.
"Hr. hr. hr. hr."
The rhythmic incantation pulsed powerfully in her mind, vibrating like some ancient war drum booming deep in the recesses of her skull. Principal Sakura stood tall and imposing on the assembly podium of the school—a position where she had given countless impassioned speeches, lauding virtues of honor, discipline, academic success, and the most important virtue of being on time. Her violet tresses, coiffed in their signature regal mass, trembled imperceptibly in a passing gust of wind that she could not quite see or understand. She stood in crisp precision, in a manner that was both impeccable and professional; a crisp navy-blue jacket slid tightly over her firm and unyielding stance, while the white of her blouse glowed brightly under the fabric, and the tight pencil skirt hugged her figure like a blade cutting through the soft morning light. This was her battleground, her kingdom, her domain, where she ruled undisputed dominion. And yet, in this sense of control and dominance, something was deeply, horribly wrong. So gut-wrenchingly, horribly wrong.
The silence was the first thing that hit her. The courtyard, which was normally filled with a symphony of murmurs, footsteps, the excited chattering of gossiping teens, and the unmistakable sound of slamming lockers, had been filled with a vacuum of silence. It was a chilling silence, too deep to be soothing. Her keen and perceptive eyes started scanning the grounds on which she stood at the podium, and what she beheld left her rooted to her spot—not in awe or respect, but in utter disbelief of what she beheld before her. The whole campus, which she had known, was totally blanketed, not adorned with the usual banners celebrating the school's insignia, but blanketed with a sea of smothering white flags. These flags were draped over windows, nailed to bulletin boards, and looped around trees in a similar way to ceremonial nooses. There were hundreds of them that circled her. They were uniform in design, and their presence was forcefully striking, commanding attention.
On each, bold, red letters burned across the white material:
レッドアイロビンス
Red-Eye Ronins.
Under the lettering—chilling, defiant, unforgettable—was a slightly askew black Manji, the ancient Buddhist symbol distorted into something that didn't feel holy at all. It wasn't fascist; it wasn't political. It was something worse—personal. Territorial. Violent. An occupation.
No. No, no, no!" Sakura wailed, her voice breaking the silence of the air around her like glass breaking under stress. She stepped back, her breath stuck in her throat, and the ring of her heels on the ground was like a dismal knell. A suffocating sense of shame closed around her as her heart hammered away, beating a wild rhythm that was identical to the chaos of her own mind. The place she had dedicated herself to—the sacred sanctuary of discipline and order—had been vanquished and overpowered without even a show of fight.
Somewhere out of sight, the chant grew louder.
Hr. hr. hr. hr.
It was as if there was a madness engine that lived and breathed, throbbing with ferocious energy deep within the very marrow of the building itself. The sky above began to darken menacingly. Her fists clenched into hard, furious fists as the flags wracked in the wind, flying like ghostly apparitions that mocked her ill fortune. The Ronin symbol insinuated itself into her field of vision, tainting her sight like a lingering curse that could not be shaken. Desperate, she screamed once more—raw, helpless, and unmistakably human—but this time no sound came from her mouth. Her throat had somehow knotted itself into a vicious knot, rendering her mute. Meanwhile, her feet seemed to be inexplicably frozen to the platform beneath her, frozen by some unseen force.
"NOOOOOOOO!!!" She cried out as she hit the ground, "My SCHOOL, MUGYIWARA!!!"
Students were smoking, drinking, and doing vile stuff.
She opened the door to the one class and glimpsed something, likely an orgy, before closing it in a clutch.
"I WARNED THEM!!!" she exclaimed with fervor, her voice rising above the din, "THAT THING WOULD CAUSE IT ALL TO FALL!" Her tone was filled with urgency as she reiterated, "NO NO NO, IT'S JUST LIKE FATHER PREDICTED!!!" The weight of her words hung heavy in the air as she declared, "A boy would be the ruin of it all."
"Mugy-----" His eyes opened wide. In the school canteen, it was a strip club. His daughter, Hiyori Toyotaro, was on the pole, wearing a bunny costume, while Shotaro was throwing bills as she swung.
"What in the world!!!!!!!" She attempted to dash over to that spot, but unfortunately, she was held back and pinned down by his group of boys.
"I must say that your daughter has definitely taken after you when it comes to her hips," Shotaro said as he walked up to her, voicing his comment with a teasing grin.
"W.I. HATE YOU!!!" She screamed.
"WELLL WELLL WELL," he said like a cartoon villain. "You could not stop me from spreading my delinquent virus to other students, and neither did you stop me from taking your school, which your family has been running since long ago and it into a degenerate nuthouse," he said in a way that seemed like a cartoon villain telling his plans.
"Hiyori!!!" she screamed out in a high, strained tone, heavy with urgency and disbelief. "You have to get off his lap right away! "What in the world are you even wearing?!"
"Mom, I am a delinquent now," she said, having a peculiar heart-shaped medicine pill in her mouth as she swallowed & kissed Shotaro, "NEVER KNEW BEING A TOWN BIKE FEELS & PAYS SO GOOD."
"NOOOOO!!!" She fights free from the grip as she is falling. "NO NO NO NO N!!!!!!!!!!" Shotaro slams her head into the ground with his heel. "So angry, huh?" He said, "You could not stop me." He said, "Now you're my bitch," grabbing her by her collar as he mashed his lips against hers.
.....
"AHHHHHHHH!!!"
The scream tore explosively out of the very depths of Principal Sakura's lungs, unleashing a sound like the rasp of a razor blade being scraped hard across rough asphalt, raw and jagged and powerful enough to make the very walls of her bedroom seem to be recoiling in terror. Her eyes leapt wide open, wide with shock and horror. She lay bolt upright in a knotted mess of sheets drenched in sweat that clung to her skin, the frantic thrashing of her pulse thudding relentlessly behind her ears sounding like a relentless alarm ringing out across the night's silence. "This was indeed… a dream," she panted, wildly attempting to reimpose a semblance of sense back into her thundering heart and mind. But no matter how desperately she tried, the slippery feel of sense refused to return to her at all.
In its place came the heaving. The huffing. The kind of gasping, uncontrollable panting that indicated something more profound was unleashing. She grabbed at her violet hair—once proud, once royal—and ripped. Locks were pulled loose like the strings of a puppet snapped.
She scratched.
Clawed.
Her fingernails scraped agonizingly over the tender flesh of her cheeks and neck, tearing the skin just a little, so the red blood welled up and cupped beneath her nails. The cuts were shallow, but they were filled with frantic, all-encompassing yearning.
The name echoed in her head with a force that seemed close to the oppressive echo of a curse that would not let up.
That name. That particular boy. That infuriatingly towering, perpetually sarcastic, ever-smiling, universe-breaking, utterly disrespectful, and disaster-bringing boy.
Mugyiwara.
Shotaro.
If there is so much as one single person in the expanse of the universe who deserves such that he must die in torment and howl like a hound—!" She shrieked at the very top of her voice, her words thick with venom as she spat them at him. Froth foamed at the edges of her lips, and her throat was raw from the ferocity of her all-encompassing rage. "MUGIWARA!!!"
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" She screamed a second time, this time hoarse and strained, her body contorting in spasms under the bedclothes. "AAAAAHHHHGHHHHGHHHHHHHH GHHGGGHHHHGGGH DAMN YOUUUUU!!!" Her scream disintegrated into a jumble of consonants and white noise sounds, primal and ancient. Not only was the fury loud, it was colossal, shaking with a biblical strength that thickened the air.
Her vein on her forehead pounded beat by beat like a seconds-counting countdown clock.
Her heart missed a beat. Then again.
Her lungs were constricted and frigid inside her chest, like a gate that had rusted through years of disuse and no longer worked well.
She gasped.
Clutched her chest.
No—not now.
Her body shook violently, reacting to a horrific rush of distress. With a tremendous effort, she rolled over, hardly managing her wild struggle to bang her hand on the side lamp resting next to her. Pills. The bloody pills were simply a necessity for her at the moment. Her hand flailed wildly over the surface of the wooden nightstand, crazily seeking the little container, and in her urgency, she knocked the framed picture of her precious daughter off the table—crack. The sound of shattering glass filled the air, breaking the moment of desperation.
The bottle slipped. Her fingers closed around it in a frantic grab, shaking as she unscrewed the cap with her teeth and tipped two pills into her bleeding hand, bouncing them from shaking fingers, one of which hit her collarbone. She managed to catch that one. Swallowed both dry.
Her chest hurt. Her ribs ached as if they were caved in.
And yet—never did her eyes blink.
Even in spite of it all, she had her eyes fixed straight ahead. Not at the broken frame. Not at her fingers stained with blood. Not even at her own reflection in the black window on the other side of the room.
She fixed her gaze intently upon the phantom—upon the elusive image of that boy's smirk, which was forever imprinted and etched deeply within the recesses of her memory.
Mugyiwara Shotaro. The name didn't just echo. It seared. As her body convulsed uncontrollably and the medicine slowly numbed the wounds of her abuse, she acutely felt it: She would have killed him herself… or died trying.
.....
She washed her face, systematically, with the icy indifference of a person attempting to scrub away more than perspiration. She looked in the mirror not for vanity, but for verification that she was still, in some manner, intact. Her morning routine never varied—she always ate first before washing—excepting today, a minor deviation in a life constructed out of rigid rhythms. She sat down at the table, back straight, eyes icy, wearing less than the bare minimum—thin straps hugging damp skin, fabric barely clinging to her curves. Sleep never came easily anymore. Her sweat issue had always existed, but since Mugyiwara Shotaro reappeared in her life, it was now a waking torment. As if her body was literally rejecting his presence.
Her breakfast was purposeful: calorie-heavy, nutrient-dense, and prepared by a maid who had a degree in food nutrition and understood the precise amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats needed to enable a woman in her late forties to move about with the energy of a person half her age. Every mouthful she consumed was an attack on deterioration, on frailty, on succumbing.
She popped them down before her fork found food—standing in a row on a dainty porcelain plate like sacrifices to a weary deity. Thyroid stabilizers, heart support, anti-anxiety. She gulped them down in habituated sequence, each followed by a gulp of foul hot water, the type that did not dislodge digestion. Her doctor had recommended taking the pills in intervals, but her anger demanded urgency. Her anger had become her energy, her prayer, her sole anchor apart from her daughter.
She shut her eyes, not out of thankfulness, but in order to conjure the flavor of anger. It was a morning routine as well—fanning the embers of contempt before responsibility softened their edge. Her thoughts turned to her daughter—her shining, obedient, beloved child—and lingered there for just long enough to go warm. Then turned. Her thoughts pulled themselves back to that other one.
That thing. That eldest child.
Minato Toyotaro. Twenty-one. A university student who spoke about lines and colors and brushstrokes as if they counted in a burning world. He described himself as an artist. He pulled all-nighters to draw, shared his drawings on the internet as if they counted, refused corporate internships, and snubbed every political alliance she proposed. He wanted to "make something meaningful," as if meaning could purchase land or power or prestige. As if a painter could ever control anything outside the edges of a canvas.
She understood artists. She admired them—Picasso, Raphael, Caravaggio, all deceased. All were revered after death. She didn't crave a martyr. She craved leverage. A legacy. Not a penniless dreamer with ink-stained fingers and romantic notions.
She pierced another forkful of egg with harsh beauty.
Shotaro Mugyiwara had destroyed everything. He reminded her of things she had kept buried and illnesses she didn't know her body still had the schematics for. Her breathing was different. Her pulse stuttered in rooms he had been in days before. He was the match to make her system fail and fury boil over. And worse, Minato enjoyed him. Her idiot of a son actually admired that boy. Admired his rebelliousness. Laughed with him.
She ate slowly, intently, eyes as hard as stone. If Shotaro remained in their lives, something would shatter. Her command. Her house. Or possibly, her body.
But not without a struggle. She was Principal Sakura.
And she did not lose.
The sound of the hallway door clacked open without knock, and in, barefoot, eyes half-closed, her violet-black hair a matted mess thrown over one shoulder, came Hiyoori in nothing but her sleep shorts and a sports bra—the one with a single loose strap she never tied up—and shuffled towards the kitchen like a caffeine-seeking zombie.
Principal Sakura was in the middle of chewing—and froze.
Her eyes narrowed like a sharpened knife. "Hiyoori," she said tightly, controlling her voice, the sort that drained the temperature out of the room. "What did I tell you about roaming around like this?"
Hiyori blinked, yawned, and scratched her elbow. "It's summer."
"That's not a defense," Sakura snapped. Her chair scraped back as she stood, radiating matriarchal terror—the kind woven from generational discipline and silent disappointment. "You are not a child anymore. You're in that time now—the stage of transformation. Your body is blooming, and you're acting like you're still ten."
"Oh my God, not this again—"
"Yes. This again." Sakura jabbed a manicured finger directly at her chest as if giving a masterclass on female modesty. "Your chest is developing. Your hips are expanding. That softness around the thighs? Hormonal. Those clavicles? Chiseled. And don't even get me started—those tiny marks peeking out under your sports bra…"
Hiyori tensed. She automatically ran her hand over her side. The flesh there, from the rib to the upper belly, hosted ghostly remnants of something unnatural-looking—reddish, faintly glowing burn marks, as if the sun had kissed her too long and never said sorry. Sakura's gaze hardened, not out of pity, but out of clenched, maternal rage that refused to mention the day it occurred.
"You didn't even tell me what exactly you did to Mazino," Sakura spoke softly. "What you did that infuriated him on his day one."
Hiyori stared off, teeth clenched. "It's none of your business."
"It's all my business when your lungs almost burst from the heat," Sakura snarled. "He could have killed you. You think I don't recognize who he is? You think I haven't read the files, the surveillance, the incident reports?"
"I was just being me."
"Exactly. And see what that landed you." Her voice shattered, bitter with terror that resembled anger. "He branded you. That fire not only burned your skin but torched your reputation."
Silence.
Hiyori froze, glass in her hand, neck strained. "You say it as if I had it coming."
"I say it as if you need to wake the hell up."
Another beat.
"…Fine," Hiyoori growled, facing away from him, the back of his jacket now showing more of those light, glinting red welts along the lower part of her shoulder blade—mementos of rebellion and shame. "Jesus Christ, you could've simply said, 'Wear a T-shirt.'"
"It's not about T-shirts anymore," Sakura replied, voice quiet. "Because the world will not keep you safe from him. I must."
As Hiyoori vanished into her room, Sakura settled slowly back into her chair, chest rising and falling, heart constricting with something black and heavy—something she never spoke aloud: fear.
For when that boy—Mugyiwara Shotaro—reappeared in her life, the whole atmosphere of their life had shifted. Literally. That room still hadn't cooled down since.
.....
She opened her medicine and pushed her palms against her eyes.
Hate, control, power—these were the languages she trusted now.
She would not let another man steal something from her family again.
"It is strange when I ask her to cover herself up more when I myself sit here in my.poor perversion of underwear," Sakura muttered to herself. "But then again, the only guy that wanted my flesh passed away years ago, while her body is frail and blooming and is still eagerly anticipated by many boys." She tightened her fist.
.....
The bathroom steam was denser today, like the air itself was coming against her skin. Hiyori grasped her stomach, fingers stabbing into her sides as if soothing something deep within her. Not pain. Pressure, hard and low, coiled around her hips and scuffling through her thighs. Her body betrayed her—cramping at random, hot with agony one moment, cold and limp the next. Her breathing shallow and fitful, and the floor beneath her feet very distant and yielding like a dream she had not yet awakened from.
She stooped, brow against the cold of the tile wall, her face wet with sweat that was short on any connection to the scalding water pounding down. There was a sear along the bottom of her back, the same bruised area where Shotaro's heat beam had seared through her blouse weeks ago. She remembered yelling at him. She remembered shame. And now, that small patch of seared skin thudded with a heat that echoed too dearly with the ache in her belly.
Something stirred—lower—and she recoiled in agony. "Tch. it started." she growled, barely above a whisper, between rage and defeat. She glared down and noticed the pale strand of red twisting with the water around the drain. It irked her—not because of what she was witnessing, but because her body never seemed to choose the most inconvenient times to remind her that it was altering her without first asking her opinion. Her jaw snapped shut as another spasm rolled in like a slow, foul wave.
Her brain was shattered and piercing. She was unable to even scream for her mother—her throat constricted, as though she'd wail if she opened her mouth. Everything overcame her with proportion: anger, grief, and embarrassment. She did not need help. She required this part of her life to stop blindsiding her. Her arms wrapped around her waist instinctively, as though she could keep herself intact.
The worst of it wasn't the pain—though there was pain. Pain that was deep, pulsating, twisting up through her hips and into her back like something attempting to claw out from her spine. But no, the worst was the uncertainty. The feeling that her body was no longer hers, but rather a half-finished specimen for someone else. She'd be able to sit, stretch, even laugh—then, in the span of a thought, her belly would heave, her knees would buckle, and she'd be consumed whole by the cramping and the nausea and this ill, swollen pressure emanating from just below her navel.
Now, crouched on the icy floor beneath a hot shower, her arms clenched around her shins, Hiyori Toyotaro was struggling not to spew bile into the drain. Her ragged breathing was hot. "Tch… it's leaking too much," she muttered to herself as the blood-stained water dripped down her thighs and rounded her ankles, red-stained with menstrual waste, blended with the blood from minute bursts within her—too early, too much, too quick.
She wasn't bathing. She was surviving. This was her bunker. Her stall. Her war zone. And she wasn't sure which part of her was still fighting.
But she wasn't dumb. She knew exactly how she ended up like this.
"Damn," she muttered, forehead pressed to her knees. "I'm going to kill her."
Her.
Hana.
Her senior by two years. Her club leader. Her "friend."
Hana had always been warm, charismatic, effortlessly gorgeous in that way that felt both off in the distance and intoxicating. She was curvy, big-laughing, cruel in the gentlest possible ways—"You're so adorable, Hiyori. If only your chest were as bold as that attitude, you'd be perfect." She'd smile when she said it. She always smiled. And the next day, she'd make an offer. A powder. A capsule. A chewable "vitamin." The first one's free.
"Don't worry, these aren't steroids," Hana had whispered like a whistleblower. "These are bio-identical. They just assist in speeding up the natural process. Girls like us—we just need a little push."
Hiyori hadn't wanted to be flat. She didn't want to appear like a kid in comparison to her friends. She didn't want to notice the way that boys glanced over her as if she were wallpaper. So she did it. Not once. She bought more. She saved lunch money. She paid in cash, small bills folded up in hair ties and snack wrappers. She took powders, then switched to pills when Hana said the effects plateaued. She heard about the injections, the strongest type—the fastest.
And they worked. Visibly.
In a matter of weeks, her hips curved out. Her chest hurt, and then it didn't, and then suddenly she required new bras. Her thighs were tight. The other girls noticed. The boys did too. One boy ran into her in the hallway and blushed. Her posture shifted. Her voice dropped a note or so from the swelling pressure in her chest. She smiled in the mirror.
Then came the expense.
Here's how the drugs functioned—what Hana never revealed to her.
The capsules and powders were laden with artificial hormone analogues, usually methylated estradiol forms, sometimes adulterated with unknown levels of estrogenic compounds created to deceive the pituitary gland to overproduce luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). These govern the whole reproductive maturation process. The shots were worse—skipping the gut and liver altogether, loading active hormones directly into her system. Her ovaries, hardly tuned for her years, started firing like a sputtering engine. Her endometrial lining grew too quickly. Her cervix enlarged. Her glands went crazy. All of this resulted in early menstrual cycles, prolonged periods, and internal tension as her system attempted to retune against input data.
Even worse, the estrogen surge caused an imbalance with progesterone, leading to uterine inflammation, nausea and dizziness, and in extreme instances—such as this one—suicidal, unprovoked menstrual bleeding combined with acute cramping and reflux of bile.
This was not puberty. This was forced evolution.
She couldn't explain it to her mother. Sakura Toyotaro, the principal, would rage—not in worry, but rage at the fact that Hiyori had spent more than 10,000 yen on a cocktail of black-market puberty gaslight pills. Her mother would see this as weakness. She'd accuse it of being vanity. She'd make it about herself.
And her brother… Minato was strange. He'd nod, draw some a piece about it, and ask if he could borrow her cramps as a metaphor for intergenerational trauma for his last art project. Then just disappear without even inviting her in.
So she suffered alone. All of it. The swelling. The bleeding. The wringing in her belly. The scalding tears. The shame. The burns on her lower back—still slightly discernible, pink and deformed—left over from that asshole Shotaro Mugyiwara shot her in the corridor like some hellish superhero thug. She even resent him anymore. She also resented what she'd turned into by competing with girls like Hana.
Alone in the shower, she sat huddled into herself, riding out the storm, inhaling steam that misted the mirror behind her. The tiles were cold. The water never felt warm enough. The quiet hummed around her ears. No one knocked.
And somewhere—somewhere in the building, Hana was smiling. Selling more "boosters" to younger girls. Tainting bodies for profit. Whispering to some new flat-chested girl that she too could be perfect… if she only pushed herself a little harder.
Worst part was that these drugs were addictive.
She is addicted to them, now she need to figure hell out to change her life.
or She needs the child who changes lives.