"HARU!!! LEAVE!!! DON'T EVER LOOK BACK AND DON'T EVER RETURN!!!"

The samurai, who has a long scar across his left eye and long messy hair, slammed the body of the 15-year-old boy on the mossy mound of the garden before heading to Haru's mother. Haru took his chance and reached for the tanto on the moss, rising up to his feet while looking at his mother who was already pinned down by two other samurais. He tightened his grip on the weapon and was ready to attack the scar-faced man but...

"RUN AND LIVE!!!" his mother pleaded, bursting into tears as her yukata was ripped off by the intruder.

"How about the boy?"

The man glanced at the boy, "Let him watch his mother suffer and die from my hands," and guffawed with the other two.

Haru could not afford to lose his mother to the same men who had already murdered his father earlier that night. He wanted to help her, but he froze where he was; droplets of moisture from the starless sky began to drip on his dirtied skin.

His mother kept on pleading and saying the same words to her only child and just as the man finally positioned himself in between her legs, their lusty eyes feasting on her.

"LEAVE!!!"

A strong breeze blew off the cherry blossom petals that spring night, and Haru's childhood memories with his beloved parents flashed before his eyes. Death is inevitable, and as most of them believed, the fallen petals of this beautiful tree did not only mean the renewal of life, but it also symbolized its end. If it was his fate to die at an early age, then he would gladly accept death, but if his mother wanted him to live, then he would.

The thunder roared as if Amaterasu-Omikami was angered by another deity; a sudden heavy rainfall descended from the pitch-black sky. Glancing at his mother for the last time, he turned his back and quickly made his way out of the backyard by stepping on a big rock positioned against the fence and jumping over it. He landed on his feet, yet staggered when he sprang up due to the wet cement. Some samurais dashed outside of their house to look for him but he had already gotten far. He ran away as fast as he could, without ever looking back, like what his beloved mother had told him to do.

The violent rain continued incessantly with noise, yet Haru's mother's painful screams still echoed as the darkness of the night consumed the young boy leaving his hometown.

---

The piercing cries even resonated in his room the moment he opened his eyes and gradually disappeared in the background once he heard the downpour outside. Breathing heavily in a cold sweat, he stared at the darkness of his room, picturing his beloved mother's face at the back of his eyes. How could he forget the face of his mother begging for his son to leave?

He finally heaved a deep breath before sluggishly sitting on his bed and checking his phone placed on top of his bedside table.

3:30 AM. Always the same time. The same weather. The same dream.

Haru laid on his bed again and gazed at the void once more, unsure when the hours of darkness and sounds of the intense rain would drift him back to sleep and ease his troubled heart and mind.

Author's Notes:

Note 1: A tanto is a short sword or dagger.

Note 2: Amaterasu-Omikami is the goddess of the sun and one of the main deities of Shinto.