Sometimes, when I am alone, I can remember my mother.

She liked to smile.

She was beautiful when she smiled.

My mother sometimes told me that I could make choices of my own. I didn't have to let others make my own choices.

My mother told me that someday, her family would come to meet me. It was inevitable, she told me.

My mother said that I didn't have to be scared. It was in my blood to not be scared. To never cower from the face of battle. To never turn away from a fight.

I was only three when she told me that.

Looking back on it, I'm glad that my mother told me those words.

Otherwise I'd have never survived.

I was four when she was killed.

Four when I was brought to my father, who had never known of my existence, and had a wife of his own and two sons.

To them, I didn't have a name. The shock of losing my mother supposedly made me forget it.

I was only four, so it was believable.

My stepmother resented me.

I was her husband's child. A child that was born from a single, drunken night.

A child that wasn't supposed to exist.

A child that meant nothing to her.

On the condition that she pick my new name, I would be allowed to live with my father's family.

The name she picked me was fitting on how I was nothing to her.

Nothing.

No quantity of worth.

ゼロ

Zero.

平和島 ゼロ

Heiwajima Zero.

In the Heiwajima family, I stuck out.

Instead of brown hair and dark eyes, I had crimson red hair and scarlet red eyes.

All the signs that I did not belong.

I met my two half-brothers.

静雄, Shizuo, a year older than me.

かすか, Kasuka, a year younger than me.

Shizuo was curious.

Kasuka was too young to really understand.

I rarely interacted with them, opting to stay in my room.

Japan was an unfamiliar place. I missed home.

I missed my mother.

I would have always stayed in my room before Shizuo reached out to me, deciding to take things into his own, small hands.

Shizuo told me that I was his sister now, and I could do nothing to change it. He told me that though I may be nothing to his mother, I was something to him. Therefore, he would not call me Zero.

Another way to write zero in kanji.

零度

Reido.

平和島 零度

Heiwajima Reido.

I remember that day clearly. The day Shizuo accepted me as his sister and gave me a name to show that I was worth something to him. I was his sister, and I grew to accept him as my brother.

Young Kasuka also adopted Shizuo's way of calling me Reido, and I accepted him as my brother too.

They were my brothers, and nothing would change that.

I eventually realized that I was strangely different.

When I watched a video of martial arts, I found myself able to carefully watch the movements and copy it. Shizuo and Kasuka found it amazing.

I found it a bit odd.

I remembered how my mother said it was in my blood to never turn away from a fight. Perhaps this was something relating to that.

The more I thought about it, the more I grew curious about who my mother's family was.

I remembered how my mother told me not to be afraid of her family, and I wondered why I would have to be afraid of them.

On days when I missed my mother the most, I would stay in my room, staring out my window, lost in thought. Shizuo and Kasuka seemed to understand and kept their distance.

On those days, I immersed myself in the stories my mother told me.

The three guardian spirits of her family.

襟, the spirit known as Eri.

守る, the spirit known as Mamoru.

くま, the spirit known as Kuma.

My mother told me that the three spirits watched over her family for generations. Sometimes, they would choose to possess a vessel wielded by a member of her family that impressed the spirits. But that had not happened in centuries, as the vessels that held them were lost.

The loss of the three spirits caused the downfall of her family, my mother told me. It is because of that loss that her family is the way they are now.

I didn't understand then.

I do now.

My mother explained that the spirit Eri was a spirit of offensive nature, responsible for attacking any enemies of her family. The spirit Mamoru was a spirit of defensive nature, responsible for protecting her family against attacks. The spirit Kuma was the spirit that was the strongest, with unknown power that helped my mother's family thrive and flourish.

I remembered that, on only one occasion, my mother told me about her two siblings.

She never told me their names.

All I knew was that she had an older brother that greatly respected family tradition more than his own family and a younger sister who looked up to her in a way that my mother believed she didn't deserve.

I had always wished that my mother could have had a better life.

When I told her that, my mother said that I shouldn't think like that. She said that I shouldn't focus on the past and instead focus on the present.

Better to dwell on what you can do right now instead of what you couldn't do in the past, she said.

That quote had always been one of my favorites.

It wasn't until later when I discovered where she found it.

As time inched by, I began to enjoy this new lifestyle with Shizuo and Kasuka. Perhaps I could get used to it and fully adapt to it. Maybe I could finally be accepted by Shizuo and Kasuka's mother. Maybe I could truly be a part of this family.

I never got the chance.

My mother's family came to meet me, just like she had said.