Shinji woke up the next morning feeling quite startled, thinking about his conversation with his father the night before. The absence of silent groans working on the front porch felt heavy, heavier than the rough quilt he shoved aside as he sat up. He stood up in the colorless glint that comes before dawn. He listened for the clang of Ren's forge, the shrill laughter of the children who woke up early. He heard nothing but the careful drip of last night's rain sliding off the eaves.
Across the room Hana twisted in her blanket, her small shoulders twitching. Shinji reached her just as she opened her eyes, eyes swollen with tears that had not yet fallen. "A nightmare?" he whispered. She nodded, breath stuck in her throat. He squeezed her hand and tried to summon the steadiness he promised their father, but the uneasy feeling in his stomach gave it away.
A faint clatter drifted from the kitchen. They followed it and found their mother crouched, coaxing rice to a slow boil. She had only made three bowls. No one mentioned the empty place where Jiro's breakfast should have been. The smell of the woodsmoke was thin today, almost reluctant, as even the fire had second thoughts of burning.
Hana's chopsticks rattled against the ceramic. Mother steadied them with a small touch. "Eat," she said with a gentle voice. "Your father needs us clear-headed when he returns." The conviction of her phrasing sounded rehearsed, like a charm against illness. Shinji forced each bite down, barely tasting the rice, and swallowed the questions he could not bear to say out loud: What if father never comes back home? What if that six-eyed thing decided that three lives was not enough?
When the pot stood empty, their mother sent them to fetch news from the square. "Back before the sun climbs over the roofs," she said, smoothing Hana's hair with a palm.
Shinji strapped on his sandals, softly brushing his hair with his left hand, and pushed open the door. Mist pressed close, wetting their sleeves within steps. The path that curved past the paddies was rutted with their fresh boot prints from the night patrols.
Shinji kept glancing over his shoulder, half-wishing to see his father striding out of the fog. Each time he looked there was only the slow billow of vapor rising off flooded fields. Near the forge they slowed. Ren's yard, once rowdy with clang and laughter, lay silent.
The great double doors gaped like broken teeth. Shinji pictured Ren crouched inside, rage and sadness coiled tighter than the legs of a grasshopper before it launches itself.
He wanted to step inside, to drag Ren out into the weak light, but the hush inside the smithy felt thick , a bruise that would only darken if prodded.
Farther on they passed the well. A bucket already filled, sweating beads of condensation, left alone before its rope had even been rewound. Flies hummed around damp footprints that led nowhere. Hana caught Shinji's sleeve. "They left in a hurry," she murmured. He nodded, unable to decide whether it was more frightening that someone fled or that no one had come to claim water since.
The square opened ahead, broad and empty. Its market stalls were bound shut as though for a storm that had yet to arrive. Without the men, the village felt hollowed out. Only the distant caw of a crow broke the silence.
Hana drifted toward the dry-fountain basin at the square's center, running her fingertips over the rough stone lip. A ribbon someone had tied for luck lay sodden in the bowl, its red dye leaking into a shallow puddle. Shinji peered down the long north lane, wishing someone would step out of the fog with news, but nothing moved except the mist.
"We should look in on Daichi," Hana said after a while. "He'll forget to eat if nobody reminds him."
Shinji agreed; anything felt better right now than standing still. They skirted through shuttered storefronts: the carpenter's hall where unfinished doors leaned against the wall, the tea shop, its wind chimes stilled, the inn, its signboard creaking on a rusted chain. Everywhere women's eyes tracked them from behind cracked doors, children huddled in shadowy thresholds, silence stitched tight against their questions. Shinji felt their gazes like threads pulling against his coat, and he couldn't quite tell how he felt about it.
At the cherry shrine a candle guttered inside a clay cup, flames barely hanging on against the damp. Hana bent, cupped her palms, and coaxed the wick upright. The glow steadied for a breath, painting her face gold before wavering again.
"Maybe Dad and the others will return by dusk," she said softly, her voice shaking more than the flame.
Shinji wished he could lessen her worries, but he could only nod, feeling the words scrape his throat. "They have to. They promised."
They turned toward the road, where the forest pressed closer to the village fence. The air smelled of wet pine needles and cold iron. Shinji paused by the boundary gate - the gate which was more symbolic than defensive - and stared into the gray treeline. The woods felt alive in an unsettling way, like a body breathing yet impossible to see.
A sudden thrash of the underbrush snapped them from their thoughts. A soft shriek escaped Hana before she jerked her hand to her mouth. Shinji stepped instinctively in front of her, pulse pounding in his ears. From the shadowed verge a shape burst, small, head bare, clothes torn and dirty with mud.
The figure stumbled, caught itself, then ran again, every step raw with panic.
"Ren?" Shinji called, without a single conviction in his voice.
The boy halted as though struck. He turned, eyes wide and wild, face smeared with dirt and something darker. Recognition flickered in his eyes before he collapsed to his knees on the packed earth. A sob escaped him, harsh and jagged, and then his shoulder convulsed as though every muscle had forgotten its proper place. His breath hitched in a short, broken tempo, as if each breath was fighting past a throat that didn't want to let anything go through it.