Rain lashed the rooftops like furious drumming from the skies, each drop adding to the chaos of the night. The streets of Kyoto glistened under flickering streetlamps, mostly deserted—except for one woman sprinting through the storm, her soaked cloak clinging to her frame as she cradled a tiny bundle close to her chest.

Her child. Her daughter.

The woman’s breaths came in gasps, legs burning, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The shadows behind her moved fast—silent pursuers with deadly intent. She darted through alleyways and over stone steps, each stride soaked in desperation.

Around her neck, a silver locket pulsed with a strange blue light. It glowed brighter as the danger neared, casting a faint aura over her daughter's face. The child stirred, letting out a soft, confused whimper.

“No, no, stay quiet, please…” the mother whispered, her voice barely audible over the thunder.

The locket—an heirloom, a beacon, a curse. They were after it. But they’d take the child too if they knew who she was.

She ducked beneath a wooden overhang, eyes scanning the surroundings. That’s when she spotted it: a crumbling shed wedged between two larger buildings, half-swallowed by ivy. Hidden. Forgotten.

She rushed in, heart pounding.

Inside, dust and damp clung to the air, but it was dry and, more importantly, out of sight. She pulled the blanket back slightly and looked down at her baby girl. Her daughter blinked up at her with wide, curious eyes—eyes that held the legacy of a line long buried, a future meant for something greater.

Tears slipped down the mother’s cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, brushing wet hair from her daughter’s tiny face. “You were never supposed to carry this burden.”

Thunder cracked overhead. The baby girl let out a louder cry.

Her time was running out.

She kissed the child’s forehead gently and whispered, “Be safe, my little light. Whatever happens… don’t let them take your name from you.”

She swaddled the baby tighter, nestling her carefully into an overturned crate padded with her cloak. Then she tucked the glowing locket deep beneath the folds of the blanket—its light dimmed now, as if it understood it needed to hide.

To mislead the hunters, she pulled a second pouch from beneath her sash—inside, an old jade comb, ornate and polished, worth chasing. With her free hand, she grabbed a broken ceramic shard from the shed floor and slipped it into her sleeve.

Outside, voices shouted in the rain. Closer.

She took one last look at her daughter, then steeled herself.

Bursting from the shed, she ran—deliberately clumsy, deliberately loud. Her footsteps splashed through puddles as she knocked over a trash bin and let the jade comb fall with a clatter at a corner. The ceramic shard, she let fall a few steps later, stained with blood from a self-inflicted cut.

Let them think she was still carrying the child. Let them believe she was reckless. Let them follow the trail.

Let them never know the true heir was hidden in silence.

Rain pelted her face as she led them away—toward nowhere.

The storm rolled on through the narrow streets of Kyoto, the wind howling like a ghost with unfinished business. Most had taken shelter by now—windows shut, lanterns dimmed. But one man remained outside, bent under a worn umbrella as he carried a crate of tools home from the factory.

His name was Daichi, a metalworker known more for his silence than for stories. Every night, he walked the same path—through alleys and shortcuts only locals knew, his hands calloused from years of labor, his heart worn but steady.

He had no family waiting at home. Only a kettle, a futon, and the echo of past regrets.

Tonight, however, was not a night for routine.

A sudden cry pierced the downpour. Faint, high-pitched—unmistakably a baby.

Daichi froze.

He looked around. The cry came again, carried by the wind from somewhere to his left. He turned down a side alley he usually avoided—too narrow, too cluttered. But the crying grew louder as he moved, more urgent.

Then he saw the shed.

Half-collapsed and covered in ivy, it looked abandoned. But the sound was clear now—just behind the wooden wall. Carefully, Daichi pushed open the crooked door.

Inside, in the shadows, a small shape glowed faintly.

A baby.

She was lying in an old wooden crate, wrapped in a soaked blanket, her cheeks red from cold but eyes wide with life. On her chest lay a silver locket, still faintly pulsing with soft blue light. It lit her features in a way that made her seem almost… ethereal.

Daichi blinked, unsure if his tired mind was playing tricks on him.

He stepped forward slowly, kneeling beside the crate.

“Hey… hey there, little one,” he murmured, his voice thick with disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

The baby looked at him and let out a hiccupping wail.

He scanned the shed, his voice rising slightly. “Hello? Is someone here? Did someone leave this baby?”

No answer. Only the storm.

He waited, but no one came.

With careful hands, he touched the blanket—still damp. The baby shivered, and he acted on instinct. He took off his outer jacket and wrapped her in it, cradling her gently. She was so small, barely the size of his forearm.

And the locket… it was warm. Not just warm—alive.

“Who would leave you out here like this?” he whispered.

There was no answer, of course. But in that moment, something shifted in him. Something ancient and instinctive. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, the way she stopped crying the moment he picked her up.

Maybe it was that he had no one waiting for him. And now—maybe she didn’t either.

Daichi looked down at the baby girl in his arms, and a quiet resolve settled in his chest.

He stood up, pulled the door closed behind him, and walked out into the rain—not just as a worker anymore, but as something more.

The next morning, the storm had passed, leaving the city drenched and glistening under a pale sky. Daichi stood outside the local police station, the baby girl bundled against his chest, the mysterious locket still glowing faintly under her blanket.

He’d hardly slept. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his arms never wavered.

Inside, he explained everything to the officer on duty—where he’d found the baby, the strange glow from the locket, the cries in the rain.

The officer listened, took notes, and frowned.

“No missing reports that match,” he said after checking their database. “We’ll post notices, check orphanages, ask around the neighborhood. But if no one comes forward...”

Daichi nodded slowly.

He already knew.

---

Days passed. No calls came. No one claimed the child.

Daichi returned to the station again and again, but the story remained the same: no witnesses, no parents, no answers. The locket’s strange light had dimmed, now just a pretty ornament around the child’s neck. A mystery in silver and silence.

Weeks became months.

He named her Hikari—light—because that’s what she had brought into his quiet, tired life. At first, he tried to stay distant, unsure if someone would come for her. But no one ever did.

So, slowly, he stopped waiting.

---

By the end of the first year, she had taken her first steps on the wooden floor of his small apartment, wobbling between toolboxes and empty rice bowls.

By the second year, she could say “Daichi” and “hot tea” and “stars.”

By the third, she would wait by the window every evening until he returned from the factory, waving excitedly the moment she saw his figure on the corner.

She was curious, bright, and full of laughter—though the locket still hung around her neck, untouched and unexplained.

Sometimes, it shimmered when she was asleep.

Sometimes, he caught her looking at it with a strange expression, as if it whispered to her in dreams.

But Daichi never asked questions.

Three Years Later…

The workshop was warm with the scent of iron and oil. Outside, a soft spring rain tapped on the roof, nothing like the storm from three years ago.

Daichi wiped sweat from his brow and straightened his back. He glanced toward the small room in the back where Hikari was supposed to be napping. Silence.

Too quiet.

He set down his tools and walked toward the doorway, only to find her sitting by the window, her face pressed to the glass.

“Again?” he asked gently. “Waiting for me even when I’m already here?”

She turned with a mischievous grin. “Just in case you leave again, silly.”

He chuckled and ruffled her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She held out a drawing she had made—stick figures holding hands under a big blue sky.

“This is you,” she said, pointing to the tall one. “And this is me. And the shiny necklace is my magic.”

Daichi crouched beside her. “Magic, huh?”

She nodded seriously. “It talks to me sometimes. But I can’t understand the words yet.”

His smile faltered, just slightly.

He had long stopped trying to explain the locket. There were no records of it, no family crests or names carved into it. But every time he’d considered taking it off, Hikari had cried in her sleep—louder than usual.

So, it stayed.

And so did she.

She was his now, in every way that mattered.

But far beyond the quiet home they had made, someone was still searching.

And soon, the past would come knocking.

Hikari wasn’t like other children.

She didn’t cry when she scraped her knees. She didn’t pout when she lost her toys. She listened carefully, spoke thoughtfully, and sometimes stared out the window with an expression too calm for a child her age.

By the time she was four, she could memorize entire stories after hearing them once.

By five, she had started teaching herself kanji from Daichi’s old factory manuals, copying each stroke perfectly with her tiny fingers covered in pencil dust.

She didn’t play much with other kids at the park. She said they were “loud in her head,” though she never explained what that meant.

And then there was the locket.

Still always around her neck. Still glowing faintly some nights when she dreamed.

Daichi had stopped trying to understand it. He didn’t dare remove it anymore. But he began writing things down—small notes in his workshop notebook:

“She knew what I was thinking today before I said it.”

“Asked about machines she’s never seen before—blueprints?”

“Laughed in her sleep. Whispered a word I couldn’t understand. Sounded… old.”

He wasn’t afraid of her. He could never be. But something inside told him that one day, someone might be.

---

Now, Age Six – Primary School Begins

The day she put on her first uniform, Daichi nearly cried. She stood in front of the mirror, straight-backed and serious, the navy-blue fabric hanging just slightly too big on her narrow shoulders. The white socks, the bright red satchel—it made her look like every other child walking to school that morning.

But she wasn’t.

“Try not to correct your teachers too much,” Daichi joked gently, fastening her satchel. “Let them feel smart too.”

Hikari giggled. “Only if they’re wrong on purpose.”

At school, the teachers were stunned. She read faster than anyone in class. Solved puzzles meant for older students. Finished tests in half the time and then asked for more.

But what puzzled them most was her silence.

Hikari wasn’t loud. She didn’t show off. She observed. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Always watching, as if she were waiting for something to happen.

One afternoon, Daichi came to pick her up early. The school nurse had called, saying Hikari had collapsed in the hallway.

When he arrived, she was already sitting up, staring out the infirmary window with that same unreadable expression.

“What happened?” he asked gently, kneeling beside her bed.

She looked at him and whispered, “I saw a place I’ve never been… but it felt like home.”

She touched her locket.

“It was broken there. The sky was silver, and people were calling my name—but not this name.”

Daichi felt the chill crawl down his spine.

He reached out, took her hand, and smiled the only way he knew how.

“You’re safe now,” he said.

But that night, long after Hikari had fallen asleep, Daichi sat in his workshop, staring at the glowing locket beside her pillow.

He wasn’t sure how long he could protect her.

But he would try—with everything he had.