The predawn darkness pressed against the shoji screens, stars scattered across the sky in crystalline silence. In his small room, the 12-year-old's eyes snapped open, sensing not to the comfort of morning light, but the sharp edges of the sensation below his body. Somewhere beneath the floorboards of the room he was in, there was a vibration in the air that he could understand as being chaotic and unwise. It was his parents' voices cutting through the still September air, a wash of chaos against the relatively cool coastal night.
He lay still on his futon, every muscle coiled tight as he turned on his back and traced the wood grain patterns of the ceiling above him with desperate focus. The tatami beneath his bedding smelled faintly of fresh straw, a comfort that couldn't soothe him now. Sleep had fled the moment their argument began, and he knew with the certainty that only children possess that it wouldn't return. The date—September 11, 2001—meant nothing to him yet, but the tension crackling through their home, the weight of unspoken urgency, he understood. There was no point in sleeping right now, only in getting up and moving to see what this was about.
His bare feet whispered across the woven mats as he crept to his door. The paper screen slid open with the faintest whisper, and through the gap he watched his father pace similar to a caged storm—all restless energy and barely contained power. His mother stood, next to the door leading into the kitchen, an anchor of stillness that somehow made the chaos around her more pronounced.
"We have to act, Yon." His father's voice carried a raw edge. "You can't ask me to just sit here while—"
"We agreed." Her words were solid, and painful, stones holding firm against the lapping of pointless waves. "When I chose this life, when I chose you, we promised each other we would never interfere. No matter what."
The boy pressed closer to the screen, watching his father's shoulders bow under an invisible weight. Even from behind, his father looked smaller somehow, diminished by the magnitude of what lay unspoken between them.
"What kind of heroes are we if we let thousands die?" The question tore from his father's throat. "What good is this power if we don't use it when it matters most?"
"We aren't heroes" His mother rose then, and though she stood a head shorter than her husband, she seemed to fill the room with her ancient, terrible presence. "And what kind of father are you if you leave your son orphaned and alone in this world?"
"Yon—"
"No." Her finger pressed against his chest. "You convinced me that humanity was worth embracing. You made me believe in the beauty of a mortal life, of loving small and quiet." Her voice cracked, revealing something raw beneath. "Now you want to throw it all away? For what? To play god? To pretend to prop up people who are going to die anyway?"
His father paused, slightly in confusion, but more in an indescribable horror. "To save them. Yon—I…I can't sit by. I can feel every life that's about to be lost, every life I could save, don't you understand that? You're asking me to do nothing…" His voice trailed off as he tried to come to terms with what he was admitting to himself.
"I'm asking you to be human." The boy's mother paused. "I've watched dynasties rise and fall, seen emperors claim immortality only to crumble to dust. I've walked this earth through centuries of wars and plagues that no amount of intervention could prevent. But these fifteen years with you. It was supposed to be different" She turned away, her voice dropping to something dangerous and cold. "If you do this, you'll just be justifying what I've always thought of you people, barbaric and—-" She caught herself, jaw clenching as she swallowed the words. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. "Don't reveal us to the world, please...for your son..." She said with a heart aching honesty.
His father's voice turned sharp, wounded. "You were going to call me an animal, weren't you? Just like you used to"
The accusation hung in the air seeming to vibrate the air around it as the two combatants considered the words.
"I won't dignify that with a response," His mother said, but her voice carried the weight of old shame.
"The desire is still there though, isn't it?" His father pressed, pain and anger bleeding together. "After all these years, you still see us that way."
The boy's mother paused, grimaced, and then tried her best to remain calm and resolute under the force of his words. The boy's father didn't see this, deciding that action was the best course as he turned to the door and made his way out.
"If caring for innocent lives makes me an animal in your eyes," his father said finally, straightening with grim resolve and sliding the door aside, "then maybe I was never meant to be a god."
He left, she followed, and the boy ran up to watch. All he saw were two shadows blurred against the starlight—one chasing, one fleeing—before vanishing into the vast darkness beyond. The boy watched for a while, expecting something different to happen, some return and reassurance, that was growing less and less likely with each moment that passed. He went back to bed, unsure of what he hoped for, but hoping for it all the same. He didn't go back to sleep, only looking out his window as stars spun overhead and the black abyss turned to a sickly pale hue. Eventually, however, a pink light crept across the horizon, painting the screens in soft pastels. Dawn brought the gentle sounds of the neighborhood awakening—distant bicycle bells, the soft rhythm of shoes on stone paths, the call of crows in the ancient pine that grew beside their house.
But it brought no sign of his parents.
The boy rose as golden light flooded through. The house felt hollow, empty in a way that went beyond mere absence. He padded through the rooms once more—past the low kotatsu table where they shared meals, past the tokonoma alcove where his mother's single orchid bloom caught the morning light, past the kitchen where two cups still sat beside the sink, cold tea leaves settled at the bottom like omens.