冬 

You can swear you only looked away for a second.

You took the train from Yokohama because Kenzō wouldn’t stop talking about that cathedral in Tokyo, the one that had burned and come back with wings, and because there’s a bookstore nearby that imports foreign journals in brown-paper bundles. It was supposed to be one day. You planned the route, the transfers, even how long you’d let him stare at the department store windows.

Tokyo in December is dry and too loud. Cold air in your throat, crowds that swallow you like the sea. A hand on your bag, a hand on his wrist, the timetable in your head—and then his hand isn’t there.

You turn once, twice—too slow—and suddenly Tokyo is enormous, the lights are too close, and Kenzō is gone.

You were on Yasukuni-dōri when Kenzō started snooping toward the side street—because ever since the little Catholic nursery near your house, he’s been talking to that priest, and you’re more and more skeptical about the shūkyō he brings home—those tidy little morality stories about being good, being kind, helping people—like life is that simple—and you told him you needed to go further. 

He made a face, but he obeyed, his hand still inside yours. And the next second he was gone. 

You push through people, you call his name once, too loud, and taste how stupid and small it sounds here, you force yourself to stop, to breathe, to look lower, where a child would be, where Kenzō would be, not where your eyes usually sit. Paper lanterns, beer crates, beaded curtains, cigarette smoke, the sweet-sour smell of spilled beer, you hate these smells, you follow them anyway.

You go through a narrow doorway, there’s a—she’s one of these—you see the big blond hair, and the sharp shapes under the powder—oh thank heaven—this person is holding Kenzō’s hands, bent down so he doesn’t slip away again, talking to him calmly, like she’s practiced at keeping children from bolting.

You grab him and pull him in, too hard. You give him a big hug. You check all his fingers like they might have gone missing too—thumb, index, middle, ring, little—then the other hand, again, because your head won’t accept it the first time.

And then you stop. You can go back to your usual control.

You thank the—the woman, properly. Up close you see eyes narrowed, mouth set, like she’s bracing for you to start shouting. But you don’t.

She looks at Kenzō, then at you, and the worry loosens into a smile. 

---

Outside, you tell him quietly what happens next time—you go home without him. He goes pale, the corner of his mouth trembling.

If Kenzō were your ex-husband’s son, you’d have to cushion him first, before you went back home, before your ex-husband heard about it and decided the little escapade needed correcting. With your current husband, you have to be the one who tightens things, because otherwise Kenzō will grow up thinking his kindness puts him above everyone.

春 

The morning smells of grilled fish and coffee; the rice is topped with shirasu. The futons are folded away, the castella from yesterday is cut into neat slices on a plate. The newspaper waits at your husband’s place at the table, another piece of reality for him to unfold and underline with his eyes, and beside it a slim German textbook for Kenzō.

The home needs to be perfect and spotless: no dust on the low table, shoes lined up by the door, ashtrays emptied before your husband even thinks to look. You can’t allow yourself sloppiness. You are not a young, never-divorced mother like the office girl at his hospital.

You watch them both get ready for their Saturday: your husband folding his second son’s letter back into its envelope without reading it twice, then buttoning his white shirt for a case conference and a bit of paperwork at the hospital, and Kenzō combing his hair in the hall mirror, smoothing it down with hair liquid for a date after classes—another one that will turn the light in his eyes into something stale by the time he comes back.

The girl is from the kind of house where you learn to pour tea without a sound and apologize before you’re asked—top of her class at the girls’ school, already used to steering her younger brother back into line like it’s routine.

---

When Kenzō comes back, you bring him miso soup with asari clams. He’s on the Yamaha acoustic in the corner, playing the same quiet city song as always after a date—the one with the woman’s low voice and the plain guitar; the lyrics soft enough he only ever listens to it with the headphones plugged into the stereo, too tender for the loud Western bands his friends love and you hate.

When Kenzō thanks you for the soup, he sets the guitar down and gives you that small, earnest bow, and for a moment the melancholic teenager turns into the sweet little boy who used to hide under your kotatsu blanket. The contrast is so clear: his arigatō gozaimasu still reaches you. You don’t want it to thin out into your husband’s polite, automatic dōmo, tossed in your direction without him even looking up from the bank forms his older son left spread across the table. 

---

Your husband comes back later than he planned to. You don’t mind the stranger’s smell soaked into his shirt and hair—you catch sharp soap and menthol-cool, and under it milk candy sweetness—you mind him thinking his name is the only one on the paper.

夏

You go through Kenzō’s room on a regular basis; all is, of course, a housewife’s job. 

The cicadas rasp outside, and the air coming in from the veranda is warm and smells of hot dust and rice straw. You move his shirt off the chair, pick up a tankōbon with a wide-eyed boy mid-sprint, knees high—drawn so clean and earnest it makes you suspicious—and stack it back with the exam-prep books and the medical texts.

You don’t find what other mothers would call concerning. Instead, you find a book buried flat beneath the manga and medical books—a novel that leaves you with an ugly picture in your head: Kenzō still young, still handsome, but with a ruin in his head and soul and a knife through his stomach.

You take the book, wrap it in paper, and dust it with salt.

---

You go on a long walk. The wind shifts once and brings brine and ship diesel. The book’s ink stays hidden inside your head. 

You pass a boy in a rubber mask, too big for his face, and you remember the one time Kenzō came back upset from school; protecting a bullied boy from his classmates was so much harder than protecting someone from a teacher. 

Your husband told Kenzō he’d done the right thing. He said it was kind, yes. Then he asked, calmly, who saw. Whether a teacher saw. Whether the other boys’ parents saw. Then he said future hospital directors don’t sit next to the child everyone laughs at, and straightened Kenzō’s collar with careful approval. 

Your neck bristles as his words ring in your ears, so clear it’s as if his voice has swallowed your own.

---

You fill the empty space on Kenzō’s shelf with a German article on SDAT nursing care.

秋 

With typhoon warnings crawling across the TV, dinner goes the way it always goes. Your husband talks about the hospital in the calm future tense he uses when he means something is settled—when Kenzō takes over, when the staff gets used to it. You wait until he looks satisfied. Then you pour him more tea and say his second son would be better suited—better with staff, better at smoothing things over, less likely to disappear into one patient and forget the rest.

Kenzō doesn’t argue. He listens. Then he says, carefully, that he’s found a German paper published in a medical journal written by a professor whose name he pronounces with one-stroke precision. He says he’ll leave the hospital to his brother and go study in Germany instead.

Your husband thanks you for the tea without looking at Kenzō. His expression settles into the pleasant blankness he uses with staff. He inclines his head toward you—or toward the room—a note too formally.

After that, Germany becomes possible.

---

At night, your husbands hand closes around yours and strokes it, and you feel his breath in the quiet quiver of his body against yours.

無

You escort Kenzō to the airport—your husband isn’t there, but his older sons are, in his place, like guarantors.

You hope Germany won’t be Kenzō’s last point—you know it has its own shigarami. But at least it has more exits.

You take his hands. You try to fix the weight and warmth of them in your memory, the way his fingers still curl around yours like they did when he was small. Then you cup his face—thumbs on the high line of his cheekbones, the skin under his eyes, and a brief press along the bridge of his nose, to remember how he looks now, before Germany and whatever comes after.

You breathe in—controlled—and it catches; you let it out too slowly, blinking less, keeping your hands steady on his face while trying not to dig your nails into his skin.

Just before Kenzō turns to go, one brother slips a small wrapped bundle into his hand. You catch a glimpse of the item: the weathered black cover of a German–Japanese dictionary, the same edition that sat on your husband’s desk for years. Kenzō’s fingers tighten around it.

You hope this isn’t the last time you see your little boy.

Type: Long-form critical essay (hybrid fictional–critical)

Status: Manuscript submitted; decision pending

Full manuscript available on request.

Abstract:

The essay traces a set of Nabokovian devices—unreliable narration, layered authorship, doubling, recursive structure, obsessive detail, linguistic and translational play, paratextual games, and child consciousness as an ethical nerve—and shows how each finds a counterpart in Urasawa’s
Monster and 20th Century Boys. At the same time, its hybrid fictional–critical narrative mirrors those techniques, letting a wandering narrator move through these ink-worlds so that the very act of reading the essay reenacts the unstable, layered authorship and fractured truth it describes.

Excerpt 1:

The Rabbit Nabokov card in your hand might not exist at all if not for one reckless act of indulgence: colliding two characters from Naoki Urasawa’s Monster.

That collision opened the door of the casino in 20th Century Boys. It’s where you found the card, and where it might reveal its rules. No one sees you. You move safely through the ink: pausing at tables, slipping behind mirrors, lingering for sparks of beauty hidden behind the scarred smiles and watchful eyes, or chasing after meaning they’d rather you never find.

The casino is a place that looks like it belongs to its own world, but you can sense all the different sceneries put into it; elements taken from American cinematic landscapes coexist in uneasy harmony with a Japanese casino ruled by the Chinese and Thai mafia, where a Russian game is played.

In this place, a man in a traditional Japanese kimono catches your attention. He hides a tantō in his sleeve—while everyone else, including the dealer, carries a gun. His poker face is almost flawless.

You know how that almost is crucial in worlds born under Urasawa’s pen.

He’s teaching Kanna—the girl with determination sparking in her huge eyes—the Rabbit Nabokov game, and reveals its creator: Aleksandr Nabokov.

It’s a hybrid of two Russian authors: Aleksandr Pushkin and Vladimir Nabokov. You wonder—why these two names combined?

Excerpt 2:

Aleksandr Nabokov’s Eugene Onegin shenanigans don’t end in 20th Century Boys. They don’t even begin here: you have to slow down and go through the mountains into Urasawa’s Bavaria.

You can tell it’s as rich as Nabokov’s landscapes—the difference lies in the form: drawings versus writing.

The town you’re visiting is called Ruhenheim. It’s both very fictional (there is no town called Ruhenheim in Germany) and very real (it looks and feels Bavarian, and it neighbors actual towns and places).

In Ruhenheim lives Konrad the jam maker. His jam comes from the same fruit that appears in Eugene Onegin: lingonberries.

Excerpt 3:

You feel as isolated and trapped as Richard did when you see the doppelranger. You can only shake your head in gleeful disbelief at the tonal clash; a wordplay as obvious shouldn’t work this well on your spine.

You glance at your hands—have they always looked this… inky? Maybe you’re committing the very sins Nabokov warned against: identifying with characters (juvenile!), hunting for the author inside the fiction (rubbish!).

But you don’t mind. The ink on your hands, the words torn to pieces—it’s entertaining, it’s enlightening, it’s enchanting, exactly the three ingredients from Nabokov’s recipe for a good storyteller.

You don’t mind looking at the author either—because what you see is a persona, or rather, a swarm of personas. A work is never just one mind, anyway; the supposed real Capital-M Mind behind this inky chaos will always remain an unanswered question.

Besides, how much can you trust answers from sources that spin absurd little stories about apes using charcoal, or about eighty-four-year-old soba apprentices their own chef refuses to see?

Chapter I 

ウッチャリ

1.

A trail of berries cuts through the fog-soaked amusement park. 

The berries glow as little red stars on the cosmos-black ground, leading to a rollercoaster—its twin in red—pulsing and still, waiting.

Creak. The rusty door opens. A shimmer flickers on the seat and sharpens into a card under a touch. One half shows a trickster from a chaotic literary world; the other, his gambling-loving ancestor. The same ink bloodline.

And—

Why is the velvety line like a long-lost friend? Why is the card like a forgotten gift from years ago? Why does it look like an undiscovered story’s cover?

Uncle?

2.

When K. opens her eyes, there is no amusement park, only an empty and dim-lit ramen shop. 

Just another weirdo dream.

She yawns and takes empty bowls to the sink. Uncle. Yeah, she wishes she had anyone to call that. Stupid dream lingers on her like the forest bedding on her shoes after a run.

No boss lurking, no customers lingering, she can slip out to her reading hut—her mist-wrapped forever morning.

The eyeglasses on the cover—round with black frames—remind her of Uncle. 

What? There is no Uncle. She snaps the book open and a card thuds against her palm.

3.

K. always dreamed of peeling back reality’s fabric and experiencing the unknown. The saying that never sat right with her—be careful what you wish for—had a sharp point piercing her.

It’s like the swinging boat ride all over again: her stomach somersaults, and oh god, don’t puke, don’t fall, no—

She lands on the grass—soft, yes, but treacherous, a fragile thread barely holding her to this world. She gulps the doughy air. When will this stop—never breathe again?

The card. She tightens her fingers on it. The spinning stops.

The hut stands. Her thoughts lurch, she’s not fully back yet.

4.

Everything is normal.

The oaks. The half-sand, half-stone paths. The holey fence slouching from the forest to the shop. She’s been gone too long, her boss will kill her.

Everything is normal.

Was the house—violets on the gate—always here? Probably. She walks faster.

It’s always so empty at this hour. She likes this stillness. The weirdness? That’s just the dizzy dream messing with her. That’s all.

Everything—

Her fingers twitch against the card in her pocket. It replaced the keys. Where the hell are her keys? 

Everything is—

The card presses against her palm, ink-sticky. No. This is not normal.

5.

The wooden shop door won’t budge. Her keys—great, still replaced by that useless card.

K. presses her face into the window. Inside, everything’s blurry—as if someone dragged a giant brush and eraser slowly across the glass.

What is she supposed to do? 

She reaches for the book and leafs through it. The words are replaced by one gibberish passage on the last page: 

Ɛ x 9ᔭㄥ

Cold teeth bite at her calves. Panic crawls up her spine on its spiky legs—like the buzz from too many magic-infused chocolates at the Red Lodge cafe.

No choice left—she needs to get out.

Chapter II

顔が嘘って。今日も

1.

Is this a place only K. can enter?

She hates the thought—hellishly self-centered—but what else could explain time turning into static just for her?

A scenario she’s daydreamed, nightmared, but never thought it’d look back at her with multitudes of eyes.

Her vision flickers, then snaps back. The usual “Guitar lessons” (not her age range) and “Have you seen this cat?” (heartbreaking) fade into manga panels.

There’s the same shimmer from her dream. Her fingers jump toward it—and it vanishes.

The inky line, the long-lost friend, is back. Why does her chest tighten? Friends shouldn’t make her palms sweat, right?

2.

It’s a repeated panel: a figure in a fur cap with two suitcases chasing a rush of white smoke. Too specific to be new, too strange to remember.

She’s supposed to take the train? Sure. Why not. Like this whole place isn’t already folded wrong-side-out.

The train jolts as K. steps in. She hits the floor. Dignity: gone. It’s fine. Fine.

Colors blur past, too vivid to be real. In her usual world, they’d melt the stone in her gut.

But this isn’t that world.

Can she still call it home if she’s not sure she’ll ever make it back?

3.

A message flutters on the window—too fast to read, but not to feel. The train halts. Outside, the air hits like déjà vu: mossy, floral, thick with foreign words, suffocating like a demon’s breath.

She walks the sandy asphalt. The signs shake with the same furious red that blistered through the dream that still clings like sweat to her skin.

Risky, sure—but it’s not like risk ever asked for her consent.

K. hates following rules. She hates not knowing them more.

At the end of the path: a carnival gate. Something human-shaped smiles—wrong enough to run, warm enough to follow.

4.

When she looks closer, the figure resolves into the shape of a man—maybe in his fifties, maybe older. Hard to tell. His features won’t stay still, like someone sketched him from memory and kept erasing, redrawing, smudging the edges.

The lines he’s built of aren’t hers, not quite the inky ones either. Something between.

No time to stare—not here, not in this hall with only one object: a humming slot machine.

The man-not-man shows his teeth in something between menace and fondness. The stone inside her fractures into splinters.

“One pull. One message. If you win, he will hear you.”

5.

“And why should I trust you?”

He shrugs; stapled smirk, dry eyes, hand stroking the machine like a wildcat. “Insert the card. Push the button. Hope. This is all you have.”

Every part of her bristles. Being told what to do makes her want to bite something—chew until it bleeds. But she shoves the card in, jaw locked, eyes pointed anywhere but him.

Whoever—or whatever—he is.

The machine flickers. Berry. Berry. —

Static.

“Tough luck.” He snaps his fingers—

And the world collapses inward like hot plastic.

The floor groans, K. stumbles, heat crawling up her neck.

She’s done playing pawn.

Chapter III

ギャフン

1.

After the world collapses, only L-shaped puddles remain. K. jumps from one to another.

The signs glow blue now, gentle as a breeze. Her chest tugs toward the light. No. She won’t fall for it. Not after signs tore the world apart.

Not easy to blame it—she’s the one who pulled the lever.

Doesn’t matter. Run.

Something wants to eat her? Let it. A manga panel monster? Fine. But only on her terms.

She slips. Darkness lashes her ankle—slick as spilled pen stroke—

shitshitshit—

it squeezes—

she kicks—

climbs—

Another train hovers suspended midair. K. jumps right into its mouth.

2.

This train glides. K. stays upright as colors sharpen—heart-shaped gardens, a mansion devoured by violets.

She exhales. The note she wanted to send to Uncle? Nonsense anyway. Who cares. But her hand drifts to her pocket—empty. Just fabric and the shape of absence. Stupid.

She almost sees it—his ink-stained shadow, dragging behind her like a second spine.

She bites it back. If that thing kept his word, he’d twist it—warp it—send Uncle a lie sewn into her handwriting. If Uncle is real, that is.

She stacks excuses like groceries, hoping neatness would quiet her gut ache.

It doesn’t. Only waits.

3.

She slaps the stop sign on a twitch of doubt. 

She can’t ride forever. Not when her watch spins like a curse and the train’s lamps carve slow halos through the air.

She needs to study the laws of this place. Map them, pin them, nail them down before they slip. The platform crackles like a stormcloud—might be her best shot.

The thought chews at her nerves. A warning? A thrill? Something buried beneath both.

The card, Uncle, not the end, just the hook. And maybe she’s already a character on someone else’s page—drawn in before she chose a pen.

4.

Gravity’s both a joke and a threat. K. flips the book open again. The gibberish on the last page grins smugly.

She almost steps into a yellow lump. Probably a fruit; it’s marked with a fresh bite. K. glances over her shoulder. Who left it here?

She doesn’t want to eat it, she wants to read it. She carves it open with the pen, skin puckers and splits, juice spilling onto the paper, not soaking, but blooming into gold dust, sharp of spice and lavender.

The pen is pulsing in her hand.

And then—

the air breaks like wet paper.

5.

K. freezes—gut twisting into a fist. Not this again. How many times? She should drop it. Forget Uncle.

She turns to bolt—

—and the bridge flickers into place, half-drawn, an abandoned doodle. It looks like it belongs in Southern France—except on a map created by someone who either doesn’t know or wants to mock.

Running won’t save her. She steps forward—then sees it: a manga panel. Uncle laughing at her joke. But it melts before she can absorb it.

Only a note remains: Your Uncle? Trust shattered. Danger ahead.

Her pulse spikes, demanding answers that will shush the wildfire inside.

Chapter IV

狸

1.

At the bridge’s end, a bar looms. Behind the counter: an older man with a handkerchief in the pocket of his velvet suit and a dotted bowtie. Is this—

She’s about to dive in, but then—something’s off. His lines are too neat and too easy. He’s not a silver fox, more like a thirty-something cosplaying one, badly.

Warning bells hiss under her ribs, but hell—she’s already here. What’s she gonna do now, moonwalk out?

“Clever trick,” she mutters, scanning him like a slippery shell cracked just enough to spill venom. “Think a cleaned-up avatar makes me forget the slot machine?”

2.

“Oh you sneaky little so-and-so,” he laughs. “I thought the necktie would do the trick. Touché.” 

The bar rips sideways, peeling back like a movie set—and there it is again: the amusement park from her dream, bathed in that same red-and-black palette. 

Her throat clenches. The walls throb with her messy handwriting.

Uncle is real. I know he is.

I need to find him.

What if I made him up?

“Delicious self-prophecy. You’re such a talented self-mocker, I didn’t even have to touch the pen.”

K.’s middle school nightmare slams back: strangers reading the chaotic pages inside her head.

3.

He pulls a cigarette from thin air. “Nice skill, right? Not gonna save you from being ripped off.”

K. puts two and two together—and it’s the hardest equation in her humble maths career. Is he saying—Uncle is—

Time hiccups. The thought doesn’t land, it detonates.

“Oh, you’re so afraid of this possibility, you can’t even think about it! Poor little bunny.”

Right. The goddamn mind-reading wall. She slams the door on that thought. The weirdo’s had enough of a peek.

“Who are you calling the weirdo?” he sneers. “I’m not the one chasing bedtime stories like they owe me closure.”

4.

“So, my fluffy cutie—still wanna see him?” He blows a smoke. “Or are you scared he’s one of them—the ones who charm like poets and rot like corpses? You know the type. You’ve read their confessions by night, haven’t you?”

A tremor shakes her hands, but she forces them still. “You think I’m new to this?”

His too-silver hair glitches into short, wispy brown strands. K. stabs him with her laser beam stare, raking the smoke aside like a curtain. “Do you think I’m looking for a fucking role model? You think I’m what—twelve? I came here for a conversation.”

5.

K.’s done letting some uncanny shadow pretend it knows her. The golden dust thrums inside her—she reaches for her pen and notebook.

“Be careful with your little toys,” he purrs, a brief lilt slicing through his usual tenor. “They’re more dangerous than you think. I also thought I was careful. And now—”

She shuts him down with a scrawl: SCRAM.

She aims to push him off. Instead, he crumbles into shrieking dust that twists into a shiny paper plane and silently glides away.

There’s ink on her hands and face. The darkness claws in without tearing the world apart.

Chapter V

認められない 弟子

1.

K. hugs her knees, nothingness pressing against her bones.

This is too easy. No shaking, no voice snarling about the end, just an ice shard raking her insides and her breath fogging.

Would the ink smeared on her sting more if it reeked like old coins?

The frost climbs her throat. Murder? Self-defense? Does it even matter here?

She wants to go home. But which home? The one with all her books, the one drowned in unbearable silence, the one eroded by memory?

Three homes.

A pen creaks; a door appears.

“Oh, you poor child. You need to eat something.”

2. 

It’s an elderly woman built of ink lines that smudge like fingerprints.

The bite’s there—brewing—but K. stays silent. She’s—it’s been ages since she last ate—stupid notebook and pen won’t conjure food—

“I know, I know, it’s hard to find good food here.”

Is this woman digging into her mind? Damn—the thought-wall again? K. glances left and right. No sign of it—but then why does she feel so thought-naked?

“Come. I’ll make you an udon bowl.”

K. wants to scream no, stomp and sulk, lash out in a bratty storm. But she isn’t a poor child anymore—only a starving, exhausted adult.

3.

1941 hangs above the door. Her name is Kumi.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. She drums the bowl—four beats that stop K. mid-scoop of curry thick with quiet history.

The rhythm nips her neck. Uncle’s guitar—he’d tap it like this before saying her name.

Sure.

The udon seeps in, quieting the stubborn brat inside her.

“If only my chef loved as much as you do.”

Kumi glances at the faded portrait—ladle raised, soft wrinkles catching the dim light. Some old man’s approval? Please. She’s folded flavors into broth since before K. could talk.

“Your chef—”

But Kumi’s gone, swallowed by shadows.

4.

Rock & roll hums through curry-stained spoons. “My sister always asks for extra eggroll.”

A hoodie hides heart-shaped acne. “Told them I trained under Kamado. Chef loved my tempura—never mind.”

Messy bun, crow’s feet, a soap-opera quote on her mug. “He says my udon’s too soft. She says my heart is.”

Old cookbooks, recipes flecked in gold dust. Silence.

Thirteen hours, zero tips. “I need a dentist, a rheumatologist, and food that’s good. Not just decent.”

Thinning hair, calloused hands. “All I want is a nod. A tiny one.”

Seven faces, one passion.

Kumi returns with a plate of seven fruits.

5.

“Okay, what the hell—you were seven people.”

“What are you talking about, dear? I got dessert.”

Her eyes flick furiously to the portrait—but Kumi’s absent smile turns fire to hush.

She looks back: six berries on the man’s plate.

She grabs the card (the notebook and pen still burning). Berries. She presses it—

Click.

The painting tips—
crashes down—
revealing:
_ x 6 _ _
A lock.

Three homes.
Four taps.
Seven selves.

The numbers fall into place. Never gibberish or smug—just waiting for her to look closer.

“I always knew,” Kumi says. “They only let me leave the six.”

Chapter VI

シーラカンス

1. 

The door slams before K. can say thank you. 

Kumi. 

Her body craves the false promise of safety, her mind drags her across the cosmos-black floor.

The corridor shifts behind her gaze—doorframes glitching like old TV pixels and bleeding bruised green and sickly pink.

Rot sours the smell of burnt paper and ink. K. pulls her sleeve over her face, there’s something—

when—

he’s supposed to be—

gone—

A pixel puppet with strings cut mid-glitch-performance. She presses against the wall—

and recoils with a gasp. The red is oozing up her skin.

He’s not trying to play the gentleman anymore.

2.

The fractured splinters inside her liquefy into panic. She bolts door to door. He follows, a static and close breath.

Every door slams into the next—

too fast to parse, too loud to forget. A four-legged fish drawing its tank in chalk, her bedroom in the wrong shade of blue.

His voice scratches the air, echoing through vents. The notebook and pen—the bombs she forgot how to defuse—are the only things that might help. She grabs, but her fingers miss. 

The notebook and pen dissolve into darkness. He glitches—becoming the figure in the fur hat.

It’s a win for him.

3.

He used to wear the smile of someone who knows her journals by heart. Now it’s so blank she can’t read it.

“This is what you wanted, right? Someone who tells you yes. Even when your ideas make no sense and you’re spiraling again.”

Each word nicks her open with surgical precision.

It’s over. Her weapon’s gone. She curls into a crumpled knot behind the crate, her face slick with tears and snot.

He kneels with a tired sigh. “You still don’t get it. I’m not here for you.” He pauses. “I’m here because no one was there for me.”

4.

He morphs into mascot-her: blue cat ears, baseball cap, and lines begging for love. “I thought he’d match the version I drew in my head, too.”

His voice drips with hollow wisdom, his ears are swollen with self-importance. 

K. wipes her face, straightening, still on shaking legs. “It’s just a sketch. But I need it.”

He tilts her head. “You don’t. And you don’t need the notebook or pen to erase me. Just do it. Please. No one can live like this.”

Her hand twitches—reaches out, then jerks back. His pixels smear into vapor.

She’s left alone with the silence.

5.

This reality gasps its dying breath with him. A new opening tears open the dark—the mansion devoured by violets looms again.

There is no door, only a ladder. K. climbs it—pale blue butterflies bursting mid-wingbeat around her. The ladder coils beneath her grip; it won’t stop her.

Her hands burn; she pants. The sky isn’t sky anymore—it’s paper, ash, whatever it wants to be.

A figure shifts in the fog. Her vision fuzzes when a hand extends through the mist. She hesitates. Grabs it.

The grip is firm and it fills her with an unknown strength.

She won’t let go.

I

The liquid in the glass bottles was as green as the streets of Düsseldorf. 

Tenma looked through his pant pockets for some small change. Mr. Açıkel—hefty, friendly-eyed, with yellowing bruises from Tenma’s last healing session after a rabid dog bite—scanned him like an X-ray. “Remember to eat normal food as well, son. This crap alone will make you sick. I know a—”

Tenma dismissed him with a broad smile. “I’d love to have a chat, Mr. Açıkel, but I have to go now.”

The smile and the dismissal came easier than usual. Maybe because Tenma was practically flying after the last session. 

A session that left him dizzy, but the nod he earned snapped him upright, the euphoria reviving his blood flow almost as power-restoring as the liquid.

Tenma bit his lip as he left the store, the bottles rattling in his backpack. 
He took a deeper breath—the first in a while that didn’t taste like smog—and looked at the panorama of Düsseldorf. Leafy streets scattered with deserted places. A patrol wagon rumbled past; Tenma tightened his fingers on his backpack straps and straightened up. When he slouched, the cops were more likely to take notice. 

Königsallee: In the old photos a fashion scene with trees growing along the canal, in the current landscape a bleak scene with potholed asphalt and former shops marked with signs forbidding entry.

We’ll need much more money and time to rebuild this street. You might help.

The old Düsseldorf, a faraway land, remembered by a few. Tenma was lucky enough to study under one of them.

He once told Tenma about a doctor who could cure the world of all its aches. 

Tenma wasn’t naive enough to think he could cure all the aches, not with his power still draining him so easily. But something deep, deep, deep inside screamed that he could cure at least some.

II

The tea tasted so much better in the porcelain cups that remembered the city long gone—Bonaparta’s beloved Prague. The sadness was a crucial part of this superior experience. 

Cups with gilded edges, small flowers, and a small crack on the bottom. He observed the crack closely—he couldn’t let one of the few items that connected him with the old world perish.

This is why he also observed his jewel so closely. A cracked jewel? Reeked of sacrilege.

Tea—especially excellent tea—was a rarity in the new world. Luckily, so was his precious jewel—the precious jewel that brought help and hope to the less fortunate. Desperation and thankfulness—two forces so powerful they made people shower the killers of one and the bringers of the other with gifts and adoration.

The healer’s hand was a mutation’s strange endowment, so strange that people who weren’t either cursed or blessed with the knowledge of the new world would dismiss it as a science-fiction story, or at best, nature’s queerness. 

But this wonder was real—he had proof in the form of a brain scan, the most beautiful brain scan he had ever seen. Bonaparta’s only complaint was that he couldn’t open Tenma’s skull with a scalpel to have a more intimate look at the anomaly located between his frontal and parietal lobe. The anomaly he wanted to feel under his fingertips. The anomaly that turned Tenma into a reincarnation of Asclepius.

This godly trait had an ungodly name: MA-131. Of course, they didn’t use Latin anymore and didn’t bother with using their imagination to come up with a name that would perfectly match the eeriness of this trait.

Luckily, he could still use Latin in his private notes: the name Manus Asclepii, a galaxy he single-handedly discovered.

After finishing the tea—green jasmine tea—he went to the kitchen to prepare svíčková with whole-grain bread, a unique meal in this decaying environment, where quality ingredients were as scarce as refinement.

But Franz Bonaparta’s jewel deserved nothing less than the finest.

III

The new world was dangerous. Mr. Bonaparta echoed these words so often that they quietly grew over Tenma’s brain. 

This was why he received a map that separated the safe—relatively safe—spaces from the dangerous ones and why he attended gun trainings. Mr. Bonaparta didn’t take this decision lightly; firearms belonged to the category that wasn’t discussed beyond necessities.

The training included bows and knives: Ammunition was scarce. 

His instructor lived in the danger zone, which meant that Mr. Bonaparta accompanied him during every training. The distance justified using the car—an expensive possession Mr. Bonaparta preferred to keep an eye on.

“I wouldn’t leave a stray cat with a man like him, let alone you, my dear.”

My dear. A word combination so rare that Tenma’s cheeks burned hotter than the midday sun—embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing—and he didn’t dare to raise his gaze from his worn-out sneakers. 

A word combination that felt like home. Whatever home was—his skin color different enough to put up an invisible shield between him and others, yet not enough to tether him to the land of his origins.

Was there truly a land of origin? 

It wasn’t just his skin. It was in the way he accented certain words, the hesitations in his mannerisms, the way he never quite knew whether to bow or shake hands—how Japanese was becoming, more and more, a foreign language.

And yet, here he was.

He followed Mr. Bonaparta to the backyard, where the instructor was waiting for them. Tenma never met someone more hardened but also weirdly soft—never a raised voice or a face betraying impatience with Tenma’s indecisiveness (gun or knife attack?).

The workouts put Tenma through the troops—sometimes literally—and sore muscles weren’t an alien concept to him. He gritted his teeth nevertheless—following rules led to results, and results brought him Mr. Bonaparta’s quiet approval.

Or at least something that looked like quiet approval.

Tenma aimed and shot, finally hitting the bullseye. His hands shook as he lowered the barrel. He discreetly wiped the sweat from his chin with his shirt and glanced furtively at Mr. Bonaparta.

A shadowy smile.

(The subtle aroma of jasmine.)

*

The man lived with a little girl who wore shorts covered in patches and seemed to spend every free moment jumping on a rope.

Tenma never saw her smile. When he tried to talk to her, she remained silent, her face still.

He watched as she landed on the balls of her feet, the jump rope slapping against the ground. 

“The girl—Is she his granddaughter?”

Mr. Bonaparta didn’t answer immediately. “She was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?!”

“Technically kidnapped.” Mr. Bonaparta looked at him with an indecipherable expression. “Her mother was killed, Herr Bernhardt a gentleman enough to take the poor yellow girl.” His soft voice soaked with sarcasm. “It’s better than being a homeless orphan, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Still kidnapped.” Tenma crossed his arms, his previous judgment of Mr. Bernhardt now not fitting enough. “We—we should take her. You could offer her better conditions to live.”

“Do you want to kidnap her again?”

“No! I—”

“Listen, Tenma.” Mr. Bonaparta put an arm around him. “Some things? You just can’t understand, so leave them be.” 

“What? I can’t just lea—”

“Kenzō.” Every syllable melted in his mouth like a sugar cube. “You see, the war was the most merciless event I ever experienced. Oh I hope you will never be forced to use what you learn here, it’s—it’s too easy to—”

Mr. Bonaparta lowered his hand, his touch still lingering.

*

Mr. Bonaparta locked himself in his office. 

The alone time suspended Tenma in a decision vacuum. Should he read a book to practice reading in the old language (maybe something about the war he wasn’t meant to understand)? English, French, or German? Do some medical drawings? Take the old walkman Mr. Açıkel restored for him and listen to music that came from the far-away-land?

Mr. Bonaparta thought that a comprehensive education was crucial for a healer.

Tenma could either relax in his room or learn another thing that would get him closer to Mr. Bonaparta breaking his rule—his rule that said that excessive praise could spoil a disciple, especially a gifted disciple, maybe even end his life.

Relaxing was the harder option.

IV

Bonaparta’s office—his small palace of solitude. Because Tenma was an obedient boy, he only entered it when Bonaparta invited him for a lesson. 

Tenma was special, so he learned about topics unrelated to medicine eagerly, his mind truly versatile.

Oh how naive Bonaparta once was, believing that people could become anything. He learned his lesson, the hard way, always the hard way, there was no greater teacher than the hard way, and now he knew what should’ve been obvious from the start: only a few in this world had the privilege to choose any path.

The rest would burn in hell. Some of them were aware enough of the flames around them, but the majority enjoyed the cloudy comfort of lies much more, even if reality came with a loaded gun—one of the worst inventions of mankind—at them. 

Only the absolute minority could enjoy what the world had to offer, yes, even this rotten-to-the-bone new world. His Tenma was a star among the stars with the anomaly changing his brain, or maybe his brain changing the anomaly into something otherwordly.

Bonaparta created a hypothesis: MA-131 not only gave Tenma his healing abilities, it also turned him into the perfect learner. The evidence was scarce for now, though. He still allowed himself to indulge in this little anecdata. 

This anecdata—a milky way of endless inspiration. Sadly, the drawings that this galaxy fruited with brought nothing but the bitter taste of disappointment. Well, almost every drawing.

There was one sketch that turned the black hole devouring the matter back into a sun.

In this sketch, Tenma had longer hair—long enough to cover his eyes and nose—a serious expression, and a spark of determination on his face. Bonaparta darkened the shadow under his chin with soft graphite, yes, it looked better and better, but what would he do with himself once the picture was finished? 

He could, perhaps, create more pictures with this particular model in his head, the model he met for the very first time long before the war. 

He dismissed him as an inane hero from a series by an author who created for children, but oh how wrong he was, how pleasing the drawings were, pleasing enough to alter his brain chemistry to the point where he couldn’t—and didn’t want to—erase the image from his memory.

He couldn’t forget the mysterious man who traded a lowlife for an innocent life. 

Tenma was like a long-lost version of this man, with a small but significant difference: Tenma had the purity his fictional counterpart lacked. 

Pure genius carried a more exquisite taste than the genius gone astray. He left the initials K. P. next to his darling.

V

The awakening hit like a nightmare.

Tenma sucked in a breath, gulped it like water, not enough, not enough, his skin as heavy as armour. 

Why was he here? Why Mr. Bonaparta’s office?

He needed a second to regain control over his very own limbs. Slowly—too slowly—he tried to sit up, but the blanket pulled him back, wrapping him like the ivy covering the city’s walls. He looked down. A T-shirt. Underwear. Skin was wrong—blueish.

The memory puzzle elements were coming back. It happened again. 

The patient, the blood, the dressings. He’d been fine—he’d been fine. He put on a mask and gloves. He could do this. He always could—

—until the ground cracked beneath him. The blood, too much, too–

And then—darkness.

The door opened with a quiet squeak. Mr. Bonaparta. Steamy cup in hand. “Oh, you’re awake, thank god.”

Was he—has he been waiting the whole time?

“I haven’t been so worried in a while. You need a vacation.”

A vacation? No, he couldn’t. Not with all these people, not with his duty, not when he still had so many people to save.

“I-I can’t take a vacation, I—”

“You won’t help anyone if you kill yourself.”

The words landed harder than the punches during the last training session, the gentleness of his voice sharpening it with the contrast. His hand too warm against his face. 

Too tired to react. Mr. Bonaparta sat next to him. A book, one they’d discussed for weeks now, appeared in his hands.

“You can always count on a healer to defy death. Until the gods strike back. Do you understand what this means?”

Tenma frowned. Mr. Bonaparta liked Greek mythology a bit too much, didn’t he?

VI

Bonaparta needed to plan every—every, every, every—step. Every step, every breath, every thought. A ritual of precision. It was the only way to save the world from turning into dust.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Yes, spontaneity carried the sweet taste of reward—too sweet, like ice cream in coffee in the old world—but indulgence was a dead-end street. He had learned this lesson. Not in the most pleasant way. The thought still leaving bitter bile in his throat.

Order. He needed order to survive. The stories helped—when order wore fiction garments, it became so much easier to follow.

Some lived only in his mind, others gained additional layers through the power of ink and colors. One of his favorites—no, the favorite—was about a mother leaving her little boy in a facility for gifted children. She told herself they would give him the life she never could.

They shared the mutation, but in her case, it wasn’t a gift. It was a death sentence.

The boy spent only a few months in the facility.

Why?

Because the gifted among the gifted deserved a personal tutor. Someone who would guide them, shape them, show them the path away from the monster.

And was there ever a better tutor than someone who had once walked the monster’s path himself?

VII

There had to be a way to give the little girl at least one-quarter of a reason to smile.

She haunted him. Especially when his hands were still and his mind was restless, his body burning through the familiar motions of morning training. He collapsed on the floor after the thirtieth-or-so pushup.

Maybe he could buy her something? A gift, even the smallest. He had some savings from the healing sessions, but— 

(How much did Mr. Bonaparta charge, anyway?)

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t buy something as pointless as an impractical gift here without spending all his money. 

But maybe—his mind clearing up—maybe he could find something in the red areas on the map?

*

Mr. Bonaparta was out for business. Tenma was supposed to be learning. Instead, he grabbed his backpack, slipped a kitchen knife into a pocket, and left.

Mr. Bonaparta didn’t have to know everything.

*

Tenma felt out of place in his too-tight shirt and hole-free pants. Another wish—Mr. Bonaparta’s wish: an outfit that pleased the eye, a rule he followed as well. Sometimes, he stared at himself in the mirror for a very long moment, a time he would surely mock anyone else for wasting.

This place—the people—were so different from the stories Mr. Bonaparta told.

Sure, some details aligned, but here, it was more—

More three-dimensional. With a richer texture. The streets pulsated with energy like the power in Tenma’s blood. The sharp scent of ripe fruit clashed with the harsh aroma of grilled meat—the latter too cruel to his digestive system, too cruel to the environment, Mr. Bonaparta had said.

Tenma slid his hands into his pockets. Did all stories told by Mr. Bonaparta lack crucial detail?

*

He made it back minutes before Mr. Bonaparta’s return. So close to a reveal. 

Mr. Bonaparta’s mood had soured; something had gone wrong during his meeting.

“Old fool thinks he can outplay me.”

Tenma tugged at the button on his shirt. He knew this tone: one glass of wine too much. Rare moments, which only made them chillingly unpredictable.

Mr. Bonaparta stood before him, casting a shadow over Tenma’s hands and feet. “How was studying today?” 

“Uhm—fine.” He tried to muster a smile that eased the lines around Mr. Bonaparta’s eyes. “I went over yesterday’s lesson about the circulatory system to understand it better.”

Mr. Bonaparta didn’t seem convinced.

*

Tenma had told the girl that the fake ruby bracelet he got her was their secret. It was after he saw her smiling for the very first time. The bracelet lit up when she touched it, the light pulsing familiarly.

Something similar happened when Tenma found an interestingly shaped rock in the garden of the facility, the facility he barely remembered. 

Mr. Bonaparta witnessed it.

Tenma pursed his lips. He remembered what he wanted to do—take her to live with them, so foolish, so naive.

Now he knew that it was better to leave her where she was, even if he wanted something different.

(But maybe—maybe he wouldn’t hurt a girl—)

VIII

Tenma stood on the roof. The sky was the color of a ripe mango—a fruit he’d only seen in Mr. Bonaparta’s old encyclopedia.

Everything intensified: the damp spots on his t-shirt, the dense air, the street sounds. He watched the distant world beyond Düsseldorf’s gates. Mr. Bonaparta called it an ocean of nothingness.

He took a sip from the bottle when Mr. Bonaparta appeared silently beside him, his steps like a feline’s.

“We have a new patient.”

A hand landed on his shoulder. Heavy. Tenma’s last gulp stretched. He was shaking. 

Shaking. It had been months since the last frost.

Last evening: too sharp an image in his mind. The nurse who usually performed the monthly massage couldn’t make it. Mr. Bonaparta had offered to do it himself this time.

Nothing had happened. Nothing unpleasant. Nothing that he didn’t sometimes think about before sleep (though he hadn’t been able to look Mr. Bonaparta in the eye the next morning). It was all so mild. A touch. A hug. A mellow kiss.

Nothing that he could say a loud, certain no to.

(The strong aroma of jasmine.)

*

He was suffocating. Every day was worse than the previous.

The gun wasn’t where he thought it would be. But the knife was. He threw it into his backpack along with some snacks, his savings, and the most important items in his first-aid kit.

He had to see this ocean of nothingness. All alone.

So many people there needed him.

IX

The little fool had sneaked away, thinking no one would notice. But he had been caught. The guards had found him trying to slip through the gates, and the alarm had been raised the moment he reached the outer walls.

Bonaparta avoided indulging in his wine—an expensive blasphemy. But now? Now, he just needed it. One glass. Second glass. Third. Fourth. Stopped counting.

His throat burned, his mind circling back to the boy—the foolish little thing who couldn’t see the goods he was given. 

Ungrateful bastard.

He remembered shaking the boy’s shoulders. He remembered raising his voice. He’d told him he had everything other people in this godforsaken world could only dream of: he had safety, he had sanctuary, he was safe here. It was a miracle they hadn’t sold him. Bonaparta knew what an easy sell the boy was, how many would love to use that precious brain. Study it. Eat it. Yes, the world wanted to devour it.

But— 

He had never witnessed that blend of disgust and fear on Tenma’s face before.

*

The headache next morning was relentless.

He’d gone too far. He knew it. But couldn’t afford to apologize. 

The boy—Tenma—had used his powers. But something was lacking this time. The boy kept his distance, every move slow, and Bonaparta knew— 

It wasn’t as easy anymore.

Bonaparta left that same day. Fine. He would fix this. He’d do something to make up for it. He went to the town and bought Tenma every book he wanted. All of them. Even though they were useless trash, things Bonaparta would never allow him to read. But that didn’t matter.

It was a small thing. Just this once.

Just to please Tenma.

But the ungrateful bastard didn’t appreciate it.

X

Bonaparta gave him less and less time alone. Tenma needed to arm himself with patience.

He would keep pretending. Just long enough to lull Bonaparta into thinking he was still an obedient boy. 

Obedient boy. How long? How long had he been seeing him this way? From the moment he took him with him home? When he first hit puberty? Nausea, nausea, nausea. 

How could he not notice earlier?! He depised Bonaparta, he despised himself, he—

He wanted to hug his mother. Have a clearer picture of her. Hear words she didn’t leave in her very short letter to him.

His cheeks were wet from tears.

*

The day Bonaparta left the house alone arrived quicker than Tenma had expected.

Even more unexpected was that Tenma didn’t need his lockpick to open the office door. Bonaparta still believed he wouldn’t dare.

Tenma pushed the door and stepped in.

It was different. Outside their lessons, this place felt like a giant maze; to think it used to be the one place that felt almost like home.

The desk. It was the center of everything. He eyed it. Drawings—yes, Bonaparta often sketched. He shut his eyes for a moment, his gut twisting. Maybe he’d regret this. But he opened the sketchbook anyway.

Animals. Panoramas.

Relief.

Then his eyes landed on the books next to the desk. Each one signed K. P.

Not a single Franz Bonaparta. Only K. P.

How naive had he been? To believe in someone like Franz Bonaparta?

He picked up a book. Black cover—no color, no decoration. Nothing like the others. He opened it, heart pounding, throat tight.

To  ███ 

my dearest Kenzō

The added words were in Japanese. 

He leafed through the book, reading in fragments. The effort he’d put into mastering that convoluted version of English Bonaparta loved so much was paying off—this was no easy read. But something made the experience smoother: the voice reading in Tenma’s mind belonged to Bonaparta.

He flipped through the pages until he reached the final sentence of part one. The temperature in the room dropped. His legs went numb, his hands trembling more than they had on the roof.

Then, the door opened, soundless.

“My dear boy.” Bonaparta’s lips so close to Tenma’s ear, his hands on Tenma’s shoulders. “Do you still think you could survive outside without me?”

Tenma could only shake his head, not a yes, not a no.

“You’re a great healer, an extraordinary one, but a lousy liar with poor strategy planning.” Bonaparta’s grip tightened. “You went straight into the beast’s trap. You don’t think I would leave my office open? Silly boy.”

He took the book from Tenma’s hands, his fingers brushing against his.

“But don’t worry, love.” Bonaparta’s voice as light as dust. “I’m not a fool like the man in there. I know how easy it is to break a jewel.”