Prologue

WARNING: violence

A strong rope was twisted around a young man's neck. As he was lifted into the air, his feet dangled helplessly, but there was nothing he could do to free himself. His hands were tied behind his back, making it impossible to grasp the knot and escape his grim situtation.

The green forest around him swayed in the wind as the setting sun shone through the thick branches. It was such a beautiful, warm summer evening, and yet it was marred by the incoming sentence of death.

Once, he had longed for the peace offered by death, the chance to be free from his struggles and burdens. But now, he only wanted to live and be with the person who was crying beneath him, the one he would never hold in his arms again.

A dark-suited yakuza tugged on the rope as he walked further away, pulling the trembling young man up even higher. He heard tattooed men's threatening voices fade away as the burning in his throat worsened. He could only hear the muffled sobs coming from the person who had given him a reason to survive, the one he had been trying desperately to keep safe - hearing his desperate cry hurt so much, even more so than his own fate.

His eyes dimmed as he glanced at him. He wanted to reach out and give one last touch to the person he had held in his heart for so long, yet he couldn't, so he gave it everything he had and stretched out his leg towards him - his muddy sneaker brushed his white hair with a shaky touch, leaving a streak of dirt behind.

He wasn't sure what he wished to tell him with that small gesture. Maybe it was an apology for the life they couldn't have or a promise that if there was an afterlife, they would find each other once more. Whenever or wherever it may be, either after death or in the next life, he would make sure he was never hurt again. He would care for him, love him, cherish him, through thick and thin.

Ghosts gathered in the grove to witness his death. He saw faces of people that he had wronged and who had harmed him, ready to take him as one of their own - but he didn't want to join them. He didn't want to die.

Tears trickled from his blue eyes onto his bruised cheek. Memories flashed in his mind just before he lost consciousness - so many regrets, so many mistakes, so many words left unspoken.

Death had already tried to take him so many times, but he had always managed to outrun it. The rope was like its skeletal hand, squeezing the life out of him as it dragged him closer to its realm, now that he was finally out of luck.

Or was he?