Before a soul is summoned into its name — before seven hollow ages dissolve in the pit of oblivion — before the present crashes against the hard fact of its own existence — there is a place where silence is the only language, and forgetting is the only temple.
That is where this story began. The one time itself never dared to write down.
———
Tai was, at first, a child like any child. The world had given him dreams.
But reality is not generous with those.
When he was four years old, he passed through things no child his age should have to pass through.
Every night his mother would tell him the same thing before bed:
"Go to your room. Sleep. Whatever sounds you hear — don't come to our room."
One night, curiosity took him by the hand. He didn't know what fate had been saving for him behind that door. He opened it.
He saw something he was never supposed to see.
His mother. Another man. Not his father.
The shock knocked the air from his body. He stood frozen in the doorway — a child — unable to look away, unable to move. He gasped. Tried to breathe. Stood there in the corridor with his chest collapsing around a silence too large for a four-year-old to carry.
Finally he turned. Walked back to his room on unsteady legs. Lay in bed.
He didn't sleep.
When the man left, his mother noticed the door had been open.
"Next time," she said to herself, "I'll remember to lock it."
———
The next day, she discovered she was pregnant.
She told her husband. He was happy. She told Tai.
Tai wasn't happy.
He was thinking: Is this my father's child — or his?
He said nothing.
A year passed. A girl was born.
Tai was five now. He looked at his new sister and thought: Is she my sister — or that man's daughter?
He kept the secret. He always kept the secret.
———
Years went by.
Tai turned twelve.
One evening at the dinner table, his father looked over and noticed Tai hadn't touched his food. He studied his son for a moment, then said:
"You've grown so fast, Tai. I didn't notice until now. I must be getting old."
He paused.
"I want to have a real conversation with you someday — before I'm gone. But you're somewhere far away right now. What are you thinking about?"
Tai didn't hear him.
He was at the table, but he wasn't at the table. He was in a courtroom — his father on the bench, his mother at the prosecution's desk, and himself standing in the center with nowhere to go.
His father flicked him on the forehead.
"Hey. What's going on in there?"
He should not have asked.
Tai said: "I've seen the same man walking into this house for eight years."
His father went still. He thought it was a joke — had to be a joke.
His mother said, quickly: "He's too young to understand things like this."
Then Tai took off his shirt.
His father's face changed completely.
Bruises. Cuts. Old ones and new ones layered over each other.
Tai's voice cracked open.
"You don't know that there's a man who comes to this house late at night. You don't know that the wife you love is a liar. She's been betraying you — and she and that man have been beating your son since I was five years old."
The table went silent.
His father asked for a divorce that same night. Told his wife he would file charges. That he would have a DNA test done — because the girl wasn't his, and he already knew it.
His mother said: "What's your proof?"
"My son," he said. "And the child you gave birth to — she isn't mine. I'll prove it."
———
That night, his father wasn't home.
His mother used the window.
She came for Tai.
He ran to the kitchen. She followed. He pulled open the drawer and took out a knife and turned around and said:
"If you take one more step — I will kill you."
She laughed.
"You? You can't."
She reached for the knife.
He stabbed her in the stomach.
She stopped. Looked down. Then looked at him. Then fell.
Tai stared at his hands. His pulse was going so fast he could hear it. His mother was on the floor, bleeding, saying:
"I'll kill you. You little piece of garbage."
He ran.
He ran straight into the man coming through the front door.
They looked at each other.
Tai bit down on his fear and threw a punch. The man caught his wrist, twisted, hit him across the nose, and beat him badly. Tai pointed toward the kitchen. The man looked up, saw the blood, and carried his mother out the door without a second glance at the boy on the floor.
On his way out, he stepped on Tai's right shoulder.
Deliberately. And kept walking.
The house was empty.
Tai lost consciousness on the floor.
His father came home from work and saw the front door standing open.
He ran inside.
He found Tai on the floor. Grabbed him by the shoulders. Tried to wake him. When he didn't respond, his father thought he was dead — and then looked up and saw the blood trail leading toward the kitchen.
He followed it to the door.
He picked Tai up and drove to the hospital.
———
While Tai was unconscious, his father filed every case he'd promised.
The DNA results came back.
His wife had been unfaithful. The girl wasn't his.
And Tai — wasn't his either.
Tai woke up three days later to a summons to court.
He sat in the gallery and listened to his father divorce his mother. He scanned the room for the man, for his mother — his mother who was supposed to be in the hospital, but was there, sitting in a chair like nothing had happened.
The divorce was finalized. Then came the question of the children.
His father stood and said:
"I'll raise Tai. I raised him from the beginning. I can't leave him in her hands."
His mother shrugged.
"Take him. Though I could claim him if I wanted."
———
After the session, they walked out into the hallway together. His father lit a cigarette and looked down at him and said:
"Even if you're not my blood — I'm still your father."
Tai's vision blurred. Tears came down his face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "All of this happened because of me."
His father put a hand on top of his head and looked up at the ceiling.
"You didn't do anything wrong."
They drove home.
His father opened the door slowly. The blood was still there — dried into the floor, the walls. Nothing had been cleaned.
Tai was in a wheelchair. Two weeks before he could walk.
His father pushed him to his room and said:
"If you need anything, tell me."
Then he smiled and said:
"You're terrible at keeping secrets."
And left.
After the door closed, Tai heard something shatter. Then his father's voice — raw, breaking — as he put his fists through every surface that would hold still. Chairs. Walls. Whatever was there.
Tai didn't go to him.
He just cried.
———
Two weeks later he could walk again.
He came home from school one evening as the sun was going down. Changed his clothes. Showered. Went to the kitchen and cooked dinner.
When it was ready, he called his father.
No answer.
He called again. His voice came back to him like something dropped into a very deep well.
The quiet shifted. Became something with teeth.
He went to his father's room. The bed was made. The air was still. His father's phone was ringing on the mattress with no one to answer it.
The fear came in slowly, then all at once, and carried him outside.
He turned the corner of the building.
Time stopped.
It wasn't just a body. It was the end of the world, made physical — hanging in the evening air, swaying slightly in the cold breeze. The face that had smiled at him every morning was gone. In its place: a void that screamed upward at the sky without making a sound.
Tai's feet left the ground — not literally, but in every way that mattered. The red of the sunset looked like something it wasn't. Gravity ceased to make sense. There was no crying, no sound — only a silent detonation somewhere in the center of him, and where there had been a boy who had just cooked dinner, there was now something else entirely.
He walked up to his father.
He was smiling.
"Dinner's ready," he said.
He went back inside and brought the food out. Set it down in front of him. Said:
"Here. Eat."
And then sat beside him and started eating.
The tears came without warning. He couldn't finish. He threw the plate against the wall.
And then he came apart completely.
———
The neighbors came out. Saw the noise, saw Tai — and recognized him, and assumed the worst.
Five men came forward and grabbed him. They found his hand bleeding — he'd bitten into it without realizing.
He laughed.
"Get away from me. Can't you see my father is right here?"
When the clouds moved and the moonlight fell across the body, the men went pale. They thought Tai had done it.
Tai screamed:
"Father — who did this to you?"
The police came. An investigation opened. And then a court date.
Same courtroom. Same judge.
The judge looked at his notes and said:
"As the father is deceased, custody of Tai transfers to his mother, effective immediately. Case closed."
Tai stood up.
"Why is the case closed when the killer hasn't been caught?"
The judge didn't respond.
Security was called.
Tai looked around the room — left, right — waiting for a single person to stand. The gallery was full. Not one pair of eyes held his.
"What are you all afraid of? Why is this case being closed? Is there anyone here? Anyone? I don't want to go with her — I want to go to an orphanage —"
The guards took him out.
As they dragged him through the door, he saw it — the man, catching the judge's eye. A small smile passing between them.
Every one of them in that room, Tai thought. All of them with their badges and their robes and their empty eyes. Not one of them saw me.
I promise you. I'll give you all cases of your own one day — about your deaths.
———
He was put in the car with his mother.
She bound his hands and beat him on the drive home.
When they arrived, the man threw him through the front door.
Tai lay on the ground and looked up at him.
The man stepped on his face.
What followed was a year.
A year of it — daily, methodical, without mercy. The beatings were severe enough that Tai stopped sleeping normally; he passed out instead, from the force of them. His mother joined in. The man joined in.
But Tai had something.
A video. Taken from the beginning — the man entering the house, his mother, all of it. Every visit, documented, timestamped. Everything.
After a year of this, his mother opened the front door and shoved him out and said:
"These problems — you brought them on yourself. Nobody told you to go tell your father."
He was thirteen years old. No bag. Clothes that were torn, old, falling apart.
As he was pushed out into the rain, the man leaned against the doorframe and said:
"The person who killed your father — that was me."
Tai's eyes moved to him.
Slowly. Completely.
He was full of broken bones. Covered in bruises. Standing in the rain.
He looked at the man and said:
"You will not live a happy life."
The man laughed.
"And who exactly is going to make my life miserable?"
"Me," Tai said. "And I'll make certain it's me.
Nobody stood with me in that courtroom because they thought I was just a child. So I'll release the video. I'll haunt your sleep. And a simple apology won't be enough to make me stop — not even close. It doesn't matter how much you're laughing right now. There will be a moment when you wish I had died as a child.
But I'll be the one who ends your life. Slowly."
The man's face changed. He hit Tai — again, again — and said:
"You? You'll do that to me? Don't flatter yourself, boy. You're on my property and no one will hear you calling for help."
The small girl began to cry inside.
The man let Tai go and went to her.
Tai's mother pushed him the rest of the way out the door.
The rain was cold. The night had just started.
Tai stood in it with his face turned up to the sky, so the rain could mix with whatever was still falling from his eyes.
A voice reached him — from somewhere underneath everything, moving upward through his chest:
You are weak right now. Humiliated. Broken. Small. And those are your advantages — because no one will expect what you're going to do.
What do you think about revenge?
Tai's voice came out barely above a whisper.
"It doesn't matter who stood against me. I'll have my revenge. And I'll prove to every single person who left me — that they were wrong."
End of Chapter 12