Haruka did not remember how he returned home.
He was soaked to the bone, his clothes covered in mud spatters and footprints.
There was a bruise at the corner of his mouth, and a large patch of skin on the back of his right hand had been scraped off, oozing blood.
He stood in the stairwell of the apartment building, not in a rush to go up, instead leaning against the wall in a daze for a while.
The phone in his pocket kept vibrating.
He pulled it out to take a look; the messages in his university class group chat had already scrolled past ninety-nine notifications.
At the very top was a video.
In the footage, he was being pressed against a wall by the Yellow-Haired Punk and slapped.
The sound was very clear, “slap, slap, slap”; he did not fight back, nor did he dodge.
The person who filmed the video had even added text.
“Is everyone finding Haruka’s extracurricular internship exciting?”
The replies below exploded.
“Hahahaha, it’s killing me.”
“Why aren’t you fighting back? Did you kneel down and call him daddy?”
“Haruka, shouldn’t you treat us to milk tea? After all, you’re rich enough to buy new shoes.”
“He deserves it, who told him to act low-key every day.”
A few people sent laughing emojis, and some even tagged him.
“Haruka, come out and say a few words. How many points for today’s performance?”
Haruka’s fingers were trembling.
He turned off the phone screen and slowly walked upstairs.
Home was on the fifth floor.
The door was unlocked; he pushed it open and entered.
While changing his shoes, he heard the sound of the television in the living room.
Phillips was lying on the sofa, looking at his phone.
Keira was busy in the kitchen.
His younger brother Coal was not there; he was probably still out.
“You’re back?”
Keira poked her head out of the kitchen.
Seeing his disheveled appearance, her expression immediately darkened.
“What happened to you again?”
“It’s nothing, I fell.”
“You can fall and end up like this?”
Keira walked out and looked him up and down, noticing the footprints on his clothes.
“Honestly, did you get into a fight with someone again?”
“I didn’t.”
“You say you didn’t, so that’s it?”
Phillips sat up from the sofa, his phone still in his hand.
On the screen was clearly that video from the class group chat.
“Take a look for yourself, look at how it’s been spread around! I even received it on my phone!”
“You spend your days not studying properly, just causing trouble outside!”
“They were the ones who hit me!”
Haruka’s voice suddenly rose.
“I didn’t provoke them!”
“Why don’t they hit others, only you?”
Keira’s voice became shrill.
“Flies don’t bite seamless eggs! If you were honestly attending university and not messing around outside, would people come looking for trouble with you?”
“Look at your brother, he’s never had any issues at school!”
This sentence was like a knife stabbing into Haruka’s chest.
His brother.
Coal, the biological son of his foster parents.
When he was two, Haruka was adopted.
At that time, Phillips and Keira had been married for five years without children.
The hospital said they had fertility issues and might never be able to conceive.
So they adopted Haruka from the orphanage.
That year, they were very good to him.
New clothes, a new schoolbag, a new room.
Keira would even tell him stories before he went to sleep.
Perhaps Haruka was destined to have a brother.
Just one year later—Keira became pregnant.
Miracles happening to others are called miracles; when it happens to Haruka, it’s the beginning of a nightmare.
After his brother was born, everything changed.
New clothes?
They were his brother’s.
New toys?
They were his brother’s.
Pocket money?
His brother got many times more than him.
Haruka wore the clothes his brother outgrew; he had to wear them even if they were too small.
He used his brother’s old stationery, and at mealtime, all the good dishes were on his brother’s side.
In front of him were only leftovers and a bowl of plain rice.
And when filling out his university applications, they secretly changed his preferences so he would attend a university near home.
They called it “living at home to save money.”
He had tried to resist, but every time, Keira would shut him down with one sentence.
“We’ve done enough by raising you, you ungrateful wretch.”
He was not their son.
He never was.
He was just a substitute they found when they thought they couldn’t have children.
Once the real deal arrived, the substitute naturally had to step aside.
“Kneel,” Phillips said coldly.
Haruka raised his head and looked at him.
“Did you hear me? Kneel! Reflect on yourself properly!”
“If your brother saw the video of you messing around and getting beaten up, where would he put his face?”
Haruka stood where he was, unmoving.
His fists clenched tight, the wound on the back of his hand split open, and beads of blood seeped out.
In that instant, he felt something move inside his veins.
It was very faint, like his pulse skipped a beat it shouldn’t have.
But he couldn’t worry about that.
“Kneel!”
Keira also roared.
“Are you deaf?”
Haruka slowly bent his knees.
He knelt on the tile floor of the living room, his soaked clothes seeping a water stain onto the ground.
The hair on his forehead drooped down, covering his eyes.
No one saw the light in his eyes slowly extinguishing bit by bit.
Keira muttered as she returned to the kitchen.
Phillips continued lying on the sofa, scrolling through his phone, while some variety show played on TV, the laughter noisy and grating.
Haruka knelt for half an hour.
Keira came out and glanced at him, saying with disgust:
“Get up and take a shower, you’ve made the floor all dirty.”
Then she ignored him completely.
When Haruka stood up, his knees were numb with pain.
He walked into his room.
Calling it a room was generous; it was actually a three-square-meter partition converted from a balcony.
It held a cot and a folding table, not even a curtain, and in winter, it was as cold as an ice cellar.
He closed the door and sat on the bed.
His phone vibrated again.
He opened it to look; the video in the class group chat had been spread by even more people, and someone had even posted it to the school forum.
The comment section was filled with nothing but mockery.
An anonymous account wrote a sentence.
“A piece of trash like Haruka is just wasting food by staying alive.”
This comment had thirty-seven likes.
Haruka put down his phone.
He stood up and walked to the balcony window.
Fifth floor, about fifteen meters high.
He pushed the window open, and the night wind rushed in, chilly and cold.
Cars occasionally passed by on the road below, their headlights sweeping across the wet pavement.
Fifteen meters.
If he fell, he would probably die.
Haruka stepped one leg onto the windowsill.
Then—
“Are you really resigned to this?”
A voice rang out in his mind.
Haruka’s body paused.
“Who?! Who is speaking?!”
He turned around abruptly; the room was empty.
“Look down at your hand.”
Haruka looked down.
On the back of his right hand, a red vein was emerging from beneath the skin.
It looked as if his veins had suddenly turned pitch black, spreading from his wrist to his fingertips.
He recoiled in fear, bumping into the window frame.
“Don’t be afraid.”
The voice sounded again.
“I am not here to harm you.”
“Who on earth are you?!”
Haruka’s voice was trembling.
“Someone just like you, someone who has been ruthlessly screwed over by this world,” the voice said.
The next moment.
A scene suddenly appeared in Haruka’s mind.
In the scene, that Yellow-Haired Punk was lying on the ground.
His face was pressed into the muddy water, emitting whimpering pleas for mercy.
And he, Haruka, was standing on the Yellow-Haired Punk’s back, looking down at all of this from on high.
A version of him covered in red armor, filled with power.
The image lasted only two seconds before it vanished.
But that feeling—
That sense of power capable of crushing everything exploded a gap in his chest.
“Do you want to… transform from an ant into the one who crushes ants?”
Haruka did not answer.
He stood by the window, half his body in darkness, the other half illuminated by the streetlamp.
The black veins on the back of his hand slowly writhed, as if they were living things.
A roar of an engine and noisy shouting suddenly came from downstairs.
“Haruka! Get your ass down here!”
He was too familiar with that voice—the Yellow-Haired Punk.
Haruka walked to the window and looked down.
Two motorcycles were parked downstairs, and the Yellow-Haired Punk and his few lackeys were looking up.
The Yellow-Haired Punk held an iron rod in his hand, and the short guy next to him clutched a folding knife.
“I’m in a bad mood, come down and keep me company!”
“Bring your pocket money for next month! Did you hear me? It’s for emotional damages!”
Phillips’s voice came from the living room.
“Haruka! What kind of people have you been provoking outside?!”
Keira’s scream was even more shrill.
“What if you let them in! Look at the good deed you’ve done!”
No one asked how he was.
No one said, “Don’t be afraid, I’ll handle it.”
They only cared about whether they would be implicated.
Haruka’s fingers gripped the window frame tightly.
He could feel something churning in his blood.
It was the feeling of something that had been suppressed for far, far too long finally about to break through the surface.
The voice in his mind didn’t speak again, just waited quietly.
Downstairs, the Yellow-Haired Punk began to bang on the unit door with his iron rod.
“Three—two—”
“When I count to one and you aren’t down here, I’m coming up! And then it won’t just be about money!”
The “bang, bang, bang” of the knocking slammed against Haruka’s eardrums.
“I…”
He opened his mouth.
The black veins spread from the back of his hand to his entire arm.
“I want to crush him to death!”
The next second,
A surge of red hydraulic fluid exploded from his arm, as if some living thing had burrowed out from under his skin.
That substance rapidly covered his entire right arm.
Its surface was uneven, colored in a striking black and red.
Haruka looked at his arm, his pupils shrinking violently.
His hand had grown more than twice its size.
His fingertips had turned into sharp claws.
Jagged edges emerged on his forearm.
Bang—!
It was the sound of the unit door being pushed open.
“I’m coming up.”
The Yellow-Haired Punk’s voice came up from the stairwell, and the footsteps grew closer and closer.
Haruka walked out of his room and toward the door.
He clenched his right fist, which was covered in red liquid fluid.
Then—
He threw a punch.
The door exploded instantly.
The entire wooden door, along with the door frame, was blasted into splinters.
Wood chips flew everywhere, slamming into the wall of the corridor.
At the other end of the corridor, the Yellow-Haired Punk and his lackeys, who had just rushed upstairs, froze in place.
They saw Haruka.
They saw that layer of inhuman, hideous liquid fluid on his arm.
Everyone’s expression froze.