Short Story 1- Chapter 8: Where He Sat Apart

The picnic was meant to be simple.

A short drive away from the city, the waterfall provided a constant backdrop of rushing water and cool mist. It was a familiar place, chosen more for convenience than sentiment — somewhere the parents could talk freely while the children occupied themselves.

The Kitahara and Sasaki parents settled into easy conversation almost immediately. Years of separation dissolved into shared laughter and overlapping memories, their voices blending with the sound of the water.

Short Story 1 - Chapter 7: A Small Disturbance

Six months into working life, Yuma had settled into routine.

His days were predictable: morning trains, the soft hum of computers, datasets that demanded precision and patience. As a junior data analyst, his work required long hours of focus — numbers, patterns, projections. He worked independently most of the time, communicating through reports rather than conversations.

It suited him.

Not because he enjoyed solitude, but because solitude was familiar.

Short Story 1 - Chapter 6: There All Along

The house was alive with laughter.

Candles flickered on the dining table, silverware clinking, voices rising in celebration. A surprise, they had said — a celebration for Haruma. The room brimmed with warmth, chatter, and the bright colours of joy that seemed almost too loud for Yuma to bear.

He stood in the corner, a faint smile carefully placed on his lips, his posture straight. His eyes scanned the room but did not settle. The excitement was not his; it never had been.

The Curse of Endless Rebirth

Synopsis:

In a world where magic has faded into obscurity, Sakuramori Rion lives his tenth life.

Three centuries ago, the Sakuramori clan stood as guardians against evil, tasked with capturing and sealing beings that brought calamity to humanity. On the night Rion attempted to seal the most dangerous of them all—Wasureri—tragedy struck. Possession, bloodshed, and irreversible choices left the clan destroyed, and Rion condemned as a practitioner of dark magic by the one person he sought to protect.

Short Story 1 - Chapter 5: Shadows in the Light

University brought freedom, or at least the illusion of it.

Haruma enrolled in a local university but chose to live at home. His friends understood him, the layers of fear and fragility that still lingered from that long year of survival. The bodyguards remained — mostly in the background now, occasionally stepping forward when an unexpected event reminded the family how vulnerable he had been.

Yuma did not stay home.

Short Story 1 - Chapter 4: The Space Between

By the time they were seventeen, the house had settled into a fragile kind of peace.

Haruma no longer startled at every sound. His visits to the hospital had decreased, spaced out into predictable intervals. The psychiatrist appointments remained, though less frequent now, and medication sat untouched for weeks at a time — sleeping pills prescribed but rarely taken, anti-anxiety tablets reserved for days when the world became too loud.

Short Story 1 - Chapter 3: A Quiet Adjustments

Haruma woke one morning and didn’t speak.

Not to the doctors.
Not to the nurses.
Not even to their parents.

His eyes opened, dark and unfocused, and when strangers came too close, his body trembled violently, breath hitching as if he were drowning in air. Alarms were raised more than once — not because his heart failed, but because fear had taken hold of him so completely that his body forgot how to calm itself.