion was viewed as a disease."You are wasting your life with this nonsense!" his father would frequently bark, his voice dripping with disappointment. "Writing won't put food on the table. Stop sitting around all day doing nothing. Go out, find a real job, and earn some money. You will amount to absolutely nothing if you keep this up."Ren had grown an invisible armor against these words. Whenever his father started lecturing, Ren would simply nod, look away, and silently retreat into his thoughts. He chose to ignore the harsh reality, believing his words would protect him.Then came a bitterly cold winter evening.When Ren returned home from a walkhe noticed his father sitting in the yard. A warm, bright fire was crackling in front of him, casting long shadows against the walls. Rubbing his cold palms together for warmth, Ren walked up to him."You started a fire, Father? It really is freezing tonight, isn't it?" Ren said softly, trying to make pleasant conversation.His father didn't look up. He just stared blankly into the dancing flames. Assuming his father was just enjoying the warmth, Ren turned around, went to his room, drew the curtains, and quietly went to bed.The next morning, the silence of the house was shattered by a piercing scream.Ren was frantic. He tore his room apart, pulled out every drawer, and searched every nook and cranny of the house. His diaries, his loose sheets, his years of hard work—everything was gone. Desperate and trembling, he called his father.The voice on the other end was cold and unapologetic. "I told you that rubbish wouldn't do you any good. Go find a job instead of sitting around. I burned them all last night. The phone slipped from Ren's numb fingers, clattering onto the floor.A suffocating wave of grief and rage crashed over him. With a choked sob, Ren lunged forward and slammed his hands against his writing desk with such violent force that one of its wooden legs bent inward with a sharp crack. The desk tilted heavily to one side, broken—just like his spirit.For the next three days, the house fell into a deathly silence. Ren didn't fix the bent leg of the desk. He left it exactly as it was, a raw monument to his pain. He locked himself away, refusing to speak a single word to anyone, his heart buried deep within the cold, unyielding ashes of his dreams.Satoshi’s intervention had successfully pulled him out of his room, but it hadn't saved his soul. Day after day, Ren stacked shelves, scanned items, and answered customers with a polite, robotic smile. The work was endless and exhausting. By the time his shift ended, his body ached, and his mind was completely numb.Every night followed the exact same pattern. Ren would walk home in the dark, quietly eat whatever food was left on the table, and immediately collapse into his bed. He never looked at his writing desk. The broken, bent leg of the table remained untouched, a silent testament to the night his dreams turned to ash.His family was finally satisfied. He was no longer "wasting his time" with notebooks and imagination; he was earning money. He was doing exactly what the world expected of him. But the vibrant, golden threads of his dreams had been violently severed. Ren no longer had a target, a goal, or a spark. He was simply surviving, unaware that a desperate, incomplete entity of pure creative energy was wandering the very same dark streets, hunting for the remnants of a broken writer.As the deep, suffocating blanket of the night wrapped around the city, the Creative Writing Shadow drifted aimlessly through the quiet streets. It had left the Hitomori Library far behind, its heart heavy with a profound, chilling realization. Hitomori—the brilliant creator who once poured his soul into every stroke of the pen—was truly gone. His physical form had vanished from the earth, and his lingering presence had faded into nothingness.The Shadow looked down at its own misty, translucent form. It was fading. Without a master's active imagination to feed on, its pigment was growing dangerously light.A wave of bitter sorrow washed over the entity. Despair clouded its mind as it walked through the shadows of the human world, whispering to the empty air, "Why, Hitomori? Why did you leave me like this? Why did you leave me incomplete?"It felt abandoned. Hitomori had given it birth through hee early tales, shaping it with the raw energy of creativity, but had departed before granting it a permanent, solid existence. Now, the Shadow was stranded—a living piece of an unfinished story, desperately searching for a new host whose passion could darken its fading color and give it a true purpose.Ren glanced at the ticking clock on the supermarket wall, counting down the minutes until his shift finally ended. The exhaustion was heavy in his bones, and his only goal was to crawl back into the safety of his bed. When the clock finally struck the hour, a sigh of relief escaped his lips. He clocked out and stepped out into the cool night air, immediately realizing his stomach was hollow with hunger.
Spotting a small, dimly lit momo shop down the street, Ren decided to stop by. As he sat by the window waiting for his food, his phone began to buzz.He picked it up, taking a bite of a steaming momo at the same time. "Hello, Mom? Yeah... yeah, I'm on my way home now."Distracted by the conversation and swallowing hastily, a piece of the food caught in his throat. Ren choked slightly, his eyes watering as he quickly cut the call and grabbed a glass of water, gulping it down until his breathing steadied. He paid the bill, adjusted his jacket, and stepped out onto the sidewalk to walk the familiar path home.But the moment he left the light of the shop, an unsettling sensation crawled up his spine. Someone—or something—was following him.At first, Ren tried to brush it off as paranoia born from sheer exhaustion. But as he walked further into the dim alleyways, the feeling grew undeniable. His mind flashed back to the moment he was on the phone inside the shop. Through the window, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of something bizarre lurking in the periphery. It wasn't a person. Its texture looked like a collage of white sheets and aged, vintage paper, and it possessed a pair of deeply mysterious, glowing eyes. He hadn't seen its full shape, but its haunting presence was now closing in on him.Ren abruptly stopped, his heart hammering against his ribs. He turned around to confront whatever was there, but the street was empty.He took a few more steps forward. Whoosh. The sensation returned, closer this time. In the corner of his eye, a strange shadow darted across the brick wall—but it didn't mimic the shape of any human. It was shifting, fluid, and ink-like. Ren’s mind raced in confusion and fear. He couldn't understand what was happening to him or what this entity wanted.Lost in a wave of panic and deeply distracted by the phantom shadow, Ren stepped right off the curb onto the main road.Suddenly, bright headlights blinded him. The screech of burning rubber pierced the night air as a sleek private car came hurtling around the corner, heading straight for him. Time seemed to slow down. Ren froze, his muscles locking up as the vehicle bore down on him, inches away from a fatal impact...