Life is like a crab apple - you take a bite, expecting it to be sweet and juicy, and it comes out sour and you don't want to eat it anymore, but it's the only thing you have left. It's the only thing you can hang on to when you wait for a better tomorrow.

As a little girl, Kyouko Sakura often thought, thought about how life could have been, what was simply out of reach. She dreamed of knights with mermaid tails on unicorns with fiery manes and candle horns sweeping her off her feet and taking her away to a wonderful kingdom, where trumpets would blow and violins would screech and everyone would rejoice at her arrival. They'd cook her food and make her bed and mop her floor and she'd never feel hungry. Her family would get rich and her mother, now dead and gone along with her sister, would never have to lift a finger again. Her father would have enough power to right all the wrongs that worried him to tears in the mornings, and her little sister would never cry at night, stomach empty, wishing and waiting just like her for a better life.

She dreamed of romance and fantasy where the hero always triumphed and saved the princess; childrens' stories where the child defeated the villain and saved their family. But none of it existed. None of it was true. It's still not true now, and Kyouko knows this. She's known this ever since she made her stupid wish and hope, grief and despair became the most important things that she could name off the top of her head just because they were the only things that kept her alive anymore, the only things that ever provided for her and kept her healthy after all of this heartbreak and hunger.

She takes a bite of her apple and decides she'll never feel hunger again. Not anymore.