On a rainy and unseasonably hot April day, 1010, an eight-year old Soyataki Hallia walked home from school.

Making the trek alone wasn’t unusual for him. His sisters, Jasmine and Rhudall, were a fair bit older than he was, and had already moved onto secondary schooling. Soy, still in primary school, would get out of class and back home an hour or so later than they did, so he spent most of his days walking along the sidewalk from the prep school to his wrought-iron-fenced neighborhood by his lonesome.

Not that he really minded it. He had always been pretty good at amusing himself.

Today, his source of amusement was the rain. For a little under a week, the normally-breezy coastal city of Vira-Teakala hadn’t seen much wind, the air growing hot and stagnant in its absence. Humidity, wet but somehow not cooling, hovered over the cityscape like a thick fog. The scattered clouds lingered and lingered, building up into a dark, heavy front as the days stretched on. It had been grey, sticky, and uncomfortable. Soy wasn’t big on humidity – how it made his hair frizz and his clothes damp and clingy – but he was excited about what this kind of weather promised: thunderstorms. Fours almighty, did he crave one. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so fond of them. The gentle growl of rolling thunder? The feeling of the rain itself? Or, potentially, just the practical knowledge that the humidity had finally broken and that the city would cool in a few days’ time. Either way, he supposed the reason didn’t matter. He liked the rain.

At about noon, the clouds had finally decided to get on with their jobs, and the sweltering weather finally broke into a light storm. At the end of the school day, his classmates had bustled around him, clutching their umbrellas and holding their coats above their heads in a feeble effort to stay dry. The rain, of course, speckled their skirts and slacks anyways. Watching them all scurry about, he could almost hear their annoyed cussing once they got home and discovered the water had soaked all the way through their socks.

Soy, on the other hand, was having a grand old time letting himself get soaked to the bone and ruining his loafers in the mud.

The raindrops, with no wind to fetter them, came down in thick sheets that had drenched him in a matter of minutes. The rain freckled his face, slicked his hair, and made his clothes wet and heavy. Grinning, he closed his eyes, leaning his head back and feeling cool water drip over his eyelids.

Ahhh.

Yes, he liked the rain.

Most of the way home, he walked down the boulevard, right along its edge, enjoying how the winter-browned muddy turf squished under his shoes. Each step left impressions of the soles in the muck (and matching stains on the leather), trailing back behind him in a wobbly line. A simple task, not really anything productive, but still… Satisfying? Meditative? Fun, definitely. It was fun for a reason that’s hard to describe – that innate sort of fun that kids have when they realize that they can indeed affect their environment, however small of how small an effect it is. It’s classic setup and payoff: push foot into mud, lift foot out of mud. He had now both ruined his shoes and created something that wasn’t there before. Magic.

Rhudall also liked to create things that weren’t there before. However, her tastes had always been a bit more avant-garde than Soy’s. In her teenage years, Rudy had decided to pick up sewing, and was completely intent on whiling away her afternoons hunched over a pedal-powered sewing machine, stitching together swaths of fabric or affixing embroideries to what she had already made (though not even she was insane enough to make them herself).

By the time he walked in through the front door, dripping wet and with mud stains up to his knees, he could already hear that distinctive “chk-chk-chk” from the study. Peeling off his sopping loafers, he peeked around the doorway. He could see her there, frizzy white hair backlit by the afternoon sun still seeping over the tips of buildings and in through the window. She was hunched over the desk, foot tapping (“chk-chk-chk”) as she carefully fed fabric in towards the needle.

Soy, being an eight-year-old menace, got a brilliant idea and proceeded to creep as silently as he could manage into the room.

Even at that age, he had gotten good at walking quietly. He knew all the tricks. Avoid the middle of floorboards, stick towards the walls or where furniture was sitting, step with his heel first before slowly lowering the ball of his foot. Imagine himself to be weightless – like a ghost, like he’d step right through the floor if he pressed down hard enough. Imagine himself to drift delicately through the air like a cloud. Imagine that his parents were listening for him from the other room.

When he got close enough, he swung his arms around the back of the chair, clamping them around her middle.

She shrieked, jerked upward, and slammed the back of her hand against the crossbar of the sewing machine. Crack. Her fabric puckered near the needle, casting hard creases into the snow-white satin. She swung her head back around, trying to get a good look at her attacker, before locking eyes with him. Her brows furrowed as the recognition set in.

“Soy! Dang it – Don’t do that!” she shouted, grabbing his right arm and shoving it back in his direction. He cackled.

“What? I’m not allowed to hug my sweet big sister?”

“You’re not allowed to bother me while I’m-“ as she was speaking, she presumably got a good look at her dress. “Agh- you-!” Watery brown stains made finger-shaped streaks down her stomach, wrapping all the way around to her sides. She held her hands up in some mixture of trying to avoid the dirt and expressing complete confusion and exasperation. “Why are you covered in mud?!”

He shrugged, still grinning like a maniac as he reveled in the sadistic glee bubbling in his chest. “It’s raining.”

“Go and change clothes or something! Just- Just get out of here! You’re dripping all over the place!” she hissed, shaking her wet hands off onto the hardwood, pointedly facing away from her sewing machine and the bundle of crisp white fabric that sat next to it.

He then got an even better idea.

“Why, what are you working on?” he continued, as innocently as he could manage. He took a few steps closer to her machine while she failed to put two and two together, too preoccupied with the mud.

“Sammi wanted me to make her a dress for her wedding…” She mumbled, pulling the fabric of her dress up and out to get a better look at it. He took another step (weightlessly, like a ghost) towards her desk. “And I thought I could get it done tonight, but I might not be able to finish the dang thing unless you leave me alone.”

Almost, almost there…

Perfect.

“Really?” He asked. “It looks almost done to me.”

She blinked, whipping her head around.

From the desk next to her machine, Soy had taken the immaculately-white body of the dress in his gritty, grimy hands, and now held it out in front of himself, its embroidered and laced hem trailing along next to his mud-stained slacks and socks. Rainwater dripped from his sleeves onto its front. As she looked at him, he ground his fingers deeper into the fabric, the biggest, smuggest grin he could manage plastered across his face. 

Her eyes went wide.

The dress fluttered like a beautiful feather or perhaps a wisp of dandelion down as it gently settled into a giant puddle of dirt water. Almost instantly, the brown bloomed through its delicate fabric, an ugly wet “Z” shape.

(He hadn’t really intended to drop the dress into the veritable ocean at his feet, at least not at first. He just wanted to hold it, to get his fingers on it, leave a smudge or two, just to bother her. But these things always escalated so easily. Pissing people off always gave him that particular high. ‘Why stop here?’ he thought. ‘She’s already angry at me. What difference is there between angry and angrier?’

The minds of children seem especially prone to this train of thought, since they often don’t fully grasp the consequences of their actions. As do those of rash and bitter people, who just never care to do so.

As luck would’ve had it, Soyataki fit into both of those categories.)

“Whoops,” he said, smiling.

Rudy’s white face went red.

She stuttered and stumbled over words for a moment, hands waving wildly, mouth agape. When she spoke again, she settled on one word:

It was then that Soy decided to run.

He shot out of the office, wet feet loudly smacking the floor with every step, head whipping back and forth to check for any tall and imposing figures heading towards him. Down the hall, up the stairs – he cornered sloppily on the stairway landing, wet socks frictionless on hardwood, and slammed his shoulder into the wall. Crack. Hissing a few freshly-learned cusses under his breath, he did his best to clamber up the rest of the flight, but made the critical error of focusing on his throbbing shoulder blade and not looking where he was going.

He proceeded to run directly into his father, who was stationed at the top of the stairway like a gargoyle.

Soy’s non-injured shoulder was the first thing to wedge itself into his stomach, his chin smacking painfully against his father’s chest. He wobbled, trying to regain some semblance of balance, before stepping on his own sopping pantleg and teetering backwards.

Whump. He hit the floor, landing squarely on his back.

He opened his eyes to the dark shadow of his father looming over him, arms crossed, mouth drawn into a thin line.

Sorikthena Hallia, the eminent king of Teak, was a person whose physical appearance generally fit his personality. He was tall – not lanky, but not broad either, somewhere in the gray area between the two – with an angular face and a mouth whose corners dug deep back into his laugh lines (although Soy had never seen him laugh). He had straight hair he wore in a complex array of braids, pale blue eyes under thick bushy eyebrows, and an artificially straight-backed posture, no doubt whipped into him by his own merciless parents. To Soy, his demeanor was like that of an aristocrat in an old painting: posh and restrained, always decked out in finery, but impossible to relate to or empathize with, with an air of discomfort and impatience leeching out the longer you looked at him.

“What have I told you about antagonizing your sisters, Soyataki?” he said. His voice was easily comparable to thunder: deep, gruff, and dully threatening due to the coming chaos it implies.

Soy reflexively tried to scrabble to his feet and dart towards his room, but Sorik caught on to his intentions before he managed to get himself upright. Quick as a whip, he lashed out a hand, grabbing hold of his upper arm. Soy, trying to wriggle his way free, could hear footsteps behind him – Rudy was stomping up the stairs. As he turned to look at her, he could see his own dirt-ridden handiwork clasped between her fingers.

“Dad! Look what he did!” she cried, thrusting the muddy fabric in their direction. Her face was red, tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “I worked for hours on it, I- I spent so much on the silk-!”

His father’s angular face turned back towards him.

“What made you think this would be a good idea?” His breath felt hot on Soy’s face. Once again, he lurched away, trying to free his arm from his father’s grasp, but it held fast. Even as he twisted the skin of his arm, the boy refused to look at him. His father decided to remedy this himself, grabbing Soy’s jaw and wrenching his face towards his. “Look at me when I talk to you, boy.”

Defeated, but still defiantly trying to convince himself that he wasn’t, Soy’s reluctant gaze finally met his father’s.

“Why did you do this?” He growled.

Soy, the young logician he was, assembled a cohesive and all-encompassing response.

“…I dunno.”

Rudy pointed at him as if his guilt was not already plainly clear, now fully sobbing: “He ruined it! I was almost done!”

Soy said nothing to that, face still smushed between his father’s fingers. The man gestured his free hand at her.

“And how do you intend to pay for this damage, Soyataki? Did you ever stop think about the consequences?” his father asked, despite knowing exactly what the answer was.

For some reason or another, that was the thing that made Soy’s childhood temper reach its limit.

“Look- just wash it!” he finally spat, “What, are you allergic to mud?! It’s not going to kill you! We invented soap for a reason!”

Rudy’s face blanched, before turning ferocious, new tears brimming at her eyes. His father scowled.

Over the last few hours, Soy had become very familiar with this fact.

After a good yelling match and a thorough rapping of his knuckles, Soy’s father had pushed him up towards Rudy, a stern hand on his shoulder, and stared and squeezed until an apology managed to fall from his lips.

“I don’t care if you’re sorry!” she had cried. She looked, sniffling, at her ruined gown. “I just want my dress!”

Though she couldn’t get that, she did get the next best thing: money for replacement silk (curtesy of the money his grandfather sent for Soy’s birthday), along with fervent promises from their mother that they would try to gently wash the mud out while it was still wet and see how things went from there.

Beyond his stinging fingers and quickly tiring wrist, Soy was assigned a month of confinement to the house – no toys, no friends, no school. There would be chores, though – plenty of them. He was to spend those four weeks working with the household maids, scrubbing plates and windows and floors until he could see himself in them. “Maybe then”, his father had said, “you’ll learn some respect for hard work”.

His true punishment was to start the next morning. For the time being, he wrote lines until his father was moderately satisfied, and was then sent to his room (which was now stripped of anything he could potentially amuse himself with) without dinner. The lock clicked behind him.

There was nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Except seethe.

So, seethe he did.

He lay on his bed, letting his wet clothes soak the sheets, staring at the ceiling as the light outside grew dim, all but vibrating with anger the whole while. “How was I supposed to know I couldn’t wash it?” he thought. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to spend an entire month locked up in the house,” he thought. “Why couldn’t Rhudall just take a joke?” There were a million things in life that were worse than having one stupid gown ruined. He had the things he loved taken away from him all the time. It was just a part of life. People lost things, people broke things, people got punished.

Well, except her.

Rudy never seemed to get punished – it was always Soy. He’d get the admonishing, the yelling, the ruler across his knuckles. Even when she did something wrong, it was never the same. Their parents just felt bad for her, like making a mistake up was something unfortunate bestowed upon her by an outside force. Like she wasn’t to blame, and even the suggestion of such was punishment enough, so she didn’t deserve any external pain.

Pain.

Soy didn’t think she had been receiving enough.

And so, in that moment, as the sun dipped below the horizon, he decided that he would be the one to show her some real pain.

He pulled his blankets up to his shoulder, closed his eyes, and listened. Listened and waited. He could hear jumbled, muffled voices from the living room. Then the creaking of the stairs underfoot, the voices getting louder. Then, his own door opening. A beam of dim light from the hall was cast across his face – he could see it even through his eyelids. His mother’s voice echoed from somewhere else in the hall, to which he heard his father respond:

“No. He’s asleep.”

If only he knew.

The door softly clicked shut, re-immersing him in darkness. Footsteps and low voices bounced around the hall for a few minutes more. He heard doors closing. Then, nothing.

Finally.

He waited a few more minutes, just to be sure. Then he threw back the blankets, sitting up, movements fueled by the magnitude of the rage in his stomach. Slinking with purpose across the room, he tried the door – locked. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He scrounged through the little desk in his room, pulling open drawer after drawer. Pens, school books, paper- Ah. He pulled out a sheet of cardstock, heavy in his hands, and folded it in half. Then in half again.

Though picking locks is generally trickly business (especially for one as young as Soy), he found himself at an advantage: this was a cheap bedroom lock, more for show than anything, without a deadbolt or any other complicated bits and pieces. This meant that a little metal latch was all that stood between him and freedom.

He slid the wad of cardstock between the doorframe and the door, poking around for the rod. Finally, he felt it – sloped on one side, just enough for him to get the cardstock under. He drew in a breath, wiggling the stock, pushing it back into the door. With his free hand, he turned the doorknob.

Click.

Time to get to work.

He pulled the door open a sliver, peering into the darkened hallway. His parents’ room was at the far end of the hall, separated from Soy’s by Rudy’s and Jas’ – one on the far side of the hallway, one on the close side. Rudy’s door was the one he wanted. He crept across the hall (sticking close to the walls, walking heel-first, like a ghost-). No light shone underneath the door, and, as he pressed his ear to it, he didn’t hear any noise coming from within. Perfect, perfect. But he wasn’t ready yet. There was something else he needed, and it sat downstairs, in Rudy’s sewing kit.

Rudy kept most of her sewing equipment in a repurposed toolbox, painted red and starting to scuff a bit on one side. As he pulled it open, he couldn’t help but be a little taken aback. She had all sorts of goodies in there – plenty of things he could use. The needles and tacks, while tempting, didn’t hold his attention for long. He had his eyes set on one thing in particular:

A pair of long, silver sewing scissors.

As he withdrew the gleaming instruments, his eyes caught the bundle of white silk sitting to his right.

The dress.

The damn dress.

He stretched out the fabric between his fingers, a lump in his throat. It felt cool and damp, and the brown stain had been reduced to a barely perceptible yellowed mark across its side.

It wasn’t even ruined. All that fuss, and Rudy had gotten off with even less consequence than he thought. Rage burned in his chest, crackling like charcoal.

He jabbed the scissors through the middle. The fabric tore like paper. He glided them through the front of the dress until he hit the collar. Then he snipped off a sleeve, just for good measure.

Fix that.

Holding his metal prize carefully between his fingers, he snuck back up the stairs.

Rudy’s door was unlocked, the doorknob turning without resistance. He turned it all the way (silently, slowly), before pulling the door open, and then released his grip on it with equal care.

He couldn’t risk any noise. He had once chance.

She lay in her bed, blankets snuggled up to her face. Her breath was slow and even. His feet carried him over to her.

Unthinking, he slipped the scissors up against her chin. The twin blades were open, poised, ready to snap shut. Her ear lay between them.

Any compassion, logic, or even simple forethought that he may have possessed was drowned out by the violent static of anger, like bees inside his head. He didn’t care about how she would feel, or if it was right, or what would happen next. He didn’t care. He just wanted her to hurt. He wanted to be the cause of it and have her know it. He wanted her to know she wasn’t safe. If he didn’t get to be, no one did.

A hot surge of rage clicked the blades shut.

Her scream cut through the air like a bolt of lightning even before her eyes were open.

She lurched upward, grabbed him by the shirt, and shoved him away. He didn’t really resist, and fell backwards to the floor, bloody scissors skittering across the hardwood. The impact barely registered. Blood – more than he had expected – seeped from the wound as the earlobe and the surrounding cartilage fell to her shoulder.

It was different, somehow, than he thought it would be.

Rudy, tears in her eyes, recoiled into a ball and pressed a hand against what was left of her ear, movements frantic.

“Oh my GOD- Oh my god- OH MY GOD!”

He thought it would feel better.

She pulled her hand away, looking at it as Soy pushed himself up onto his shoulder. It was slick with the dark reddish brown of blood. She opened her mouth to shriek again, but gagged instead, clamping her clean hand against her face.

Maybe he just hadn’t really expected himself to do it.

It was then that the door flew open. His parents stormed into the room, still in their nightclothes, both of their eyes wide with horror and confusion as they searched for the source of the scream.

“Rudy! What-“ his father began, but his voice halted as his eyes fell on Soy, illuminated in a rectangle of light from the hall.

“YOU!”

He had not yet managed to stand when his father lunged at him, grabbing his arm and forcing him to clumsy feet. He gripped Soy’s shoulders and shook him, adding to the dizziness in his head.

“What in the hell did you do?!”

His mother was already at Rudy’s side.

“Honey, here, let me see-“ she began, cradling Rudy’s round face in her hands. As she tilted his sister’s head to the side, she saw it there – the wound. Her words seemed to die in her mouth. She just stared. His father stared too. As did he.

He had cut away just shy of the lower half of her ear, from about the middle of the ear cone to where her earlobe attached to her head. Blood ran thickly down the side of her chin, staining the collar of her nightgown and gumming up strands of her hair. Rudy wasn’t wailing, anymore – she was just staring straight ahead, eyes wide, hyperventilating. Tears dripped down her face but she didn’t seem to be all that aware of them.

His father’s head turned back to Soy, a slow and even movement that seemed almost inorganic. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

It was at this point that Soy’s soul started to return to his body, and he got the good sense to run.

Ducking out from under the grip on his shoulders, he swerved to his left, escaping his flailing arms and managing to dive out the door. His socks slid and he slammed hard against the far wall, but he recovered quickly, getting enough traction to dash down towards the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him.

His father thundered out the door immediately after him. He was so close that Soy could feel the floor shifting under his weight with every lead-heavy step. His pulse was loud in his ears. He hit the stairs, half-running, half-jumping.

“SOYATAKI!” he boomed. Soy felt air breeze across his back as his father’s hand raked inches from him. He rounded the corner of the landing. “Get back here, you little devil!”

On the first step of the second flight, he slipped.

While one foot skidded down, the other hit air, sending him spinning into the remaining steps. He tumbled down the rest of the flight, feeling as if his head was hitting every step. At the bottom, Soy sprawled out on the floor. Tears sprung at his eyes, though he could still see his father’s advancing silhouette through them.

He wobbled to unsteady legs and managed a few steps, ducking into the living room, but it wasn’t enough. His father’s hand balled in the back of his shirt, and he spun him around.

“You little DEMON!” he screeched, eyes wild.

Crack. His hand lashed across Soy’s face, sending him reeling. The man regained his grip on him before he could fall to the floor.

Crack. A second time. This one was back-handed.

“What in the Four’s name is WRONG WITH YOU?!”

And a third.

The fourth wasn’t a slap, it was a punch. Soy’s teeth clacked painfully against each other – he tasted the acrid tang of blood. His glossy eyes searched the hall behind him for….

For what?

Against all odds, he looked, hoping that someone would come to save him. His mother. Jas, maybe. Rudy? Even in the moment, he wasn’t entirely sure why. Before he’d even turned eight, he’d burned all his bridges to cinders, and then given them a gasoline bath and scorched them again for good measure. The only thing left for him at that point was the river, and the water didn’t seem to have much a preference on whether or not he drowned.

“I knew it, I knew you’d do this-“

His fist hit him hard in the stomach.

“You hurt MY daughter-“

In the chin again, this time.

“Just to get back at me, you little-“

By this point, Soy had dropped to his knees. Blood seeped from his lip and his nose; his jaw ached. Somewhere along the line he had lost a baby tooth. His stomach throbbed with pain. His eyes were watery and blurry, and together with the dizziness in his mind, it made focusing on anything impossible.

Breathing hard, hair a frizzled mess and sweating, his father loomed over him. He stood there, staring, panting, for what felt like forever. Soy couldn’t move.

He had long since given up on running.

All he could do was silently will it to be over.

Soy saw his father’s eyes flick over to his right. Then back to him. He shifted his grip, moving to grab the back of his head.

“Since you’re so resistant to learn it…”

He dragged him across the room. The boy wriggled his limbs, trying to get some traction, some grip, some way to resist, but he was hardly any match for a man three times his weight.

Soy’s mother and father prided themselves on having nice furniture. Real wood, old growth, immaculately designed and assembled. The piece he stopped in front of was a coffee table. It was a nice little thing, good for playing cards or resting your feet on. Mahogany, probably – imported from somewhere. A sleek, modern design. Rectangular.

Nice sharp edges.

He yanked Soy’s head around to face it, his tired scrabbling giving him no pause. His fingers dug into his scalp.

His father slammed his face into the edge of the table.

The corner cut deep into the bridge of his nose. He heard the feet skitter across the hardwood.

He pulled his head back.

Then slammed it down again.

And again.

He wasn’t sure how many times it happened. It didn’t really matter.

It didn’t stop until he heard a yell.

“DAD!”

Jasmine.

Funny, that she would come to his rescue. At that age, he never would’ve to hers.

That was probably why she was the better sister.

She grabbed ahold of his father’s arm and yanked him away. It was enough to free Soy’s head from his grip, and the boy fell to the floor like a broken doll. His vision was full of spots. He could hear blood in his ears and taste it in his mouth. Sound reverberated around inside his head until it hurt. His nose felt like it had been seared on coals.

Jas screamed at his father above him. He screamed back at her. On shaky limbs, slipping in and out of consciousness, Soy dragged himself towards the only salvation he could see: the living room couch. He crammed himself under the damned thing like an alley cat on its last legs.

They kept yelling for some time. Eventually, it died down into mumblings and crying. Someone knelt by the couch, speaking softly, reaching a hand out to him. Soy stared straight ahead, not taking it.

Eventually, they left.

There he stayed, crammed into that tiny space, wooden crossbeams poking into his chest with his head twisted to the side. His face ached, red-hot like a sunburn – his nose especially. After a time, he felt solid enough to maneuver his trembling hand up to it to wipe it. The second his fingers brushed the welt, it felt like needles were being sunk into every pore on his face. He gasped, yanking it away. A rich, dark streak stretched across his thumb.

Even at that age, even as manic and sadistic as he was, he felt something that could probably best be described as a volatile mixture of shame and guilt. It wasn’t what his father did that put it there. It had hurt like hell, yes, but it didn’t make him come to some epiphany or make him suddenly feel remorse. It was just pain.

But he had done the same thing that this father did.

It was just pain. There was no point to it. Nothing came out of it – he knew nothing would – and he had inflicted it anyway.

But as uncomfortable as the guilt worming in his chest was, the throbbing of his bleeding nose was worse.

The longer he lay there, the more what he had done to his sister shrunk back to the corners of his mind, and the more his hatred of his father took its place.

Whatever realization may have come from Rudy’s blood was washed away by his own.

This trend continued for the next eight years of his life.

“Soyataki?”

He lowered his hands, rolling out his stiff shoulders.

His mother gave a sigh, rubbing her forehead. She couldn’t even seem to work up the energy to be disappointed in him anymore. She just looked tired.

“Your father wants to speak with you.”

Fantastic.