Shinji heard drawers yanked open. The slap of a cupboard slamming shut. A plate rattling. Then another.
"Of course," she growled. "Drunk again. Great. Just fucking great."
He stared at the TV. But he didn't see it anymore. The sound of chakra, of training, of boys defying gravity had dissolved into static in his ears.
The real soundtrack now was her: the bitter scrape of utensils thrown into the sink, the crash of a pot dropped too hard onto the counter. Her curses trailed behind her like smoke, half muttered, half shouted, always full of venom.
"You think I work twelve hours for this?" she hissed, her voice rising again. "Twelve goddamn hours on my feet, dealing with bullshit from customers and your father's lazy ass, just to come home to this mess?"
Shinji stayed frozen, eyes locked on the floor. A pause.
A new sound. Something delicate. Metal?
Her voice again, lower now. Slower.
"I work. I clean. I cook. I scrape and save and bend until my back feels like it'll snap. And what do I come home to? A broken husband. And a useless son."
She turned.
The kitchen light flickered above her. Once. Twice.
In her hand, small, but glinting—was a knife.
A paring knife. Something harmless in a drawer. Harmless until it wasn't.
Her grip was tight, knuckles white. The blade trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the tension winding up her arm like a spring about to break.
Shinji's heart climbed into his throat. His breath came shallow and thin.
"Do you know," she said, voice quieter now, almost like confession, "how many times I think about walking out and never coming back? Do you know how many nights I sit in that parking lot and stare at the steering wheel and wonder what would happen if I just didn't turn the key?"
Shinji didn't answer. He couldn't.
Her eyes shimmered, but not with sadness. With anger too deep to be spoken.
"I loved her," she whispered. "She was… she was good. She was bright. And sweet. And you..."
Her lips curled, and she took another step forward.
"You were just there."
Shinji's legs wouldn't move. His fingers dug into the couch. The knife in her hand glinted every time she moved.
"Why couldn't it have been you instead of her?" she whispered.
He blinked. "What?"
Her voice broke. "Why couldn't it have been you?"
The blade trembled.
She lifted it.
Just a little.
Enough.
"You just sit there," she said through clenched teeth. "Every day. Doing nothing. You think I don't see it? You think I don't know what you are?"
Another step.
His hands went to the cushions behind him, trying to push himself backward, but there was nowhere to go. His back hit the armrest.
The glow of the television flickered across her face as she leaned forward. Her pupils were pinpricks. Her jaw was clenched so tight the muscles looked ready to tear.
"I see you," she whispered.
Then she raised the knife.
It didn't come down.
Because Shinji screamed.
A raw, high sound. Not like a movie scream. Not like a child throwing a tantrum.
It was the scream of an animal. Trapped, cornered, knowing what came next.
And the room shattered around him.
...
He sat up so fast his head struck the wall behind him.
The pain was sharp and immediate, a dull crack that stole the breath from his lungs. He doubled over with a wheeze, clutching his chest as his vision blurred, not from the impact, but from the crushing weight pressing in from every side.
The straw mat twisted around his legs like a net. He yanked at it blindly, breath coming in short, panicked gasps. His shirt clung to his skin with cold sweat. His hands shook.
The room was quiet. Too quiet. Only the faint creak of wooden beams above, and the slow rasp of wind slipping through the wall's thin cracks, like something whispering just beyond the edge of hearing.
It's real.
He knew it the way you know a wound is real, by the throb. That hadn't been just a dream.
His hands covered his face. His fingers dug into the sockets beneath his eyes. He couldn't breathe.
The couch was still there in his mind. The dull glow of the TV. Her voice like glass ground between teeth. The glint of the knife in her shaking hand. And that one sentence.
"Why couldn't it have been you?"
He didn't even know if it had really happened, not in the sense that people meant when they talked about memory. He didn't remember addresses. Or birthdays. Or his own last name. Just sensations. Just that moment, her voice, her face, the shape of the room. The crack in the ceiling tile.
He sobbed. Not the quiet, held-in kind. Not the kind people do when they want to be strong.
No, he broke.
Tears spilled from his eyes with no warning, and he curled inward, arms over his head, shoulders shaking violently. The sound he made didn't even feel like it came from him. It was something torn loose. Something dragged up from the deepest part of him, shame and grief and fury all wrapped around a core of fear.
He bit down hard on the sleeve of his shirt to keep from waking the house.
But the tears kept coming. His stomach cramped. His ribs ached.
He didn't cry like this when Goro died. He didn't even cry when Ren stopped speaking, or when Taro disappeared. He didn't let himself.
But now…
Now it was all unraveling at once.
He didn't know how long he lay there, face pressed into the mat, eyes burning, throat raw. The wind continued its whispering through the slats, and the darkness held him like a fever dream.
The world had changed.
Not just Kinsen. Not just the village, or the people, or the way fear now clung to every doorframe like a second shadow.
He had changed.
This wasn't just about dreams anymore.
These were memories.
Real. Old. His.
And if that was true, if those moments, those nights, that world had once belonged to him.
Then he wasn't just a boy from a rice village.
He was something else, someone else. Someone who died.
Shinji curled tighter, knees to his chest, as the weight of that thought landed fully. He had died. Maybe young. Maybe afraid. Maybe unloved.
A boy who lived in a home of knives and silence and loud televisions late at night.
A boy who didn't fight back. A boy who wasn't wanted.
He sobbed harder.
The grief wasn't just for himself. It was for her. The sister whose name he couldn't remember. The one who held his pinky with her small hand. The one who laughed like it made the world better.
She had been loved.
And he had not.
He shook so hard his teeth chattered.
What did it mean, to die unloved? To carry the echo of that life into this one? Was that why he'd always felt slightly apart from the others? Why even Ren, even Hana, people he trusted, sometimes looked like they belonged to a world he was only borrowing?
Was that why he heard things in dreams that didn't belong in Kinsen? Why chakra hadn't surprised him?
The pieces were still scattered, but the shape was coming into view.
He was not born here. Not truly.
The thought should've felt miraculous. Or terrifying. Or like a story.
But it didn't.
It felt… lonely.
Like standing in a crowd and realizing none of them could hear the same music in your ears.
He sniffled hard, wiped his face on his sleeve, and sat up slowly. His whole body ached now. From crying. From confusion. From how much his chest hurt.
The fire had long gone cold. The embers glowed faintly from the hearth, like eyes that refused to close.
He rubbed his arms, then looked down at his hands.
Kinsen's hands. Callused from pulling weeds, raw from lifting buckets, streaked with soot from the forge.
But underneath…
Maybe something else.
He turned them over.
Palms open.
Still trembling.
Still his.
"Chakra," he whispered again. The word felt heavier now. Not magical. Not foreign.
Almost like it belonged.
The memory of the cartoon came back, sharpened now by emotion. The way the boy had stood upside-down on the tree. How his feet didn't slip. The blue glow at the soles. The confidence in his face.
How? Shinji thought. How did they do that?
He pressed his fingers together. Nothing sparked. Nothing burned.
But something flickered deep inside his chest, like that old coal again. Not roaring. Not loud. But alive.
He didn't know what the memory meant.
He didn't know why he remembered that cartoon first, of all things. Not a name. Not a school. Not a favorite meal. Just that show.
He swallowed hard, blinking fresh tears from his eyes.
He was tired of being afraid.
Tired of wondering if he belonged.
If this was his second chance, if life really had given him another try, then he couldn't waste it crying.