[I picked up a prickly Rei Furuya.]
[Later, he became the only light in my life.]
Kamishiro Banjin can see the "death lines" on people who are about to die. He lives in solitude, running an old bookstore.
One rainy night, he found a child called "Zero" in the back alley. The boy bit his hand, his eyes like those of a desperate young beast.
Banjin didn't think much of it. He simply took the child home.
He made him failed panda-shaped custard buns, taught him to write his first character, and held his hand all night when nightmares woke him.
He thought he was saving Zero.
But he didn't know that this stubborn child, in his own clumsy way, was slowly saving him from a century of loneliness.
"Zero," he asked softly, wiping jam from the corner of the child's mouth, "will you leave me?"
The grown-up Rei Furuya caught his wrist, his breath burning hot:
"Don't even think about it. You're the one who came after me first. You'll never get rid of me, not in this lifetime."
Theme: Evening after evening, morning after morning.
