The Darkness of Past

33 years ago, a boy was born to Kagura Family’s head, Kagura Kazami. He was ecstatic at the birth of a boy who would succeed his position and named him Kazuya. When the boy was barely able to walk, Kazami immediately began his ‘training’ as the heir.

It was a brutal, hellish torture that wasn’t meant to be imposed on a person, even less a child. But the Kagura Family was special, even among other yakuza family. True to their roots as mercenaries, they specialized in assassination, torture, and combat. As the successor of such a family, Kazuya was naturally forced to master all of those skills.

At two years old, Kazuya was taught martial arts and the human body’s anatomy. When he was five, various assassination techniques and torture methods were drilled into his body. At seven, Kazuya regularly took poison to develop his immunity. By the time Kazuya reached ten years old, he was already sent out on his first assassination mission.

“Kazami-sama! Please reconsider!” The family executives made a big fuss when Kazami announced Kazuya’s first mission. “The young master is only ten years old! No matter how you look at it, he’s still way too young for this!”

“He’s ready for this mission.” Kazami refuted coldly. “I’ve trained him myself, so I’m confident in his ability. You won’t disappoint me, right?” He glanced toward Kazuya, who stood silently by his side.

“Yes, Otou-sama. Please leave it to me.” Kazuya answered obediently.

“Good. If you fail, you’ll meet the same fate as your target.”

Despite the cruel threat thrown by his father, Kazuya’s expressionless face didn’t waver at all.

“I understand.” He said dispassionately.

Kazuya’s first mission was to infiltrate an influential politician’s house and assassinate him, disguising his death as an accident. To be fair, it was too high of a hurdle for a child who had never done this before. Everyone thought that Kazuya would definitely mess up and needed to be helped.

However, Kazuya’s natural talent and Kazami’s harsh training produced results beyond everyone’s expectations. The child assassin successfully infiltrated his target’s house and calmly broke the politician’s neck before making it looked like he died from falling off the stairs.

Such stellar results silenced all of the opposition within the Kagura Family. As years passed by, Kazuya received more and more missions from his father. Naturally, the boy didn’t grow up to be an ordinary boy. He grew into a killing machine who lacked emotions and knew no affection.

Kazami forbade Kazuya from interacting with anyone other than him and his tutors, in fear that human affection would create a flaw in his otherwise perfect killing machine. Even his mother wasn’t allowed to see her son at all. After birthing an heir for the family, Kazami never turned to look at his wife anymore, treating her as if she didn't exist.

Thus, Kazuya grew up to be a young man with a hole in his heart, yet he didn’t even realize what he was lacking. No matter how twisted his family was, it was everything that Kazuya knew. He thought that he’d grow up like this and inherit the family, just as he had been told his whole life.

Until he met her.

*****

I snapped out of my reminiscence and slowly opened my eyes. The sight of my small, constricted bedroom made a sigh escape from my mouth. After standing up, I walked toward the closet made inside the wall and slid the door open. Instead of reaching for my futon, which took up most of the closet's space, I crouched and reached out to the back wall. I knocked on the wall until I found a part of the wall that echoed strangely. I slid the fake wall aside and took out a small, old box.

The edge of my lips naturally curled into a smile as I opened the box. There were old pictures inside. The colors had faded with time, and yet they were still incredibly precious to me. I picked a photo of three people—a laughing man, a brightly smiling woman next to him, and a shy-looking girl between them.

“Onii-sama…Shiori-san…” I whispered as I stared at it wistfully.

Up until this day, I never knew how my brother ended up getting entangled with such a kind and compassionate, yet ordinary girl like Shiori. All I knew was that they met when Kazuya was in high school. During their first year, Shiori was a classmate of his.

Most people in school tended to avoid my brother, or so Shiori had told me once. Kazuya always had a cold, scary look on his face, and he never talked to anyone. Coupled with the fact that he was the heir to the Kagura Family, no one dared to approach him. But he started to change after he met Shiori. The brother that I knew was a very kind soul, to the point that I was having trouble imagining him as the scary person that Shiori told me.

Of course, such a change wasn’t always a positive one, especially in the eyes of my twisted family. Kazami was angry that his precious heir had turned soft, so he ordered Shiori to be killed. He thought that if he got rid of the person who ‘tainted’ Kazuya, he would go back to how he used to be.

But Kazuya had changed way outside of Kazami’s expectations. Kazuya protected Shiori from the assassination attempt, and abandoned his family to be with her. He and Shiori disappeared without a trace.

*****

Kazami was terribly enraged at the defiance of his son. In a fit of anger, he turned toward his wife and had her birth another son. Unfortunately, the one who was born after that was a girl instead. Kazami was disappointed, but he still took her to be trained the same way he did Kazuya, ignoring his wife’s desperate pleas.

Kazami didn’t have much expectation for his daughter, but it all changed when she began to show tremendous talent in her physical ability. Kazami started to train her even harsher and stricter than before, in order to not produce another failure like Kazuya. Normal people would’ve already been broken long before, but the girl endured the brutal training and emerged as another perfect killing machine.

When the girl grew older, Kazami began to worry that his daughter would be led astray just as Kazuya did. He didn’t want his painstakingly raised killing machine to be lost again, and so when his daughter reached middle school, he sent her to a girls-only boarding school far away from home. Unexpectedly, his intentions backfired as she met someone there—her long-lost brother.

*****

“Oe Nagi.” The homeroom teacher of an all-girl middle school called out his students’ name from the class roster.

“Here.” The student raised her hand.

“Oono Fujita.”

“Here.”

“Kagura—”

The teacher’s sentence abruptly stopped. The strange pause made all the students look at him, including the person whose name was halfway called.

I stared at my homeroom teacher with an indifferent gaze. He was also looking at me for some reason, with blatant shock written all over his face. The teacher looked to be in his early thirties, with ordinary black hair and gray eyes hidden behind glasses. There was nothing conspicuous about him, yet I felt something familiar from the teacher.

“Ahem, my apologies, my throat was a bit itchy just now.” The teacher made an excuse before continuing his roll call. “Kagura Sakuya.”

“Here.” I answered mechanically.

The rest of homeroom proceeded normally, yet the teacher never once looked at my direction again.

A few weeks passed after that incident. The rumor about my infamous family immediately spread around the school, resulting in me being isolated in my class. But I was already used to it. After all, I also spent my whole elementary school being isolated and feared by everyone—including the teachers.

However, this time I keenly felt someone monitoring my every move closely. It was none other than my homeroom teacher—Kirigaya Kazuya. At first, I thought he was simply looking out for me, the problem child in his class. But my curiosity grew when he kept monitoring me, even outside his classes. He’d follow me to the cafeteria during lunch break, to the dorm after school, and basically wherever I went, to the point that I considered reporting him as a stalker.

Fortunately, just before I decided to do so, Kazuya called out to me.

“Kagura-san.” Kazuya called my name one day right before the last period ended. “Will you meet me in the counselling room after this? I need to talk to you about something.”

I nodded at his words. Since he was my homeroom teacher, I thought maybe he wanted to talk about my lack of friends or something like that.

With that in mind, I went to the counselling room after school according to Kazuya’s request.

“Thank you for coming, Kagura-san.” Kazuya said as he closed the door behind him. “I wish to talk about something really important to you. Can you promise that you’ll keep our conversation here a secret?”

I looked puzzled, but I still agreed. “Sure, as long as it doesn’t harm me.” I replied curtly.

Kazuya took a deep breath before removing his contact lenses. He looked at me with the exact same scarlet-colored eyes as he carefully watched my reaction.

“…!” I jumped to my feet, too surprised to speak.

My mind immediately thought of the only person who could possibly possess the same shade of scarlet eyes as mine. My missing older brother, whom I’d never met before.

When I grew up, I’d heard of bits and pieces about my older brother’s existence. Other family members mocked him for being a weak man who was seduced by a wicked woman and abandoned the family. Even though everyone was looking down at him, I still held an interest and curiosity for the older brother I never knew. I kept wondering why he would go so far as to throw away the family and the heir position just for the sake of a girl.

“Kagura-san—no, Sakuya, I think you’ve figured out my identity.” Kazuya smiled bitterly at me. “I’m Kagura Kazuya, your older brother. I’m sorry that I kept my identity a secret up until now, but it’s because I have to make sure that you won’t expose me to Otou-sama.”

I frowned at his words. “Why do you think that I won’t tell him?” I half-threatened him. “Otou-sama will certainly be pleased if I can bring back the head of his prodigal son.”

Kazuya’s bitter smile deepened into a sad one as he replied, “Yes, there’s always a chance that you’ll report me to him. But…I think you won’t. I’ve been in your position, so I know that you’ll hear what I have to say. Because you can’t help your curiosity.”

I was stunned when I heard it. I didn’t realize it myself until Kazuya pointed it out. That I was curious about him, enough to prioritize hearing him out than earning my father’s praise.

“…how stupid.” I scoffed. “You’re making a ridiculous gamble here. What would you do if I ignore your words and report to Otou-sama? Are you saying that you’re confident you can subdue me before that?” I naturally lowered my body into a fighting stance.

Kazuya immediately raised both of his hands. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve long abandoned my training, so there’s no way I can keep up with you. I simply decided to trust in you, that’s why.”

“Trust?” I parroted his words in shock. “Are you crazy? How can you trust someone you don’t even know like this? You’ll just be taken advantage of and then thrown away!”

“As expected, my little sister is a kind person.” Kazuya ignored my heated words and said that instead. He looked at me so warmly that I was dumbfounded. “If you truly want to expose me, then we won’t be having this conversation. Sakuya, why don’t we take a seat and chat for a bit?”

As if to show that he had no bad intentions, Kazuya lowered his hands and took the seat across the desk. I eyed him suspiciously, but when he showed no signs of doing anything strange, I finally sat down again.

True to his words, Kazuya was just talking to me. He asked me about our parent’s health, the things I did before coming to this school, and then he talked about his life after leaving the family. It was such a simple, ordinary thing, and yet I found myself gradually becoming comfortable with him. Was it because he was my older brother? Or because he was such a gentle person?

Nevertheless, this became a habit of ours. We’d meet after school, either in the counselling room, the library, or even in the cafeteria. At first we were simply talking to each other, but Kazuya slowly taught me about the happiness that came from small, ordinary things.

He taught me how to enjoy the gentle breeze and beautiful scenery as we took a walk around the school’s garden. He taught me the deliciousness of eating from food stalls instead of the luxurious food that I always had. But most importantly, he helped me discover the emotions and kindness that I had lost due to my harsh childhood.

Thanks to him, my isolated school life was slowly improved. The other students no longer looked at me with such fearful eyes, and some of them were even brave enough to talk to me. None of them were close enough to be called a friend, but having someone return your greetings in the morning surprisingly gave you a nice feeling.

I once asked Kazuya why he approached me in the first place. But he didn’t answer and just ruffled my hair with a sad smile on his face. I felt like maybe he did it out of guilt—that I was born and forced to bear the burden of the heiress because he abandoned the family.

*****

A year after discovering my brother, we had grown closer with each other. Kazuya always showered me with affection, as if he was trying to atone for his sins by becoming a good older brother. He also introduced me to Shinji, whom he helped run away from the family as well. Kazuya told me to rely on Shinji if anything happened to him in the future.

At first, we were always careful whenever we went outside of school, since neither of us knew when or where the Kagura Family might be watching. But after some time had passed and nothing happened, Kazuya started taking me outside of school on his days off, sometimes along with Shiori.

On that particular day, Kazuya invited me to visit his house after school. I’ve been curious about it but never had the courage to visit his house. Frankly, I was excited for the opportunity to know more about my brother. And so, I went home with Kazuya when the school was over.

Kazuya had bought a small but cozy home near the school. He lived there together with Shiori, just the two of them. Kazuya had told me before that Shiori was injured because of the Kagura Family, and it caused her to be nearly infertile. That was why they had no child for almost 15 years. But fortunately, a miracle happened and now Shiori was pregnant with their first child.

“Hello, Sakuya-chan!” Shiori greeted me at the door when we arrived. “I’ve been waiting for you to come visit!”

She proceeded to hug me tightly, just like an older sister would.

“Shiori, let’s go inside quickly. It’s not good for you to be outside.” My brother fussed over his wife, causing Shiori to burst out in laughter.

“Geez, I’ll be okay! With the way you’re acting, people would think that I contracted a deadly disease instead of being pregnant!” Shiori said cheerfully as she led us inside.

“Please excuse me.” I timidly said as I took my first step into the house.

It was my first time visiting someone else’s house—not counting all of those infiltration missions—and I took my time to look around. The floor was layered with wood, which gave a warm feeling to the house. There were a lot of windows, allowing natural light to brighten the house. The furniture was a hodgepodge of different styles, but they all strangely blended in together.

“What do you think, Sakuya?” Kazuya asked proudly. “It’s a bit small, but it’s the first house we bought for ourselves.”

I nodded in amazement. “I really like it! I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels…warm. I wish I can live here as well.”

Kazuya exchanged glances with Shiori, then they burst into laughter.

“Sakuya-chan, there’s actually a reason for Kazuya to invite you here today.” Shiori approached me and held my hands. “Would you like to move in with us?” She asked me earnestly.

“H-Huh?!” I was shocked by her request.

“I know you’re a part of the Kagura Family, but I believe that you’ll be happier if you left them, just like Kazuya.” Shiori continued. “Of course, if you don’t want to, then it’s also fine. We both just want you to be happy.”

My gaze alternated between my brother, who was smiling mischievously, and Shiori, whose hands transmitted her warm intention.

It took me a few moments before I could finally choke out a reply. “…why?”

This time, it was Kazuya who answered. “Because you’re my precious little sister.” He said as he stroked my hair. “To tell the truth, when I first saw you, I was tempted to keep pretending that we’re not related. Seeing you keep reminding me of those painful, harsh days…and of Otou-sama.”

I flinched and backed away from Kazuya. I knew very well what he was talking about—the brutal, inhuman training that pushed you beyond your limits and forced you to throw away your heart just to survive.

“If it’s painful, then why did you reach out to me…?!”

“It’s exactly because I know how painful it is.”

Kazuya closed the distance between us and pulled me into his embrace.

“It’s my fault.” He whispered with bitter voice. “It’s my fault that you were born into this accursed family. Because of my cowardice, you were forced to go through that terrible experience. I know I can never be forgiven for it, but I don’t want to leave you suffering all by yourself. Just like how I was saved by Shiori, I want to save you, Sakuya.”

Hearing those words, I awkwardly reached out and hugged my brother back. “I’m…already saved by you, Nii-sama. Thank you…I’m really, really grateful that I was born as your sister.” My voice grew hoarse at the end of my sentence.

“Sakuya…” Kazuya closed his eyes in relief. “Won’t you leave the Kagura Family? Living like a killing machine, bound to the orders of the family head like a curse…that’s no way to live. I want you to be able to choose your own future, Sakuya.” He entreated me.

Tears blurred my sight as I broke down crying from Kazuya and Shiori’s warmth. I think it was the first time I truly cried my eyes out, not because I was sad or angry, but because I was happy.

After crying a lot and calming down, I told them that I wanted to live with them. Both Kazuya and Shiori were ecstatic to hear that. We agreed to pack my belongings today, then I’d move in starting tomorrow.

I went back to my dorm with a spring in my step, unaware of the grave mistake I just made.