Beep, beep! Beep, beep! Beep, beep!

"Ughhhh!" I grunt as the same irritating noise erupted from my alarm clock. I released myself from the warmth of my bed sheets that kept me prisoner and threw my legs over the side of the bed. The darkness surveyed the area with no signs of light breaking through even as I opened my curtains wide.

"It's still dark outside." My eyes scanned the stretching sky for any hint of the sun rising, but like for the past few years of my life, there were no remains of light or sunshine in my world.

I searched through my drawers for a change of underwear and grabbed my towel from the balcony, where it was drying in the cold breeze before I headed off into the bathroom. The stream of water followed the shape of my body and fell to the shower floor as the steam rose, fogging up my glass doors. I exited carefully, making sure not to slip on the marble floor as I slipped a towel around my waist. Mistakenly, my eyes caught a glimpse of my scarred forearms.

"I told myself I wouldn't remind myself of that until I got there again but... I guess it's impossible after all." I whispered to myself in a melancholy tone.

A parakeet set of iris's glided down my body like the remaining water droplets.

Just like that day... Heavy rain poured, leaving nothing behind once it stopped.

~ 6 years ago ~

Weeeeooooo! Weeeeooooo! Weeeeooooo! Weeeeooooo!

The sirens that day roared distinctively. They run through my head as clearly as the words I have ever read. The ponderous rain lashed against the balcony doors in the living room through the dark sinkhole of clouds that didn't seem would ever stop. I remember sitting at the table, eating the dinner my parents had prepared me before they left, and receiving a phone call on our dedicated house phone. It was rare to hear that obsidian brick ever ring. Unfortunately, whenever it did, bad things always followed. And this time was like the rest of them, however, unlike the other times, this wasn't left unresolved without any consequences following.

I dashed to pick up the phone before second-guessing myself for a couple of seconds and finally answering. The person calling seemed to be outside at the time, as I could hear the same rain whittling away in the background. His breathing had an unsteady rhythm and was heavy in exhaustion. He hesitated multiple times to talk through the phone, each time twisting his words as he began again and again.

"Mister?" I called out first. I thought I heard a hurt sound break through his voice, but I couldn't be sure. He sniffed and spoke his first words.

"Is this... Is this the Kage family's son?" He asked, clicking his tongue at himself.

"Yes, it is." I confirmed concisely.

He then went silent again, until his voice re-emerged. "Your parents. They are dead." My mind blanked at his words. At the time, I questioned if I heard him correctly. Maybe I'm just making things up, right?

"I will be coming over shortly, kid. So hang on and don't do anything."

Boop, Boop!

The man ended the call with those words that clung and suffocated the back of my mind. Every breath that I took felt tiresome, and each second felt like an hour.

"Are they...dead?"

Knock, knock!

A thumping noise could be heard from the front door. I desperately remember sprinting to the door, slipping on the floor, and hitting my nose on the way. I gazed through the peephole to check the identity of the guest. I couldn't get a glance at his face, but a striking jet-black cap with a gold badge told his story enough. He was a policeman. An officer to be exact. I held the door open to him, looking up at his face that was positioned downwards along with his cap shrouding his face in uncertain darkness.

His tag on his uniform read clearly, officer Moriya. A tough look stained with disdain aimed at himself. He blamed himself for his useless nature. At the time he could only stare at me. A child who had just lost his parents.

A stream of tears aligned down my face. A silent cry burst forwards from a contemporary mask I hid behind. My smile remained along with the lie planted deep within my psyche, a plague that kept me sane and away from pain. A defensive mechanism.

Officer Moriya crouched down and spread his arms wide open with a snotty smile as his eyes sparked with the minuscule light that reflected the tears in his eyes. My frail body, weighted by the stress, collapsed into his gentle embrace.

"You'll be okay, kid." He mustered from his heavy breaths as drops heavily fell down his cheek and onto my back.

"Of course, I will. There only running...late after all." I spoke what seemed like the truth back then. But the more I look back on it, I was defenceless to the cold exposure that had been revealed to me. My life filled with a pallet of colours had lost shade and brightness. A word that slowly crumbled and drained from colour.

Over the next couple of days following that tragedy, I didn't attend school. Officer Moriya had already informed the staff of the occurrences that I was facing and justified my absences. He also hired a personal nanny for me that would become my guardian. He went through interviews to make sure to choose the right applicant that would be able to provide support and love for the sheltered child that I was. Eventually, after a week, my nanny had been decided. A kind and beautiful woman in her early 20s. Sato Aikawa was her name. She would support me day and night, preparing me meals cuddling me, and tending to my physical and emotional needs.

The void I felt in the house had now slowly started to see itself repaired. However, unbeknownst to me, the damage by my parent's death was irreparable. Like tearing a canvas into two. It can be fixed, but only temporarily.

In the last days of the phase, their funereal followed. Something I didn't accept. The scenery felt too much like my missing puzzle. The beginning of a missing person. Me. A rainy day just like that day with men and women wearing black suits and dresses, their faces blurred and swallowed by nothing. Like they came to watch over my demise. The grim reaper that would take my will to live and my identity. In the last week before I would return to school, my parent's business was sold off and all the money was inherited by me. On that day I became the youngest Japanese billionaire. My face, however, was much different from the expression most would accept. This money only further tried to instil the fact that my parents were dead.

I remember turning to everyone. They would all just whisper words like, "poor kid", "a shame his parents died." The thoughts that plagued my mind as I glared into their black eyes that saw past nothing but a poor kid.

MY PARENTS ARE NOT DEAD!!!!!