Embers - Chapter 1

The fire keeps burning. Actually, the ones who burned to death in the fire were my father and older brother, but in my dreams, different people get caught in the flames. Sometimes relatives, sometimes friends, sometimes my mother—various people. The one who most often burns to death is Yuya Sairenji, so inside me, there are countless bodies of Yuya piled up. It’s just dreams and imagination, but it’s definitely there. When I see him in real life, it’s like a sudden flame lights somewhere inside him and slowly spreads, turning into a whirlpool of anger.

The fire happened when I was still in kindergarten.

Right after waking up in a hospital bed, I groaned every day from the sharp pain of my burned body, barely able to speak properly. I vaguely remembered a voice calling me, “Nagi, don’t die,” after the pain had eased a bit. I faintly pictured myself being protected by someone inside the burning house.

It was only when I was in middle school that I realized that person was my older brother.

The memories I dug up made me painfully aware that he died protecting me. I felt dizzy from my own ungratefulness.

“Nagi.”

My brother was calling me inside the flames.

“The one who set the house on fire is definitely out there.”

Those words came back to me from my fading consciousness.

“Find them. Find them, and I will…”

The memory darkened as if something ended there.

I lost many things without understanding why.

I don’t think I’ll ever get them back, nor do I expect to, but there were voices calling me besides my brother’s.

“Nagi…”

The one who called me lying in the hospital bed was Yuya Sairenji. At that time, we didn’t have much connection, but I knew why he cared. My brother and Yuya were high school classmates and close friends who were always together, so for Yuya, a high schooler back then, caring for my little brother was probably a way to comfort himself.

If my brother had seen a close friend caring about me, maybe he would have been glad.

But then, there was betrayal.

My mother and Yuya’s father remarried, and things changed.

“Hey, Nagi.”

I was facing Yuya in a small Japanese-style room in the Sairenji family home.

“I understand how hard it is that your father and brother died. But you can’t follow after the dead.”

I was in middle school, Yuya had just graduated college, and it had been eight years since the fire.

“Don’t keep thinking about the fire. Since our parents remarried, we’re family now. I can’t be like your brother, but I want to support you as your brother. You’re still a kid. There’s a lot you need to do ahead. So please don’t keep thinking about the fire or things that will soon become time-barred. Think of me as your brother and focus on our new life.”

Yuya was expressionless. His words sounded like empty platitudes, and I thought he was ignoring my precious family. I couldn’t trust him at all anymore.

Without saying yes or no, I silently sat there, burning with anger, then suddenly punched Yuya. He didn’t dodge the fist of a middle schooler shorter than him. I don’t know if he thought it was a bad move or looked down on me enough that it didn’t matter. I didn’t care.

“There’s no way I’m going to think of you as my brother…!”

I hit him right on the nose, and bl00d dropped on the tatami mats. Yuya groaned in pain but said nothing. The bright red bl00d was unbearably vivid, and I looked away, running out of the Japanese room on impulse. I had nowhere to go inside what didn’t feel like my home anymore. Even now, as a high schooler, I’m always alone, restless, running somewhere.

The bloodstain left on the tatami mats is like a scar from the fire he left behind.

I hated it without reason. But I wasn’t born hating Yuya.

Before my mother and Yuya’s father remarried, before I started resenting him, I had some vague feelings looking for a shadow of my brother in Yuya. It wasn’t because Yuya resembled my brother. It was because of the high school uniform he wore and his clearly taller stature—I vaguely saw the image of “brother” in those things.

Yuya probably wanted to respond to that, and I think he thought it was because I was the brother of his dead friend. But it was fake. Family ties were just family ties. As I grew up and became aware, and as I was bullied because of my burn scars, as I saw Yuya trying to be a brother to me, anger became the only clear and reliable guide for me.

I mostly remember causing trouble at school during middle school. Most of the time, I didn’t believe it when my mother, who was lucky enough to be away from home during the fire, said she survived. I hated my stepfather who wooed her after losing his spouse and son. I had no place to breathe. That was fine. I was determined, reminded of my brother’s words, to live to find the arsonist and take revenge in his place.

But Yuya didn’t approve and kept trying to talk to me. He asked about my school life and future plans but never mentioned the brother they were once so close to.

He was an unbearable obstacle. I was always angry at the unfair fact that it wasn’t my brother but him who was alive. So, I hit him many times, but while doing that, I grew into a high schooler, and Yuya became a working adult.

The anger keeps burning. It won’t burn out until it’s over.

Finally, I can get real information about the arson.