Chapter Text
Autumn in Tokyo always brought with it the smell of wet ginkgo leaves and the subtle smoke from the heaters that families were beginning to light in the stately mansions.
At the Hirota estate, however, the season seemed to have stagnated. The silence that settled in the polished wooden hallways was not made of mourning, but of a suspended expectation.
For Harua, the last three weeks were the first in three years in which his lungs seemed to process oxygen without the weight of an invisible oppression.
Sitting on his heels in the center of his quarters, Harua maintained the impeccable posture that the etiquette of the Meiji Era demanded of an omega of prestigious lineage.
His black hair, modernly cut at ear length, with soft strands falling over his expressive eyes, shaded a face of fine and delicate features. And his fair skin contrasted dramatically with the heavy fabric of the mofuku — the entirely black mourning kimono, whose rigid folds seemed to anchor him to the tatami. His hands, small and with slender fingers, rested on a small dark silk-covered notebook hidden beneath the folds of his sleeves: his diary.
It was there, in the meticulous and almost invisible handwriting, that he deposited the fragments of the soul that society did not allow him to carry in public.
Harua opened the notebook, the ink pen gliding with a soft sound.
“The autumn wind brought the end. I do not feel the weight of the weeping widow; I feel the weight of the bird looking at the open door of the cage. I am a mibōjin, the person who has not yet died, but for the first time, life does not feel like a punishment.”
He closed the diary quickly upon hearing distant footsteps. Stowing it away in the back of a hidden drawer beneath the wooden floorboards, Harua allowed himself to let out a long sigh. Involuntarily, his front teeth began to torture his full lower lip, pressing the soft flesh until he could almost taste the ferrous tang of blood. It was his oldest habit, the only physical vestige that betrayed the chaos behind his porcelain facade.
While he waited for the official summons from the family council, Harua's mind inevitably wandered through the last four years, unearthing memories he had spent so much time trying to anesthetize.
He was seventeen when he sat that same way for the first time in the presence of Hirota Eiichiro. Back then, his black bangs, which insisted on falling over his eyes, did not serve as a shield to hide his pain; they were merely the adornment of a young omega considered the treasure of his own lineage.
During the engagement, Eiichiro had been the epitome of the chivalry demanded by the new aristocracy.
At twenty-two, he was the image of the ideal Alpha, a tall man of broad and imposing shoulders, whose athletic build was softened only by the rigidity of his posture. His hair was cropped close in the modern military style, and his face possessed handsome features, with sharp eyes that seemed to always evaluate everything around him with a natural superiority. He dressed with a sober elegance, alternating between dark silk kimonos and European-cut suits that were beginning to dictate fashion among the capital's businessmen.
In every visit to Harua's parents' house, Eiichiro conducted himself with an impeccable reverence and brought delicate gifts: boxes of tea coming from Shizuoka, silk handkerchiefs with crane embroideries, and sheet music of Western songs that Harua liked to strum on the piano.
All that courtesy and the attentive, polite way with which Eiichiro treated him during the courtship lit a tender flame in the young omega's chest. Harua, in his innocence, came to firmly believe that that commercial arrangement of families would not be just a cold obligation. He nurtured the sweet and secret hope that, through that affection and mutual respect shown in their meetings, a true and deep love could bloom between the two.
The moment that had remained engraved in Harua's naive mind, however, was the formal marriage proposal dinner. Before the patriarchs, Eiichiro had bowed until his forehead touched the floor, his firm and velvety voice echoing through the room:
— I give my word of honor to the Shigeta family. I will care for Harua with the greatest respect and zeal an Alpha can offer. His safety and his happiness will be the pillars of my roof.
Harua, watching the scene from behind a bamboo divider, had felt his chest warm. He believed that destiny was being generous. At that very dinner, sitting at the furthest end of the table, almost invisible under the shadow of the elders, was Eiichiro's younger brother.
Hirota Riki was, at the time, only fifteen years old.
He was a boy of long and awkward legs, whose shoulders seemed too large for the still-growing structure of his body.
The son of a German citizen and the patriarch Hirota, the boy carried the traits of his mixed heritage in a timid way: his face still displayed the baby fat of his cheeks, which flushed violently every time someone addressed him, and his eyes, of a deep hazel tone and slightly slanted, were always kept low. He was considerably shorter than Eiichiro and seemed out of step in the rigidity of that room.
Harua had given no importance to the boy. To him, Riki was just a silent brother-in-law, a boy who seemed to want to disappear into the walls during dinners.
What Harua did not realize, because his eyes were focused on the illusion of a bright future with Eiichiro, was the way Riki's eyes followed him.
Every time Harua smiled, every time his bangs fell and he brushed them away with a light movement of his head, every time his sweet, citrus scent emanated, every time Harua directed even the slightest look toward him, Riki froze.
The boy guarded every detail of that beauty with a painful and reverent fascination, suffering in silence from knowing that that ethereal creature belonged to his older brother, the perfect heir to the family empire.
A few weeks later, Riki was sent to Berlin to study, and Harua completely forgot his existence.
Then, Harua's eighteenth birthday arrived. And with it, the wedding.
The ceremony followed the strictest traditional rites at the shrine, a spectacle of opulence and formality that sealed the union of the two lineages under the eyes of the gods and high society.
Every step was calculated; the sound of sacred drums and flutes echoed through the solemn hall while the bride and groom performed the san-san-kudo ritual, exchanging sips of sake from three cups of different sizes to vow eternal fidelity.
Harua remembered the coldness of Eiichiro's hands when their fingers briefly touched, and the crushing weight of all those aristocratic eyes judging his worth as an omega and future bearer of the Hirota heirs. And despite everything, he was genuinely happy.
But the wedding night was the stage where the crystal of illusion shattered into sharp pieces.
The bridal chamber exuded the smell of incense and essential oils. Harua, still wearing the shiromuku — the heavy, entirely white wedding kimono that symbolized death to his old family and birth into the new one —, sat on the edge of the futon waiting.
His hands shook, the inexperience and instinctive fear of his omega wolf making his body stiffen.
Eiichiro entered, the collar of his attire already slightly loose, his dominant and heavy Alpha pheromones occupying the air. At first, he tried to maintain his gentlemanly pose, touching Harua's shoulder with his cold fingers, praising him and trying to kiss him.
But the omega's reaction was an involuntary flinch, a tremor that Eiichiro interpreted not as innocence and inexperience, but as rejection.
— What is this, Harua? — Eiichiro's voice lost the sweetness of the engagement, turning icy. — You spent months accepting my courtesias. Now that I am your husband, are you going to act as if I were a stranger?
— I-I am sorry, Eiichiro-sama... — Harua whispered, his front teeth digging into his lower lip in an involuntary gesture of nervousness, his expressive eyes welling with tears. — I just... need a moment. The air is heavy... I...
But the pride of an Alpha heir to the Ie did not tolerate hesitation. Eiichiro's patience evaporated as quickly as a drop of water on hot iron. To him, Harua's fear was an affront to his power. If the omega would not yield by will, he would be taken by authority.
Without another word, Eiichiro advanced.
His immense hands grabbed Harua's delicate shoulders, pushing him against the mattress with a force that made the air escape his lungs. Harua tried to push him away, a glimpse of pure panic taking control, but his physical strength was insignificant against the weight of the Alpha.
The white silk fabrics of the wedding were torn with a violent sound that echoed through the room like thunder.
— You belong to me, Harua. Your father signed the registry and handed you over to me so that I could fulfill my role — Eiichiro growled near his ear, his breath hot and heavy with sake. — And now it is time for you to fulfill yours!
What followed was a night of horror that Harua would spend the next few years trying to erase from his mind.
Eiichiro did not bother to prepare him, or with his consent. Driven by frustration and the desire to submit that beauty to his control, he forced him in a violent and cruel manner. He ignored his crying and his pleas. And at the peak of the knot, when Harua thought he would die from the pain, with his face buried in the pillow to muffle his screams, Eiichiro held the back of his neck with relentless strength and dug his teeth into the soft skin above his shoulders.
The pain of the forced bond was like liquid fire running through his veins. The biological tie, which should have been a connection of souls, was sealed like a branding iron on slaughter cattle.
Harua passed out from shock before the night ended, his body exhausted and his mind collapsed.
The next day, the gray morning light invaded the room. Harua woke up alone in the large futon, naked and bruised. Eiichiro's sandalwood scent was still impregnated in the blankets and rooted in his skin, mixed with the ferrous smell of dried blood.
Slowly, he sat up, every muscle in his body crying out in pain. His trembling fingers went up to the back of his neck, touching the swollen and sore ridges of the bite. When he looked at his own hands, he saw traces of blood.
He dragged himself to the standing mirror in the corner of the room, and the reflection he found frightened him.
His eyes were dull, red, and swollen, lacking the vibrant shine they had boasted days ago. Finger marks were appearing on his face and neck. There were purple bruises on his wrists and shoulders. On his thighs, the blood along with his husband's seed were trickling from his intimacy and were the most painful physical reminder of the violence he had suffered.
Harua felt an overwhelming nausea. He limped to the basin of clean water, trying to scrub his skin, trying to tear Eiichiro's smell off himself, feeling deeply dirty, violated and, above all, betrayed.
The Alpha who had knelt before his parents and promised to care for him with respect had revealed himself to be a selfish monster under the protection of the law. Eiichiro have the legal backing to act that way; the husband was the supreme head, and the omega, merely his property.
It was on that morning, while gathering the pieces of his dignity from the bedroom floor, that Harua's body made a drastic and involuntary decision to protect him: the trauma blocked his biology. In the three years that followed, the omega never entered heat again. His pheromones became almost imperceptible, a straight line of apathy that prevented his organism from preparing for reproduction. His sweet orange blossom aroma had been erased along with his innocence.
In the beginning, after the violence of the first bond, Eiichiro had tried to remedy the abyss that had opened between them with an approach he considered generous, showering him with luxuries. The alpha did not accept being rejected by that which he possessed.
He brought tortoise-shell combs coming from Nagasaki, rolls of French velvet, and Kyoto silks woven with genuine gold threads, as well as brooches encrusted with Western gemstones that cost small fortunes. He wanted Harua to smile, to demonstrate the gratitude expected of an omega graced by such a prestigious marriage.
But the omega's body did not forget. Whenever Eiichiro drew near, Harua's stomach would contract in a violent nausea. He tried, with all his might, to maintain etiquette, but his front teeth tortured his lower lip until it bled, his hands shook, and the implicit repulsion in his eyes was something his husband could not tolerate.
— You act as if I were a monster, Harua — Eiichiro had said one night, throwing a lacquer box containing a ruby brooch against the tatami. The dry thud echoed through the room. — I give you everything... I give stability to your bankrupt family! And you look at me as if I were inferior to you.
From then on, the omega's indifference transformed into fuel for the alpha's cruelty. Eiichiro grew tired of trying to buy the affection he considered his by right and began to punish Harua through a polished contempt and daily humiliation.
Without the stimulus of heat, matrimonial encounters became a mechanical obligation, painful and devoid of any feeling. Harua realized that trying to fight and resist only fed his husband's sadism; he learned, under the weight of pain, that his existence there was boiled down to submission.
And the more inert he remained, the faster the violence ended. If he did not fight and did not show any reaction, Eiichiro would grow bored and leave him in peace. The omega learned to survive by developing a dissociation technique that he secretly called "the retreat of the soul."
He stopped breathing through his nose, avoiding the Alpha's suffocating sandalwood smell. He did not move, did not make a sound, did not blink. He became a smooth, cold surface.
When Eiichiro's heavy steps echoed down the polished wooden hallway, on the nights he decided to collect what he called the "family registry tax," Harua would simply lie on the futon and fix his eyes on a specific knot in the wood of the ceiling.
Eiichiro would growl, irritated by the lack of natural lubrication and the absent warmth of that body, acting in a quick, painful, and selfish manner before turning to his side and ignoring him until dawn.
The only moment in which Harua truly existed was in the early hours of the morning, when the mansion fell asleep. Under the faint light of a single beeswax candle, he would pull the dark silk diary from its hiding place.
“My body is a desecrated temple,” he wrote one night, his trembling fingers staining the rice paper with black ink. “He touches my skin, but he does not reach me. I am merely the reflection of what he wishes to destroy. May the earth swallow me before the next winter arrives.”
Winter arrived, but not to take Harua away.
The months had merged into a continuous winter after the wedding night and the subsequent blocking of his biology. Eiichiro, who at first expected quick heirs to consolidate the Ie, became even more frustrated.
The Alpha heir could not bear the thought of failure; in his mind molded by the pride of the Ie, an omega who did not bloom was an insult to his masculinity.
However, the Civil Code and the prestige of Harua's family prevented an immediate return without it causing a scandal in the social columns of Tokyo's newspapers.
The solution Eiichiro had found was to relegate Harua to two distinct functions: absolute silence in the privacy of the home and surgical ostentation in public.
The business dinners, however, were the stages where the spectacle of Eiichiro's cruelty reached its peak. With industrialization advancing in great strides, the Hirota mansion frequently received Western investors, imperial army officers, and weaving trade barons.
On those days, Harua's preparation began hours before. Two elderly maids, faithful to the traditional leadership of the house, dressed him in the most expensive kimonos in the province — heavy silks in shades of dark blue or olive green, embroidered with genuine gold threads that outlined winter landscapes.
Harua's bangs were meticulously combed to the side, though a stubborn strand insisted on falling over his expressive eyes, granting him an aura of melancholy that foreign guests frequently mistook for "the exotic oriental mystery." But the mystery that no one deciphered kept itself in the dark; handwriting was his only mirror and confidant.
“November 14th. The master of the house brought a necklace of cultivated pearls from the port today. He fastened it around my neck tightly, making sure the jewelry covered the scar from the mark on the back of my neck. He said my neck must look perfect for tomorrow's guests. My skin burns under the touch of the cold metal. They look at the pearls, but no one sees the invisible blood that still trickles from where he bit me. I bite my own lip until I taste iron, just to remember that the soul is still mine, even if the body is locked in an iron box.”
The premonitions he confided to the paper came to life over the following nights. During the banquets, Harua's role was that of a living decoration. He sat to Eiichiro's left, his back rigidly straight. His hands, small and fair, handled the ceramic pitchers with surgical precision, serving the warmed sake or imported wine to men who barely looked him in the eye, but whose covetousness was palpable in the air.
— The young master Hirota possesses not only the best railway contracts in the region, but also the most beautiful consort in Tokyo — a general had commented on one occasion, his eyes shining from the drink. — A gem of a genuine diamond.
Eiichiro would smile, a broad and aristocratic smile, while his hand went beneath the table and squeezed Harua's thigh with a punitive force, his fingers pressing into the fabric of the kimono until finding the flesh.
— A gem that requires a firm hand so as not to break, general — Eiichiro would reply, his voice dripping with pride — But the Ie of the Hirotas knows exactly how to polish what it possesses.
Harua did not react to the squeeze that would certainly leave a purple bruise the next day. He merely kept his eyes low, his front teeth sinking into his lower lip until the physical pain masked the humiliation.
He knew what that praise meant.
He knew that as soon as the guests crossed the iron gate of the estate and the lights of the dining room were turned off, Eiichiro's jealousy and inflated pride would turn into violence within the four walls of the bedroom.
All the covetousness that the other men showed for Harua during dinner operated as fuel for Eiichiro's sadism. “They look at you, but you are my trophy,” the Alpha used to growl against the back of his neck, forcing Harua's inert body against the mattress while pulling his hair, collecting the "conjugal duty" as a punishment for his own impotence in making him enter heat.
With the passing of the second year of marriage, Eiichiro's indifference transformed into abandonment.
Tired of the omega's melancholy and cadaverous coldness, the heir began to openly frequent the pleasure districts of Yoshiwara. The sandalwood scent he brought home began to come accompanied by cheap perfumes of courtesans and female Alphas from the teahouses.
Sometimes, Eiichiro's mistresses were bold enough to send perfumed letters directly to the mansion, or leave cheap silk hair ribbons in the pockets of his Western coats, knowing that Harua would be responsible for overseeing the washing of the clothes.
The maids whispered in the corners, looking at Harua with a mixture of pity and disdain; cause an omega who could not keep his husband at home and failed to generate an heir was a failed creature.
Harua, however, found a morbid peace in that abandonment. The more time Eiichiro spent in the brothels, the fewer nights he spent in the bedroom of the east wing. Silence had become the omega's best friend.
Until that autumn morning.
The sound of horse hooves galloping wildly across the gravel of the main garden broke the stillness of the east wing. Harua was in the middle of his morning calligraphy when he heard the clamor at the main entrance: shouts from servants, the restrained crying of the housekeeper, and the heavy sound of boots clicking at the entryway.
Eiichiro's carriage, returning from a night of excesses in the pleasure districts under a heavy fog, had lost control on a sharp turn near the Sumida River. The vehicle had overturned on the rocks. The Alpha heir of the Hirotas had had his neck broken instantly.
He was dead.
Upon receiving the official news from the patriarch himself, Harua had bowed in a protocolary manner, touching the palms of his hands to the floor. Inside, an overwhelming tremor spread through his ribs. It was not mourning. There was not a single drop of sadness in his chest. It was the intoxicating and frightening sensation of freedom.
Mibōjin. The person who has not yet died. He accepted the title and knew that without heirs and without the active biological bond of a heat, the family council would have no reason to keep him there. He would be returned.
His parents would accept him back as a shameful burden, yes, but he would have a small room, silence, and the guarantee that no Alpha would ever touch his skin again.
With hands shaking from pure relief, Harua spent the following weeks organizing his few belongings: his simplest clothes, his calligraphy brushes, and, hidden in the bottom of a lacquer box, the dark silk diary. He was ready to leave. The cage was open.
That was when the sliding door of his room was opened without warning by the head housekeeper.
Harua blinked, brushing away the past and back to the present. In the gray autumn afternoon, Harua closed his eyes as he remembered the taste of blood in his mouth.
He took a deep breath, hearing the housekeeper repeat the council's summons.
— Harua-sama. The second young master Riki-sama crossed the port of Yokohama this morning and is already in the council room. The patriarch and the elders demand your immediate presence for the reading of the new registry of the Ie.
— I am on my way — he replied, his voice low and controlled.
Hirota Riki had returned.
. The fifteen-year-old boy... the timid and awkward, short, and chubby-cheeked boy he barely remembered... had returned from Germany as the new head of the house. He was now the man who would dictate whether Harua would remain locked in that purgatory or if he would finally reach the peace of isolation.
He knew that the family council did not usually give up a prestigious alliance without a fight. And the presentiment of the horror that was to come made Harua's stomach turn as he walked, step by step, toward the invisible tribunal that would decide the rest of his days.
But Harua adjusted the sleeves of his black mourning kimono, swallowed the knot that rose in his throat, and walked toward the main room trying to stay positive. The relief in his chest was almost palpable as he walked through the hallways. He wanted to believe that this would be the last time he would step into that wing of the mansion.
He would enter, hear the announcement of his removal from the family registry, bow in gratitude, and leave, without knowing that the destiny awaiting him would cross his life once again with the pair of hazel eyes he had neglected in the past.