[February 21, 2013 — 2:11 A.M. | Maspeth, Queens]
The warehouse hummed like a tired machine, cold air rolling from the industrial freezers. Gabriel Morales tugged his jacket closer, mop handle slung over his shoulder, thermos in hand. Twenty-one, worn thin by school, work, and the weight of helping his mother pay rent.
He should've been home. He should've been asleep. But the manager had said just a couple of hours, easy overtime. So here he was.
The walk-in freezer was colder than usual, frost crusting the racks of boxed seafood. He stepped in to check the leak. The heavy door clanged shut behind him. He turned, tried the handle. It didn't budge.
"No, no, no…" His laugh was thin. The emergency release was broken, the phone signal dead.
He banged, shouted, pressed his shoulder to the door seam until his lungs burned. The cold crept in through his jacket, biting first at his fingers, then deeper. He stacked boxes to block the vents, wrapped himself in plastic, kept moving. Anything to stave it off.
But time stretched. His phone blinked its last percent. He whispered his mother's schedule to himself, prayers he'd never believed in, the names of books he'd half-read. His voice cracked and went hoarse.
When the chill finally pressed him to his knees, he laughed once, softly — at the absurdity of dying like this, boxed in by frozen fish. His breath bloomed white before him and vanished.
Darkness swallowed him.
[A Place Without Clocks]
There was no tunnel, no light, no peace. Only awareness, raw and exposed. Thought without body. Memory without voice.
Then came sound: a heartbeat, heavy, muffled, rhythmic. Thmm. Thmm. Thmm.
Warmth replaced cold. Liquid cradled him. He tried to scream, but there was no mouth. He tried to move, but his limbs were soft, small, folded against himself.
No… no, no, no.
The truth hit him like a slap in the face: he wasn't gone. He wasn't even himself anymore. He was inside a womb.
[April 19, 1994 — 3:12 A.M. | 19th Ward, Tokyo]
The room stank of boiled rags and old wood, of rust creeping in through cracked pipes. No monitors, no sterile lights. Just a mattress on the floor, a bucket, and the cries of a woman laboring through pain in near silence.
Hayato Seno entered the world not with a weak whimper, but with a shrill, ragged cry — almost a snarl.
His mother, sweat-soaked and trembling, held him to her chest. She hushed him quickly, though her own eyes gleamed faint red in the gloom.
Too much noise could bring the wrong kind of attention in a building like this.
"Strong lungs," muttered the midwife — a wiry old ghoul with hands steady from practice. She rinsed her arms in a basin, watching the newborn through sharp eyes.
The father crouched close, his shadow long against the peeling wallpaper. Calloused hands brushed the child's head with awkward reverence. He smiled — not wide, not showing teeth, but softly. "Hayato," he whispered. "Our son."
The baby cried again, small fists flailing. His mother didn't bare her breast. She bit into her wrist. Dark blood welled and she pressed it to his lips.
Instinct overrode fear. He drank. The taste struck like lightning: warmth, iron, hunger awakened in him like it had been waiting all along. His cries stilled. He fed greedily, eyes fluttering shut.
The father let out a long breath, relief etched into his face. "He'll grow."
The midwife's tone was quiet but edged. "Growth is not mercy. This city takes more than it gives."
The mother's arms tightened protectively around the child. "Then he'll learn to take back."
The baby — Gabriel once, Hayato now — fed, and in the dim light, his eyes cracked open. For the briefest moment, they gleamed red.
[April 19, 1994 — 4:02 A.M.]
The midwife left before dawn, shawl drawn tight, steps vanishing into the night without goodbye. Silence claimed the room except for the soft gurgles of the newborn and the city's distant hum beyond thin walls.
His mother lay back on the mattress, pale but smiling faintly as she stroked his hair. His father sat watch by the window, gaze fixed on the street below.
"They'll come," the mother murmured.
"Not tonight," the father answered. "We'll move soon. Keep quiet. Keep moving."
"Maybe…" she hesitated. "…Maybe the stories are true. The café in the 20th. They say it helps people like us."
The father shook his head. "Rumors. And rumors don't keep us alive."
For now, they had this room. For now, they had a child. For now, it was enough.
Hayato slept curled against his mother's chest, small chest rising and falling to the rhythm of her heartbeat. He dreamed, though he was too young to know the word for it: cold doors, frozen air, a death he remembered and a life he didn't understand.
And when morning broke, the ward stirred awake with another day of hiding, hunting, and surviving.
[April 25, 1994 — 2:46 A.M. | 19th Ward, Tokyo]
The apartment was small, the kind of space that smelled permanently of damp concrete and rust, no matter how often the windows were opened. A single bare bulb lit the corner where Hayato's drawer-crib sat, lined with a worn sweater. His mother rocked him slowly, humming low — not a melody, but the rhythm of breath turned to comfort.
She was pale, hair sticking in clumps against her temples, but her eyes softened as she looked at him. When his cries sharpened, she didn't flinch. She bit her wrist again, wincing as the blood welled up, and pressed it gently against his lips.
He drank greedily, small hands twitching, crimson staining his chin. His eyes cracked open for a moment, glowing faintly in the dim light.
His father watched from the table. The man's shoulders were broad, his hands calloused, but there was a restlessness in the way his foot tapped the floor. He had spent the last few nights leaving after dusk and returning before dawn, sometimes with a bundle wrapped in butcher paper, sometimes with nothing but tired eyes.
"How much longer can you feed him like that?" he asked quietly.
"As long as I must," his wife answered, voice firm even through exhaustion. She wiped the blood from Hayato's lips with her sleeve. "He's strong. He'll need more soon, but I'll manage."
The father looked down at his own hands. "It should be me. You've lost enough already."
"You go out there every night. That's enough."
Silence stretched. The only sound was the baby's soft suckling.
[May 6, 1994 — 3:18 A.M.]
The night was restless. Shouts echoed faintly from the alley, boots striking pavement, followed by the distant metallic clang of steel clashing against something less human.
The father froze at the window. "Doves." His voice was little more than breath.
The mother's arms tightened around Hayato, pressing him against her chest, rocking him gently to keep him quiet. His tiny fists clenched at the air, sensing the tension though he couldn't name it.
From the street below, a scream tore through the night — high, sharp, then cut short. After it came silence, the kind that was worse than sound.
The father's jaw worked, but he didn't speak. He just pulled the blinds shut, locked the window, and sat back down, one hand resting on the edge of the drawer-crib like he could guard his son with touch alone.
Hayato stirred in his sleep, whimpering softly. His mother hushed him with quiet murmurs, though her own voice trembled.
"Shhh… shhh, Hayato. Sleep. Just sleep."
[May 11, 1994 — 12:57 A.M.]
They didn't own much. A chipped kettle. Two mugs. A radio with a cracked dial. But every night, the father made coffee the way ghouls do — to drink, but to smell. He let it steam in the kitchen until the room carried its warmth, pretending it was a home like humans had.
Hayato's drawer sat close to the table, so he could fall asleep to the sound of water bubbling and spoons clinking against ceramic. Sometimes, when he fussed, his mother would dip her finger in the dark liquid, touch it to his lips. He never drank — his body rejected it immediately — but the warmth on his skin calmed him.
His father watched this ritual once, brow furrowed. "He won't remember."
His mother didn't look up. "Maybe not. But I will."
[May 21, 1994 — 4:02 A.M.]
The midwife returned only once in those early weeks. She came in silence, hair tied back in a scarf, eyes sharp as razors. She examined Hayato carefully, fingers tracing along his arms, feeling his pulse.
"He's strong," she said at last. "Too strong, maybe. He'll need real flesh sooner than most."
The father frowned. "Not yet. He's a baby."
The midwife's expression didn't soften. "Baby or not, hunger doesn't care. When the time comes, you'll have to choose: feed him or bury him."
His mother clutched Hayato tighter, lips pressing to his soft black hair. "Then I'll feed him."
The midwife gave no blessing, only gathered her shawl and left, footsteps fading down the hall.
For a long while after, no one spoke. The only sound was Hayato's small breathing and the faint drip of water in the kitchen sink.
The days blurred together. Shadows under the parents' eyes deepened, but they never faltered when it came to him. The city outside was cruel, but here in this cramped room, there was love — fierce, desperate, and clinging to every fragile second.
And in the drawer where he slept, Hayato dreamed of cold doors and falling snow, though he had never seen either in this life.