Toru Nakajima loved quiet mornings.
Before the world learned to hate him, before blood and darkness and rebirth, he used to sit by the classroom window as sunlight crept over the fields behind the school. His history textbook sat open on the desk, pages worn soft from hours of rereading.
Dates, empires, wars he remembered all of them.
Not because he liked violence, but because he wanted to understand why people fought at all.
He used to imagine himself a historian someday, walking through dusty ruins, piecing together the fragments of the past. His teachers said he had potential. His classmates said he was weird.
Both were right.
Toru wasn’t built for confrontation.
He was small, soft-spoken, and thoughtful in a world that rewarded noise and cruelty.
When a classmate tripped him in the hall, he apologized.
When someone stole his lunch, he laughed it off.
When they shoved him into the lockers, he smiled because smiling hurt less than crying.
He’d tell himself it’s not worth it, that if he just stayed quiet, it would stop. But it never did.
He’d watch them the boys with sharp laughs and practiced meanness, and wonder how they could be so fearless. Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe hurting him made them feel less small.
At home, it was quieter still.
His mother worked two jobs, often gone before sunrise and home long after dinner. His older sister, Hana, studied nursing at the university across the city. When she did visit, she was tired, eyes ringed with exhaustion, her voice soft but distant.
They loved him.
He knew that.
But love, he learned, wasn’t always something you could feel.
He used to leave little notes on the kitchen table: Good luck at work, Mom. Don’t forget breakfast.
She never answered them, but sometimes a piece of toast would be left out the next morning slightly burnt, but still warm. That was her way of saying she saw him.
He would eat it quietly and pretend it was enough.
When things got bad, Toru turned to his books.
History didn’t bully. It didn’t sneer. It just was.
He’d read about empires that rose and fell, kings who burned the world because they couldn’t stand being small. He used to wonder if maybe those rulers started like him weak, overlooked, pushed aside. Maybe power didn’t make monsters. Maybe power just showed them what they really were.
He never thought the thought would become prophecy.
It had been raining the night he died.
He didn’t remember why they’d followed him after class maybe just boredom. Maybe they wanted to see how far they could go this time.
He remembered the sound of laughter echoing in the alley, the sting of fists, the copper taste of blood. The cold. The way the puddles reflected the streetlight in fractured gold.
And his last thought absurdly calm was how small everything looked from the ground.
Then nothing.
When he woke again, the world stank of rot and hunger.
The first thing he remembered was the darkness. The second was the sound snarling, chewing, breathing too close. He didn’t know what he was. Only that he was not human anymore.
When the other goblins shoved him away from food, he didn’t fight back. He remembered how to yield, how to wait. He told himself he could endure, that maybe they’d let him have scraps later.
They didn’t.
They never would.
Days passed. Hunger hollowed him. His body shook, his vision swam. He felt smaller than ever smaller than when he’d died, smaller than when he’d been kicked in that alley.
And then something inside him broke.
When Grak, the biggest of them, shoved him again laughing that same cruel, familiar laugh something sharp cut through the fog. Not courage. Not rage. Just a simple, terrible thought:
No one is going to stop this. Not unless I do.
He remembered the kings in his history books. The empires built from blood. The monsters who refused to stay small.
He lunged before he even realized he’d moved.
Teeth. Claws. Blood.
And when it was over, he was full of food, of strength, of something that felt like freedom.
After Grak’s death, as he crouched over the corpse, the memories of his old life began to fade like dreams at dawn. The faces, the streets, the classroom all dissolving under the weight of new instincts.
He told himself it wasn’t him that had done it. That Toru wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
But the truth whispered back, Toru died because he wouldn’t fight. Vris lives because he will.
He looked down at his hands bloodied, trembling, strong.
For the first time, he wasn’t sorry.
Morning light crept through the blinds, painting pale lines across the kitchen table.
The toast had gone cold. The note sat beside it, edges curling slightly from the heat of the kettle.
Morning, Mom. Don’t forget breakfast. I’ll see you after class.
—Toru
She had read it a dozen times since last night.
The handwriting was small and careful, like he’d been afraid the paper might flinch.
Mrs. Nakajima held the note in trembling hands, lips pressed tight. She hadn’t slept. There were still faint traces of mascara on her cheeks not because she’d worn any yesterday, but because she’d put some on this morning, trying to look composed when the detectives came.
She couldn’t remember what they’d said, not all of it.
Assault. Alley. Late evening. No suspects.
Words that meant everything and nothing.
The apartment felt too quiet now.
The clock ticked too loud.
Every sound was absence.
Hana came in just after nine, wearing her nursing uniform. She didn’t speak at first. She simply crossed the room and wrapped her arms around her mother, holding her so tightly it almost hurt.
They stayed like that for a long time two shadows clinging together in a house that felt half-empty.
When Hana finally pulled away, she saw the note on the table. Her chest tightened.
“He… he kept writing them, didn’t he?” she whispered.
“Every morning,” their mother said, voice shaking. “Even when I didn’t have time to read them.”
Hana’s eyes burned. “I should’ve been here more. I kept telling myself I’d visit when exams were done, when I had a day off…” She stopped, words choking in her throat. “He just wanted someone to talk to.”
Her mother didn’t answer. She just folded the note carefully and tucked it into the pocket of her apron like something holy.
The police had taken his school bag for evidence.
His shoes still sat by the door. His jacket still hung on the hook.
When Hana walked past his room, the faint smell of dust and pencil shavings hit her like a blow. His desk was covered in open notebooks, each filled with messy handwriting and dates endless timelines and notes about ancient empires, battles, fallen kings.
In the margins were little scribbles, personal thoughts half-finished:
“Power doesn’t always corrupt… maybe it just reveals.”
“History repeats because no one listens the first time.”
“I’ll be different.”
She pressed a hand to her mouth. The tears came soundlessly.
By evening, the small apartment was filled with the smell of incense.
A framed photo of Toru one from middle school, awkward and smiling too wide stood on a wooden shelf. A bowl of rice sat beside it.
Hana knelt before the shrine, whispering through tears. “You just wanted peace, didn’t you? You never wanted to hurt anyone.”
Her mother sat beside her, eyes on the small flickering candle. “He was too gentle for this world,” she murmured. “It chews up boys like him.”
The candle sputtered once in the still air, smoke curling like a question.
Neither of them noticed the faint tremor of the flame, or how the rice bowl shifted ever so slightly as though moved by a breath too quiet to hear.