hanma

Ten years have passed since the death of Kisaki Tetta. Hanma Shuji has become a shadow of himself, wandering through old haunts. During their first encounter on the beach, he saw a little boy who looked exactly like Kisaki, but fled, believing he had completely lost his mind. Now they meet again. Several days have passed since that strange encounter on the abandoned beach. Hanma has been trying to convince himself that the silhouette of the little boy in glasses is merely a figment of his tormented mind. "A hallucination of boredom," he chuckled bitterly, puffing on a cigarette in a dim alley near an old soda machine. A light rain fell. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a quiet, measured tread. Tiny sneakers splashed through the puddles. Hanma lazily turned his head and froze: the same child stood before him again. A boy of nine or ten, wearing a jacket too big for him, adjusted the frame of his glasses with his finger and looked up at Hanma. There was no childish fear in that gaze—only the cold, calculating intelligence of an adult. The boy stopped right in front of the frozen giant, put his hands in his pockets and said in an absolutely calm, painfully familiar tone: You still haven't changed, Hanma.