"Leave the country you parasite"
"Turn around."
"Get out of here."
The voices traversed the gloom like oil through cracks—without faces, without men or women, without humanity.
No…no…no… don't touch me… leave me alone… please… No… I'm… I'm just a student.
The dream constricted itself around her throat so tightly, like invisible hands. They were smoky fingers that were otherworldly, accompanied by blinding fire, and laced with a great sense of shame.
"No way!"
Fatiba sat up straight in bed, her chest heaving, her body oozing cold sweat that stuck to it like damp cling film. Her breathing tore from her chest with a burning ferocity, the sound like jagged pieces of smashed glass tearing through the air. The crescent scar on her forehead throbbed and seared fiercely, as though a smouldering matchstick had been drawn along her skin to leave an incandescent burning that left her intensely aware of its existence.
In desperation, she stretched out for the one and only anchor that ever made her feel real and substantial in herself—her treasured hijab. Her fingers flashed to the pins holding it together before her panicked brain was able to get in control of her fingers, shaking slightly as they wrapped around the soft material like a little girl who clutches with all her strength to a rope in stormy waters. She wrapped the precious cloth around her chest, pulling deep into the familiar folds, muttering a soft dhikr with her quivering lips, seeking comfort in the rhythm.
The room was dimly, softly lit, with the dawn seeping slowly through the partly parted curtains, but her body never had a moment of peace or calm. Suddenly, she leapt out of her bed in a bundle of terror and felt the chill of the floor beneath bare feet. She hurried to the bathroom and turned the light on. Water gushed forth. Cold water. Her hands shook like mad. She splashed cold water on her face. Again, she splashed water on her face. Once more, she splashed water on her face. Her flaxen, no-longer-rolled-up-and-restricted hair stuck to her face in matted and unbridled strands, as water droplets formed and rolled off her chin down onto her neck.
She examined herself carefully in the mirror, checking each part of her appearance.
Almond eyes wide, almost otherworldly. White lips. The scar still there. Always there. She breathed hard, as if she was a soldier at the end of a marathon. She had her hands on either side of the sink so hard that her knuckles turned white.
No blood. No smoke. No dead uncle. Not now.
All hers. Only the scar reminded her of what was behind. Only the silent profundity that always surrounded her when she considered something that she had vowed to leave buried and forgotten.
The faucet dripped in rhythmic cadence. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound increased with each drop, louder and clearer than the last. Her heart pounded against her ribcage in rage that seemed to ache as if it longed to break loose. It seemed to hunger for unloosing a raw scream.
But she didn't respond the way one would have expected. Instead, with a strained and barely audible voice, she whispered, "I'm here. I'm awake. I'm not there."
She didn't seem convinced in her mirror.
And the day was hardly off the ground.
"The key to everything."
The words had hit hard, not as word, but as vibration that ran along her very marrow, like aftershocks of thunder that would resonate along her ribcage long after the storm had passed. The voice of her uncle—warming with it, weighted with the wear of years, and full of unbreakable resolve—remained suspended in her mind as though strands of smoke were intricately snagged in a piece of fabric. He had indeed been with her. In that shattered, memory-haunted hallway. In that distorted, godless realm to which her mind somehow recurred each and every night when she was too tired to fight its power. And on this night, almost on the verge of being reclaimed by the shadows, he had said them.
"Shotaro is the key to everything."
She drew ragged breath.
Her own heart received a harsh, violent jolt, as if something was violently yanked on a fat rope.
Shotaro!! she shrieked, the name bursting out of her like a reflexion—like spewing out anguish, panic, and urgency all at once.
She whirled fast away from the mirror, nearly tripping over the bathmat in her haste as she snatched up her towel and tied it awkwardly around her head. Her hair, still damp from the shower, was plastered to the back of her neck as she half stumbled back into her room, a look of desperation in her eyes. The floorboard creaked loudly under her feet, the thin wooden boards grunting loudly under the weight of her hasty strides. Her uniform dangled loosely on the back of the chair, but she didn't even notice, so focused was she on what she was doing. Her hands went on autopilot—pulling hairpins, shoving the sleeves of her uniform into place, creasing the folds of fabric tightly, and knotting the fabric tightly against her neck in the manner of a guard.
She didn't care one whit that the collar wasn't straight and appeared askew.
She didn't care that she hadn't even bothered to dry her hair.
She was worried about him alone.
There was a sense of restlessness and yearning that twisted in her breast when she called out his name once more, but this time softly, gently, as if she were sharing a most precious secret with only a select few. "Shotaro…"
...
Musashi-no- Yamato's red-light district always had a sick, slow kind of heartbeat—neon lights blinking like sleepy eyelids, alleys shrouded in darkness, and laughter too harsh to be happiness. Shotaro Mugyiwara entered it.
He made his way across the bridge slowly, his footsteps echoing. The river beneath puffed cold and damp air through the concrete arches. There was something about this part of town that always caused his skin to crawl—not with fear, not with revulsion—just a sense. The sort of places where niceness dies slowly, and individuals smile while nudging others off the edge.
Then he heard it.
Not a shout. Not a scream. But the kind of sound you only manage to make when your breath's caught in your throat and you're desperately trying not to scream. Strangled. Straining. A girl underneath the bridge.
He halted. Cocked his head.
And sniffed.
"Mm," he growled, eyes narrowing. "That's not cheap."
His nose twitched once more. The smell was pungent, artificial, hidden beneath sweat and fear—but there it was.
".Audrey Blues," he murmured out loud, voice flat but eyes burning. "Limited edition. Imported. Custom-layered."
His jaw clenched.
"So it's some asshole with too much money."
He stepped off the sidewalk, down the embankment. No pose of heroism. No cape blowing in the breeze. Just heavy steps trampling gravel and shattered glass beneath his feet. The shadows under the bridge meant nothing to him. He was a shadow to them.
He just kept moving.
Under the fading buzz of a dim streetlamp, a shiny, obsidian-colored luxury vehicle was parked half on the curb, the engine humming like it was aware it didn't belong. The doors reflected in quiet arrogance, buffed to a mirror finish, windows tinted black as if the transgressions within had something to conceal.
Next to him, a bald man in a pinstripe suit was pinching a woman's wrist with one hand, the other poking the air inches from her nose. His glasses reflected light with a clinical shine—cold, wealthy, and untroubled. His voice wasn't boisterous, but it was crisp, heavy with practiced control fraying at the seams.
"You think you can walk away from me? After everything—everything I did for you?
She was the kind of person who hadn't slept for a week. Mid-twenties, perhaps less, perhaps more—grief and fatigue had a tendency to age people unevenly. Her wrist turned in the man's grasp, her nails biting into his flesh through habit, not strength. Her lips quivered on words she couldn't find—too many, too much at once, all clogging on each other en route. Her heels scraped against the pavement, fighting him as if it would bring her back to life.
"Stop pulling—stop fighting!" the bald man snarled, yanking her in toward him like he possessed her gravity.
She fell. Her bag thudded onto pavement with a crunch, spilling her life onto the concrete—powder compact broken, lip balm toward a drain, a cracked phone blinking very softly, pages ripped from a battered notebook fluttering like clipped wings. A receipt for something tiny. A photo of someone smiling, perhaps once.
Nobody stirred. A couple on the opposite side of the street turned away, eyes glazed, feigning their silence wasn't complicity.
The city blinked.
And then Shotaro was there.
Not striding. Not rushing. Just—there.
Seven feet, eleven inches of wet school uniform and wordless, volcanic disappointment.
The bald man froze in mid-tug. He hadn't noticed the footsteps. Just a voice, low and deadpan, breathing down his neck like judgment itself.
"Know what," Shotaro said, matter-of-factly, "when a guy who's close to eight feet tall and runs a literal metric ton cuts you down with a warning, you shouldn't do that."
The man spun around with a wince, face-to-chest with what appeared to be an angry man just out of detention at the gym. Silver locks, crimson eyes, face like someone who'd witnessed too much idiocy for one existence.
"Jesus Christ—" the man began, eyes wide, voice breaking under the intensity of Shotaro's gaze.
".Only if you have any idea how literal that is," Shotaro said, tone as flat as rusted metal.
He didn't posture. Just side-stepped with the lazy elegance of someone tired of being in the right, tilting his head like a teacher observing a toddler insert a fork into an outlet for the third time.
"You guys have all this money," he told him, sweeping his arm vaguely over the man's suit, the car, the entire shiny facade of control, "all this polish, and somehow no survival instinct. It's like seeing a deer run at a train and then complain it wasn't warned."
The man stepped back, but his pride blazed hotter than his sense. "Do you even know who I am?!"
Shotaro breathed slowly. Then—facepalmed. Full-hand, slow-drag, forehead-to-chin style of facepalm.
"Ohhh great," he moaned. "We've officially reached the 'Do you know who I am' stage of this fiasco. Classic rich dude speak."
He dropped the hand and glared through the man like glass. His tone dipped an octave, low and smooth.
"You know what that makes you?"
The man stiffened.
Shotaro's mouth wrenched—not with a smile, but with something much more sinister. "An educated illiterate. You understand? Ivy League degree, preschool brain. I've met sewer rats that had better emotion control."
The man began to open his mouth to snap back—but didn't complete.
Because Shotaro shifted.
Quickly.
Suddenly.
There was room for a second, and the next he had the guy airborne with one hand. His fingers wrapped around the guy's neck—not hard enough to choke, but hard enough to show him what helplessness was like. The guy kicked and coughed and scrabbled at him—but Shotaro didn't react. His red eyes fixed into him, silent and frightening.
"Shut it up, dickhead," Shotaro growled, voice low and intimidating in its casualness—like he wasn't even angry, just sick of seeing history repeat itself in expensive shoes. "It doesn't matter how much your clothes cost. Doesn't matter how many titles, suits, or fucking colognes you spray to fragrance your decay."
He leaned in, nose to nose, breath cold enough to make the man wince. "If I pull all that away from you—your jacket, your watch, your smug little labels—then strip back the skin? You'd be like everyone else would be if I stripped their skin back. Just blood. Just meat. Just a carcass."
And then he dropped him.
Not like trash—worse. Like nothing.
The man crumpled on the sidewalk, coughing, gasping, glasses lost, suit stained with street grime. He looked up at the towering silver-haired boy who'd just unmade him, eyes wide with a cocktail of fear and insulted pride.
"I… I'll sue!" he sputtered, spit foaming at the corners of his lips.
Shotaro blinked. Then shrugged the driest shrug in the entire country of Japan. "Oh, okay. Because I prevented you from attacking this woman?" He turned, pointing at her as if she were the only sane person in the picture. "Great solid grounds for a lawsuit. Go on, sue me. You may get a a free punch."
"You don't understand!" the man snarled, still parked in his own ego. "I own her!"
Shotaro's whole face went stiff. Then cracked into a grin so nasty it might cut glass.
"Slavery ended in 1590, I'm afraid," he said, eye-rolling. "Not a good year for your entire master of the universe routine."
"She's mine!" the man snarled, pointing. "I created her life. She wears the clothes I purchased her. That purse? That watch? All mine. I constructed her."
Shotaro narrowed his eyes at the man as if he were reading a narcissist-written fanfiction. His head canted forward, eyes narrowed—not in anger, only intensely unimpressed. Like witnessing a terrible stage play degenerate into improv.
"Hey, lady," he whispered softly now, voice low enough to mellow the street. He faced her, and the madness receded for an instant. She gazed back—still trembling, still exposed—but there was something in her eyes. That serene clarity only a person who'd swallowed her pride too many times could ever carry.
"Do me a favor," Shotaro requested, "can I take a look at your watch and purse for a sec?"
She stiffened.
Then, gradually—almost as if her muscles required permission from trauma itself—she took off the slender gold watch from her battered wrist and passed over the purse. Her hands shook, but she did not look away.
"Thanks." Shotaro nodded, then spun around as if the finale of a magic trick. With a dramatic flourish of the wrist, he hurled the things at the man's chest. They landed with a thud, ricocheted off like prop that had lost every ounce of gravity.
"Here," he said matter-of-factly. "Enjoy your sparkly prizes. Place them alongside your emotional maturity—oh wait, you lost that one."
The man spat, face red with rage, eyes wild with a mixture of anger and humiliation. But Shotaro's tone fell—keen now, all sarcasm gone.
"Any other day," he spoke slow and icy, "I might've felt sorry for you. Believed, perhaps, she didn't say no plainly. That perhaps you got it wrong."
He took a step closer.
"But I can see the bruises on her wrist. Her skin. Her face. You didn't get it wrong—you loathed every no she gave you."
He gestured to the man's chest.
"That flips the victimhood."
The man was about to bellow something through the open mouth, but Shotaro interrupted him, turning toward the woman with this odd blend of kindness and desperate optimism.
"Hey. Tomorrow morning, all the dresses, bags, pieces of crap he ever purchased? Return it all. Dump it in a garbage bag and walk away. You keep it, he'll turn it into a weapon. Make himself the victim."
"Fuck that," the man sneered, licking the corner of his lip, his words cracking like a battered ego grasping for a hold. "You think you can speak to me like this? You don't know who I am? I have Nether connections. The type of individuals that inhabit locations that don't appear on charts. A phone call. A lawyer. You'll disappear."
Shotaro blinked.
Once.
Then smiled, slow and exhausted—like a man who'd watched this cutscene one too many times.
"Oh, yeah. That guy." He leaned in, as though about to share something holy—some cosmic truth passed down by his ancient forebears. "Every city's got a few."
The man, now confident by virtue of his fantasy, pulled out his phone, thumbs poised to call upon whatever dark deity he thought responded to his summons.
Shotaro cocked his head, voice keen as a broken twig.
"Bitch, you really did think this was Persona 5?"
The man stopped in his tracks, perplexed. "What—?"
FZZZZ—KRAK!
Shotaro's scarlet eyes blazed like two rifle scopes taking the shot. A razor-thin beam of heat stabbed out with precision surgery—just enough to sear circuits, bisect the phone in half, and explode it in the man's hand like a firecracker.
Glass shattered. Plastic warped. Smoke curled lazily upward in a spiral, as if even the universe was out of patience.
The man screamed, falling to his knees. His palm was burnt just enough to blister—not destroy, just remind him. He held it against his chest, screaming—not with pain, but with the sheer brutality of being reminded of his place by a teenager in a crumpled uniform.
Shotaro didn't blink. He just exhaled slowly through his nose.
Calm. Cold. Just done.
"Oops," he grunted. "Dropped your call."
"AAAGGHH—FUCK! Never cared for that game anyway!" the man screamed, his voice cracking into cartoonish despair. "Four was better!"
Shotaro blinked again.
This time it was the woman who shrieked—genuine, offended, horrified.
"WHAT?! Persona 5 is THE Persona! The soundtrack alone is gospel!"
Shotaro groaned, theatrically turning to both of them, as if God himself was tired of this world's gaming spoils.
"You're both stupid," he stated bluntly. "Three is the greatest Persona. It's actually about dying. And I'm fairly certain Atlus is releasing a remake in 2024."
The woman's eyes widened in shock. "How the hell do you know that?!
Shotaro stood up, brushing his blazer as if he hadn't just disintegrated a phone during a stand on principle.
"I have dreams," he told her.