Coming home from school on December 18th, 2047, I took off my shoes and placed them around an inch from the door. I quickly replaced those shoes with my inside slippers. I adjusted the strap on my bookbag, listening around the house for Heki's footsteps.

  Weird. He's usually out of his room around this time, scavenging the kitchen for food.

  My soul yearns for the kitchen, and so does my stomach. I think Mama had stocked up on the seaweed. I could make a riceball. Before I have time to think, I'm in the kitchen. I grab the seaweed box and start to open it, before a soft sniffling sound makes its way to my ears.

  The blood flow nearly stops in my hands, that's how still they became, along with the rest of my body. I'd never heard tears in this house, except my own.

  I spin around, eyes squinting at the source of the sound. In the living room, sits Mama. Her gaze is fixed on the TV; I only see the back of her head. She shakes, though. I squint harder, and put on my reading glasses. Breaking news? I approach the couch slowly, but with urgency.

  Mama turns around to see me, and incoherent Japanese immediately spills out all at once. My eyes blow wide, hands instinctively moving into the air.

  'Mama--Mama, what's wrong?' I stammer, lowering one of my hands to carefully place on her shoulder. She immediately slaps it away, though. Even in this state, she hates physical touch.

  'Heki--' She musters between broken, loud wheezes. 'Heki is hurt--'

  Mama never really was good at English, after all, we only moved to America from Japan after I was born.

  'What?' My heart nearly stops for a moment, before taking off into the sprint of my lifetime. My blood rushes through me so fast it makes my hands tingle, and I swear I nearly blacked out for a moment.

  I sit, more like collapse onto the sofa next to Mama, adjusting my glasses with shaky and numb hands to read what's going on.

  ...

  No.

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  No!

  The headline at the bottom of the screen reads:

  Young Japanese Man Found Presumably Dead on Main St.

  The image above framed a young adult man. His hair, pin straight and a hot mess. His eyes, dark. Pale skin that never seemed to tan.

  That can't be Heki. No.

  Heki was always happy, and bright. Well. Not... this. A dark red liquid pooled around his torso, but most of it was mainly around his--wait--where is his arm!?

  The entirety of this boy's lower right arm was cut off. A bit of the bone stuck out of the cut, and little pieces of flesh and veins remained around it. The muscle exposed in the upper arm was turning gray, I could tell that much.

  I felt sick. An understatement, actually.

  The acid in my stomach bubbles up to the sphincter, as if trying to find Heki itself. As it creeps up my esophagus, I stand abruptly. All the blood in my body drains itself toward my feet, and I fall unceremoniously to the ground. The urge to vomit slowly fades, but I vaguely hear a loud thunk and a sharp pang shoots through my head.

  Once I come to my senses, I realize I must have hit my head on the coffee table on my way down. My eyes sting, and my ears are tortured by this god-awful ringing.

  I use every last bit of energy in my body to look up at the screen again. My eyes, blurry with tears both from the physical pain of the hit, and the emotional pain of my brother on that screen, look over the image once more.

  It's not Heki.

  But it is. A voice speaks in my head. Not mine.

  A flurry of tears fall from my eyes, and I cry out. I can't bother to get up anymore. Everything is over.

  Heki was my reason for being who I am. He practically raised me. Don't get me wrong, I love Mama, but she just doesn't have that wisdom. That soul.

  Now, that soul is in the afterlife.

  That despair crushes my very essence, until it shifts into something darker. Angrier. Who could've done something like that to someone so young!? He was only eighteen. He was just about to end his first semester of college. He still had so, so much to live for.

  Being his younger sister, I had to avenge him. I could never want anything more in my life.

  I swore in that moment, to every higher being that would listen, that I would find whoever or whatever did that, whatever ruined his chance at a life, my chance at a life, and make them live through hell.

  Just like they did to me.