The Game Of Life

The Calm Before The Storm

————— The Present —————

Life is unfair. I learnt that the hard way growing up. No, I wasn't abused by my own family, nor was I bullied for being different. Rather, I was cheated in the game of life. I lived as the eldest son in a household of eight people. Well, seven now...

My Father died just before I turned twelve years of age, making me 'the man of the house' before I even reached adolescence. He was a good man, he always tried his best to bring food to the table. Unfortunately, we had just a few too many mouths to feed.

He would descend this very mountain every Saturday morning to sell coal to the townspeople at the foot of the mountain. He was respectable. In my opinion, his time came way too early, it was really unfortunate. He didn't deserve it.

My Mother. Her name was Kie. She was exquisitely beautiful. She looked so young even at her age. I looked a lot like her actually, I inherited a lot of her facial features. The only difference was that I had my Father's colour palette.

I had two younger sisters, Hanako and Nezuko. Nezuko and I were actually really close in age, me being merely eleven months older than her. Hanako was about eight when Father died, meaning I was about four years older than her. Hanako was always really clingy.

I had three brothers. Takeo was the eldest of the three, being only two years younger than me at the time. Shigeru would have been the same age as Hanako, they were twins after all. And Rokuta, my dear baby brother, was only about a year and two months.

You may be asking yourself why I'm writing in past tense about my siblings? There's a little story behind that. You see... They're not really with us anymore. They've passed on. I just hope that the afterlife is treating them well.

I would say that I hope that heaven is treating them well, but I'm not actually entirely sure there is such a thing as heaven and hell.

Could it be, that when you die, all you feel is an s less void of nothingness?

————— The Past —————

It's the middle of Winter at the moment. It's one of those Winters where the temperature would start to get unbearable once it reached night time. The days were only bearable if you had a thick layer of clothes on.

It's actually quite nice out today. I wouldn't say that it's warmer than yesterday, but there's definitely more sunlight. Being able to see the sun in Winter was always a rarity. When it happened, and you could see sunlight peeking through the trees, it was nice.

Let me evaluate. Since my family and I reside halfway up the mountain, further away from the town than the summit of the mountain, the sun was always brighter. And warmer. Maybe even hot in the Summers. But that only happened occasionally even in Summer.

But in the Winter, the clouds seal the sun away and take its place in order to precipitate their flakes of snow all over the forest floor. Sure, the snow was beautiful and great to play in, but I had responsibilities, and that means I have no time to be playing in the snow.

I was chopping some wood, it was around four thirty, maybe five in the morning, you could tell because the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. I was thankful because I finally had some natural light to work with instead of having to use my lantern.

I always woke up early to do my work, I learnt to do that after many instances where my siblings had tried to follow me to the town. I can't bring them in the snow, they don't walk as fast as me and they don't wear as many layers as me, they'd freeze.

Because of these events, I'm forced to wake up early on Saturdays to make sure I'm gone before they wake up. All I really need to do is load the charcoal in my basket and I'm off, it's not really that hard, I'd just rather be quick about it because time is of the essence.

As I swung the basket across my back, I let out a sigh, trying to ignore the fact that my eyelids were dropping like I was sick. The basket was full, which was good news for me because that meant that with the money we'd gave food on the table for a week or two.

As I begin my descent, I can't help but feel off at the quiet atmosphere. It was rather unusual because even at this ungodly hour the animals would never shut up. It was uncomfortable, it was almost as if I could feel the presence of something rather unorthodox.

————— End Of Chapter —————

Author's Note- I don't know where I'm going with this book. If I get to it and don't decide to drop this book, Giyuu is ending up with Sanemi. I don't care if you don't like it, take your opinion and shove it up your ass. I don't really know who I want Tanjirou to end up with. Gimme some ideas in the comments I guess.