Page 15 of The Oni's Heart

She just laughed, the sound bitter and harsh. “Then why are you here?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t have an answer for myself.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice low. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

And maybe that was the truth. Maybe I hadn’t found peace. Maybe I had never really escaped.

Maybe I was just as lost as she was.

9

The Shadow of the Past

MOMOI

Ishould’ve known better.

I should’ve known that no matter how far I ran, no matter how many oceans I crossed, my past would follow me like a tethered corpse. The Yakuza wasn’t something you could leave behind—not easily, anyway. And no matter how much I hated it, or how much I wanted to forget it, the moment someone found out about me, about who I was, everything would come rushing back.

I learned that the hard way.

It was a cold slap in the face that morning when the envelope slipped through my door, the familiar, grimy handwriting scrawled across the front. The Yakuza. Even now, even here, they found me. My stomach twisted as I stared at it, the letters burning into my retinas. There was no escaping them. There would never be a safe place. Not even in this city full of strangers, hidden behind the facade of a new life.

I dropped the envelope onto the kitchen counter, unable to bring myself to open it right away. The anxiety clawed at me, pulling me into the familiar, suffocating fear I thought I hadoutrun. The words inside would be simple, calculated—just a reminder that they hadn’t forgotten about me. A warning.

But I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to know what they wanted this time. The longer I stared at it, the more I wanted to walk away. Just ignore it. Pretend it didn’t exist.

But it did. It always did. I couldn’t outrun it. Not really.

I inhaled deeply, my chest tight, and grabbed the envelope. The letter inside was short, just a couple of lines, but it was enough to make my heart race. The message was the same as always:Your loyalty belongs to us.

There it was. The past reaching out from the shadows, clinging to me like a parasite.

I tried to shove it all down, to bury it deep inside where it wouldn’t hurt, where it couldn’t touch me anymore. But I knew, deep down, that there was no forgetting.

I threw the letter on the table, my hands trembling. I could feel the anger rising, a tide that never receded. I couldn’t go back to them. Iwouldn’tgo back to them. Not after everything I’d worked for. Not after everything I’d tried to leave behind. But the fear lingered, suffocating, because I knew it wasn’t just my life they’d come after.

It probably meant my mother was dead.

It probably meant they wanted me to take her place.

My mind flashed to all the things I’d done to survive, all the times I’d been forced to make choices I could never take back. The things I’d been willing to do—things I couldn’t wash off, no matter how much I scrubbed at my own skin. The stain was permanent. I was permanent.

You can’t escape your past, Momoi,I told myself, the words cold and harsh in my head.You’re never going to be free of it. Not here. Not anywhere.

I squeezed my eyes shut, the familiar ache in my chest threatening to break through. I thought of the monk, Tatsuya,and howhehad tried to pull me out of my dark spiral. The memory of his calm gaze, his words, seemed so far away now—like something that had never really existed.

I wasn’t even sure what I wanted from him. His kindness—it felt akin to a cruel joke. A foreign thing, something I didn’t deserve, and yet... I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Every time I did, a knot tightened in my chest. He was so damn different.Too different.His calm, that steady presence—it irritated me more than it soothed. He seemed to have it all figured out, a man who lived in the light while I was drowning in shadows. And it made me angry.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to care. But here I was, staring into the distance, my thoughts wrapped around him with an old, familiar ache I didn’t want to acknowledge. He made me want something for myself—a life untouched by my past, a future where I didn’t have to keep running.

But that was the problem. It wasunattainable.

What right did I have to want peace? To want normalcy? Every part of me screamed at the thought, every scar on my body a reminder of how far from normal I really was. Men like Tatsuya—they didn’t understand. He had the privilege of a clean slate, a life built on discipline and calm. Me? I had nothing but the wreckage of my choices and the bitter taste of regret.

And that’s where my anger festered. He made me want something I couldn’t have, something that would always be just out of reach. Every time he looked at me with that damn calm in his eyes, it was as if he was telling me I could have it too. But I knew better. I knew what I was. I knew where I came from. No amount of kindness, no matter how genuine, could erase the dirt that clung to my skin, the stain of everything I’d done just to survive.

So, I buried the thought down deep where it couldn’t rise up again. It made me sick to even think about it. The idea that I, of all people, could have something pure and untarnished was laughable. I had been shaped by my choices—by every wrong turn, by every dark alley I had wandered down. And to even imagine that I could be part of that world, the world where Tatsuya belonged, made me want to scream.

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