Touka and her younger brother, Ayato, lost their mother in a hit and run accident when they were six and four respectively. Touka barely remembered her mother. She had the pieces of a whole picture in her mind. But, Ayato didn't have any pieces at all. It was through their father's bedtime story that Touka and Ayato put their pieces together, making a whole picture of who their mother really was. But, then as if their family was cursed, just two years later, their father was murdered.
This time it was supposed to be a robbery. She remembered loud voices, a deep harsh voice threatening her father. Open the safe! Open the safe! Or I kill them. The man had a knife held against her father chest, his hand pulling her father's collar, lifting him off his feet.
She was frightened. And her father was yelling with desperation. She never heard her father rose his voice before. Touka! Touka! Take Ayato! Ran!
But the fear had frozen her in place. And Ayato, her baby brother Ayato, took her hand and forced them to hide under their father's bed.
The man then laughed, there's something in his laugh that betrayed insanity. He didn't come to the Kirishima family to rob, he came to slaughter. He lifted his knife high before plunged it down.
Touka saw the whole thing. She saw the blade penetrating her father's chest. She saw the blood, a deep shade of red, spurting and then flowing steadily. She heard her father gasped and choke as his breath left him. She didn't dare to look at anywhere else but the blood. Red, red, red with her father's dying face. Good bye. That what they said, the red and the blood.
It was a strange thing, but the blood actually moved her. She put her hands on her brother's eyes, although she forgot to cover his mouth. Ayato let out a scream and the robber turned in their direction, hiding under their father's bed.
Her father's murderer took Ayato, holding him by his pajama's collar as he lifted him to the air. As Ayato kicked the air and screams in fear, the thought of losing her brother didn't cross Touka's mind. She just wanted her brother back. She just wanted her father back. Winding the clock backward to the bedtime stories again. She wanted to leave. She wanted to erase the blood.
She screamed No! No! Please! But the man didn't listen to her, he lifted the knife that had been inside her father's chest and went for a strike.
She saw the blood again, red and flowing with a salty smell, and she moved faster than she had ever moved, without thinking. Instinctively, she took a scissor from the nightstand and stab the man's side as hard as she can. The blade went all the way in. Blood spurting from the wound. A deep shade of red, just like her father's. The man screamed, the knife in his hand fell with a clang against the floor. Ayato was thrown onto the bed and he's crying but he was safe, he was safe. The man stupidly fell on his knee, tightening his hands on his bleeding wound. But, Touka already had the man's knife in her hand. And this time she was the one who went for a strike.
Touka stabbed him once…. Twice…. thrice. Once more and once more. She went for his back, his neck. The man rolled and laid on his wounded back. The front of his body facing her. She stabbed him in the stomach. She just stab and stab and stab. She was scared that if she stopped the man would kill her brother. Killed her.
"Onee-chan! Onee-chan! Stop!"
She heard her brother's cries. But she can't stop. There was only red and red and red. Everywhere. The red blinding her. The red deafening her. Her brother's cries faded, weaving into the red ropes replacing her senses. And then suddenly it stopped. With no warning and no notes, the knife fell from her hands. It didn't clang, it splashed into the blood.
Touka's hearing came back with a ringing, then silence, and then slowly she heard her brother's low sobs. Ayato was curling in their father's bed, his hand covering his ears, eyed closed, muttering stop…stop…stop…
Touka walked to her brother with a usual pace as if she had not just kill a man in cold blood. She hauled her brother to her back and surprisingly Ayato didn't refuse. He put his hands onto his sister's neck but he kept muttering stop…stop…stop…
Her brother was heavy. But she didn't care. She heard a loud thunder rose up. A lightning illuminating the flood of red blood bathing her father's bedroom. Taking a picture of the blood covering her whole body, her face, matting her hair. Tainting her younger brother.
She felt her head burning with red. So, she walked out of her father's room searching for something, anything, to cool her head. Touka walked through the silence of their house, a mute witness to what had happened. Blood trickled from her clothes onto the wooden floor, her small feet leaving traces and prints. A record of the red night. Lightning keeps taking pictures of her insanity.
The front door was left wide open, rain water splashing to the inside of their house. She stepped outside with her brother in her back. The rain water was cold, but she was burning red and it feels good to have the icy water freeze her. The water cleaned her clothes and body of the blood. The road was stained by red colored water which flew down the gutter. Touka readjusted her brother in her back and she started to walk.
Her brother didn't stop his empty, distant whispering of stop…stop…stop… he didn't even open his eyes but he clung onto his older sister, his hands wrapped around her neck as they walked from block to block. Until there were people with umbrellas and places with street lights. How come they didn't notice two little children walking through the rain in the middle of the night only with their pajamas on was astonishing and creepy . But, not all of them.
An old man started to walk toward them and with a worried voice he asked, "Girl, what are you doing here?"
But she kept walking and walking, Ayato kept muttering and muttering. And the red burn getting hotter and hotter until her brain felt like it fried and the red began swallowing her.
The old man watched as the girl fell onto the street.