With black hair and eyes, and almost pale skin, Carl was a five-year-old boy of mixed Japanese and American heritage. He looked at his father, who was lying on the ground and gasping for air. Carl stared at his father silently. His father muttered something, his voice barely a whisper.
"Ha-Haruki... take care of your mom. And take care of yourself."
The words came out in a shaky mix of Japanese and English, broken by pain. Despite the blood and the fading light in his eyes, his father managed a weak, trembling smile.
Carl looked at his father, who was slowly slipping away. His hands trembled as he reached into his father's pocket and pulled out the phone. On the outside, he seemed calm — but when he called emergency services and held the phone to his ear, his voice cracked, betraying the storm of fear and pain inside him.
Carl clutched the phone tightly, his small fingers barely able to press the right buttons.
"Hello?" he stammered, his voice breaking. "P-Please... my dad... he's–he's not moving properly. He's bleeding."
The operator's voice came through, calm and steady, but Carl could barely hear it over the pounding of his heart.
"Stay with me, sweetheart," the voice said. "Tell me where you are."
Carl looked around the quiet alley, the broken crates, the back door of convenience store. " I-I don't know the address. But there's a red sign that says 'Yamada Market'. We're behind it. Please come fast."
His father's breathing grew shallower. Carl dropped to his knees beside him, gently grabbing his father's hand, which was going colder by the second.
"Dad... please," he whispered. "Don't go. You said we were going to see Mum next week. You promised."
His father blinked slowly, the smile he had forced earlier now completely gone. His lips moved faintly. Carl leaned in close.
"... Proud... of you..." the words were barely audible.
Carl's throat tightened. Tears spilled down his cheeks, falling on to his father's chest.
In the distance, the faint wail of a siren echoed through the city streets.
"They coming," Carl said, squeezing his father's hand. "Just hold on a bit longer. Please."
The boy didn't notice the blood on his own shirt, or the way his knees scraped on the rough pavement. All he could see was his father's pale face... and the way his chest rose slower each time.
Then—red lights. A rush of footsteps. Shouting. Gloves. Hands lifting him away gently.
"Let me stay with him!" Carl cried out.
A paramedic bent down. "We'll take care of him, I promise."
As they worked, Carl stood frozen, watching. He didn't understand all the machines, or what the shouting meant. But he knew enough to recognize the silence when it finally came.
The kind that meant no one was breathing anymore.
==========
After the funeral in Tokyo—a small, quiet ceremony with only a few relatives and Carl's tearless face—he was flown back to the United States to live with his mother.
She greeted him at the airport with open arms and swollen eyes.
"Oh, Carl..." she whispered, kneeling down to hug him.
But Carl didn't hug her back. His arms hung at his sides, his face unreadable.
"I'm fine," he said. He wasn't.
The house they lived in was a modest one in the suburbs of Seattle, filled with warmth and pictures that now felt like a different lifetime. His mother tried. She cooked his favourite foods, sat by his bed at night, spoke gently to him.
But Carl stopped smiling. He barely spoke at school. Teachers said he was polite, quiet, smart —but distant.
One day, a boy accidentally bumped into Carl in the hallway. The boy turned to apologize, but Carl had already walked past, his eyes like glass.
At home, he stared at the ceiling at night, remembering the sound of his father's final breath. Remembering the heat of his blood. The coldness that followed.
==========
He was only five then. By the time he turned eight, he had stopped asking questions about death.
By ten, he no longer cried. Not when he scraped his knees. Not when his pet hamster died.
His mother noticed how he no longer laughed at the cartoons he used to love. She sometimes stood quietly by his bedroom door, watching him sit in silence, sketching in a notebook.
"What are you drawing?" she asked one evening.
Carl close the notebook. "Nothing important."
She didn't push. She was scared of pushing him too far.
=====
Middle school came. Carl grew sharper. Quieter still. He didn't make friends easily. Some thought he was cold. Others said he was just "too serious."
But Carl noticed everything. He noticed the pain in other people's voices. The subtle ways people avoided things they didn't want to feel. He saw through smiles like they were made of glass.
His mother signed him up for therapy. He sat through the sessions in silence for weeks, until one day he said:
"Do you think people can turn to stone if they feel too much pain?"
The therapist blinked. "That's... an interesting question. Do you feel like stone, Carl?"
He paused.
"Sometimes I think if I don't feel anything, nothing can hurt me anymore."
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Carl was twelve when he first walked into the alley behind a local store, just to see what it felt to stand in place that reminded him of that night in Japan.
He didn't cry. He stood there, fists in his jacket pockets, head tilted to the side.
His voice came out low, emotionless: "I remember."
He didn't know what he was hoping for. A ghost, maybe. A whisper. Anything.
But there was only the wind, brushing against his hair like his father's hand once had.