The midday sun beat down, harsh and unforgiving against the small, dusty figure wandering aimlessly through the bustling city streets. Buildings towered overhead, cold glass and concrete giants that seemed to mock the tiny boy below. His light blue hair was matted, clinging to a face smeared with dirt and drying blood from tiny nicks and scrapes. His eyes, wide and vacant, stared straight ahead, reflecting the empty blue sky above—a perfect mirror for the hollow space inside. He shuffled forward, tiny legs aching, his dark, oversized shirt hanging loosely on his frame. In one small, trembling hand, a smear of dark, sticky residue hinted at the horrors he’d left behind.

The world rushed past him—people chatting, laughing, going about their heroic or mundane lives—but none of them saw him. He was just a shadow, a piece of debris on the sidewalk.

A woman, dressed smartly, paused briefly, her eyes flicking over him with a quick, assessing glance. A faint flicker of pity, quickly replaced by a mask of discomfort, crossed her features.

"Oh dear," she murmured, taking a quick step back as if afraid of contamination. "You look like you've had a terrible time, little one. A hero or the police should be along soon to take care of things, yes? Stay right here."

And then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd, leaving behind only the faint scent of expensive perfume.

The boy—Tenko—stared at the spot where she vanished. His lips trembled, but no sound escaped. The silence where a comforting word should have been was deafening. It felt like a confirmation, a final, crushing verdict delivered by the uncaring world.

This is it, then. This is the punishment.

His gaze drifted down to his hand, the one that felt so strange, so itchy. If someone had just reached out, just touched him gently, maybe... maybe this awful, burning feeling would have stopped. Maybe the dust wouldn't have settled so heavily on everything.

"It's so bright," a small, raspy voice whispered, barely audible over the city noise. The words felt foreign, like they were scraped from the back of his throat.

"No one... saw me, did they?" A faint tremor ran through the small frame, not from cold, but from a deep, internal freezing.

"If they had reached out... just once..." The thought trailed off, dissolving into the vast, empty expanse of the sunny afternoon. As the thought fades from his mind, he becomes someone else. A different soul wakes up in this small traumatized body.