Prologue

Tatsuya Gray was always alone. Well, not always. Not when he was a child. When he was about five years old, he had a nice, whole family, a best friend, and a pretty decent life. He didn’t care too much for his half-japanese heritage, and just soared through life like any little five year old should. He was adorable, just like his best friend Madison Anabel Fisher. And she wouldn’t go by any other name, either.
“Hey, Tatsuya!” the little girl called from across a large field of grass at Central Park. She was with her family, though. Tatsuya didn’t like her family, and they didn’t like him, either. They thought he was a bad influence on their only daughter. It was his fault that she was so weird.
She approached him and sat down next to him on the bench.
“Hello, Madison Anabel Fisher,” Tatsuya greeted her. She always got so annoyed if anyone called her anything but that. It was like her trademark.
“Maddy, dear,” her father said. “Stay here, and we’ll be right back, okay?”
“Daddy, I don’t want you calling me that,” she said, her voice whiney. “I don’t like that name.”
Her father didn’t respond, and just walked off with her mother, who remained silent.
“I don’t see why you’re so annoyed by that,” Tatsuya told her. “Maddy is a pretty name.”
“Yes, but four other girls in my class have the name Madison, and two of them are called Maddy. I don’t want to be the same as all of those people.”
“I understand,” the boy said, inching closer to Madison Anabel Fisher on the bench. “Having a different name is nice.”
“That’s why you’re so lucky, Tatsuya,” she told him. “I’ve never met anyone with the same name as you.”
“I guess,” he said. “But you shouldn’t let small things like that bug you like that.”
“Oh, what do you know?” she giggled. “Come on, let’s go for a small walk.”
“Let’s not go too far, though,” Tatsuya said, standing up. “My parents want me to stay in view of them.” He turned around and glanced at his parents with his baby sister in the distance.
“Of course not,” she said, following him and putting her arm around his so they linked together. “Let’s just go to the edge of the street, okay?”
“We’ve got to be careful, though,” Tatsuya told his best friend.
“Don’t get so bugged with small things!” Madison Anabel Fisher mocked him.
They began to walk together, and arrived at the edge of the street where the cars where whizzing by in a big blur of different colors.
“Why do you think they’re in such a hurry?” Madison Anabel Fisher asked, not directly at Tatsuya, though, but more into the sky.
Tatsuya shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got to be somewhere important. Like a birthday party, or something.”
The girl giggled again, and then let go of Tatsuya’s arm promptly before sitting down on the sidewalk.
“Maybe we should go back,” Tatsuya said. “Our parents might be looking for us.”
“Just relax, Tatsuya,” the girl giggled again. “We’ll go back in about a minute.”
The blur of colors stretched across the sea of the road, and it was like the next five seconds of Tatsuya’s life were sped forward. There was a bicycle coming in from the right, and then something Tatsuya had never seen before: blood. The spilt blood of an adorable, small five year old girl.
Tatsuya heard many screams at the same time: the man on the bike had screamed, Madison Anabel Fisher’s parents screamed and rushed over to their fallen daughter.
“You know, little kids shouldn’t be lying in the way like this!” the cyclist screamed into the sky.
“THIS IS YOUR FAULT,” Madison Anabel Fisher’s mother screamed at Tatsuya. “YOU DID THIS TO MY BABY.”
“I-I didn’t,” Tatsuya said with a small voice.
The shaking hands of a careful father scooped Madison Anabel Fisher’s tiny body into his arms, and walked off without looking back at Tatsuya.
“I didn’t do it,” he said again, even though no one could hear him.
The parents, the cyclist, and the girl were gone.
Later that night, Tatsuya was back at home. His mother had just put the food out on the table, but he didn’t feel like eating. The horrifying image of his tiny friend’s body lying on a bloody sidewalk kept infiltrating his mind, and he felt like he couldn’t do anything.
“Tatsuya, you have to eat,” his father told him with a strong voice. “You can’t just starve yourself.”
“Joseph, don’t force him through anything,” Tatsuya’s mother said, her voice much softer in comparison to her husband. “The poor boy’s been through too much today.”
“Of course, Amaya,” he said. “But he still has to eat something.”
And then the slight sobs of Tatsuya’s baby sister came from upstairs.
“Tell Kimiko to stop crying,” Tatsuya said, his voice completely monotone. “It’s making my head hurt.”
“I’ll go,” Amaya Gray said. She kept one last plate of food on the table, and then rushed upstairs to comfort the crying baby.
“Tatsuya, listen to me,” his father said, his voice much softer now. “I know some bad things happened today, but there are always going to be things that will try to bring you down. You just have to know to be smarter than faith, and…” he let his speech trail off, and then pat Tatuya once on his back. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Even though Tatsuya’s father never really finished his speeches, or fully completed his thoughts, Tatsuya always knew what he was talking about.
“Yes, daddy, I understand.”
“Good,” he said, smiling an odd sweet smile. “I’m glad you understand. And remember—there are always going to be things in life that get you down, and it’s just going to get worse and worse, but even if you get down, you can’t let those things keep you down.”
Tatsuya nodded, even though he didn’t think anything could be worse than having his best friend run over with a bicycle.
Tatsuya’s father gave him one more hearty pat on the back, and then went back to his dinner.
The distant sobs subsided, and Amaya had come back down to the dinner table.
“Kimiko is worse than Tatsuya when he was a child,” she joked.
His father chuckled, but Tatsuya stayed still—he still couldn’t think about anything except for Madison Anabel Fisher, and the bicycle, and the bloody sidewalk.
And then came a knock on the door. Why would anyone come to our house while we’re eating dinner? Tatsuya thought.
“I’ll get it,” Tatsuya’s father said, standing up.
Tatsuya followed him, and watched his father open the door from a distance. He couldn’t see who the man was when the door opened, but a faint outline of him was visible. He was tall, and his hair was kind of spiky, and it stuck up in an odd angle.
“Oh, I had a feeling you were coming,” Joseph Gray told the stranger.
“Did you, Joe?” said a scratchy voice. “Did you have a feeling about this?” The stranger’s arm raised to about the level of where Joseph’s head was.
BANG. It was the loudest noise Tatsuya heard, and then more screams. Tatsuya’s mother shrieked as she watched her husband fall to the floor, squeals of crying came from the upstairs bedroom, and the odd stranger lowered his arm. But Tatsuya didn’t react. No, he didn’t even flinch. The five year old boy simply gazed as his father fell onto the floor, into an even bigger pool of blood than Madison Anabel Fisher’s.
Tatsuya’s mother fell to the floor after his father, and began to sob over his sleeping body as Kimiko continued to do the same upstairs.
“I’ll take care of Kimiko,” Tatsuya told his mother, who wasn’t listening. Tatsuya walked upstairs, and into his baby sister’s room.
“It’s okay, Kimi,” he said, rocking his baby sister in his hands. “Mommy will come up soon and give you your dinner, and then daddy will sing you his lullaby, okay?”
The sobbing stopped, and Kimiko gave a small smile.
Tatsuya smiled back. “That’s much better. Do you want to eat something, or do you want to take a nap?”
Kimiko answered by giving him a small yawn.
“I see,” he said. “I’ll leave you in your crib, then.” He gently placed his baby sister back into his crib, and let her fall asleep as he left her room.
His mother was still sobbing downstairs, and Tatsuya didn’t think that the best way to get her to stop was to ask her if she was hungry, so instead he let her be and went into his room.
“Too much blood,” Tatsuya said, curling up into a ball on his bed. “Too much for on day.” And as Tatsuya tried to empty his mind of the horrific experiences he had today, he fell asleep.
After what felt like two seconds, he was awaked by his mother.
“Mommy, what time is it?” I asked.
“It’s about 10 AM, Tatsuya,” she said, her voice even softer than usual.
“Already?” he asked. “How’s Madison Anabel Fisher… and where’s daddy?”
Amaya bit her bottom lip. She didn’t know how to answer her son’s questions.
“They’re gone, darling,” she said, her voice even quieter than before.
“Gone?” Tatsuya repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Well, Madison’s parents called, and said that they were going to be moving away. They didn’t want their child to live in such a dangerous place anymore.”
Tatsuya knew this wasn’t true. He knew that her parents just didn’t want their precious daughter to be around a boy like him all the tim.
“And daddy?” Tatsuya asked. “Where did he move away to?”
Amaya bit her lip again, and tried to hold back the tears. “He’s just gone.”
“Okay,” Tatsuya said, closing his eyes again. “Mommy, I’m sleepy.”
The caring mother placed one light hand on her son’s head. “Go to sleep. I’ll wake you up later, okay?”
“‘Kay,” he said, curling up into a ball again.
From that moment on, Tatsuya Gray was always alone.