His name was Ren Kurosawa.
"Ren," like the lotus—resilient, blooming even in mud.
And "Kurosawa," the black swamp—his family's legacy of surviving things they never should've had to.
He lived in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture—just south of Tokyo but a world away in feeling.
The kind of place where neon signs burned over rusting rooftops, and cigarette smoke drifted with the wind like forgotten prayers.
Ren's home sat in the narrow backstreets of Kawasaki-ku, near Higashi Monzen Station—where the trains squealed too loud and people kept their eyes low.
His neighborhood smelled like old rain and fried food, with vending machines blinking 24/7 and shutters that hadn't lifted in years.
At Tachibana Elementary School, Ren was invisible until it was convenient to hurt him.
He was small, soft-spoken, and unlucky. A walking target with bad shoes and worse timing.
Every bruise had a name. Every silence was earned.
But he endured, because of her.
Aiko Kurosawa, his mother.
A single mother in every definition of the word.
She worked mornings at a soba shop near Kawasaki Daishi, evenings cleaning offices in Shin-Kawasaki, and nights folding boxes in a warehouse by Keihin Canal.
Some nights she came home with her knuckles raw and voice gone—but her smile never wavered.
She made their cramped 2-room apartment feel like a sanctuary.
The tatami mats were fraying, but she swept them daily.
Their futons were thin, but she made the blankets smell like home.
Above the window, she strung her paper cranes—folded from old receipts and lottery slips—fluttering like faded hope.
That morning, as a slow rain misted the streets of Kawasaki, Ren sat at their kotatsu, still groggy.
Aiko crouched beside him, tying his shoelaces.
"You'll be okay today, right?" she asked, her voice soft like temple bells.
He nodded, as he always did.
She pressed a rice ball into his hand, wrapped in cloth with a tiny embroidered maneki-neko.
"Eat it before lunch. Good boys don't starve just because the world forgets to feed them."
Ren hugged her harder than he meant to. She laughed softly and kissed his temple.
Outside, the sky grumbled. He stepped into the rain.
Past the covered shopping street at Azalea Mall,
past the stench of the meat shop near Kawasaki Ginryugai,
past people who saw but didn't look.
He didn't know it yet.
Didn't know that today—
would be the last morning he saw his mother standing.