The Hyūga household wore its normalcy like a mask, polished and unbroken. Neighbors saw a father who swept the front steps, a mother who bartered fairly at the market, two children whose laughter brightened the street. Yet beneath the calm, something pressed against the walls—an unseen weight that refused to leave.
Ren felt it most. He was still a child, but old enough to sense when words were cut short, when silence was chosen too quickly. He noticed how his father checked the locks twice before bed, how his mother's eyes lingered at shadows too long.
That night, the silence broke just enough for him to hear. From his room, Ren pressed his ear to the door.
"We can't keep him blind forever," Hana whispered. Her voice carried the tension of someone both afraid and determined. "He's too sharp. He notices."
"He's ten," Ryouji's reply came low, heavy. "Ten is too young to carry burdens I can't even name aloud."
"Too young to bear it," Hana said, "but old enough to suffer if we keep him in ignorance. He'll ask the wrong person, Ryouji. He'll chase answers where we cannot follow."
There was a pause, so long Ren thought the conversation ended. Then his father spoke again, voice like stone against steel. "Then I'll tell him only what he must know. Nothing more. The truth is a fire. It warms, but it burns. I won't let it consume him."
Ren's chest tightened. What fire? What truth? He lay back, staring at the dark ceiling, but sleep did not come.
---
The following day, the family moved through routine. Hana hung the laundry, Sakura tugged at her apron strings, Ren carried a basket of folded clothes to the shelf. But Ren's eyes kept drifting to the street. Every cart that rolled by, every stranger's laugh, every pair of footsteps felt loaded with meaning.
At noon, the side door rattled with a knock. Not the front, where neighbors came. The side.
Ryouji answered, his body taut, every line of him prepared. He opened it only enough to see.
The man outside was thin, in a worn coat and low-brimmed hat. His smile stretched wide, too rehearsed to be honest.
"Hyūga-san," the man said softly. "Or perhaps… another name would fit better?"
Ryouji's hand pressed harder against the door. His gaze narrowed. "You're mistaken."
The man chuckled, though no humor touched his eyes. "Streets remember footsteps, even when men try to walk them differently. Some shadows can't be washed away." His eyes flicked beyond the door, toward Sakura's voice calling for her brother. "Lovely family. Be a shame if old debts found their way home."
Ryouji's jaw locked. Without another word, he closed the door—slow, controlled, final. The stranger did not knock again.
Inside, Hana's hands trembled. She looked at her husband. He shook his head once, the message clear: not now. Not in front of the children.
---
Dinner passed in silence until Ren broke it. "Dad," he asked, his voice small but steady, "who was that man?"
Ryouji set down his chopsticks. His eyes met Hana's, then shifted to his son. For a moment, he looked older than his years.
"There are people in this world," he said carefully, "who survive by stepping on others. Once, long ago, I walked among them. I left. But leaving doesn't erase the footprints. Some follow."
Ren's fingers tightened around his bowl. "So… they're following you?"
Ryouji did not soften the truth. "They're watching. Watching us. But they will not touch this family. Not while I breathe."
The boy nodded, though the promise carried both comfort and fear. He lowered his gaze, pretending to eat.
---
That night, when the children slept, Hana faced her husband in the dim lamplight. "You've opened the door a little," she murmured. "But secrets don't shrink when exposed—they grow. If you tell Ren pieces, he'll want the whole. If you hide the whole, he'll dig. Either way, the past sits at our table now."
Ryouji leaned back, shadows cutting hard angles into his face. "Then we strengthen the walls. If the past insists on knocking, it will not find an open door."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the scrap of black tape he had hidden earlier. He placed it on the table between them. A fragment. A reminder. Proof that the past was no longer just a memory.
Hana stared at it, her expression torn between fear and resolve. "And if the door breaks?" she whispered.
Ryouji closed his fist over the tape. "Then I break them first."
---
Outside, the street was quiet. Too quiet. Somewhere beyond the lamplight, a man with a wrong smile walked away, leaving only questions that grew like cracks in the walls of the Hyūga home.
And in his bed, Ren dreamed restless dreams of doors half-opened and voices he was not supposed to hear.