Ren Sugihara

Ren Sugihara's life before moving to Tokyo was a story of gradual decline.

He was born in Osaka, to an ordinary family: his father was an accountant, his mother a nurse. He grew up quiet but not withdrawn—he loved drawing Pokémon in a sketchbook, putting together puzzles, and spending long hours on the windowsill watching the cats in the alley. In elementary school, he had friends. He laughed loudly, raced, and even fought over a toy sword once.

Everything changed in fifth grade.

Ren's classmates noticed that he was too soft. Too sympathetic. Too quick to cry when others were bullied. At first, they simply teased him. Then they stopped inviting him to soccer games. And then someone threw a dead fish in his backpack—for standing up for a boy with glasses.

Ren didn't complain. He simply stopped being himself.

In middle school, he learned the most important rule of survival: don't stand out. Smile, but not too much. Laugh when everyone else is laughing. Don't tell people you love them. Don't show that you're hurt. He became a convenient person—sweet, harmless, empty inside. People got used to him. They stopped noticing him. That's exactly what he wanted.

The transfer to Tokyo became an opportunity for Ren to escape. From the school where he was remembered as weak. From the apartment where his parents whispered, "Something's wrong with Ren." In the capital, no one knew his story. He could start over, pretend to be normal.

And he pretended. On April 1st, he smiled at the new class—softly, a little shyly. He extended his hand. He said, "I'd be happy to be friends!"—though he didn't believe it for a second.

But inside, there was a loneliness that couldn't be erased. Ren grew tired of people as quickly as he had once grown tired of ridicule. He sought out quiet corners, empty corridors, windows where he could close his eyes and pretend he wasn't there.

He didn't know someone was looking at him from the shadows. That someone saw the emptiness behind his smile and called it not brokenness, but beauty.

Ren wasn't looking for love. He just wanted to survive.

But love found him on its own—and turned out to be worse than any school bullying.

Akira Kitayama's life began with a loss he couldn't remember.

His mother died when he was three. Cancer. It happened quickly, quietly, almost unnoticed by a child who couldn't yet say "mama" consciously. His father, an engineer at a large corporation, couldn't cope with the grief except by throwing himself into work. Akira was raised by his grandparents—strict, silent people who believed that emotion was a weakness and that boys weren't supposed to be hugged.

In kindergarten, Akira didn't cry when he fell. In elementary school, he didn't ask to join the team. He simply existed on the periphery, like a piece of furniture. His classmates tried inviting him home for birthday parties—once, twice, three times. When they were politely rejected, they stopped trying.

By eighth grade, Akira had completely become a shadow. He hated no one, wanted nothing. He went to school, got average grades, and returned to an empty apartment (his grandparents had died within a year of each other, and his father was still missing at work). He ate buckwheat with sausages, did his homework, and went to bed. Sometimes he felt like he'd already died and simply forgotten to fall.

In ninth grade, he hit someone for the first time. Not for himself—a boy in his class was beating up a first-grader for money. Akira simply walked up, grabbed him by the collar, and knocked him out with one blow. Without anger. Without emotion. Like a machine. The bystanders scattered, and Akira turned and left. No one reported it to the teachers. No one dared.

The reputation of a silent psychopath stuck naturally. He was feared, but left alone. That suited Akira just fine.

He thought it would always be like this. Gray days, meaningless studies, high school, then university, then work, then death. He didn't care.

And then April came. And a boy with brown hair and empty eyes behind a warm smile walked into the classroom. A boy who was as tired of people as Akira was of himself. A boy who smelled of vanilla and loneliness.

Akira didn't know what "love" was. He'd never seen it in his family, never tasted it.