The room was dark.
A man lay on the floor beside the bed, his body curled in on itself. Silent groans escaped his clenched teeth as pain tore through him. A crimson tattoo bloomed across his face and down his arm, its jagged patterns pulsing faintly beneath his skin. Sweat drenched him, soaking through his clothes and pooling against the cold floor.
As the pain intensified, the markings glowed brighter, as though something beneath his flesh was awakening.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
