Chapter 174: The Boy Before Hiiro (2)

Watanabe Souta, the youngest son of a family famous for producing champions.

For a long time, he believed every story written about them.

Their house had looked less like a home and more like a private museum dedicated to the Watanabe name. Trophies crowded glass cabinets in the entrance hall, polished so careful that visitors could see their reflections between gold plaques. Medals hung inside frames along the walls, and newspaper clippings followed visitors from the entryway to the staircase. Even the corridor leading to the bedrooms had been turned into another display of victories, as though there could be no corner of the house where his family was allowed to be ordinary.

His mother held the place of honor. In the largest photograph, Watanabe Koi stood atop an Olympic podium with a gold medal around her neck. Her white karate gi was immaculate, one fist raised while cameras flashed from below. The photograph had been taken years before Souta was born, but he knew the image as well as he knew his mother's face.

His father had his own wall.

Watanabe Daigo beneath the blazing lights of a boxing arena, bruised and sweating, both gloves lifted above his head while an entire crowd appeared to scream his name. Beneath the photograph sat championship belts and framed magazine covers describing him as relentless, disciplined, and indestructible.

Their children were expected to continue the legacy.

Akihito, the eldest, followed their mother into karate and became a national youth champion before he was old enough to drive. Masato took after their father and excelled in boxing, while Naomi and Ren made names for themselves in gymnastics and competitive swimming.

Four older siblings, four athletes, and four more pieces of evidence that the Watanabes were exactly what the newspaper claimed, a dynasty.

They were talented, disciplined, victorious, and perfect. Souta believed the final word until he was nine.

That was when his father's drug use became public.

One failed test opened a door nobody could close again. Years of concealed substance abuse followed. Questions arose about previous victories, then came the accusations of payments made to people who had promised discretion, doctors who had ignored suspicious results, and trainers who suddenly claimed they had never known anything.

Sponsors disappeared within days. Brands that once placed his father;s face on advertisements removed him overnight. Former friends appeared on television panels and explained solemnly that they had always suspected something was wrong.

Reporters gathered outside the family gate.

From his upstairs bedroom, Souta could see rows of cameras through a narrow gap in the curtains. Voices shouted whenever anyone approached the windows of front door.

"Watanabe-san!"

"Did your family know?"

"Have your children been tested?"

"Do you have anything to say to the athletes you defeated?"

Souta had been frightened of the reporters.

Then a glass struck the wall downstairs and shattered, making him flinch. The sound inside frightened him more than the people outside.

His father's voice followed, angry and slurred. Then, his mother's loud ones.

His mother's scandal followed before the first one had time to disappear from the headlines. Messages were leaked, photographs published, and an affair with another athlete dissected across every channel.

Souta did not fully understand infidelity at nine, but one thing for sure, he understood screaming. That was enough.

His parents argued behind closed doors at first. Then, Souta learned not to linger in the hallway outside the study. He learned to increase the television volume whenever voices began rising downstairs.

Once, Souta watched his mother sweep everything from a dining table with one violent movement while his father stood across from her, laughing bitterly.

That night, Souta discovered which rooms in the house could be locked from the inside.

The perfect family collapsed publicly and violently.

Akihito took it the hardest.

Souta had worshiped his eldest brother. Everyone had.

Akihito was the dependable one, the heir to their mother's reputation, the brother who helped Souta tie his first belt and waited beside the mat when he competed. He carried Souta on his shoulders after victories and shared his sweets when their parents were not looking, and sat

Back when Souta was seven, he had announced that he wanted to become exactly like Akihito.

Akihito had laughed, then he reached down and ruffled his hair. "Aim higher, Souta."

After their parents' scandals, reporters pursued Akihito almost as aggressively as they pursued his parents since he was the family's most visible child. So now, every defeat suddenly meant the Watanabe talent had been fraudulent all along. As for every victory? He earned different questions.

Had he taken something? Did he still support his father? Did he forgive his mother? Was his success legitimate?

Questions that had nothing to do with karate followed him everywhere.

Akihito smiled through them at first. Then… he smiled less.

Along with that, he began skipping meals, missed practice occasionally, stopped accompanying Souta to training, and soon, he barely left his bedroom.

Souta thought perhaps his brother only needed time. Once the reporters became bored, Akihito would come downstairs again. They would train together. He would laugh, and everything wouldn't return completely normal, but maybe they could build something close enough.

One evening, Souta won a small tournament. It was nothing important compared with the events his family usually attended. Still, he had been proud.

He returned home, carrying a medal around his neck but no one seemed to bother looking at him. Their mother was arguing on the phone, so Souta took a tray from the kitchen himself, and carried dinner upstairs because he always did this whenever he came home.

Stopping outside Akihito's room, he stared at it for a moment.

"Aki-nii? I brought dinner."

The bedroom door was locked, so he sat outside with the tray balanced across his knees. For a while, he listened to the silence on the other side. Then, he smiled to himself and started talking.

"I won today," he called through the door. "Coach said my spinning kick was the best one."

No answer came from inside.

Souta looked down at the rice and grilled fish. "I got hit in the face afterward, but that part wasn't my fault. I was being careful but Takeru is too tall."

Usually, his brother would have laughed at that, but the hallway remained silent.

He looked down at his medal. "I'll show you this if you come out."

He sat there for another ten minutes until his legs started hurting. In the end, he placed the tray carefully beside the door and stood.

Before leaving, he crouched again and pushed the medal through the narrow gap beneath the door.

"There." He smiled faintly. "You can look at it first."

With that, he went to bed.

===

The next morning, the tray remained outside Akihito's room, untouched and cold.

Souta remembered staring at the dried surface of the rice. Something about it bothered him, but before he could think about it for too long, his mother called from downstairs, reminding him that he was going to be late for school.

So, he left… but never went to school. Instead, Souta found himself standing outside the dojo of his old instructor.

There, his mind could finally focus on something else. He did not have to wonder why Akihito had not eaten. He did not have to listen for footsteps from upstairs or think about the closed bedroom waiting for him when he returned home.

Inside the dojo, there were only familiar things–the dull slap of bare feet against the mats, the sharp crack of padded strikes, and an instructor who cared far more about whether Souta kept his guard up than whatever was happening inside the Watanabe house.

So Souta trained.

He trained until his arms shook, until sweat soaked through his shirt and his lungs burned with every breath. Whenever a thought tried to creep back in, he hit harder. It was easier that way. As long as his body hurt enough, his mind did not have room to.

When he returned that afternoon, an ambulance stood outside their house.

The reporters had somehow already gathered beyond the gate, and adults moved quickly though the entrance hall.

Someone blocked Souta from going upstairs. He didn't understand why.

Then his mother came, and someone whispered something to her which caused her to fall on her knees.

Souta had never seen his mother collapse before.

His father stood near the wall with both arms hanging uselessly at his sides. For once, he wasn't shouting, and he wasn't angry. He simply stared at nothing.

Souta looked toward the staircase.

No one explained things properly to him at first. He only heard fragments from the adult's conversation.

"We found him..."

"... too late."

"I'm sorry."

It took Souta several minutes to understand what everyone else seemed to know already.

He stood there as the paramedics carried his brother out of the house and toward the waiting ambulance, staring at the shape beneath the sheet as his mind simply refused to connect it to the person he knew.

"He took his own life…"

The words reached Souta, but they did not make sense. Not at first.

His brother had been upstairs yesterday, his dinner had still been outside his door that morning. And somehow, while Souta had been training in a dojo trying not to think about him and his family, Akihito had already been gone.