**1**
(First case: Ria Kisaragi and Ken Amatsurugi)
Their parents were killed. Because they didn't pay the debt. A debt they took from the Takayama gang when their grandmother got sick. The money was needed for the operation. Grandmother died a week later, but the debt remained.
Father tried to negotiate. He went to the Takayama people three times. Three times they kicked him out, laughed, spat in his face. The fourth time he didn't come. They found him in a car, blown up, burned, with the remains of what had once been a human. Mother was with him. They were sitting next to each other when the gas tank exploded.
Ria was nine. Ken was ten. Their aunt took them in; she lived in another city. She didn't like children, but she liked the money left to them. When the money ran out, the aunt said: "You are adults now. From here on, you're on your own."
Ria and Ken grew up as orphans.
They didn't cry at the funeral. They didn't cry at all. Their life split into before and after.
**2**
(Second case: Aki Mikuri)
Everyone at the market knew him. Not by name, by voice. He was always loud and cheerful, shouting: "Tomatoes! Fresh tomatoes!" and people smiled. No one knew that at night he sat in his small room and rewound the tape on an old VCR.
His father was a cameraman. Not a Hollywood one, a street one. He filmed weddings, birthdays, sometimes funerals. Until one day he filmed something he shouldn't have seen. The Takayama people don't like witnesses.
They killed his father. On camera. Aki found the cassette a month later. He watched it once. And realized his life was over.
He didn't know why they recorded it. Maybe for a report to the boss. Maybe to intimidate. Maybe just because they liked watching it later. Aki didn't want to know.
But he remembered every detail. Every sound. Every movement of the film. He rewound it again and again until he learned it by heart.
He didn't show the cassette to anyone. He hid it. And began searching for others. The ones left after his father. The ones he filmed for people. Weddings. Birthdays. Funerals. Aki rewatched them all. Looking for faces. Looking for hints. Looking for those who might be connected to the killer of the person closest to him.
At first it was simple. He collected other people's recordings. Asked neighbors, acquaintances, his father's clients. "Let me watch, maybe there's something important there." They gave them. They didn't know what exactly he was looking for.
Then he started filming himself. He filmed life. Streets. Intersections. Houses. Faces. He was looking for them. From that fucking day.
He didn't know what he would do when he found them. Maybe take it to the police. Maybe publish it. Maybe just watch them and wait.
Aki didn't sell his recordings. Didn't show them to anyone. He just kept them. In boxes. On shelves. Under the bed. There was no room for furniture in his room, only film reels, discs, memory cards. Thousands of hours of other people's lives. And one of someone else's death.
He rewatched them at night. Otherwise he couldn't sleep. Because if he closed his eyes, he saw that cassette again. Heard those sounds. Felt that smell.
His thoughts were only about one thing: if the truth disappears, he will never know who killed his father. And without that, he cannot live.
**3**
(Third case: Kim Lee)
He doesn't remember when he first realized he liked pain. He only remembers that his parents were constantly fighting. Over money, over debts, over the fact that his father lost their house at cards, his mother pawned her ring, and the Takayama people came.
They didn't beat Kim. They beat his father. And Kim sat in the corner and watched. And felt a strange warmth somewhere in his chest. Not pity. Not fear. Something else.
He was still a child when he first touched himself. He didn't understand what he was doing. He was simply looking for a way to feel at least something besides the cold that filled him from the inside. Each time he needed more. More sensations. More control.
Over time, he realized he wanted to be strong. He wanted to be not the one who watches, but the one who hits. He started with himself. At first he just clenched his fists. Then hit the wall. Then others. Every blow brought him closer to what he considered power.
**4**
(Fourth case: Oota Saki)
Her brother was the eldest in the family. He was the only one who understood her. They did it not because they loved each other, they were simply lonely.
She remembers his hands. Long, thin fingers that held her by the shoulders when she cried. She remembers his voice: "Quiet, quiet, I'm here." And there was no one else.
The Takayama people killed him. Just like that. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They dismembered him and left his guts on the fence of the Oota family home. She found him two days later. She sat next to the remains and watched the flies land on his guts.
From that day she hates them all. Everyone who carries their surname. Everyone who works for them. She lost her brother, and with him she lost the part of herself that knew how to love.
Now she only knows how to hate. And hatred is all she has left.
**5**
(Fifth case: Yuna Ryu)
He was born a boy, but always knew it was a mistake. When he looked in the mirror, he saw not himself. He saw someone else trapped inside who couldn't get out. His parents didn't understand. They said: "You're just confused." They didn't know that he was confused not in himself, but in their expectations.
One day the Takayama people came to their house. For debts. For disrespect. They killed his parents and raped him, he was still a boy then who didn't understand what was being done to him. He remembered only the smell, tobacco, sweat, blood. And the pain that never went away.
After that he changed his gender. He decided that if the world wanted to see a girl in him, he would become a girl. He became Yuna. But the memory remained. And every night he sits in his room, his fingers squeeze himself, and he tries to forget. It doesn't work.
He jerks off to feel at least something.
**6**
(Sixth case: Chon Mina)
Her hair was pink.
Not bright, not neon, pale, like sakura petals that had already begun to fall. A short bob, neatly trimmed, the ends just above the shoulders. She always wore it that way. Ever since she survived.
She was seven years old when it happened.
She was playing in the yard, not far from the house. Her mother was inside cooking dinner. Father was supposed to return from work in an hour. It was summer, warm, it smelled of grass and something sweet from the neighboring café.
Then a car pulled up.
Black. With tinted windows. Three men got out. She didn't remember their faces. Only their smiles. And the smell, that same smell she would remember her whole life. Tobacco, sweat, iron.
They grabbed her when she ran toward the house. She didn't have time to scream. They stuffed a dirty rag in her mouth, and she only remembers the taste, dirt, gasoline, fear.
Her mother ran out at the scream. She didn't scream for long. Mina heard only one blow. Then silence. And voices. "Why did you kill her? We should have left her alive so she could watch the shit she's drowning in." Laughter. Then footsteps toward her.
They took her to an abandoned building. An old school that had been closed a year earlier. It was dark there, smelled of mold and something sour. They dragged her into the toilet. Dirty, with peeling tiles, rusty pipes and a smell that cannot be described in words.
They dunked her head in the toilet. Flushed it. She choked, coughed, began to drown in someone else's filth. The water was cold and warm at the same time, she didn't understand how. She only remembers that she couldn't breathe. That she was dying.
Then they pulled her out. Smiling. Laughing. And again. And again. Until she lost consciousness.
They threw her out onto the street. Thinking she was dead. Outside the school gates, in the mud, on the side of the road where no one walks.
She lay there for three hours.
She woke up because someone was shaking her by the shoulder. An old woman. Homeless. With a wrinkled face and kind eyes. She smiled at Mina. "You're still alive, girl. Tough one."
Mina didn't know if she was strong. She just couldn't die. She couldn't let them win.
She dyed her hair pink later. A darker pink. So as not to look like that girl. So that when she looked in the mirror she would see not the child who drowned in shit, but someone else.
**7**
(Seventh case: Kaoru Mizuno)
She was a child when her mother was killed. Not just killed, they desecrated the body, ate the hands, rap*d the corp*e, beat it with their feet until the face was no longer a face. Kaoru found her in the morning. She stood and watched. And didn't cry.
Kaoru killed for the first time when she was twelve. She simply strangled a homeless man who was bothering her in an alley. She doesn't remember his face. She only remembers the warmth that spread in her chest when he stopped breathing. It was better than sex. Better than food. Better than anything she had ever felt.
Now there are no human boundaries for her. No code. No principles. No morality. Not even reality itself. She doesn't believe in God, because if God exists, he allowed her mother to die such a death. From the day of the death until today she blesses violence as her tool.
**8**
(Eighth case: Renji Asakawa and Genzo Takeda)
Their main mistake was knowing Kaoru's face.
Renji was her target. He was the grandson of Takayama. His grandfather was the one who destroyed everyone around him, who raped, killed, burned to the ground. Renji had never seen his grandfather. He doesn't know who he was. He doesn't know that his blood is the same as the monster's.
And that makes him guilty. Even if he did nothing.
Genzo was even worse. He hugged Kaoru. Once. By accident. She pressed herself against him, and he didn't push her away. For her it became a betrayal. For him, just a moment.
And now both of them are on her list. Renji, by inheritance. Genzo, by carelessness.