Reverie and Nightmares

Prologue

Pumpking: Like knives 

A little more force, and Morioka Adachi would have been sprawled unconscious on the pavement with his cheek split open against the gravel, but he had learned long ago that even pain had rules, and one of those rules was knowing when to stop giving his tormentors a reason to keep swinging.

Morning after morning, day after day, he endured it with a kind of exhausted obedience, accepting fists to the jaw, boots to the ribs, knees driven low enough to make him retch into the dirt, and laughter that stayed with him longer than the bruises ever did.

Growing stronger would not have saved him, growing braver would not have saved him, and growing a new pair, as they loved to say, would not have changed a damn thing, because pain had never asked whether Morioka was ready before it claimed him.

Pain was his inheritance.

He would crawl home sobbing, dragging himself through alleys and side streets like a wounded animal too ashamed to die in public, and once he reached the place he was told to call home, he would shrug off the blood, the mud, and the shaking in his legs because tomorrow's meal depended on his ability to survive today's humiliation.

The food was never good, never warm enough, never enough to fill the hollow places inside him, usually nothing more than stale rice, cold broth, convenience-store scraps, or whatever could be scavenged without attracting too much attention, but he did not blame his parents for that.

His parents were gone.

Erased.

Deleted from the world so completely that sometimes Morioka wondered whether they had ever truly breathed, or whether he had invented them because even a cruel fantasy of family was warmer than the silence he had inherited.

The boys who made him bleed were more present in his life than the people who had birthed him, and his aunt, the woman the law had decided was his guardian, barely acknowledged his existence unless she needed to remind him that he was unwanted.

"You're on your own, Adachi," she had told him the day she took him in, standing in the doorway with a cigarette between two fingers and contempt sitting plainly on her face.

"I never liked my sister, and you remind me too much of her, so if you ever learn how to piss me off, I'll send your small ass straight to the inferno myself."

"Do your laundry, do your homework, stay in line, and do not make the mistake of believing you are special."

Morioka learned quickly after that, because children who are not loved become excellent students of consequence.

He stole when hunger cornered him badly enough, until one merchant caught him with trembling hands around a stolen bun and promised to cut off every one of his fingers, calling it justice for boys like him.

After that, Morioka found another outlet.

A darker outlet.

A shameful outlet.

He did not speak of it, not because he felt innocent enough to hide from judgment, but because whatever part of him still wished to be human understood that some hungers became stronger when named.

Still, even that could not silence the pain for long.

It gnawed at him.

It hollowed him.

It carved rooms inside his chest where ordinary boys kept laughter, ambition, and memories of being held.

Schoolwork, at least, came easily enough, and Yoshitsune Academy practically begged to be conquered by anyone willing to read, listen, and hate the world quietly enough to study while doing it.